“Lucien Greaves” and The Satanic Temple have a lot to answer for

How can TST’s defenders think grotesque bigotry by its owner is merely “an imperfection” to be celebrated?

When confronted with examples of Doug “Lucien Greaves” Misicko’s pattern of reactionary words and actions over the past two decades, usually, The Satanic Temple’s sycophants offer one of a small handful of stock excuses to deflect and otherwise resist actually dealing with it.

Their most recent tack has been “Lucien Greaves has changed! Actually, ‘The Satanic Temple is a church for imperfect people‘ which is why our religion is great!”— an excuse that exceeds parody but more seriously points to the dangers of what is now required of TSTers by way of loyalty.

And yet as we have said, “When it comes to The Satanic Temple, there’s always more and it’s always worse.”

Starting February 26, the admin(s) behind The.Satanic.Wiki began releasing more clips on Twitter and Kolektiva from audio and corrected transcripts of old Internet radio shows The Satanic Temple’s co-owner Doug Misicko used to make with his friend and longtime collaborator Shane Bugbee, primarily from the incomplete audio of a show called The ABCs of the Alphabet.

This was back when Misicko was using the pseudonym “Doug Mesner” rather than “Lucien Greaves” as he mostly does now.

These conversations—intended for public consumption!—are incredibly bad, but of course all context added to them makes them even worse.

We’ve censored the slurs in the titles, but in the actual audio clips and transcripts, they are presented as they were said at the time: in full and without obfuscation or shame.

The titles The Satanic Wiki gave them are fairly short, and it’s often difficult to describe fully all of what makes them terrible. For example, while Misicko is talking about arson and bullying in high school, Bugbee plays the Nazi anthem along under Misicko’s story; how do you best emphasize and summarize that?

In any case, if you still have friends who are supportive or otherwise ignorant of The Satanic Temple, and they don’t want to read a long article about it, any of the below clips should encapsulate quickly why these people are not to be trusted with your money or to fight for religious liberty of any sort.

(For those not up to date, while these clips are from 2003-2004, the issue is that Misicko and Bugbee were close up through 2013 when Misicko tapped Bugbee to help re-launch TST after the first attempt failed, and their leaked emails and gravestone-teabagging stunt together that summer demonstrate how little change had actually happened in that decade. More of that history here.)

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“Lucien Greaves” wants to write a “[ableist r-slur] story”

CW: r-slur and other ableist slurs, antisemitism, n-word slur, anti-Hispanic slur, call for genocide, ableism, eugenics, sexual assault mention

So again, the audio and transcripts are not going to be redacted. There is a lot of slurs and concepts that are going to be upsetting.

This is just one of many clips that The Satanic Temple would like pretend does not matter. It’s from the 24-hour “Might Is Right” Internet radio stream intended to promote the new edition of a 19th century book that Shane Bugbee published and Doug Misicko had illustrated—itself already a proto-fascist and grotesquely bigoted work—with crime publisher Hart Fisher coming on for one of the interviews.

One thing that may not be obvious from the rest of the clips is that the dynamic of this kind of edgelord, serial-killer-geek, shock show requires a straight man to work most of the time. Usually this is a role Misicko plays, but in this clip it’s mostly Fisher and therefore Misicko gets to play along more.

Some of the excuses that apologists today make for the past behavior of their religion’s co-owner is that other people were saying worse things.

This completely misunderstands how these conversations work, and as we go through these clips, the idea should be easily dispelled that Misicko has any real objections to what he is taking part in for dozens of hours of recording time over many years.

Hart Fisher: Been like a little cripple time down here at the RadioFreeSatan.com.

Doug Misicko: Yeah, we love the retards.

Hart Fisher: Oh, very important. Kids of Whidney High.

Doug Misicko: Right. Make some beautiful music.

Shane Bugbee: First ones in the fuckin showers.

Hart Fisher: [Mimicking] “The fuckin showers.”

Shane Bugbee: First go the retards and then go the Jews.

Doug Misicko: The retards are entertaining.

Shane Bugbee: Next is the niggers and spics and then more Jews.

Hart Fisher: …right.

Doug Misicko: You can tell a retard it’s got a bug on the back of its head and watch it spin in violent circles, and everybody has a good time.

Hart Fisher: While I was growing up, I had this friend of mine he had a cousin that had Down syndrome and he moved in with his with- with his grandma and that- the Down syndrome chick, and her bedroom was next to his and he said he used to have to listen or masturbate at night.

Doug Misicko: He had to, huh?

Hart Fisher: Well, yeah, you know, he’s just living in a fucking trailer. Some fuckin’ retard is masturbating and making all this noise. Ain’t no way…

Doug Misicko: I heard retards have quite the sexual appetite, too.

Hart Fisher: Oh, yeah. And then I was dating this girl and she had an older aunt that was a, uh, a ‘tard. And she she got knocked up by the mailman. ‘Cause the mailman would come and sweet talk his way in until eventually he knocked her up. And that was in Texas. Friendly.

Doug Misicko: Yeah, it doesn’t even sound like the ‘tards are at a loss to find somebody to do it with them. What is going on!? That’s dysgenics.

