Matt Hale Interview In Spin Magazine ( 2000)

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http://www.creativityreligion.info http://www.kreativistenskyrka.org Matt Hale Interview In Spin Magazine (2000) by Zev Borow Photographs by Catherine Opie Marketing Hate Matt Hale – Local reverend, titular leader, and relentless marketer of the burgeoning White-Supremacist group World Church of the Creator – wants to reach out to you, Spin Reader. If you’re young and White, he desperately wants to be your friend. If you’re not, he wants you to “disappear”. A lifetime of hate: Matt Hale, seated on his childhood bed, says he has been a racist since the age of 11. Peoria, Illinois, is as Midwest as it gets. One hundred fifty-four miles southwest of Chicago, 171 miles northeast of St. Louis, a mostly flat, fading factory town along a bend in the Illinois River, on the other side of which is East Peoria, a smaller, hillier mini-suburb. The two cities are home to about 140,000 people, most, but by no stretch all, of whom are white. Peoria is where Richard Pryne grew up. Matthew Hale lives in East Peoria, was born and raised there, up a hill on a quiet street in a chipped, gray, two-story clapboard house with a latticed wood porch and a small, mangy backyard. His great grandfather built the place by hand around 1200. Today, Hale, who is 28, lives in the house with his father, a retired 30-year veteran of the East Peoria Police Department. It’s where he works out of, too, upstairs mostly, in his brother’s old room. Most of the inside of Hale’s house could be described as wan in decor. The carpets are worn: there’s a lot of old wood furniture; a sagging plaid couch, a Chicago Bears throw rug, a Bradley University trash can. The sitting room has a cute owl lamp and a Garfield doll propped up on one windowsill, but even that room, like most of the house, doesn’t receive much natural light. In the summer, the whole place gets a little musty. Hale’s brother’s old room is the exception. Light streams in, there’s a gleaming white computer and fax machine, and the walls are painted a deep, rich red, which would probably be the first thing you’d notice if it weren’t for the Israeli flag that’s draped on the floor for use as a doormat, or all the swastikas, or the giant nylon flag emblazoned with a golden halo, a red crown, and a giant black “W”. That’s the flag of the World Church of the Creator, of which Hale is both the local reverend and worldwide leader: his formal title, actually, is Pontifex Maximus. “Sort of like the pope combined with a Roman emperor.” as he likes to say. His brother’s old room is international church headquarters. “The fact that it’s painted red,” Hale says with a shrug, “is just a nice coincidence. That’s what color it was when my brother lived here. I guess that worked out pretty well, huh?” The World Church of The Creator is a religious organization devoted to white supremacy and hatred of all nonwhites, defined as including, but not limited to, Jews, blacks, Asians, and Latinos. It refers to these people as “mud races.” To Hale and other WCC members, race, and the hatred of other races, is a religion, their religion. It costs $35 to join ($45 if you live out of the country). WCC members hold dear a list of 16 commandments, which include: “Remember that the inferior colored races are our deadly enemies, and the most dangerous of all is the Jewish race. It is our immediate objective to… keep shrinking our enemies.” And: “Phase out all dealings with Jews as soon as possible. Do not employ niggers or other coloreds.” The WCC also hates Christianity, because, explains Hale. “It preaches universal love.” He clarifies: “Christianity is what causes white people to feel sorry for other races. If we could eliminate it, we’d be in a much better situation.” One of the group’s credos is the word Rahowa , which stands for “racial holy war.” Hale often says it, with a little uplifting lilt, at the end of phone conversations, in place of “good-bye” or “take care.” Hale says the WCC’s plan is to “eventually take over America and rename it Whiteland. Because that’s what it would be.” For this, Hale has what he calls a “four-part plan.” “The first step is to stop the influx of nonwhite races into white countries. The second step is to end all aid to the other races. The third step is to deport those races that are here – the nonwhites. And the fourth step is a geographical expansion, similar to the winning of the West, basically.” The WCC’s church services are held biweekly, usually at a local Peoria park, and, according to Hale, are attended by 20 