Spokespersons for The Satanic Temple have defined the group as “a non-theistic religious organization” (DeVito). Statements to the effect of “they don’t actually believe in or worship Satan” or “[they just see] Satan [as] a symbol of the Eternal Rebel in opposition to arbitrary authority” are virtually ubiquitous in media coverage of TST (“FAQ”). The group similarly proclaims that it does not “promote” or “believe” in “symbolic ‘evil’” (ibid.). TST’s spokespersons tend to complain about the fact that Satanists are “misunderstood” by the public, especially when they encounter opposition from Christian-identified individuals: “A lot of the ideas people have about Satanism come from moral panic. We do think it’s part of our noble pursuit to correct people of these type of witch-hunting activities,” says Misicko, who has elsewhere written that “[a]s the co-founder of and spokesman for the Satanic Temple,” he is “naturally irritated by [‘the colloquial use of ‘Satanic’ to (…) to describe all that is reprehensible and morally corrupt’],” (Berg, Greaves). It is fairly obvious, however, that rather than being a source of genuine distress which TST seeks to alleviate, this “misunderstanding”—cultivated through a range of techniques, from the unorthodox use of words like “Satanic” to the frequent misrepresentation of the organization as a single-issue interest group concerned with “separation of church and state”—is deliberately fostered by the group.
Matt Goldberg, a film critic for Collider, notes several of the inconsistencies involved in the operations of The Satanic Temple in a review of Hail Satan?, a propagandistic documentary film which presents TST in a favorable light:
“[T]he Satanists [of The Satanic Temple] seem slightly disingenuous in their media strategy. On the one hand, they want people to know that they’re not worshiping evil and that they’re non-violent. But at the same time, their entire media strategy rests on being misunderstood. So many of the news clips [that Hail Satan? director Penny] Lane uses are from Fox News, who knows that their old, Christian viewers will freak out about Satanists and TST depends on that reaction for recognition. If they were simply The Church of Religious Pluralism, no one would care. As Greaves [Misicko] smirks his way through media appearances, you can tell that for him, this is a way to provoke and offend evangelical figures. But that’s not a religion; it’s a rhetorical device and it quickly wears thin.” (Goldberg, “‘Hail Satan?’ Review: Religion as Trolling”).
We could take this analysis one step further by noting that not only does The Satanic Temple’s “media strategy [rest] on being misunderstood,” but so does the entirety of its praxis. Deliberate cultivation of misunderstanding is necessarily at the core of any neo-fascist group which adopts the strategy of crypto-fascism. This naturally leads to a profound lack of clarity about what TST is and what it really stands for. Scratch just beneath the surface of the exoteric presentation of the group as a liberal, libertarian, or left-leaning “separation of church and state” outfit, repeated like a bad meme ad nauseum throughout virtually all major mass media outlets over the past six years, and one encounters a bewildering well of arcane material which the average person, even if they are interested in arriving at a deeper understanding of the significance of TST and its relationship to modern Satanism as a whole, simply doesn’t have the time to make sense of. But that’s what this Unauthorized Guide is for.
Coupled with the superficial similarity of the group’s praxis to “Billionaires for Bush,” many people would likely take the fact that The Satanic Temple says that it “doesn’t believe in Satan” (or God) as a sign that the group merely pretends to be Satanic for theatrical effect. To suppose that this “lack of belief” automatically means that followers of TST are merely pretending to be Satanists would be misguided however, since the idea of being simultaneously religious and an atheist is far from unique to The Satanic Temple. For instance, the Independent reports that two percent of clergy in the Church of England are atheists (Wynne-Jones). As one retired Anglican priest argues, “Once you have accepted that religion is a human creation, then it is like art and literature and things like that. They are an extremely valuable way to understand yourself,” (ibid.). Humanistic Judaism, founded by an atheist rabbi, is another non-theistic form of organized religion, alongside which it is safe to say there are others. Contrary to what may be considered conventional wisdom, it has been contended that religion “does not necessarily imply belief in God, gods, or ghosts, but refers to the experience of the sacred, and consequently, is related to ideas of being, meaning, and truth,” (Eliade).