Having not listened to this segment in a while, upon doing so again it is grim and genuinely depressing knowing how much power the man now has in liberal and even some leftist circles.

But if you needed to show a friend getting interested in TST just one clip to let them know it’s a bad idea, this is probably the one.

Again: Two of the three people in this conversation launched The Satanic Temple together in 2013, and Doug Misicko a.k.a “Doug Mesner” a.k.a. “Lucien Greaves” brought Shane Bugbee in because the prank documentary project that would ultimately become “TST” needed help.

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“Lucien Greaves“ on the Oklahoma City Bombing and the bad PR of killing children

CW: terrorism, praise of white nationalist violence, misogyny

Amy Bugbee: A major person who did help pass around Day 51 [a Waco standoff documentary] was Tim McVeigh.

Shane Bugbee: Yeah, exactly. That was one of the people that gave it to and we’re trying to live to- some people call McVeigh a terrorist and American terrorist. I call him an American hero. Okay?

Amy Bugbee: That’s right. And I just finished reading American Terrorist, Timothy McVeigh story, and it’s… fascinating. It’s really a shame and the major- the thing that he was most upset about what the Oklahoma City bombing was the fact that the children dying outshined what the message was he was trying to convey by blowing up the building. And it’s a real shame. He said, if he would have known that there were- there was a daycare center in there, he would have picked a different target because of that.

Doug Misicko: All right, that was the biggest mistake. And of course, it was easy for the media to take that away.

Shane Bugbee: What was the biggest mistake?

Doug Misicko: The fact that there was kids in there.

Shane Bugbee: That was your… you consider that a mistake

Doug Misicko: Well, it’s a PR mistake.

For those who don’t already know, Timothy McVeigh was a white nationalist terrorist who hoped to fulfill the vision of The Turner Diaries and ultimately its genocidal “day of the rope” by bombing a federal building (as that novel did).

One hundred sixty-eight people were murdered, including 19 children. But they were incidental to McVeigh.

Evidence of McVeigh’s admiration for a novel called The Turner Diaries, published in 1978, will aid the prosecution’s effort to portray him as a hate-filled radical. The book, a favorite of far-right groups, tells the story of a group of white supremacists who blow up FBI headquarters in Washington at 9:15 one morning–almost exactly the same time of the Oklahoma City bombing. The Turner Diaries oozes invective against blacks and Jews. “We have allowed a diabolically clever, alien minority to put chains on our souls and our minds,” a passage reads. “Why didn’t we roast them over bonfires at every street corner in America? Why didn’t we make a final end to this obnoxious and eternally pushy clan, this pestilence from the sewers of the East…?”

McVeigh was such an eager evangelist for The Turner Diaries that he handed it out to friends and sold it at gun shows–often at a loss. The government will probably present testimony by Fortier and McVeigh’s sister to confirm this zeal and may argue that McVeigh thought the book provided a model for how he might retaliate against the government for its Waco raid. For example, the bomb the narrator builds is, like the one used on the Murrah building, made out of ammonium nitrate mixed with heating oil and is loaded into a truck.

Letters and testimony by friends will show the defendant’s growing paranoia about the government and his bitterness toward it. A revealing set of documents was found in the car McVeigh was driving when he was arrested after the bombing. One item is a commentary by John Locke, which McVeigh copied by hand, asserting that a man has a right to kill someone who would take away his liberty; another is a photocopy of a passage from The Turner Diaries that says the purpose of the fictional bombing was to wake up America.

Time Magazine, 1997

Doug Misicko — a.k.a. “Doug Mesner” a.k.a. “Lucien Greaves” the owner of The Satanic Temple — thinks the children killing was bad public relations, though.

The members of The Satanic Temple who see this will say, “That was a long time ago! And it was mostly Shane Bugbee, who did nothing for TST — other than helping TST get early press coverage while he was paid to promote the Temple in Vice and on podcasts.”

Being a close friend and collaborator with someone so effusive in praise to white nationalists for years is bad enough, but Misicko has said plenty for himself, too.

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“Lucien Greaves” talks about “The View” (TV show) and network [n-slurs]

CW: anti-Black slurs, antisemitism, racism

Doug Misicko: We’re doing the alphabet. We’re starting each show with a letter, and just going- That’s our very generalized theme. It’s our theme without a theme. We bring up a letter, first word comes to mind, and we discuss this is our panel kinda like those five big, fat black Negros and sit and talk about-

Shane Bugbee: Rotund. (Doug Misicko: Yeah.) We don’t use the “f-word” in this house.

Doug Misicko: “Inflated” for “I”.

Shane Bugbee: Oh god, inflated? (Amy Bugbee: There you go.) Worse than- worse than fat. “Inflated”. (Doug Misicko: Right.) But like the five big flat- fat black Negro, what?

Doug Misicko: Big- uhh, I think it’s five big, big inflated Negros that discuss things on a show. I dunno, there’s some morning show.

Shane Bugbee: I’ve never seen it. (Doug Misicko: Yeah, nevermind.) Is it “The View”?

Doug Misicko: Yeah, I think that’s what it is.

Shane Bugbee: Are they all Negros?

Doug Misicko: I think so.