or 30 members. (Hale refused any request to observe a WCC service.) According to Hale, things begin with his opening remarks, then members recite the WCC’s commandments, as well as passages from a text called The White Man’s Bible . Finally, Hale delivers a closing sermon, and the following words are read aloud by all in attendance: “To the fulfillment of these religious beliefs, we Creators forever pledge our sacred honor and our religious zeal.” He says the entire ritual takes about an hour and that similar services are held, usually in parks or member’s homes, in other cities where there are WCC chapters. These services, combined with the organized production (photocopying-and-stapling sessions) and distribution of church literature (handing out pamphlets, faxing, etc.), constitute the total of WCC member activities. Hale says he does not receive a salary. National experts on white-supremacist groups have called the WCC one of the largest and fastest-growing such organizations in the country, noting that in the last year it has increased its chapters from 13 to 44, in 39 states. Still, by all accounts it is a relatively small group. Estimates of its membership range considerably, from a few hundred to several thousand people. Hale will not give out membership numbers, saying “whatever we say, people will either say we’re inflating or deflating the truth.” He does say that skinheads make up between 10 and 15 percent of the church’s numbers.” The World Church of the Creator was founded in 1973 by a former Florida state legislator and the man who invented the electric can opener, Ben Klassen. He committed suicide in 1993. Matthew Hale joined the church in 1995 and was elected its leader in 1996. If you recall having heard of either Hale or the WCC, it is most likely due to an incident that occurred over last year’s Fourth of July Weekend. Then, Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, a 21-year-old Indiana University student from a wealthy Chicago suburb, went on a rampage through Illinois and Indiana, shooting at blacks, Jews, and Asians, killing two people and injuring nine. He eventually shot himself while being chased by police. Smith was a WCC member. In fact, hale had named Smith “Creator of the Year” for 1998 because he had distributed the most WCC literature. Since July, Hale has been on TV a lot. You might have seen him on NBC’s Today Show, or CBS This Morning, or CNN, or Leeza. Hale likes being on television. He’s pretty good at it, too. He is calm, articulate, and speaks well extemporaneously. He’s been in the papers a lot as well, most recently due to an anti-hate rally held in front of his house led by East Peoria’s mayor and several of its religious leaders. Hale says he enjoys talking with members of the press. He is accommodating and unfailingly polite. But what Matthew Hale really likes, what he really wants, is to talk to you . That is if you – a person reading this magazine – are more what you’re supposed to be: young. To talk to you is what he wants more than anything, even if most of you will despise him. Because you–even if it’s just one of you–are worth it. Of course, you have to fit his definition of being white. As for the rest of you, well, the truth is, if he could, he’d snap his fingers and have you and your family and everyone who categorically looks like you disappear. Immediately. “Oh yeah, that’s true.” Hale and I are in his sitting room. It is late August, overcast, and slightly humid. He is explaining further about how he’d like to snap his fingers and make some of you disappear. “I’ve always said that. I won’t lie about it. I just…” He pauses. “Here’s the thing: For us, morals are determined by what race you are. And, certainly, it’d be moral to push the nonwhites off the planet. Nothing wrong with it.” Much of Hale and his church’s philosophy revolve around the belief that different races are different species, and, as such, a cold fist of natural selection – that is a cold, white fist – should govern who lives and who dies. It is a clean, clinical, and, of course, erroneous concept. A species is defined by its characteristic number of chromosomes; all humans, regardless of race, have 46. When I try to contest his definition, he shakes his head and tells me I’m wrong, then continues. “What I’m saying is, it’s not part of our program to commit genocide. We’re talking about something more like a war. I think there’s a distinction.” Character issues: Hale, pictured in his yard, passed the Illinois bar but has been denied a license to practice law because he does not have the “fitness of character” to be a lawyer.   “FOR US, MORALS ARE DETERMINED BY WHAT RACE YOU ARE, AND, CERTAINLY, IT WOULD BE MORAL TO PUSH THE NONWHITES OFF THE PLANET. NOTHING WRONG WITH IT,” SAYS HALE. What that distinction is, exactly, he can’t quite explain, simply repeating that there’s a difference between killing in the name of land or resources and sending trainloads of people to the gas chamber. As with many of the slippery or logically problematic distinctions Hale makes, it is not entirely clear if this is one he actually believes or has simply trained himself to say with conviction. This ambiguity, combined with a generally even-keeled, analytical demeanor and a capacity to be polite to people he’d rather see dead, jibes well with the fact that he is the recent recipient of a law degree from nearby Southern Illinois University. Despite passing the state bar exam, however, Hale has been denied a license to practice law. An Illinois state panel ruled in 1999 that his racist activities indicated he did not have “the fitness of character” to qualify as a lawyer. He appealed the ruling. Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, according to court transcripts, testified on his behalf at a hearing for the appeal. The appeal was denied on THursday, July 1. The next day, Smith took the .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun and .22-caliber pistol that he’d bought from an illegal dealer the month before and began shooting Orthodox Jews walking home from Sabbath services in a north Chicago neighborhood. Not long before the shooting spree, Hale says, SMith had decided to pursue a law degree himself. “He would have made a great lawyer,” says Hale. Hale’s first appeal was eventually denied, and two subsequent appeals have also been denied. It was eventually denied, he even contacted famed, spotlight-seeking – and Jewish – civil-libertarian lawyer Alan Dershowitz about his case but ended up going with a layer from St. Louis instead. After his third appeal was denied by Illinois’ highest court last November, Hale announced he would take his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Hale is also a classically trained violinist. A music and political-science major as an undergraduate at Bradley University, he still plays for a half hour or so each day and has performed with some local symphonies. He is tall and wiry and has small, blue eyes and a face that is angular, almost to the extreme. His complexion is pale and somewhat scarred, as if he suffered from bouts of acne when younger. On the day we first meet, he’s wearing brown shoes, white socks, a pair of khaki shorts, and a short-sleeve, red-striped polo shirt. When he opens the porch door of his house, he tells me he’s on the phone with a reporter from CBS radio. Classical music is playing in the background. “Dmitri Shostakovich.” Hale tells me, putting a hand over the receiver. “And since you’re from Spin, I’ll tell you it’s what I call ‘heavy-metal classical.’ He smiles and returns to the interview. After finishing up his phone call, he gets up to shake my hand, which is something I wasn’t sure he would do. I first contacted Hale via e-mail after reading his name in connection with the Smith shootings. I explained that I was interested in writing an article about him, adding that though I had no interest in debating him, he should know that I vehemently disagree with nearly everything he believes in, that we are practically the same age, that I am Jewish, my first name actually Israeli, my grandparents survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. His response was prompt and cordial. “Sure, come on out.” Hale’s parents divorces when he was eight. His mother still lives in Peoria. According to Hale, he has a good relationship with both her and his father. (Both of Hale’s parents refused to be interviewed for this article.) Hale says that while neither of his parents are members of his church, they are supportive. His father, he says, in the more understanding of the two. Hale also has three older brothers, two of whom are mailmen, the other a night watchman. “Only one of my brothers is really in line with my views,” he says. The family was raised Methodist. Hale says he thinks he went to Sunday school when he was around five, but soon after, he and the rest of the family stopped attending church altogether. “Christianity was never a big thing with any of us,” he says. At 12, he read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich after buying it one day while in a Christian bookstore with his father. A few months later he ordered Mein Kampf from the Peoria