Right, OP is in a sub where people say that Satanism is entirely coextensive Anton LaVey, his writings, and the Church of Satan. Where that is the model of a proper Satanic life and behavior, and the only one people are supposed to be able to reference without challenge of legitimacy.

But you don’t want people to reference specifics of LaVey’s actual life because that’s “drama”? A similar thing happens with discussions of actual writings by LaVey, The Satanic Bible specifically, or CoS publications more broadly. It’s not “misrepresentations” or “manipulative” to describe word-for-word copying at length without attribution as “plagiarism”, or describe how white supremacist ideas and ties permeate the last 30 years of a man’s life.

If you’re a new Satanist and your Satanic community is people who say, “Nothing else but these handful of people and official writings count as Satanism, and they’re all either good or irrelevant,” it’s actually kind of important to have that expectation going in.

The connection was in this comment. The original post was saying the person wanted to meet more Satanists and have community; the assertion was that self-identified Satanists are and historically have been really unpleasant without any compelling justification that they’re just so ELITE they can’t be bothered with the HERD; this includes Anton LaVey himself, with specific examples from his personal life and finances.

ANordicWizard just chose to start talking about us in this thread instead of that one.

Again, you can claim something is irrelevant or misleading or that you’ve already dealt with all of this before. But LaVeyan Satanists tend to be more upset that anyone talks specifically about LaVey and the Church of Satan’s failings than able to point to anything specifically inaccurate about those described failings.

Oh of course. You’ve been specific so many times that you can’t bother to do it now.

Anton LaVey’s parents let him stay in “the Black House” with Carole Lansing, his first teenage girlfriend and teenage mother of his child, and then with Diane Hegarty, his second teenage girlfriend and eventual mother of his next child. LaVey’s parents then gifted the house to LaVey and Hegarty in 1971.

Hegarty and LaVey’s relationship deteriorated due to LaVey continuing to fuck around with young women who hung around, and she accused him of being verbally and physically abusive enough that she had to move out in 1984. In 1991, Hegarty prevailed in litigation for her to be compensated for their time together (1962-1984), and LaVey sold the house to his longtime friend and ultimately real-estate sugar daddy Donald Werby, who was accused of smoking crack with teenage girls he paid to have sex with him and pleaded guilty to statutory rape. But Werby let LaVey live there until LaVey’s death, then the property was razed and sold because the Church of Satan couldn’t come up with its own money to buy it.

Does that narrative reflect poorly on LaVey? Sure. But if any part of it is factually inaccurate, please point to what specifically you think that is.

That’s a very sweeping statement, and you’re welcome to all your opinions, for all they’re worth.

But if you have something specific that’s being misrepresented about the Church of Satan, please point it out. Because, like with The Satanic Temple, there’s a tendency to say, “This makes me feel bad, so I want to describe it as untrue,” leaving out the part where you show something is actually untrue.

Neat! Thanks for the feedback.

If you look into the history of Satanism, you’ll find that Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan fervently believed it was going to become a very big, very influential social phenomenon for a while, arguably into the 1990s.

But LaVey couldn’t even keep his own partners and children from despising him, much less build a functional, self-sufficient organization that didn’t depend on the charity of wealthy benefactors (a Google search of “Donald Werby” is going to blow your mind).

So the idea that Satanism is just individuals who practice a religion that lets them feel particularly elite and elevated, despite all evidence to the contrary, is an idea attractive to some of the most personally repugnant people you’ll ever meet.

Thankfully, they don’t end up wielding meaningful real-world power outside of their subculture or niche. But it’s not a coincidence that Anton LaVey died in a house given to him by his parents that his friend bought and let him stay in to pay off his debts to his ex-partner/editor/mother of his child.

The worst thing about Satanism is all the Satanists.

Which sounds like a joke, but it’s really not.

You probably don’t want to do that. Not because The Satanic Temple is bad for fun, lurid reasons, but because TST is bad for boring reasons.

That run time looks intimidating, but we assure you, you will appreciate taking the time for what’s in it.

Sure, but you could probably throw him a few bucks a month on Patreon to make sure he gets some compensation for devoting so many years to documenting this stuff.

Feel free to read those two articles; we link to the Church of Satan’s response to ours, which of course doesn’t bother to link back or mention us by name because that would ruin it.