Shane Bugbee: Barbara Walters is on there.

Doug Misicko: She’s a Negro.

Shane Bugbee: Exactly.

Amy Bugbee: Yep. She’s Jewish.

Doug Misicko: She’s some- No, oh, uh, she’s a- she’s a network (Shane Bugbee: Idiot?) -nigger, is what she is.

In his book on The Satanic Temple Speak of the Devil, Professor Joe Laycock took at face value the claim that Doug Misicko saying “I think it’s OK to hate Jews” was one quote taken out of context where Misicko stated something clumsily and didn’t stop his co-hosts from engaging in worse bigotry. TST podcaster Stephen B. Long called this, “Lucien’s Moment of Cringe”.

We already knew the apology in the statement on Misicko’s behalf passed around in 2018 didn’t match reality. That same show had so much other material that was much worse, including the above two clips but also many more such examples.

This, however, is not from that same show. It is a different show called “ABCs of the Alphabet” happening a year later. It also involved future co-owner of The Satanic Temple Doug “Lucien Greaves” Misicko and his collaborator for at least a decade Shane Bugbee, as well as Bugbee’s wife Amy. As Misicko describes in that clip, the format was for the three of them to just “riff” for 30 minutes about subjects related to that letter of the alphabet, occasionally with musical breaks.

Because Shane Bugbee thoroughly publicly archived his own work, we still have these. Otherwise, essentially no one would remember or have access to any of it.

For example, the only surviving bit of Radio Free Satan’s “The Doug Mesner Show” (Misicko’s earlier pseudonym) is a segment called “Tard Sex”, despite that show running for at least 126 episodes until December 2007.

So we only have some of what Misicko was willing to say in public in this period, and we know he did it for years, but in now way should this be taken as fully representative of his views and attitude.

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“Lucien Greaves” on Black co-workers and cunnilingus

CW: anti-Black racism, discussions of sex acts, death

Doug Misicko: I used to work with coloreds, and they always talked about cunnilingus. (Shane Bugbee: Oh!) They always did, every night, it was the fucking topic. “Did you do it?” Y’know?

Shane Bugbee: They don’t though! Coloreds don’t eat pussy.

Doug Misicko: Some of them… It was a big debate. Some of them would talk about- (Shane Bugbee: No, they don’t!) “Do you eat pussy?” And others would… No, some would say they did, and others would say “Fuck, no!”.

Doug Misicko is 29 here, for the record.

He probably knows better than to say this sort of thing in public now, but The Satanic Temple remains overwhelming white as an organization for reasons that probably are not surprising and have been pointed out before.

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“Lucien Greaves” talks about the KKK and killing [Jewish people]

CW: antisemitism, racism, violent threats, slurs

Doug Misicko: Alright. So weren’t we talking about kiddie porn earlier?

Shane Bugbee: No, we were talking about the Ku Klux Klan. (Doug Misicko: Oh, okay.) Amy was talking about kikes during the- you know, when we were off the air, for K.

Amy Bugbee: I was just mentioning it was a K-word.

Shane Bugbee: I think you said, “Fucking kill the kikes”.

Doug Misicko: What does “kike” mean to you, Amy?

Shane Bugbee: Go fly a kike.

Amy Bugbee: Yeah, exactly.

Doug Misicko: Kike-y tennis shoes.

Amy Bugbee: Yes. “Just do it.”

In regards to the more famous antisemitic quote, “I think it’s OK to hate Jews if you hate them because they wear a fucking frisbee on their head and walking around [thinking] they’re God’s chosen people,” it has long been The Satanic Temple’s standard apologism to point out that Cevin Soling a.k.a. “Malcolm Jarry” is an ethnically Jewish man, as is since-exited founder David Guinan a.k.a. “Nicholas Crowe” from the Hail Satan? film.

Professor Joe Laycock unironically trotted that out as the excuse, “Some of Doug’s best friends are Jews!”

Jarry and Guinan are both Jewish and rejected the suggestion that Mesner harbors anti-Semitic views. Jarry expressed irritation that those claiming Greaves is an anti-Semite never bothered to ask his opinion about the
podcast.

Joseph Laycock, Speak of the Devil, Chapter 3, “Satanic Schisms”

This discussion of k-slurs precedes some clips about hatred of public displays of religiosity and how Misicko’s friends Shane and Amy Bugbee visited the KKK museum for their honeymoon.

Then they play a song by white supremacist musician Johnny Rebel that is violently descriptive about how the Louisiana KKK lynched a Black man for claiming he had the right to be served at a white restaurant.

A different Johnny Rebel song entirely about how bad Black people smell is what had closed the section of Misicko talking about how Nazis had ruined the concepts of antisemitism and eugenics a year before.

So maybe Cevin Soling is not the best person to ask about the prejudices of his business partner.

