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We’re collaborating with some folk at Ave Satanas Podcast (ASP) and Free Society Satanists to bring you a miniseries looking at Might Is Right — ur-text of Satanism and an infamous work of proto-fascism first published in 1896 by Arthur Desmond a.k.a. “Ragnar Redbeard”.
To be clear: Might Is Right sucks, both as a book and ideology. It’s full of doggerel, bigotry, and contradictions. But we’re gonna talk about it, chapter-by-chapter, from the perspective of modern, anarchist Satanists who feel that racism, misogyny, antisemitism, and tyranny are “bad, actually”.
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Folk who have thoughts on MIR and want to weigh in are welcome to join us on Twitch.
Assuming we can make the technical stuff work, the idea is for us to talk this week about the background of Arthur Desmond and Might Is Right, and why a piece of shit book like that is even worth investigating almost 130 years later.
(Spoiler: Anton LaVey plagiarized it for The Satanic Bible.)
Since we’re springing this on you suddenly, the chapter-by-chapter stuff won’t start until Friday Aug. 22, giving people time to do their reading and weigh-in. The first one will prolly be messy, but also to do some open table-setting about why we are bothering with this project now.
We’re using the mechanically impressive “Authoritative Edition” that Trevor Blake put together and published in 2019, harmonizing and annotating various versions, but nobody else ought to feel obligated to use that one rather than any of the free versions you can find floating around on the Web.
Frankly, if you follow along reading the 1910 edition published by “14 Words Press”, you are in some ways getting the more genuine and relevant version of this rancid fucking text, what it is all about, and it’s cultural significance than Blake’s version which falls all over itself in apologism.
This is not really a fun book to read, and if you haven’t read it before, maybe it’s not worth your while.
However, the fact that is bad actually helps to explain a lot of the stuff you see around you today, and the continuity of shit like incels and “anti-theist” antisemitism is also useful.
* * *
Book editions
Ep. 6: Chapter 6 “Love and War and Women” (pages 243-303)
Love and Women and War. Female animals love the best fighting males. Sexual selection and the necessity of unmerciful conflict.
In what has been a very competitive category, the final chapter seems like the very worst one of all.
It mostly treads no new ground, but I (David) know why I misremembered the “woman is two-thirds womb” section in the previous chapter as being in this one. Namely, the whole chapter is just an expansion of that misogynistic rant, just continued in a vein that never really gets anywhere fun (“Christians ruined the sexual chastity of our ancestors”), and it continues to be antisemitic and racist, obsessed with miscegenation, and contradictory page-to-page when you don’t keep in mind “he hates Jewish, “bad whites’, and non-white people, and he hates women, so everything is consistent when you work backward from that.”
Having read all of it, the book badly needed a real editor of any kind, although the best sort of editor would have brained Arthur Desmond with a pipe and left him to bleed out in an alley before burning the manuscript.
There may be a more thorough and academic study done of Desmond’s writing process to settle this, but the feeling you get reading the finished product is that he just kind of emptied his head out in fits and starts, occasionally going back to insert something else written years before and tangentially related to the subject in the middle of what he was working on then. But by this point, Desmond’s political transformation had left him without any real class critiques or even the veneer of progressivism, and it’s just the hatefulness spewing out of him. Which is also quite boring by now. It’s not blasphemy. It’s everything we’ve heard a hundred times in this book and all around us.
So we have a few examples we’ll look at, then we’re going to recontextualize the whole thing and its relationship to Satanism, and finally, we’re going to offer up some better ur-texts that Anton LaVey either feasibly could have plagiarized instead or we think Satanists today ought to treat as our philosophical core.
Section 1
If the females behave badly, the male chastises them: they crouch at his feet, seem to beg his pardon, and shed copious tears. At times the male and female weep together.” (Monist.)
Sai: It really goes to show how incels and some men view women, even today, as babies who just “have to be put in their place”. It goes hand in hand with how an alarming number of me prey after much younger women which only leads me to think… is he telling on himself? It’s very interesting that this quote was handpicked by Redbeard/Desmond.
Section 2
Even to be carried-off by force, is not repugnant to her feelings, if the “bold bad man” is in other respects acceptable.
Sai: Sir, I know you haven’t had a crumb of pussy, but have you ever talked to a woman?
She pines to be ‘wooed and wow,’ (or as it were) she likes to feel that she has been mastered, conquered, taken possession of —that the man who has stormed her heart, is in all respects, a maw among men. This suggestive female idiosnocracy is rythmically set forth by an anonymous writer, thus: ‘ ‘Down a winding path way in a garden old, tripped a beautous maiden, but her heart was cold. Came a prince to woo her, said he loved her true; maiden said he didn’t, so he ceased to woo. Came a perfumed noble—dropping on one knee; said his love was deeper, than the deepest sea. But the winsome maiden, said his love was dead, and the perfumed noble, accepted what she said. Came a dashing Stranger, took her off by force: said he’d make her love him, and she did—of course.”
