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Bernhardt "Ben" Klassen (February 20, 1918(1918-02-20) — August 6, 1993) was the founder of the ethnic supremacist and white separatist World Church of the Creator in 1973.

Early life

Klassen was born in Taurida, Ukraine to a Mennonite family. At the age of five, he and his family moved to Mexico, where they lived for one year. At age six, he moved with his family to Herschel, Saskatchewan (in Canada). He attended the German-English Academy (now Rosthern Junior College).

White Racial activism

In 1968, Ben Klassen moved to Florida to work for George Wallace's presidential campaign. In 1973 Klassen founded the original Church of the Creator (COTC). The religious organization was later revived as the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC) in 1996 with Matthew F. Hale as its Pontifex Maximus, or Head Priest, and later the name was changed to The Creativity Movement (TCM) in 2003 because of a trademark dispute after the TE-TA-MA Truth Foundation trademarked the name Church of the Creator. Klassen attracted several hundred white racial loyalists as members from the US, Canada, Sweden, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia and South Africa.

Ben Klassen first popularized the term Racial Holy War (RaHoWa) within the white racialist movement. He also consistently called Black people "niggers" in public discourse as well as in the literature of the COTC, as opposed to many white nationalist leaders who use relatively more polite terms for the aforementioned group in public. For example, the 7th commandment of the COTC's "16 commandments of Creativity" openly uses the word "nigger".

Ben Klassen was the author of several books - Nature's Eternal Religion (1973), The White Man's Bible (1981), Expanding Creativity (1985), A Revolution of Values Through Religion (1991), the autobiographical work Trials, Tribulations and Triumphs (1993)^[1] and many others.

Death

Ben Klassen's gravesite in Otto, NC

Klassen committed suicide in 1993 after the death of his wife, by overdosing on sleeping pills. In his suicide note, he made reference to his book The White Man's Bible, which describes suicide as "an honorable and dignified way to die for any... of a number of reasons, such as having come to the decision that life is no longer worthwhile."

References

Works online