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“Lucien Greaves” talks eugenics and “who decides”

CW: eugenics

Doug Misicko: Yeah, eugenics. Right right, right, right. No, no, no. Eugenics is the practice of proper breeding to produce a better gene pool, and a lot of people try to say that it doesn’t work, and that you can’t breed people better because of too many variables or anything else, but everybody knows through common sense that’s a bunch of shit because we’ve seen horse breeders, we’ve seen animal breeders, we’ve seen everything else. I mean, people give a shit about the papers when they get their dog. People give a shit about those things because they know it works. We know there’s facts of heredity. We know that smart people can have a stupid kid, and you know, stupid people can sometimes have a smart kid, but that’s called deviation from the mean, and it’s not uncommon. That happens, but nonetheless, I feel there should be a eugenics policy, or at least something to curb it’s opposite, which is dysgenics, which is producing inferior breeds through, like fetal alcohol syndrome, or crack babies, or whatever. We shouldn’t promote that, and often people will ask me, you know…

Shane Bugbee: Oh really? Lots of people ask professor Doug. “Oh, people will ask me…”

Doug Misicko: People will often ask me “How can you promote an idea like eugenics? Who is qualified… Who’s going to decide who is qualified to have a kid, and who’s not?” You know? And I always tell them that I would be happy to decide. I would be happy to put up some kind of standardized test, like driving a fucking car, Y’know?

Shane Bugbee: So you would decide?

Doug Misicko: Why not?

If a religious leader is willing to argue for eugenics policies because it’s just “common sense” and that animal breeders are “proof” that it works, how serious do you think this guy is even capable of being when it comes to defending reproductive freedom?

Again, to the idea that “people change”, remember that Doug Misicko kept a website called “Dysgenics” live and updated until 2018.

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“Lucien Greaves” on “N-words”

CW: anti-Black racism, n-word slur, lynching reference

Shane Bugbee: What are your N words, Doug?

Doug Misicko: I have neighbors, Nazi…

Shane Bugbee: Did you say neighbors?

Doug Misicko: Yeah.

Shane Bugbee: Is that the other N word? (Amy Bugbee: laughing)

Doug Misicko: Other N word? You mean be-

Shane Bugbee: That’s the other N word. Like “nigger”. And then you go, “nigger”, and the other N word is neighbors. They’re a nigger.

Doug Misicko: Why “nigger”! I didn’t think of that.

Shane Bugbee: Amy’s uh, father gave us that one.

Amy Bugbee: That’s what my dad says.

Doug Misicko: What? He says “neighbors” is the other N word?

Amy Bugbee: He says that “neighbors” is the other N word, yeah.

Doug Misicko Oh, Right. Well… then what- what do you do if your neighbor’s a nigger?

Shane Bugbee: Fuckin’ hang him high. (Amy Bugbee: Sell your house.) Hang him high, OK?

Doug Misicko: [laughs audibly into the mic] I also had news, nurses, and noise…

Maybe more than any other clip, this one makes it obvious what the dynamic is for these conversations.

Doug Misicko is certainly not actually uncomfortable in these situations, as some sycophants of The Satanic Temple and “Lucien Greaves” like to claim now. You do not “uncomfortably” collaborate with people like this for years and sit through hours of recording sessions with people who are this sincerely fond of white nationalists and the KKK, who talk about how neighbors are “the other n-word”, and who “joke” about lynching and eradication this often.

Claiming that Misicko is uncomfortable with what’s going on here and not actually taking part in bigotry is something like saying the comedic duo Abbott and Costello only involved one comedian because Abbott played the straight man and Costello got the punchlines.

Another excuse will be that this was all just dark humor in bad taste. However, that is not actually an excuse, and moreover, Misicko was regularly quite serious about interests such as eugenics or fascism.

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“Lucien Greaves” makes his case for fascism

CW: anti-Black racism, n-word slur, white nationalist symbolism, fascism

Doug Misicko: Well, I gotta tell you, the f-word still has ’em all beat. (Shane Bugbee: What?) F-word still has ’em all beat internationally. I go to other countries, I still see “fuck” on the wall. I never see “nigger” written on a wall.

Shane Bugbee: Interesting

Doug Misicko: When I was in Italy, I didn’t see “nigger” anywhere.

Shane Bugbee: But you went to the fascist leader’s house. (Doug Misicko: Actually, I was in a fascist-) The guy who started the fascist-

Doug Misicko: I was in a fascist neighborhood, right outside the Vatican, and it was a real nice, clean area, but you would see swastikas spraypainted. You know, like the crosshairs. I don’t know what you call that, you know, but it was a fascist symbol. A circle with just the crosshairs in it. With… little fascist logos or anything else. It was a clean area, nice area. If you went to the shitty side of town on the wrong side of the tracks in Rome, saw little hammers and sickles painted on the walls and shit like that. That was the difference. (Amy Bugbee: Wow, that’s crazy.) I think it says a lot, and I think it stands to reason…

Amy Bugbee: And you bought that T-shirt. What did your T-shirt say?

Doug Misicko: Uh, in Italian it says “you’re with us, or you’re against us.” And it was- it’s a- It’s a fascist shirt. It was a fascist logo on it. I actually got it at a little fascist kiosk outside of Gabriele D’Annunzio’s palace.

Shane Bugbee: And who is that again?

Doug Misicko: He was a- y’know- he was like the first fascist. He was the godfather of fascism. Italian World War One hero that occupied the promised territories, after the First World War. With the Blackshirts. One of those- One of those hidden heroes. People should look him up. Look him up on the internet… Good deal.