Still, in contradiction to the “non-theistic” line which The Satanic Temple currently upholds, an early version of the group’s website reveals that at its public debut in January 2013, The Satanic Temple’s creators described it as having been founded “so that those theistic Satanists who continue to practice their religion in silence might find community” (Internet Archive, “thesatanictemple.com”). While there are several clues in this archived text indicating that it was conceived as “satire,” including elements of fiction and trolling (for example, TST is therein described as having been founded in 2006 by a “Neil Bricke,” which is an apparent reference to a real person named Neil Brick, who maintains the website “ritualabuse.us” and whom Misicko described in one podcast interview as a “little shit” and “moron” [16:35]), the contrast between this early Satanic Temple declaration and later ones is not the only inconsistency we find in trying to decipher the group’s genuine orientation towards the question of “belief” in “Satan.”
Satanic Temple “High Priest” Brian Werner was an early, if not founding, member of The Satanic Temple, claiming to have been with the group “since day one,” although Douglas Misicko has referred to himself and Cevin Soling as being the only co-founders. Werner’s joint appearance with Misicko in a January 2014 televised interview on behalf of TST testifies to the closeness of Werner and Misicko in the early phases of TST’s existence (Mancow). Werner resigned (or was dismissed) from TST in late 2014, apparently over differences about the direction in which the organization should develop ideologically and politically. In a statement made in a Youtube video titled “High Priest Brian Werner resigns from The Satanic Temple,” posted on the 23rd of December 2014, Werner blames his departure on “a major change within the organization in the last few months.” Werner goes on to state, “Now, when this organization started, I wanted it to represent all followers of the left-hand path: theists, LaVeyan, Luciferian, Thelemite.” Shortly after that, The Satanic Temple’s former High Priest states, “I’m not an atheist. I’m a Satanist.”
Werner’s video statement also provides us with a glimpse into the kinds of reactionary social and political attitudes tolerated inside The Satanic Temple. Aping the same “prosperity theology” espoused by certain conservative Evangelical groups, Werner claims to have become a wealthy Lamborghini-driving capitalist by “adapting[ing] the Satanic philosophy within [his] life.” Werner was vocal about endorsing the nationalist, anti-immigrant presidential campaign of Donald Trump, uttering the phrase “Hail Satan, Hail Trump” without any apparent trace of irony. While still a “High Priest” of The Satanic Temple, Werner designed the extremely tasteless, racist T-shirt “joking” about the shooting of Trayvon Martin seen below:
Figure 4.1. A hoodie designed by “High Priest” Brian Werner of The Satanic Temple in 2014. It references the 2012 vigilante murder of Trayvon Martin and the “Stand Your Ground” law which allowed his killer, George Zimmerman, to go free in what many recognized as a modern day lynching (Rosenberg, Teitelman).
It can reasonably be deduced that Werner’s expulsion or “resignation” from The Satanic Temple had more to do with judgements made about the level of negative publicity and backlash his over-the-top racism was likely to attract if he would remain a leading figure in TST than with opposition to his racism in and of itself, given (1) Misicko’s history of open support for eugenics and cozy relations with neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen and (2) Soling’s history of thinly veiled denunciation of racial desegregation of schools. This tells us that, if Werner had only kept his racism a bit more under wraps, encrypted beneath TST’s exoteric façade (as Misicko and Soling have done, or tried to do), he might still be one of TST’s leading figures today.
