Even before the shootings, the group and its predecessor, Church of the Creator, had an ugly past. The original church was founded in 1973 by Ben Klassen, a former Florida legislator who invented the electric can opener and ultimately killed himself in 1993. Some members have been linked to the 1991 murder of a black gulf war veteran in Florida, a plot to assassinate black and Jewish leaders, and other hate crimes. Hale revived the group in 1996, combining a crafty sense of First Amendment protections, the instincts of a religious cult leader, and a willingness to fence with the media. Last week he was happy to talk to a U.S. News reporter about the roots of his racism, which he said came from reading the encyclopedia when he was 12 and concluding that most great accomplishments were by white people.
Religion goes to the core of people's value system.
Civil rights groups put the number in the low thousands but say the group has targeted younger, more educated recruits, like Smith, who grew up in a wealthy suburb and got into a good college. They want more upwardly mobile, young people who are computer literate and disenfranchised. Matt Hale is a microcosm of the future of this movement. At the same time, weekend warriors who wanted to defend the Second Amendment have gotten sick of waiting for the revolution that never came. He points to more than 500 hate groups operating in the United States last year, notably the National Alliance, the Ku Klux Klan, and the National Socialist White People's Party.