# Ben Klassen The **movement's anti-Christian ideologue** (1918–1993). Ben Klassen founded the Church of the Creator (COTC, 1973) and invented the concept of **"RAHOWA" — Racial Holy War** — the white supremacist battle cry that became one of the most widely adopted slogans across the entire WN movement. Where [[Christian Identity]] provided a *theological* framework for white supremacy (whites as God's chosen, Jews as Satan's offspring), Klassen provided a *secular racial religion* that rejected Christianity entirely as a Jewish invention — making his ideology appealing to the substantial anti-Christian wing of the movement. Klassen matters for the KB not as a mass organizer (his church never exceeded a few hundred committed members) but as an **ideological innovator** whose concepts — RAHOWA, race as religion, explicit rejection of Christianity — persist throughout the modern WN movement and represent an alternative ideological stream to the Christian Identity tradition. ## Biography | Period | Role | Significance | |--------|------|-------------| | **1918** | Born in Hewlettville, Ukraine (ethnic German Mennonite community) | Family emigrated to Saskatchewan, Canada (1924), then to the U.S. | | **1940s–1960s** | Businessman and politician | Electrical engineer; Florida state legislator (1966–1967, Republican); member of the [[John Birch Society]]; early anti-Communist activism | | **1973** | Founded Church of the Creator (COTC) | Published *Nature's Eternal Religion*, the foundational text | | **1981** | Established church headquarters | Otto, North Carolina compound | | **1983** | Published *The White Man's Bible* | Second major text; expanded the "Creativity" theology | | **1987** | Published *RAHOWA! This Planet Is All Ours* | Popularized the RAHOWA acronym; articles anthologized from *Racial Loyalty* tabloid | | **1992** | COTC member Mansfield murders | George Loeb, COTC minister, murdered Harold Mansfield Jr. (Black [[Gulf War]] veteran) in Jacksonville FL | | **1993** | Suicide | Diagnosed with cancer; wife deceased; church failing; took overdose of sleeping pills, August 6/7, 1993 | ## Creativity: The Ideology Klassen called his belief system "Creativity" and structured it as a **racial religion without a god**: **Core tenets:** - **Race is the highest value:** Not God, not nation, not class — race is the organizing principle of human existence - **Christianity is a Jewish invention:** Designed to weaken the white race through slave morality (turn the other cheek, love your enemies, meekness as virtue). This is an explicit Nietzschean argument applied to racial politics - **Jews are the primary enemy:** Not through Satan (as in Christian Identity) but through cultural manipulation — Christianity, communism, capitalism, and media are all Jewish instruments of white racial destruction - **Nature's law:** Racial struggle is natural law; the "survival of the fittest" applied to races. No supernatural component - **RAHOWA:** Racial Holy War is the inevitable and necessary climax of racial struggle — the final conflict that will determine whether the white race survives or is destroyed ### Creativity vs. Christian Identity | Feature | Creativity (Klassen) | [[Christian Identity]] | |---------|---------------------|----------------------| | **God** | None; race itself is the supreme value | Christian God; whites are His chosen people | | **Christianity** | Enemy — a Jewish weapon | True religion — corrupted by Jews but authentic for whites | | **Source of authority** | Natural law / racial biology | Biblical interpretation | | **Jews** | Cultural enemies manipulating institutions | Literal biological descendants of Satan | | **Appeal** | Secular/atheist WN adherents | Religiously inclined WN adherents | | **Violence justification** | Natural law; survival of the fittest | Divine mandate; holy war against Satan's children | This split persists in the modern movement: some WN adherents are explicitly anti-Christian (as in parts of the Atomwaffen/accelerationist milieu), while others frame white nationalism in Christian terms (Christian Identity remnants, some militia groups). ## The RAHOWA Legacy RAHOWA — the acronym Klassen coined for "Racial Holy War" — outlived his church and became **universal movement vocabulary**: - Used as a greeting, sign-off, and rallying cry across KKK, skinhead, neo-Nazi, and Identity movements - A Canadian white power band named themselves "RAHOWA" - Appears in graffiti, tattoos, and online forums across the global WN movement - Functions as a shibboleth — immediately identifying the user as a movement insider ## Matt Hale and the WCOTC Revival After Klassen's suicide, the church nearly dissolved. In 1996, **Matt Hale** — a young law school graduate — revived it as the **World Church of the Creator (WCOTC)**: - Hale was denied his Illinois law license for character reasons (his WN activism) - In July 1999, WCOTC member **Benjamin Nathaniel Smith** went on a three-day shooting spree targeting minorities, killing two (Ricky Byrdsong, Won-Joon Yoon) and wounding nine before killing himself - In 2003, Hale was arrested for soliciting the murder of federal judge Joan Lefkow (who had ruled against WCOTC in a trademark case) - Hale was sentenced to **40 years** in federal prison (2005) - The organization lost the "Church of the Creator" name in the trademark dispute and reorganized as the **Creativity Movement**, which continues with minimal membership ## See Also - [[Christian Identity]] — The competing theological stream; Christian vs. anti-Christian WN - [[National Alliance]] — Pierce's parallel ideological project; [[The Turner Diaries]] as organizational catalyst vs. RAHOWA as movement vocabulary - [[Aryan Nations]] — Identity-based rival; some personnel overlap - [[Willis Carto]] — Parallel institution builder; Liberty Lobby occupied different ideological space - [[David Duke]] — Contemporary WN leader; political strategy vs. Klassen's religious-ideological approach - [[Atomwaffen Division]] — Anti-Christian wing of modern WN movement echoes Klassen's rejection of Christianity - [[Militias and Extremist Groups Ecosystem]]