Doug Misicko got a white nationalist shirt at the home of the “godfather of fascism”, whom he calls a “hidden hero”.

The white nationalist celtic cross is the graffiti the co-owner and founder of The Satanic Temple is saying indicates a good neighborhood versus a bad one on the “wrong side of the tracks” with the hammer and sickle.

He was 29.

TST’s sycophants say, “Nobody’s perfect!”

Sometimes, the Temple’s sycophants will claim a certain clip shouldn’t count because it’s “out of context” (they never provide the exculpatory context) or “bad jokes” or claim Doug Misicko was “clearly uncomfortable”; no such excuse here. This is quite serious and led by him.

“He’s changed!”

Yet, in recent years up to the present, The Satanic Temple has at the explicit direction of Misicko sided with neo-Nazis in the name of “free speech” then sued people who talk about that.

Maybe Doug “Lucien Greaves” Misicko is different now, but golly! it’s weird he makes folk high up enough in the organization to be able to talk privately to him sign non-disparagement agreements, huh?

So we are once again demanding people to remember that TST is not the “cool progressive satanism” and it does not give a single shit about the marginalized.

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“Lucien Greaves” really hates Detroit

CW: anti-Black racism

Doug Misicko: Yeah. And best thing you can do to Detroit is burn it all down.

Shane Bugbee: And why is that Doug? Is it the coloreds?

Doug Misicko: Yeah, the place is just a shithole. I mean, they’re not gonna do anything with it. Fuck it. We should carpet-bomb it and start again.

Apropros of nothing, while they call him “Doug from Detroit” in that segment, in the year 2000, Detroit was 80 percent Black and 12 percent white. Meanwhile, the suburb of Sterling Heights, Mich., was 90 percent white and 1 percent Black.

Which city do you think Doug Misicko is actually from?

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The Satanic Temple’s co-owner “Lucien Greaves” on public displays of religion like Judaism and Islam

CW: antisemitism, islamophobia, antitheism

Doug Misicko: Oh, I know recently in France, they were talking- they were trying to pass a law that nobody could wear any religious apparel at a school. No- no turbans, no goddamn little Jewish- (Shane Bugbee: Where was this at?) In France! No goddamn Jewish little frisbee caps on their heads.

Shane Bugbee: Well, I like that as long as it’s no religious stuff. Fucking none-

Doug Misicko: I’m with you. I’m all for it. I’m all for it.

Shane Bugbee: It’s like like smoking in public- it’s like smoking in restaurants wearing religious garb all over. It’s offensive to me. I don’t want to see that shit and smell your stinky fucking incense ass. Fucking take that shit to your house man and what you’re smoking cigarettes and everything else. Smoking in restaurants. I don’t like religion in fucking public, either.

Doug Misicko: God damn right. I would like to slap everybody’s fucking turban off their head, every goddamn Jewish frisbee off the back of somebody’s fucking skull.

We are jumping around a bit, but for people who want to claim this is mere anti-theism, keep in mind that for context, this closely follows the “fucking kill the [k-slurs]” conversation and is immediately followed by fawning praise for the Ku Klux Klan, with the only caveat being their Christianity is a problem.

Again, Cevin Soling is entitled to his opinion about his business partner. But Doug Misicko said what he said, and he did it repeatedly as a grown-ass man using practiced phrases like “Jewish frisbees” for years, not a one-time slip of the tongue in his youth.

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“Lucien Greaves” recalls his pilgrimage to fascist Italy

CW: praise of fascists

Doug Misicko Okay. Yeah. So I went to Italy. I got back about a couple months ago, and I was there for a couple of months. And I went to a place in Northern Italy called Gardone Riviera. And that’s where Gabriele D’Annunzio’s house was. Most people don’t know who Gabriele D’Annunzio was, but he’s like this Italian World War One war hero. He was a playwright and a poet- (Shane Bugbee: Italian, “I”.) Yeah, Italy… So, we went over there- I went over there. And it was a beautiful place. He was he’s a poet and a playwright. And he talked- but he basically talked Italy into going into World War One because he thought Italy deserved more of the Balkan territory that they didn’t have and everything else. And the Allies told them that if they came into the war, that they would get those territories. Well, D’Annunzio was considered a war hero because not only did he talk everybody into going to war, but he actually participated in the war, much unlike our Rumsfelds, Colons, Dicks, and Bushes, but anyways, he lost an eye in World War One. But after World War One, they didn’t give Italy these territories. So he took his volunteers, the Blackshirts, they went unoccupied the territories for a while. And that was the original Blackshirts. Those were the original fascists, and Mussolini aligned themselves with him and them. And he was writing for a newspaper at the time and claiming that he was all about them. D’Annunzio didn’t like Mussolini, he was saying, “You say you’re going to support us but you haven’t sent provisions? You haven’t sent men. You’re just a you’re just a fucking idiot” — for “I”. And so when Mussolini came to power, right, D’Annunzio was basically confined to his house because he was he was a liability to the fascists. He could make them look bad. So he spent fascist money like it was going out of style, basically on the agreement that he was exiled to his home. So anyways, I went to this home, being that he spent their money like it was going out of style, It was beautiful. It was a palace. He’s a very eccentric man, too. He had a room that- his rooms all had themes. One was like a funeral room, it was like it had like a coffin-

Shane Bugbee Oh I love that- I’ve always wanted. And it’s funny, you say that: I’ve always wanted to have themed rooms.