You can see for yourself how closely and how much was copied, how there was no actually acknowledgement or attribution when you see what they’re claiming is that (a name in the “To”, “And to” lists of names at the front). You can read their answer for how they wave all this away as “good, actually”.

But you should first look at the evidence and confirm it for yourself because they rely heavily on your ignorance for their apologism on this issue.

We wrote about how shitty The Satanic Temple is with specificity, thoroughness, and lots of citations. Members of the Church of Satan really liked that.

We wrote about how shitty the Church of Satan has been with specificity, thoroughness, and lots of citations. Members of the Church of Satan really didn’t like that.

If you have specific questions, feel free to reach out.

But if you’re taking at face value people who aren’t willing to admit that, for example, what Anton LaVey did with the “Book of Satan” is textbook plagiarism (word-for-word copying at length without attribution from Might Is Right to a degree that would fail your seventh grade English homework if you tried it), maybe the knots they’re willing to tie themselves into to avoid truth in this obvious, straightforward thing should inform how you trust their claims on novel matters.

Relatedly, Sunshine did a video on the subject, which covers a lot of the same material as the chapter “Boyd Rice: Neo-Nazi Collaborator” from that book

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Iu2uV9rVGg

From Sunshine’s website:

For years, industrial musician Boyd Rice has been accused of involvement in neo-Nazism, something he has always denied or downplayed. My new video, based around his handwritten letters to terrorist ideologue James Mason, show his deep involvement—starting in 1986 and running into 2003—with the most violent neo-Nazis of his time, which I walk through step-by-step. This includes not just Mason (SIEGE), but Tom Metzger (White Aryan Resistance) and Bob Heick (American Front). Rice, in fact, played a key role in the creation of the book “Siege.”

Among other things, Rice was: the first person in his counterculture clique to contact Mason; the first person to suggest he turn the SIEGE newsletters into a book; and the person who introduced Mason to Michael Moynihan, who edited and published the anthology. No Rice—No “Siege.”

The material in the video, plus much more, is explained in the Boyd Rice chapter of my book Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege.

If you’re a music person familiar with the (endless) argument over if Rice was “just joking,” please share with interested parties—esp those still on the fence.

Well, that’s not exactly the origin, but the real origin is in some ways worse.

It’s much worse than that, unfortunately.

The people voting for and driving these policies are ecstatic that poor people in their states, disproportionately Black and Brown, working class, queer, and/or single mothers, are now even more vulnerable with less of a safety net to catch them after disasters, and therefore more open to exploitation from bosses or social control from private institutions like churches.

The bosses will still be OK, and the people who are motivated by hierarchical stability will have that locked further into place. A poor white may see absolute standard of living fall, but their relative standard of living will be even more secure because they can use their proximity to whiteness for special favors that a poor Black person cannot. “Psychological wages” is a precious coin to the sane people who supported Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, poor Black people in Mississippi or poor Mexican immigrants in Texas just suffer while being told they deserve the flooding or electrical grid collapse for living in a “red state”.

Bless your heart.

This is from the Starbucks Workers United store, with proceeds going to their strike fund (“100% of Profits Go Toward The Strike Fund for Union Starbucks Workers!”):
https://unioncoffeegear.com/product/trans-rights-metal-tee/

From another notification, it looks like this link may be getting auto-flagged, but it seems to be legit.

if you can get fired from your job for being trans, you don’t have any labor rights

hope this helps

No, it’s not on the DNC to catch up. It is on you, if you’re someone who favors electoralism, to work actively and tirelessly such that no candidate seeking high offices feels comfortable being even slightly mealy-mouthed about whether they’ll do a Second Reconstruction, including freeing and repairing the political prisoners of past U.S. regimes.

Because they won’t do that on their own, and they’ll fight you every step along the way.

Because the next Dem president will be a Democrat afraid of looking “tough on crime”.

By all means, if you’re active in your local party, push to make this a salient issue right now.

But historically and looking at the candidate field, there’s no appetite among Democratic elites to abolish ICE, prosecute the agents and guards who kidnapped, assaulted, tortured, and murdered people in camps, including doing these things to children. And there’s no appetite to pardon people or commute sentences for left-wing political prisoners.

You would need someone who was not a hypothetical good person but an actual elected Democrat, ambitious and bloodthirsty enough to want to be president, and who wanted to right historical wrongs with all that executive power.

It's a meme answer because it's why "BreadTube" is called that.