The Fascism Question
(First published in THE SATANIC SCRIPTURES, 2007 C.E.)
The Church of Satan does not dictate the politics of its members, and they have always been free to choose whatever suits their personal needs, pragmatism being the guiding factor. Our members generally promote the idea that their nation of residence should move towards a secular, pluralist society in which people are free to participate in any religion or philosophy of choice, and that the adherents of these myriad alternatives agree not to coerce others, either through force or through legislation of their religiously-derived moralities. The mechanism of local politics is employed on the basis of what will bring the most personal benefits to the Satanist and the people and goals he cherishes.
Those outside the Church of Satan have, from its inception, accused it of all manner of politics: communism, fascism, anarchism, liberalism, conservatism—and just about anything else you can think of, all of which are mutually exclusive. What IS clear, is that journalists who have an “axe to grind” against the Church of Satan have always accused it of advocating a political system which is one they personally abhor—thus casting the Church of Satan in the role of “devil” for them in whatever arena of human thought they wish to explore.
In the 1960’s the radical left preached a philosophy of “peace and love” which really boiled down to the concept of leveling everything to being “equal.” This “philosophy” championed the abandoning of rational criteria for evaluation of anything, and the embracing of everything as being of equal value, thus fostering mediocrity on every level of human endeavor. We are still living in the fallout of this mode of thinking, as the people who espoused these ideas when young have grown to adulthood and are now the “establishment”—those adults whom they considered to be the enemy during the sixties. This “egalitarianism” was manifested in cultural domains with concepts such as: “Anything can be defined as being art and all such works must be considered to have equal validity.” Thus, some random splashes on a canvas were considered an equal achievement to the Sistine Chapel; a mud hut was held up as being equivalent to Versailles. A janitor was dubbed the equivalent to a physicist; a novelist was now the peer of one who scrawled graffiti on a bathroom wall. This principle of “indiscrimination” was applied to all other fields of achievement. Those who opposed this leveling were accused of being “fascists” or “Nazis,” without regard for what these terms might have meant in their actual historical origins and practice. After all, it was the mid-sixties, twenty years after the ending of a war that most of these folks weren’t even alive to have experienced. How quickly past orthodoxies are forgotten.
The Church of Satan was created in 1966 and stood in contradistinction to these ideas, which were generally defined as being “liberal.” From the time of the very foundation of the organization, Anton LaVey and the members of the Church of Satan were appalled at this ideology which preached that any kind of merit was illusory—and thus that the act of evaluation was an “evil” practice. Discrimination became a bad word, when previously it had denoted sound judgment. Well, the Church of Satan never shied away from embracing things that society considered evil, and thus it championed a rebirth of strict criteria for evaluation of all areas of human endeavor, and quite radically placed the responsibility for this squarely on the shoulders of each individual. There was no “appeal to authority” in Satanism since each person held the responsibility for being his own authority. For this reason, we were then called “fascists” and “Nazis”—NOT because of any advocacy of the sociopolitical ends of these historical movements.
The masses today still don’t know what the terms “Nazi” and “fascist” really mean in their original sense. These words are now used as epithets against anyone with whom they don’t agree. Most frequently they are employed by “politically correct” intellectuals in the same manner that Joe McCarthy used the word “communist” and the Christian Inquisitors used the word “witch”—to discredit the validity of the accused’s point of view and brand them a “heretic” or “thought criminal.” Because of the continuing decline in the level of education, even amongst those who pursue degrees at major universities, we can expect that there will be no broad understanding of what the terms “Nazi” and “fascist” really mean now and for some time to come. These will simply remain vague derogatory designations used against those perceived to be “the bad guys.”
Satanists are aware of what impact words and images have on the herd, and thus use them to their advantage. It should be clear to anyone who has observed human society that there is an all-pervading interest on the part of the contemporary general public in the Third Reich. Anyone with cable television or who happens to visit movie theatres will see that the Nazis are the standard archetype in entertainment for what the masses deem to be evil, and they are fascinated with this dead government and fetishize it to no end. Do you watch “The History Channel” (whose emblem is a carved, angular letter “H”)? We jokingly say that this really stands for “Hitler” not “History” as much of their programming concerns analysis of the Third Reich.
The herd’s misconceptions establish how a Satanist uses symbols to influence these people. Would-be iconoclasts today who try to reclaim the swastika as a “good” symbol have failed to supplant the herd’s identification of this as a sign of “ultimate Evil,” far more potent to them than our Sigil of Baphomet. When dealing with mass consciousness, current meanings establish buttons that can be pushed.
