The World Church of the Creator is the fastest-growing white supremacist organisation in the United States with 35 chapters throughout the country. Claiming a membership of 7,000, it believes in the supremacy and expansion of the white race which is "unique and sacred above all others".

The organisation was founded by former members of the Church of the Creator, which was formed in the 70s by the late Ben Klassen, one of America's most outspoken racists and author of The White Man's Bible.

In 1993, eight members of the original church were arrested by the FBI for conspiring to bomb the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles.

The current leader of the church is the Rev Matt Hale, 29, who was in the news last week as he failed in his efforts to join the Illinois state bar.

Although Mr Hale had passed the requisite bar exams, his often expressed racist and anti-Semitic views were deemed to make him ineligible to practise.

His appeal against the rejection was turned down by the appeal board last Friday, the day that Benjamin Nathaniel Smith started his shooting spree.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles said yesterday that there were now an estimated 400 such race-hate groups in the US, with a membership between 20,000 and 40,000. He said that they were particularly active on the worldwide web.

At the time of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 there was only one such website, now there are more than 2,000, he said.

The World Church's website is decorated with Nazi insignia and skulls. It also has one site aimed specifically at children of 9 or 10, the first of its kind.

What anti-racist groups find most disturbing about the church is its use of the web and its notion of "leaderless resistance"' which allows leaders of groups not to be prosecuted by actions advocated on the web.