The Satanic Temple’s paramount spokesman, “Lucien Greaves” (i.e., Douglas Misicko), has done and said more than enough outrageous things to warrant a spotlight in Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch. To give just one example, which will be unpacked in greater detail in 6.3.3, Misicko declared on a podcast which also featured Holocaust denialism that “it’s okay to hate Jews if you hate them because they [practice Judaism, as opposed to it not being okay to hate Gentiles who descend from Jews or who are ex-Jews]” (“Doug Mesner [Lucien Greaves] Satanic Temple Anti-Semitic Rant”). More recently, he has expressed explicit support for the platforming of neo-Nazis and their inclusion in the so-called “Left Hand Path” community (hinting at a kind of “ecumenical” Satanism and a sense of fellowship between TST and explicitly/openly neo-Nazi varieties of Satanism, like those elaborated by groups such as Joy of Satan Ministry and the Order of Nine Angles or Tempel ov Blood).
Unfortunately, most of this outrageous behavior and discourse seems to have gone under the radar of journalists and Misicko continues to widely be given platforms to propagandize on behalf of The Satanic Temple without his problematic attitudes ever being called into question. Perhaps limiting his racist commentary to more informal and quasi-underground outlets like obscure podcasts and social media posts has helped to keep his hate hidden to a greater degree than Werner’s.
Nevertheless, a decision seems to have been made to focus The Satanic Temple’s recruiting efforts on sectors of the so-called “white middle-class” (petit bourgeois) population which are nominally “left-wing” or liberal-leaning. It appears that it was the desire to rebrand Satanism and shake off its association with neo-Nazism and make it more marketable to the previously mentioned demographic through what Misicko calls the “Satanic Reformation” that led to the dismissal of Werner, more so than any disagreement about whether Satanism is or ought to be “theistic” or “non-theistic.” Probably the “non-theistic” brand of Satanism was judged better from the perspective of the desire to dissociate Satanism from its extreme right-wing connotation, because it is more compatible with satire, which allows the group to dissimulate the seriousness of its Satanism when necessary. Critics can then be maligned for “not getting it” and being in the clutches of “moral panic.” This “Satanic Reformation” is comparable to the far-right’s rebranding of neo-Nazism as the “Alt-Right,” and the fact that TST emerged at precisely the same moment as the “Alt-Right” is surely no coincidence.
Greg Stevens, another leading figure within The Satanic Temple, has been described by one disaffected former Satanic Temple member as being “friends” with Mike Cernovich, a right-wing extremist associated with the “Alt-Right.” This claim appears to be supported by a video clip Stevens posted to Youtube on April 30, 2016, showing him and Cernovich discussing “trolling as a tool for social change,” as well as chummy interactions between the pair on Twitter. Cernovich, who has identified himself as “Alt-Right,” is infamous for spreading the propaganda of white supremacist and neo-Nazi movements, such as the claim that “white” people are victims of a genocide being perpetrated by Black criminals, who “regularly [slaughter] the innocent” (SPLC, “Mike Cernovich”). Unlike Werner, Stevens remains at the top of TST’s hierarchy.
Despite adopting the superficial trappings of a satirical “Satanists for Bush” street theater-type group, the thing that makes The Satanic Temple different from genuine parody groups like “Billionaires for Bush” (who were not actually Bush supporters or billionaires) or “Communists for Kerry” (who were not actually Kerry supporters or Communists), is that members of TST actually are, or at least proclaim themselves to be, sincere adherents of a bona fide religion which they call Satanism (“FAQ”). Questions about whether TST is “serious” or “satirical” and whether its members are theistic “Devil-worshippers” or atheists who only “believe in Satan” insofar as the “literary” word-symbol of “Satan” is construed to stand for “rebelliousness” are essentially a pointless distraction from what should be the more pressing matter of the group’s links to extreme right-wing political and religious ideologies and telltale signs of cryptic allegiance to a reactionary agenda. In order to focus on these more pressing issues, we must demonstrate thoroughly that the seriousness with which The Satanic Temple regards itself as a “religious” organization necessarily disqualifies it from being satirical, the pretense of parody being upheld to obfuscate the group’s sincere crypto-fascism.
CONTINUE READING… 4.1 How Not to Do Satire
OR RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS (Anatomy of a Crypto-Fascist Sect: The Unauthorized Guide to “The Satanic Temple”)
Daniel K. Buntovnik 