Waldenbooks. “I’m ten thirty-seconds German.” he says, “and was interested in reading about my heritage.” He says his mother and father were not racists, although he does recall his father (a registered Democrat who has voted Republican since Nixon) telling him Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist. “I even had a black friend as a kid,” he says. “He wasn’t a particularly bad fellow.” He pauses. “See, I guess, in a lot of ways, that’s the point. It’s doesn’t really matter if they’re good or bad, nice or mean. They could all have halos and it wouldn’t matter.” “Why? I ask. “Because they’re black,” he says. “He wasn’t a particularly bad fellow.” He pauses. “See, I guess, in a lot of ways, that’s the point. It’s doesn’t really matter if they’re good or bad, nice or mean. They could all have halos and it wouldn’t matter.” “Why? I ask. “Because they’re black,” he says. And, in the next breath: “I do remember that when I was 13 I was a Shakey’s Pizza, and there was a dance going on, and I saw blacks kissing white girls, and it made me nauseous… I get violent thoughts when I see race-mixers.” At that time, he says, he wasn’t yet a racist, just patriotic. “I was rah-rah American, flags all over the place, the whole nine yards. Then, I became a nationalist and a racist. This was when I was around 11.” At 12 he “formed a little club” of like-minded friends. “We called it the New Reich. It wasn’t very serious. One fellow would draw a lot of pictures of World War Two.” As a sophomore at East Peoria Community High School, Hale formed a political party, the American White Supremacist Party. “I was also reading a lot of Nietzsche around then,” he says, “and he’s very critical of Christianity. So, by the time I was a junior I was a racist and anti-Christian and had started my own political party.” He continued his activities, including working for David Duke’s political organization while an undergrad at Bradley, which was where he first, as he says, “made news” when he held a “pro-white” rally on campus. “I had been yearning for it so much,” he says. “It was hard on my family and everything, but I also felt a sense of terrific release, I was out in the open.” In 1995, he ran for East Peoria City Council, losing but garnering 14 percent of the vote. “After that I gave up on politics,” he says. That same year, he joined the WCC. In 1996, he says he was nominated for Pontifex Maximus, which carries a ten-year term, by a WCC reverend in Milwaukee, who, according to Hale, “was impressed that I was going to law school and enjoyed dealing with the media.” As Hale leads me through an annotated history of his life, I can’t help but look for the clues that will lead to some kind of answer to the obvious question: Why? Why does he hate the way he does? “Yeah, people are always looking, hoping to find out my parents beat me or something. The truth is, this is who I am, who I’ve always been. I’m pretty comfortable with myself, really. It’s not, certainly, the idea – I hear this so often – that somehow I believe as I do because I have low self-esteem. I keep hearing that.” He sighs. “I grant you it is somewhat of a complicated evolution, though. I’ve been writing about it in my memoirs. I’m hoping to get a major publisher to do it. Maybe after this Ben Smith thing, that might increase the chances. I might write a chapter about it.” He asks me if I think that will help, I tell him I don’t know. There is a consensus among experts that Hale and his church are dangerous. The Anti-Defamation League called on the U.S. Justice Department to launch an investigation of the group following the Smith shootings. Mark Weizman, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Task Force Against Hate told The New York Times the church was “the most active and sophisticated” such group currently operating. “The WCC is about resonating with young adults,” says one expert on racist groups.” It’s supposed to work like a drug, filling a voice. For many, it’s become the drug of choice.” By the book: The WCC’s White Man’s Bible observes 16 different commandments, such as “Remember that the inferior mud races are our deadly enemies.”   