1988: White Supremacist Church Leader Begins Search for Successor

Ben Klassen, the founder and leader of the Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973 and 1982-1983), travels to California to ask John Metzger, son of neo-Nazi White Aryan Resistance (WAR) founder Tom Metzger, about taking over the COTC. Klassen is 70 and actively looking for a successor. Metzger, saying he “wouldn’t want to be affiliated with a church,” declines. Metzger’s WAR, a nexus for neo-Nazi “skinheads” around the Northwest, is in temporary decline, having suffered a $12.5 million judgment against it from a civil suit filed on behalf of an Ethiopian murder victim and having been embarrassed by the disclosure of the fact that the Metzgers had spent WAR funds on personal items such as Tom Metzger’s toupee. COTC will ultimately benefit from the split, gaining many disenchanted WAR members. [Anti-Defamation League, 1993; Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/1999]