Doug Misicko He had one where the- the theme was severed hand. There was hands all painted on the walls and everything is just he was into it. He was- he was great.

Again, the usual excuses just do not work here for Doug Misicko who is given the last few minutes of the show about the letter F to extoll the virtues of fascism and one Italian fascist in particular.

In his court deposition for Arkansas 10 Commandments case Cave v. Thurston in 2020, Shane Bugbee would go on to claim that Misicko visited the birthplace of Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

This could also be true, but the lack of specific citation along with this story does seem to suggest that Bugbee just misremembered where Doug Misicko had traveled for his fascist pilgrimage.

It is not safe to trust the word of Shane Bugbee on anything, including recollections, but it’s also clear he can’t be disregarded as a total fantasist, either. He was there for a lot of this, and whatever axe he has to grind after his falling out with Misicko and Cevin Soling, he actually has preserved a ton of contemporary receipts anyone can independently verify.

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“Lucien Greaves” talks about arson and high school bullying as Nazi national anthem plays

CW: n-word slur, fascism, arson, bullying, fatphobia, ableism

Doug Misicko I once lit a pep assembly on fire, and I did not get expelled for it. All those people! I used to get in trouble for most everything I did, and I thought it wasn’t fair. And then I was sitting at this boring pep rally because they caught me trying to leave. And there’s a big paper banner, and I just lit it on fire. The thing went up. [German marching music starts playing] And I thought, “Oh shit, it’s all over.” But they put it out and they never figured it out. And apparently nobody saw me do it. (Amy Bugbee: Wow, you never got caught?) It was the most amazing thing I never got caught for… (Shane Bugbee: I love it.) But speaking about whacking you on the head with a big book or whatever. There was a- in my high school…

Shane Bugbee Doug, you don’t mind I’m playing “Hitler Youth” songs underneath you, do you? (Doug Misicko: No, it’s fine.) It’s a good march there. We got four minutes.

Doug Misicko Maybe I can tell a story then.

Doug Misicko’s story of bullying a fat fellow high school student in swim class to get him in trouble with the teacher says something about him, but we’re mostly past, “Wow, what a douchebag,” at this point.

The “Hitler Youth” marching song is “Horst-Wessel-Lied“, the Nazi anthem that became the national anthem of Germany when the NSDAP took power.

Again, this was for a broadcast they intended to be public and listened by as many people as possible.

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“Lucien Greaves” on burning down churches (and temples) plus why we should nuke the “Holy Land“

CW: antisemitism, islamophobia, violent anti-theism

Doug Misicko: It’s ignorant. And I have respect for ancient history and archaeology, but I would say make the fucking “Holy Land” to crater, a radioactive waste, and then tell them, “Go to town. It’s all yours. All you assholes.” Fuck it. Solomon’s Temple? Who gives a shit. It’s just it’s gone too fucking far. It’s gone too fucking far.

Amy Bugbee Exactly. Fence off the whole country, and it can only be for tourists, you know, no one can live there or something.

Doug Misicko Yeah, free zone, UN, whatever. Martial Law! No- none of those assholes should be there. If people really are- have some orthodox religion they shouldn’t even be allowed close. They should be taken as terrorists to begin with. (Amy Bugbee: Exactly.) Churches- churches are terrorist organizations. They’re fucking terrorist organizations perpetuating this idea of a lease on a land written on ancient holy document, and it’s stupid.

Shane Bugbee Ignite the church.

Doug Misicko: Yeah.

Now, admittedly that video ending is spicy, and given that The Satanic Temple has been targeted by arson and bomb threats in recent years, even if you’re not a sycophant of TST, you may even think it’s a little unfair as a jab.

Well, maybe. But Doug Misicko said what he said, he’s said worse that we know of let alone what we don’t (thanks NDAs), and he seems quite serious there.

But also, The Satanic Temple and its key figures also still love this sort of rhetoric and imagery so long as it’s directed at people other than them.

Which they certainly have a right to! But they can’t really claim to be mad about it now, especially given their own stated values.

The Satanic Temple’s Fourth Tenet: “The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one’s own.”

TSTers: “not like that”

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“Lucien Greaves” and the OfficeMax gay Hindu organ harvester “prank call” story

CW: anti-South Asian racism, homophobia

Doug Misicko: O-okay. Well, I have an organ theft story from OfficeMax (Amy Bugbee: Excellent.) Because I used to work at OfficeMax, and it suddenly struck me that every day I had been going into the break room and ignoring the fact that they had an anonymous tip line there that I could, presumably, call at anytime to give people “snitch tips”. You know, if I needed to report my management for theft, or whatever else, or I was afraid to go to anybody else, I could call this number. So at one point, I decided to exploit this about daily. So one of the more “classic calls” I made to the OfficeMax tip line- snitch line, whatever you call it. So I called them and I reported that our store manager was gay, and that his friend had been proposing- propositioning people in the men’s room, and it made me afraid to go in there and take a shit. I told them I had an eight hour shift, and I was afraid to go in there. Take a piss.