Dr. Keith Akins, an anthropologist who spent three years studying racist, militia, and extremist groups in Florida, told me, “[The WCC] are unquestionable violent, dangerous. Their newsletters and newspapers are filled with hatred, and they attract some very violent people.” WCC members do have a history of violence that predates Smith. A member in Florida was convicted of killing a black sailor returning from the Persian Gulf War in 1991. In 1997, two church members pleaded guilty to the beating of a black man and his son in Miami: a last year, also in Florida, four members pleaded guilty to robbing and pistol-whipping an video-store owner they believed was Jewish. Some watchdog groups also believe WCC members were linked to a plot to bomb a black church in Los Angeles and to a bombing of an NAACP office in Tacoma last year. But Hale says the church is nonviolent, that he has personally devoted his life to “peaceful, legal change.” The WCC website states that it does not believe in violence, and church membership manuals maintain that illegal activity, or encouraging others toward illegal activity, are grounds for dismissal. “Not for moral reasons,” says Hale. “It’s just not productive. We’re more effective free than dead or in jail.” This point is made with a relish that makes it seems as if he’s a little disappointed that it doesn’t warrant a return compliment. His eyes get a bit bigger as he looks at me and adds. “And if I were encouraging people to commit crimes, well, I would have been whisked away a long time ago.” Hale does, however, own a gun, a German Mauser World War I rifle, and he’s also made himself familiar with his father’s pistols at shooting ranges. “And I do encourage all church members to own guns,” he says, “for protection.” He calls Benjamin Smith “a martyr for free speech,” adding that he is proud of what Smith did, and that he could not feel sorry of “anything like compassion” for his victims. “I knew Ben Smith, knew how upset he was at being arrested at school for distributing our literature, knew that he felt t was very wrong that I had been denied my law license.” Those, he says, are free-speech issues. A few weeks before my visit, Buford Furrow, a member of another supremacist group, the Aryan Nations [which differs from the WCC primarily in its belief in Jesus Christ] walked into a Jewish day-care center in Los Angeles and shot five people, three of them children. Hale says Buford was wrong and isn’t a martyr, like Smith. “I mean, if I had information that said Buford Furrow had been beaten up by Jews or something the day before he did what he did, then I might say he was a martyr for nonviolence, you know.” Then he laughs. He adds that he doesn’t feel compassion for those Furrow hurt, either. We stay on the topic of compassion. I ask him if it is ever the slightest bit hard for him to divorce himself from feeling bad for other humans; after all, he is human, isn’t he? He tells me he thinks the people Smith and Furrow shot were “subhumans,” then looks at me, seems to think deeply, and then relates a story from the WCC’s bible, written by its founder, Ben Klassen. “It talks about a woman and her children living in a log cabin. One day she is cleaning the house and finds a brood of snakes. Now, one could say, “My goodness! These snakes are a danger to my family, I better get rid of them.” Or, you could be like a white liberal and take the snake’s viewpoint and say, ‘Hey, they have a right to be there. Live and let live.’” What if the snakes weren’t dangerous? I ask. “Well, if they weren’t dangerous, and the mother knew it, then her reaction would not need to be as sharp and swift. But what’s said in the story is that, you know, she gets a club and beats ‘em to death and throws ‘em out on the ground.” HQ: Hale’s house, above, in headquarters for the WCC. An Israeli flag, serves as doormat to Hale’s office. The WCC has recently put up a website directed at young children, complete with bubble letters and crossword puzzles. “I think of what we’re doing as planting seeds,” Hale says. Hale says his best friend is his father and that he’d rather not get into the question of whether he has a girlfriend. “I certainly… Let’s just put it this way: I’m as normal as they come when it comes to that.” We’re at a restaurant called Bob Evans, just down the road from Hale’s house, Hale orders the only thing on the menu he is willing to eat the fresh-fruit plate. He only eats foods in their raw or unprocessed state. “it’s not a requirement for the church,” he says, “but it’s recommended.” This is because the WCC promotes “a natural lifestyle.” He doesn’t smoke or drink and started eating this way just over two years ago: he says that a typical meal would be several bananas, apples, and maybe some raw peanuts. “I used to eat fish,” he tells me. “But, I mean, imagine grabbing a fish and ripping its guts out with your teeth. Not very pleasant.” I ask him if he would describe himself as “straight edge.” “No, not really,” he says. “I’ve heard that before, but I’d just rather