Certain savvy Satanists who make their living entertaining the masses have used the public’s obsession with this material for their own ends. Hence they have employed symbols and techniques derived from Third Reich spectacles (which were undeniably powerful means for motivating masses of people) for the purpose of stimulating their audiences and thus putting money in their pockets. Is this advocating political fascism? No, of course not.
Fascism is a doctrine that requires the submission of individuals to the goals of the state. This is a collectivist philosophy, suppressing individualism, which states that each person should sacrifice himself to an abstract principle, which is treated as a sacred entity: THE STATE. The past supposed “glories” of the state, usually mythological, become the sacred icons in what is in actuality a new religion. Fascism is clearly a means for controlling herds, and one that was effective. It took one of the largest wars to end the bid for world dominance by nations using this system.
The “sameness” of the masses serving THE STATE is the common ideology for unification of the populace, and such is the favored tool for totalitarians whether they are called fascists, or clergy, or commissars. Hence uniform modes of dress are frequent tools to bond the populace together.
Satanism advocates a different approach. Stratification is a term coined by Anton LaVey to signify how nature allows everything to “seek its own level.” It is not something that need be advocated—it happens of its own accord. Social orders are human constructs, artificial in nature. We Satanists think that if one were to apply Nature’s principles to a society, in this context stratification would then be the concept that one’s merit, evidenced by developed talent and productivity, decides one’s position in society. That position could change, depending upon the shifting matrix of societal values for your abilities. Individuality is thus championed, and there will be a flux in class status rather than an imposed stasis creating a frozen hierarchy of hereditary aristocrats.
This was not the goal of the German fascists of the Third Reich. Their standards were racist. They sought political power and needed a scapegoat for the economic woes of many people. They chose the Jews, since many were economically successful as well as skilled arts practitioners, and Nazi propagandists galvanized much of the populace into following them through hatred of people they branded seditious monsters. They also targeted Communists, whom they felt were enemies to their system of National Socialism. Once the Nazis took power, their first order of business was to imprison political enemies, many of whom were Communists. These were the people first incarcerated in concentration camps. However, the need to continue identifying enemies, denigrating groups of people so that the “Aryans” could feel superior, lead to the imprisonment and extermination of the Jews, along with gypsies and even homosexuals, despite the homophile proclivities of some leading Nazis. They too were purged. “Decadent” was the smear used against them while the Nazis assumed the mantle of moral and aesthetic purity.
When fascist doctrine is placed into practice, regardless of where or when, there has to be somebody who tells the herd what the needs of THE STATE are to be, since THE STATE is just an abstraction—it does not actually exist. Here enters the “Ruling Class,” otherwise known as the Nazi Party, the Communist Party, the Khmer Rouge, and so on. These rulers claim to embody THE STATE, telling the masses what the will of THE STATE is. They reign much like the ancient priesthoods who held their power by being the only ones capable of communicating to people the “will of the Gods.” These people are a de facto aristocracy, using THE STATE for its raison d’être, just as the latter-day heads of some of the communist states handed down THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE as their excuse for controlling their massed subjects. These rulers are not subject to sacrificing themselves to THE STATE, because they are the ones who, as embodiments of THE STATE, choose who is to be sacrificed. They don’t pick themselves, though sometimes they do pick their cohorts who are getting a bit too cocky. These kinds of rulers now use terms more palatable to our century,whose masses won’t buy such old excuses as “the divine right of kings,” but their means are identical. Of course, these rulers are often foiled by subsequent “prophets,” who convince the masses that they, rather than the current rulers, embody THE STATE, and so counter-revolutions occur and the former leaders are usually dispatched with violence.
“Don’t pay any attention to the man behind the curtain!” said the glowering face in a fountain of fire (THE STATE/THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE), hoping that Dorothy and crew wouldn’t notice who really is pulling the strings. But Toto (the beast) pulled aside the curtain. Now we might begin to see how Satanists factor in to this equation.
The Satanist should always be aware of who is really running the situation in which he finds himself. The clever know the ropes of the system in which they live and use that to their advantage. Satanists do not see themselves as being part of the herd and naturally resist any attempts to be forced to live under any regimes that would make them part of the controlled masses. However, Satanists might not care how the herd is being controlled, so long as they themselves aren’t subject to being controlled along with them. If forced by circumstance to be part of such a governmental situation (and I caution the reader to examine how much he really knows about the machinations of his current nation of residence), the clever Satanist would either attempt to be the person who pulls the strings, or, more likely, his associate. Being the one behind a “leader” is generally a safer position, as the leader is always a target, while the advisors often survive changes in “top dogs.” Let Machiavelli be your guide.