Shane BugbeeNow, was this true?

Doug MisickoNo, it wasn’t! Not at all.

…

04:26 Doug Misicko: Oh… No, so he says, “Has his friend over proposition you for sex in the bathroom?” And I said “No.” And he said “Has he proposition anybody, you know, for sex?” And I said, “Dude, what is your fixation with gay sex?” And he said, “Hey, you- you called and I thought you were saying that this guy’s propositioning people for sex and bathroom.” I said, “I never said that. I said he’s propositioning people in the bathroom that he’s gay. That doesn’t mean wants to have sex with every guy.” And he’s like, “Oh okay, I don’t get it then.” And I said, “he’s asking people for their organs. He just wants the kidneys.” And he said, you know “What do you mean?” I said, “He’s this little Hindu fucker. He’s this greasy, smelly, little hairy Hindu guy. And anytime somebody comes in the bathroom, he asked if he can take their kidneys for, uh, people overseas.” And this guy was intrigued. These people, they were too stupid to hang up on me.

Something that is maybe not easily communicated in this format is just how terribly mediocre and boring all of these recordings are.

There also is bigotry (“this greasy, smelly, little hairy Hindu guy”), and an enduring theme of apparently very sincere homophobia because it just comes up over and over.

But there is no real cleverness here, no humor, nothing even interesting except that one of the three people in these conversations now regularly goes on Fox News and other outlets to present himself and his organization as an existential demonic threat to the fabric of society when talking to reactionaries, and presents as a cheeky, novel sort of progressive challenge to Christian nationalists when the audience is liberals.

In reality, he is neither, and when giving depositions for court and forced to answer follow-up questions outside of a partisan dynamic, Doug Misicko turns out to be not so far removed from the painful mediocrity of these sort of clips.

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“Lucien Greaves” on domestic abuse (he blames the victims)

CW: domestic abuse, victim-blaming

Amy Bugbee: Oh, we didn’t cover abuse! The other A-word.

Shane Bugbee: Oh god. Good thing we only have a minute left. That song is not getting played. (Amy Bugbee: Ah well, it was a good try.) Well, what’s the name of the song (Amy Bugbee:” Public Assistance.” We’ll play that for P. (Amy Bugbee: Pee?) (laughter) We’ll play it for P so you don’t get disappointed too much. Abuse, real good. You wanna fit abuse into a minute and a half? Go for it. Mic’s yours.

Amy Bugbee (laughing) Oh no, no. No thanks. “Abuse.” Y’know, it’s just something that happens.

Doug Misicko It can be an addiction, too.

Shane Bugbee Yes, it can be.

Doug Misicko But I think more often the person getting abused is addicted to it.

Shane Bugbee Yeah, sometimes I think it’s a two-way street, but that’s just…

Doug Misicko …Or at least just as often.

Don’t worry, though. That was “a long time ago,” and as we all know, the past and present have no continuity whatsoever.

At present, The Satanic Temple so much does not have a problem with abuse within the organization that they regularly investigate and clear themselves of all wrongdoing.

They may send you a legal threat for talking about it, though.

Is it possible that when your religion is literally owned by a guy who thinks that targets of domestic abuse are addicted to it, your religion’s leadership and what it values might have some other issues?

While there was plenty of indication of that from the situation in Austin that we detailed in our article about TST’s lawsuit threat against The Satanic Housewife, and we linked to many other people having such criticism long prior, this is actually just the way the Temple is set up to function and people who want to do better have to either leave in protest or be kicked out for going against this system.

There is no reform when a council of a few presumably unelected people control membership unilaterally, and therefore a person’s access to community, community they usually come to rely on.

For those who were once in reactionary Christian churches, try reading any of these accounts of how allegations of abuse are handled by TST as policy—especially kicking out people who report abuse of other members in the name of neutrality—and ask yourself, did your own Christian churches do worse?

Now, back to the beginning: do we have evidence that Doug Misicko has a history of actually abusing his partners? Not that we can substantiate, no.

But if the co-owner of The Satanic Temple had a history of being a domestic violence victim, TST might have some better policies.

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“Lucien Greaves” explains the (true) importance of abortion access: “It’s not so much about dead babies as less people”

CW: antinatalism, anti-abortion terrorism, satanic panic, murder

Hart Fisher: Well, you know, the sad thing is- is honestly Satanists have a long way to go to catch up to the Christians. You know, the Satanists just are not doing enough killing. I mean, why are they out there killing you know, these these “right to life” people? You know, abortionists are getting wiped out left, right, and center. Satanists should be out there, waxing these motherfuckers.

Shane Bugbee: You think?

Hart Fisher: Sure. I mean, isn’t dead babies good for Satan? Isn’t dead babies good for the whole satanic movement. Don’t you want more abortionists out there?

Shane Bugbee: “Your satanic movement”?

Doug Misicko: It isn’t so much about dead babies, as less people.

