March 22, 2023

“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.

The Satanic Temple excuse bingo: "How many times must he say he's sorry?", "That was a long time ago", "That's biased!", "At least they're DOING something", [TST sycophant free space], "It's been dealt with already", "That's out of context!", "The Catholic Church is way worse", <something the ACLU actually did>

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.)


“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

[Twitter][Kolektiva] [Instagram][Tumblr] [Transcript]

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.

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.

image of three white men standing together. Caption: "Shane [Bugbee] pictured in the middle in 2013 with Lucien Greaves aka Douglas Mesner (left), and "Malcolm Jarry (right) of The Satanic Temple." However, "Lucien Greaves" and "Mesner" are pseudonyms for Douglas Alexander Misicko and "Malcolm Jarry" is a pseudonym for Cevin Soling

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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

[Twitter][Kolektiva] [Instagram][Tumblr] [Transcript]

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.

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

[Twitter][Kolektiva] [Instagram][Tumblr] [Transcript]

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.

The Doug Mesner Show"

Artist, commentator, and self-proclaimed "One Man Gang-Bang," Douglas Mesner takes on the world armed with a tape recorder, police scanner, and sardonic wit.  Anunscrupulous journalist of the Muckracker/Gonzo School, Doug takes his taperecorder everywhere it's unwelcome.  Bringing pranking to the level of stone-faced professionalism, Mesner's Show promises to revolutionize Rotten Radio and serve as the definitive audio documentary of the apocalypse.

Episode 126

Week of 24 December 07

Unidentified Flying Objects 2.
Radio Free Satan (RFS) program “The Doug Mesner Show”

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

[Twitter][Kolektiva] [Instagram][Tumblr] [Transcript]

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

[Twitter][Kolektiva] [Instagram][Tumblr] [Transcript]

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!”

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

[Twitter][Kolektiva] [Instagram][Tumblr] [Transcript]

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

[Twitter][Kolektiva] [Instagram][Tumblr] [Transcript]

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

[Twitter][Kolektiva] [Instagram][Tumblr] [Transcript]

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

A black and white image of "celtic cross" or "sun cross", a circle with an even-limbed cross in the middle, with the phrase "O con noi / O contro di noi" written around it, which in English is "You're with us or you're against us"
Celtic Cross / Sun Cross

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

[Twitter][Kolektiva] [Instagram][Tumblr] [Transcript]

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

[Twitter][Kolektiva] [Instagram][Tumblr] [Transcript]

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

[Twitter][Kolektiva] [Instagram][Tumblr] [Transcript]

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.

7. I stopped publishing Might is Right in 2016 and disavowed any connection with White supremacy or related groups. I took responsibility for my past actions, but Doug did not. He is sympathetic to fascist ideology and its emphasis on power. He has taken a particular interest in Mussolini, even visiting Italy to see Mussolini’s birthplace. Doug also has a Process P Cross tattoo, which is a power symbol derived from the Swastika
Exhibit 2 – Declaration of Shane Bugbee — Document #188, Attachment #2

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

[Twitter][Kolektiva] [Instagram][Tumblr][Transcript]

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

[Twitter][Kolektiva] [Instagram][Tumblr] [Transcript]

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

[Twitter][Kolektiva] [Instagram][Tumblr] [Transcript]

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

[Twitter][Kolektiva] [Instagram][Tumblr] [Transcript]

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.

Legal threat sent by The Satanic Temple to former TST Austin member The Satanic Housewife over her TikTok videos
Person discussing why they left TST Pittsburgh when the local leadership council chose their ex over them.

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?

Person being kicked out of TST Delaware for reporting abuse against their partner, a fellow member.

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

[Twitter][Kolektiva] [Instagram][Tumblr] [Transcript]

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.

Medium Article from 2016 by Ragnar Santorum with image "The Satanic Temple Main"

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).

Former TST Maine “Ragnar Santorum”, Sept. 11, 2022

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.

Ragnar Santorum @RagnarSantorum
Mar 9 Replying to  @LucienGreaves
Leftoids need to come up with a new slur, "far-right" has become so diluted when I see someone say "far-right" I think "some normie thing that's probably enjoyable" which this is not.

Lucien Greaves @LucienGreaves
Replying to  @RagnarSantorum
I think there needs to be a word that refers to both ends of the polarized extreme that recognizes their common ground in their fight to establish censorship and install an autocracy. Something that recognizes that their politics are often merely just a pretext for power demands.
“Ragnar Santorum” and “Lucien Greaves”, March 9, 2023

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):

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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  1. […] people tend to cite “order” and “cleanliness” as justification for fascism (looking squarely at Lucien Greaves from The Satanic Temple here), or for that matter the maintenance of national borders to keep out “savage” […]

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