explain what I do and don’t do, rather than give it a name like that.” Just before we leave, I tell him that a part of me was scared, afraid for my physical well-being, to come out and meet with him. And, I tell him, a part of me is still scared of how, or someone in the church, might react if they don’t like the article. Am I being paranoid? I ask him. “Well,” he says, wiping his hands on a napkin, “that’s hard to say, I mean, really. Because there are a lot of white people who are really upset. They might not say it to me, directly, but I see a lot of things on the Internet.” What is your advice to me then? I ask. “Well… don’t worry about it” He laughs. “Because you can’t control it. Don’t worry about things you can’t control.” But here’s what makes Hale really dangerous. Like Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, Miramax Films, the Ford Motor Company, and an ever-growing, omnipresent army of vendors all around you, the WCC’s Pontifex Maximus is a marketer, with something to sell, to you, because you’re the right demographic. Like the rest of them, he think he’s figured out just what you want to hear and how you want to hear it. It’s why he is calm and polite, why he’s writing a memoir, why he does afternoon talk shows. It’s why he couches his views on violence in neutered language, pseudoscience, euphemism, and metaphor. War sounds better than genocide. Jews and blacks aren’t necessarily bad people, they just have to go. Latinos and Christians aren’t human beings, they’re snakes that live under the bed. It’s why he chuckles before telling me not to worry about things I can’t control. It’s why he’s happy to invite me out to East Peoria. About this, again, the experts concur: “[Hale] is definitely the most up-front of a new generation of hate leaders,” says Mark Weitzman of the Wiesenthal Center. “He’s not after the people who live in trailers but has made a concerted effort to recruit college-bound, middle- and upper-middle-class kids. He’s trying to give his movement a veneer of respectability, as well as the blow-dried look.” Mark Ham, professor of criminology at Indiana State University, who has written extensively about hate groups: “It’s all about moderating the image and trying to fit into the mainstream.” Harlan Loeb, Midwest counsel to the Anti-Defamation League: “It’s about resonating with older high-schoolers and younger adults. It’s supposed to work like a drug, filling a voice. For many, it has become the drug of choice.” But don’t take their word for it. When I press Hale about violence, he says he can sum up his views with this statement: “In the public consciousness, [violence] takes away from our being able to persuade people.” But the fact is what he is trying to persuade people to do, if indirectly: is rid the planet, that is kill, nonwhite people. And then there’s the very idea behind the WCC being a religion, rather than just a hate group, also a calculated choice. “Nothing gets to people’s hearts like religion,” Hale explains to me calmly. “Politics is a transitory thing: religion is permanent. Religious is what’s in people’s hearts. And we’re after people’s hearts. As they say, “Hearts and minds.’ You know, like in Vietnam.” Except, now, it’s your heart, your mind. Hale: “Sure, the ideal person we’re trying to reach is someone who’s just entering college, someone probably very much like many of [Spin's] readers… Young people are more impressionable.” Hale calls you “young people.” “And I would say we are most successful when we have younger people approach young people, through missionaries that go to college campuses.. I’ve done it myself, gone to high schools, and, you know, after the kids get out I walk up with some literature and say, ‘Hey, let me give you some thoughts on why this country’s going to hell.” He pauses. “Many young people are on the Internet. So, our site has a lot of pictures and graphics that appeal to young people.” He tells me the WCC has recently put up a website directed specifically at young children (with bubble letters and crossword puzzles), then adds, “I think of what we’re doing as planting seeds, and the more seeds we plant, the more will bear fruit.” But his tactics, he says, need to adapt to his audience. “In some areas we have a different pitch than other areas,” he says. He mentions how one time when he was on CNN, the reporter made note of him not using the “n-word” when talking about blacks on TV, though he does in his writing. “They implied I was a hypocrite,” he says. “But I’m not… I choose to use words that people feel comfortable with.” He didn’t use the “n-word” while