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Jewish World Review July 8, 1999 / 24 Tamuz, 5759
(JTA) THE WHITE SUPREMACIST who went on a
shooting spree against minorities over the weekend belonged to an overtly
racist and anti-Semitic group that advocates a racial holy war.
It is also a group whose leader found some unlikely Jewish supporters earlier
this year in his battle to gain a license to practice law.
Matthew Hale, an unabashed anti-Semite who heads the World Church of
the Creator, has twice been denied a license by an Illinois state panel that
evaluates the "character and fitness" of prospective attorneys because he
espouses racial hatred.
But Alan Dershowitz, a prominent Jewish attorney, came to Hale's defense
after the initial denial, arguing he had a right to free speech and a right to
practice law, no matter how objectionable his views.
"At another time, in another place," the ADL said in a statement last
February, "we could envision a circumstance in which another Committee
on Character and Fitness could follow this lead to reject a candidate
because that candidate has expressed support for abortion, opposition to
school prayer or other moral views contrary to the majority of his or her
community."
The controversy gained Hale nationwide attention and launched him onto the
talk show circuit.
Dershowitz offered to represent Hale, but Hale later declined, saying that
Dershowitz's association with his cause had already given him the publicity
he sought and aided his widespread recruiting drive.
The World Church of the Creator, founded in 1973 in Florida, has
experienced a resurgence in recent years under Hale's leadership and is now
what law enforcement and other officials call one of the fastest- growing hate
groups in the country.
The group teaches that Jews and non-whites are subhuman "mud people"
who threaten the survival of the "white race." It sees a "racial holy war" as
inevitable in its quest to build "a whiter and brighter world."
The group's Web site, which Hale runs, proclaims, among other things, that
Hitler had the right idea, but should have promoted the supremacy of all
whites, rather than just Germans.
Although the group claims not to condone violence, the July 2 shooting spree
carried out by Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, a 21-year-old follower of Hale's,
was only the latest in a string of violent attacks associated with the group.
Federal agents are still investigating the World Church of the Creator in
connection with last month's bombing attacks on three Sacramento
synagogues.
World Church fliers were left at one of the three torched sites prior to the
attacks, according to the ADL.
The group's predecessor, the Church of the Creator, was also linked to the
1991 murder of a black sailor in Florida returning from the Persian Gulf War
and to foiled plots to assassinate black and Jewish leaders and to bomb
black and Jewish agencies, synagogues and churches.
In the last year, three members of the group have been accused of
pistol-whipping and robbing a Jewish video store owner in Florida,
purportedly to raise money for "the revolution."
Smith, meanwhile, had already come to the attention of students and
administrators at both the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which
he attended from 1997 to 1998, and Indiana University at Bloomington,
where he was currently enrolled.
At both schools, police say, he distributed hate literature, and at Indiana he
formed a group he called the White Nationalist Party of Indiana University.
It was while he was a student there that he joined Hale's World Church of
the Creator, according to the Center for New Community, an organization
that works to counter hate group activity.
The organization says that Smith became a "rising star" in the church and in
January 1999 was named "Creator of the Year," its highest honor.
The June 1999 issue of The Struggle, the church's newsletter, announced
that Smith had relocated to central Illinois "to assist" Hale at "world
headquarters," according to the Center for New Community.
Though now the group's leader, the 27-year-old Hale was not its founder. It
was the invention of Ben Klassen, a one-time Florida state legislator who
formed the organization in 1973, according to the ADL.
Hale discovered the racist organization while he was attending Bradley
University in Peoria, Ill., where he had already organized a campus group
called the American White Supremacist Party.
Klassen committed suicide in 1993, leaving a leadership vacuum.
The group foundered until 1995, when Hale -- who had been active in
various white supremacist and neo-Nazi organizations for close to a decade
-- took over and launched a new recruitment effort.
He now claims that the group has 7,000 members, although the ADL
estimates the figure at closer to 2,000.
The Center for New Community says that Hale has taken the group "from
the brink of extinction to prominence within the racist movement," increasing
the number of chapters nationwide from eight in 1995 to 31 today.
Smith's two-state rampage was carried out on the fourth anniversary of the
group's first meeting under Hale's leadership, according to the Center for
New Community.
It also occurred one day after Hale was denied a law license for the second
time.
Hale said this week that Smith's rampage might have come in response to
that action and "to what he saw as an incredible injustice."
Hale, who works out of an office in his parents' home in East Peoria, Ill,
where an Israeli flag serves as a doormat and swastikas adorn the walls,
insisted in an interview with the Associated Press this week that members of
his church follow the law.
"I've always encouraged our members to be legal. I've certainly never
encouraged violence," he said. "People have their own free will. They do
what they please."
Blaming Smith's shootings on the church, Hale added, is "the same as
people accusing the Pope of being behind all those abortion clinic
bombings."
Harlan Loeb, Midwest civil rights counsel for the Anti-Defamation League,
said Hale's assertion that he bears no responsibility for the attacks defies
common sense, "as if holding a match next to a gasoline tank has no
connection to the ensuing fire."
"He has set in motion a process to which he's inextricably wedded," Loeb
said, adding that his connection deserves legal scrutiny.
On Monday, the ADL called on the Justice Department to launch an
immediate full-scale investigation into the World Church of the Creator.
Asked if the ADL regretted issuing a statement earlier this year on the denial
of Hale's law license, Loeb said, "As an agency that is a strong supporter of
the First Amendment, we stand by our commitment that viewpoint
discrimination is murky territory."
But now that "we've made our statement on the free speech and free
expression issue," he said, his group "will devote all of our energy to
exposing Matt Hale for what he
(Pauline Dubkin Yearwood of the Chicago Jewish News contributed to this
report.)
Hate group head linked to shootings once had Jewish supporters
By Daniel Kurtzman
The Anti-Defamation League, while calling Hale's views "abhorrent," said
that denying him a law license "sets a dangerous precedent."
Smith's rampage, which left two men dead and at least seven others --
including six Jews -- injured, ended late Sunday night when the alleged
gunman took his own life.