If one is not a member of the ruling class, but is actually part of a minority faction in a pluralistic society, then advocating that “everyone be treated equally under the law” may guarantee that you will have a maximum amount of personal freedom. Be aware of mitigating “power factors” at work—like wealth. Of course the amount of freedom depends upon the laws of the society in which one lives and we recognize that special interest groups often jostle to get more of the “pie” through handouts and privileges established via state mechanisms.
Satanists know that there are no natural rights as the concept of rights requires someone or something to be doling them out, and in the past this was usually considered to be some God. The only rights one has are those given by the laws of the governmental structure under which you live, and ultimately, even these devolve into what you may attain for yourself using whatever personal power you might have. That is why the rich get away with so much more, as their money gives them power and hence, more rights in a society ruled by lawyers and not justice.
However, if you belonged to the ruling class you might have a very different perspective. It is true that self-identified Satanists are currently a minority in a pluralistic society. But what if they achieved a position of being the ruling class? How would clever self-declared Satanists run a government? What would they advocate? How would they control the masses? This could be a fine question that could be dealt with in a novel of speculative fiction, as it is not likely to happen in reality. But, we do know that the people who really understand how to exercise power on the highest of human levels, regardless of whatever philosophy they proclaim as their cover, are actually maintaining their power by behaving in accordance with the true nature of the human species, and are thus de facto Satanists.
So, some Satanists who are “political idealists” might envision a fascistic future wherein Satanists are the “men behind the curtain” directing the herd to support their own personal indulgences—the herd sacrificing themselves to a ruling, but necessarily hidden, Satanic “elite.” I see this as a political pipedream, a form of idealism incompatible with the essential pragmatism of Satanism. Running a state would leave little time for personal indulgences and enjoying one’s life.
As you can see, in contemporary Western society, the only political factions likely to attempt to create a fascistic system (as meant by the original meanings of the terms) are the right-wing fundamentalist fanatical Christians. The film, The Handmaid’s Tale provides a chilling visualization of this possibility. They have the same moral self-righteousness as the Third Reich leaders and their kind has always found scapegoats to burn at the stake. I think it far more productive to advocate a system that guarantees freedom for the exercise of many points of view—so long as it doesn’t require me to pay for wastrels who want a free ride.
We in the administration of the Church of Satan do not control the thoughts of our members, so if some of them want to toy with these political dreams, that is their prerogative, so long as they don’t identify them with the aims of the Church of Satan, which are emphatically not political, nor are they idealistic.
The Church of Satan has never required anything of its members except that they hold the writings of Anton LaVey as their basis for membership in this organization. We do not try to force our members into some kind of lock-step unity in their personal choices for building upon LaVey’s foundation. We thus celebrate an astonishing diversity. There are some perspectives that we hold in common. We champion merit and superior achievement in all spheres, and are the opponents of a society that is a rampant “mediocracy.”
American Satanists tend to define the United States as the world’s first Satanic Republic. Egalitarian types who reject that concept should note that the Founding Fathers did not grant freedom to everyone—it was thought to be a right only for those whom they deemed worthy and capable of intelligent ability to exercise such freedoms, originally excluding people such as slaves and women. Thus, they weren’t giving everyone equality, but were advocating freedom for people whom they defined as equals in ability and capability, an important distinction that has been lost on many who want to interpret their wisely constructed governmental structure as being egalitarian and democratic. It was designed as a republic, which suggested that men of reason might need the ability to circumvent poor or repressive decisions that could arise if a “majoritarian” democracy was installed. That was considered “mob rule” which was just as intolerable as being controlled by hereditary monarchs, particularly since the Founding Fathers shared the same low opinion of the masses as that held by we Satanists.
So we come ‘round at last to that question: “Is Satanism fascism?” The answer depends upon your definition of that term. If fascism is understood to be the totalitarian system of government enslaving its subjects to serve the state in drab conformity, then the answer is a resounding “NO!” However, if fascism is merely a loose epithet tossed at those who do uphold standards for excellence in human achievement in all arenas of endeavor, then we’ll wear THAT as a badge of honor. We, who embrace Satan as our emblem, don’t need no stinking good guy badges!
Image from THE GREAT DICTATOR, a 1940 film directed by Charles Chaplin. Chaplin mocked the AXIS powers, the fascists of his time, when their war of conquest was raging across the globe—a must see work! Click on the title to order Criterion's excellent release of this memorable movie.
Peter H. Gilmore
High Priest of the Church of Satan