talking to me. Do you feel more comfortable? Opposing the composed: This past July, more than 250 people held an anti-hate rally in the street in front of Hale’s home, above right, while Hale sat on his porch and talked to the media, above left. Talking head: one of Hale’s appearances on CNN. The first day I visit with Hale, when I go up to see his brother’s old room, the one with swastikas and the flags, he introduces me to Danielle Walker. She is sitting at a large round table, wearing bell-bottom jeans and a red T-shirt with the emblem of the WCC. She is stapling together WCC pamphlets. She had pudgy, ruddy cheeks, blue eyes, and hair pulled back in a ponytail. She is 15, going into her junior year at Peoria High School, and is Hale’s fourth cousin. She met him just six weeks ago. “I was a Christian up until then,” she says. Now, she’s a church member. Walker says that since she become a member, her mother has wished death on Hale, and that their relationship has since deteriorated. “My mother doesn’t know I’m here now,” says Walker. “She’d kill me if she found out.” Hale is sitting with us as we speak. I ask him if he’s counseled her about how to handle her mother’s anger. “She needs to be patient,” he says. “Everybody’s parents initially react negatively.” Walker says she has lost some friends because of her new views. “But the majority are okay with it, as long as I don’t tell them how to live their lives.” She is a cheerleader and “pretty active at school.” which she says is about 40 percent white. She says she knows she’ll have to interact with students of other races, but that doesn’t mean she has to help them in any way. However, she says, she doesn’t have a problem talking with me. Another new development is that she can’t listen to Christian music anymore. “But as far as alternative, that’s okay.” She likes Smash Mouths and the Carnberries. She used to like Eddie Murphy. “Yeah, but I don’t laugh at Eddie Murphy anymore. Same with Chris Rock. I used to listen to his stuff, but now if I see that garbage, I turn it off.” After a while, Hale and I go back downstairs. The phone rings. Hale’s answering machine picks up: a woman’s voice, shrill and angry, rings out: “Hello? Hello! This is Danielle’s mother, is she there? If she’s there, then…” Hale runs to pick up. “yes ma’am,” he says, twice, then puts down the phone and calls up to Walker, who runs downstairs to pick up. She tries to get out the word mom twice, maybe three times, before hanging up. “Pscycho bitch,” she huffs, then heads back upstairs. About 20 minutes later, two East Peoria police cruisers pull up to the house. Hale steps outside to meet them. They greet Hale as if they know him, with a smile. They tell him that Walker’s mother has called them. Hale tells them she is there of her own free will. “We know, Matt,” one of the officers says. Hale walks into the house and gets her. Once she is outside, the officers tell her that because she is only 15 she has to go home. Hale says he will drive her. When we get to Walker’s house, before she gets out of the car, she turns to me and says that she just wants to tell me she really likes Spin . A few weeks after I leave Peoria, I have a phone conversation with Lisa TUrner, a church member who won’t give out her age and lives in Northern California. Turner and Hale exchange e-mail on a daily basis. “Image is important to Matt,” she says. “This country is driven by the media, and unlike other groups that have turned their back on it, Matt knows that even though he is frequently treated unfairly, that’s okay. He’s willing to make that sacrifice.” She tells me that Hale is willing to give his life for his beliefs. I ask her why it is that Hale is so savvy when it comes to the media. “He’s just one of these people that seems to have come into the world with that,” she says. “He’s a natural, I guess. You see people in history like that. I mean, why was Hitler the way he was?” She pauses, then chuckles. “Karma maybe.” Before I went to East Peoria to meet with Hale, a lot of people told me not to go. Some people said I was putting myself in danger. More, though, felt that I shouldn’t make the trip because Hale and his views didn’t deserve any more publicity. I’d tell them that I didn’t believe that the way for the media, or society in general for that matter, to handle someone like Hale was to pretend he wasn’t there. That, I would say, is also dangerous, maybe more than giving him some free publicity. When I eventually did make it to Peoria, one of the first things I asked Hale was why he was willing to do this, with me of all