Hart Fisher: I mean, honestly, I’m an atheist. So to me, the whole thing is just good fun.

Doug Misicko: …We’re all atheists here… Atheism doesn’t run contrary to Satanism.

Hart Fisher: I guess? You know, do what thou wilt? Isn’t that the law?

Shane Bugbee: Only if you’re twisting your fucking head off your shoulders.

Amy Bugbee: Only if you’re that homo Aleister Crowley.

Honest question: has The Satanic Temple ever spoken in favor of fertility?

They aren’t effective at it, but it sure does seem like they only really are invested in the “less people” part of bodily and reproductive autonomy.

Many things come and go, but Doug Misicko’s love affair with eugenics (particularly for the disabled) and worries over “overpopulation” remain solid as a rock.

Thank you though, “Ragnar Santorum” for, as usual, making sure not to worry about offending “leftist sensibilities” when talking about exactly which “too many people” The Satanic Temple and its owners mean when they worry about overpopulation (disproportionately “too many greasy, smelly, little hairy Hindu guys”, Misicko might even have said once).

Which again, you may think is a cheap shot to end on. “Guilt by association.”

In a vacuum, maybe it would be, but as this article and even more our previous one went to great pains to demonstrate, when you get past the less juvenile public posture, not much has really changed about Doug Misicko whether he’s going by “Doug Mesner”, by “Lucien Greaves”, by “Konrad Josefsson“, or any of the other many sockpuppets he uses because our guy just can’t stop being who he is, including beefing in the comments online.

Because when you change—when you actually, legitimately and sincerely change—you don’t keep people like “Ragnar Santorum” in your organization, or utilize them as online trolls and perhaps one of the paid contractors The Satanic Temple uses to stalk people online as TST admitted in court and as former TST HQ director Ash Astaroth alleged of Santorum specifically following Astaroth’s own ouster in November 2018:

Memes mocking my art using stills from porn sites of videos my husband and I had made years prior to my TST involvement started surfacing everywhere. Lucien has always had a team of trolls, including Adam “Dodge” Ostrofski and Ragnar Santorum who help him stalk and troll people online so that he doesn’t get his hands too obviously dirty.

Ash Astaroth, “The Satanic Temple is a business cult of alt-lite asshole trolls.””

This is not really guilt by association anymore but also an indication of what so-called libertarianism and principled centrism really mean when someone arrives there from the far-right.

When you spend literally years ensconced in spaces where you are openly praising fascism, comfortably using slurs, calling for the eradication of whole classes of people based on their disability or race, seriously pushing for IQ-based sterilization, and all of this other gross stuff — you ought to have some good idea what the “far right” is.

Here’s how one of Doug Misicko’s prank calls ended, the one with the psychic (content warning: misogyny, racist slurs):

Doug Misicko: We know what you’re up to. You’re lying to us.

Shane Bugbee: Can we call you names for 4.99 a minute you whore?

Doug Misicko: You sold yourself out.

Shane Bugbee: Cunt. Dirty rotten halfbreed. Look, she just sits on the line like a fucking cab you’re sand-nigger bitch….

Amy Bugbee: That was interesting… That was interesting.

Shane Bugbee: It’s time for you white motherfuckers to wake up.

They then played two songs “White People Awake” and “Triumph of the Will” by the white power punk band RaHoWa.

That is, they played songs by a band called “Racial Holy War” in a reference to the neo-Nazi Church of the Creator’s idea of eradicating Black and Jewish people specifically from the planet.

Together, Misicko and Bugbee went on to interview the songwriter of the RaHoWa band, George Burdi, and neo-Nazi terrorist Tom Metzger, founder of White Aryan Resistance. While Burdi had supposedly changed his ways after a near-fatal attack on anti-racist protestors some years before, the broadcast still played his “Blood Destiny” speech after introducing him as a “lifelong white racial activist”; Meanwhile, Metzger’s organization had murdered an Ethiopian immigrant in Portland, Ore., which Misicko even referenced.

This is not just “edgelords”; this is not just people who are geeks for “dark” material. This is violent white nationalism, and Misicko has continued to align with such people and align his organization with such people under the excuse of “free speech” even while suing critics including the press. Perhaps most tellingly, even now, Misicko cannot go further than “both sides” in way of criticism of fascism.

The far right is currently sending hundreds of people to elected office around the USA, has captured much of the judiciary, fills law enforcement top to bottom, and weekly, fascist gangs go out to try to destroy queer life in the streets while legislators and judges do so in the government. There is no proportionate communist, socialist, or anarchist counterpoint to that, and only someone with their thumb on the scale and a rooting interest could pretend there is.

Misicko may be a dipshit, but he’s not stupid. Unless it’s on a hot mic, he will not get caught mocking Black, Jewish, or intellectually disabled people the same way he used to.

However, people who have genuinely radically changed, who have genuinely seen the errors of their ways from their beliefs — which as we have shown, are this bad — don’t look at the world today and its global fascist movement and talk of “polarized extremes”.

“Lucien Greaves” and The Satanic Temple have a lot to answer for. But so long as sycophants continue to make excuses for him and give him unaccountable money through the organization he owns, he has no reason to answer for it and likely never will.

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