writers. He explained, as Lisa Turner and others would, that it was worth it to him. “You know,” he said, “I think everybody gains by writing articles such as yours. The church gains because we reach a lot of people. Your magazine gains because a lot of people will read it – I think you’ll find that it’ll be one of your most well-read issues for a while. And even Jewish and black groups gain, because they continue to get financial contributions to fight us. They’re like, ‘Hey, the Nazis are coming, we told you so.’” And Spin offers just the type of audience you’re looking for, I said to him, doesn’t it? “Exactly,” he replies. And, I continued, you’re willing to make the trade, say, nine readers who will hate you, for just one… “Who will go to the church’s website,” he answered, cutting me off. “Yup.” Suddenly, I wondered, was that a trade I was willing to make? After all, in many ways, articles like this or any media coverage of Hale, was really all the WCC had, that and a colorful website. What else was there? A big homemade flag in Hale’s brother’s room? A few church offices around the country that were probably once someone else’s sibling’s old rooms? Pamphlets, newsletters, T-shirts, and meetings in public parks. As it stands now, the World Church of the Creator is, mostly, a church on paper: it’s just that paper is often newsprint or glossy magazine stock. Wasn’t I, and any article about him, simply playing into Hale’s hands? Maybe it is best to simply ignore him. Hale even told me as much: “The most dangerous thing to us,” he said, “is stagnation, people simply leaving us alone.” Hale is a skilled communicator, almost unconsciously deft at manipulating and tailoring his message, and he’s tireless. Spend time with him and you realize that, with or without the spotlight, he is not going away. And he is right about wanting to be in Spin . He knows his demographic. Some of you are especially susceptible to what he’s saying, how he’s saying it. When he told his snake story, whose side were you on? The mother’s or the snakes? Did you get the point of it? Hale’s point? Or did it make you think that his logic, his parables, make little sense when applied to real people? Is there even one of you who taught, “Yeah, beat those snakes to death”? Is there even one of you who considered him long enough to obscure what he’s really talking about, what he really wants? Probably. But couldn’t reading about Hale, about his motives, his real motives, do some good? THere are those of you who would have been intrigued by his soft-sculpted rhetoric, by one of his pamphlets thrown on your yard, by one of his appearances on Leeza , or by one of his missionaries on campus. Now you’ll be more wary, more aware. There are so many of you he’d like dead. Or, is Matthew Hale too dangerous, to insidiously clever, to write about in Spin ? If only because of a few of you, a few who are too willing to hear what he has to say, too easy a target. Is Matt Hale too dangerous not to be written about? Are some of you too dangerous to read about him? Does the question alone offend you? It should. Did I make the wrong decision to write about Matt Hale? Well, did I? The last thing I did before finishing this article was send Matthew Hale an e-mail. Here it is: Matt, I’m just about done with the piece. One of the things that I focus on is the way you approach the media, and the fact that you were willing to do the piece, in spite of me being Jewish and having different opinions than you, in the hope of reaching even one Spin reader. I thought about that a lot as I wrote. In fact, I started to think that perhaps I shouldn’t write the article at all, that anything I wrote would only serve your purposes, and that my writing about you in Spin , specifically, produced a specific kind of danger. In the end, as it stands now, I’ve decided to go ahead with it. I’m wondering, what do you make of my dilemma? This was his reply: Dear Zev. I appreciate your thoughts and understand your dilemma. However, I would say that the cat is already out of the proverbial bag – there is no way that the media (at least part of it) will ever be able to ignore Creativity again. The events of the past months have insured that… We may not have to “like” one another, but I am glad that we can at least respect one another’s viewpoint. In fact, I have far more respect for Jews than half of the White population. If I were you, I would have done the piece just as you have done, but not take into my own personal views… If my ideas are truly wrong, your readers, no matter how young, will figure that out. Respectfully, Matt