…
Superior males take racially superior women, and inferior males are permitted to duplicate themselves, per media of inferior feminines. Each class reproduces its kind (on the average) and if the ordained struggle for earths Good-Tkings is not artificially interfered with, the leading classes are periodically called upon to maintain their pre-eminence, at every turn, by Might or be swept away; enslaved, supplanted, expropriated by the braver and bolder Animals.
Sai, re: “superior males” – Modern scientists would like to have a word… It’s interesting that he thinks this considering the massive cases of inbreeding in just his time and before that resulted in some “not so healthy” looking people. Genetic diversity is stronger.
…
The brave man is ever generous, frank, outspoken, dauntless. His brow is open—his step fearless and firm—his bearing self-poised, leonine. He looks at you without a tremor—sums you up at a glance, and in business affairs, his ‘ ‘word of honor’ ’ is more binding than a Shylocks sealed bond. He may not be an erudite philosopher—a profound scholar—nor an eminent elocutionist— (nor be troubled over much with the “saving” of his soul); but he is more than all that—HE IS A MAN. Hence, everywhere he is first favorite, especially with the feminine gender—whose sexual instincts are as true to Nature, as the needle is to the pole.
Sai: Is this a yaoi fanfic?
Section 3
Women take supreme delight in the roll of warlike drums—in the marching of the military; in reading the poems and romances of ‘battle, murder, and sudden death.’ (Police Gazettes are mostly supported by women, because of the sensational homicidal reports.)
Section 4
In many respects women have proved themselves more cruel, avaricious, bloodthirsty and revengeful than men. Women are also remarkably good liars. Deception is an essential and necessary part of their mental equipment. They are inherently deceitful. Man however reckon upon that and discount it well in advance. Without deception of some sort, a woman would have no defence whatever, against rivals, lovers, or husbands. We must not forget that women really hate each other—intensely.
Sai: For a man who hates Christ, he sure does talk like a lot of Christian men. This is one of the main talking points “alpha” podcasters & Incels have when talking about women. From claiming a lot of women lie about rape to generalizing women as snakes who just wait to “catch a man up”. It’s alarming how this almost exact phrasing is used today and only shows that this book indeed needs to be taken more seriously as a threat.
…
Women are made sexually attractive to equilibirate their lesser masculinity. It is man—the warrior’s—business to supply their wants; and select the best of them, for his own enjoyment and the propogation of his seed. They will not object—except in a giggling, semi-sentimental sort of a way, because they comprehend their own incapacity for self-mastership, and logical business methods. They are never touched with any sense of personal responsibility; are mere babies in worldly concerns—hysterical, well supplied with tear glands, verbal mechanism—but lovable always. Slaves and women are notoriously incompetant of self-control—of holding their own in ‘business’—when not inspired and assisted by male friends. They are intended by nature to be loved and defended but not to be “equalized.”
Sai: This is very reminiscent of Andrew Tate and how he views and espouses his views on women in general but also the women he’s trafficked.
Section 5
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Section 6
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Section 7
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Section 8
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Section 9
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THE HIGHER LAW
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Q: What is Might Is Right? Why did you write the forward to the new printing of Might Is Right ?
A: Might is Right by Ragnar Redbeard is probably one of the most inflammatory books ever written, so who better to write an introduction? It was only natural that I excerpted a few pages of it for The Satanic Bible. The book has been so indelibly linked with me, it was felt that any new edition should have my name on it. I am pleased with the new printing. The afterward is befitting the impact the book had upon George Hawthorne, a reader already predisposed to that kind of presentation. The editor’s notes made my Ms. Lane astutely reveal aspects I had not considered. The possibility of two distinct authors, in light of my own observations, makes perfect sense, though I am not qualified to hazard a guess as to who the other might be.
Q: What is your opinion of the militia groups today? Of the government, the president or politics in general?
….The extreme right-wing, like the extreme left, I find to be a rather humorless lot given to blaming everyone but their own kind for the plight they crusade against. The same applies to racism. There would be no problem if the gentile white man had done something when he was the majority. Now, he’s trying to close the barn door after the horse runs away. That’s why I believe in stratification by allowing water to seek its own level. It’s something that can, and is, being done. I’m all for a police state; no messing around. There should be an armed guard on every street corner. The Israelis have the right idea: school bus drivers and MacDonalds managers carrying Uzis.
—Anton LaVey fax interview with Shane Bugbee, Summer 1997: https://churchofsatan.com/interview-mf-magazine/

“Might is Right” illustrations for 2003 re-print by TST co-owner Doug Misicko (“Lucien Greaves”) under the pseudonym “Doug Mesner”.
[Source]
Jack
David
Sai:
Excerpt:
The night crawls along. Nurses, doctors, and troopers. I am still scared, but i am just as angry and evil as i am scared. The detectives are in and out and, when nobody is there except them, they get in their digs and bangs. But after a while i don’t think about them too much. I am thinking about living, about surviving, thinking about what is going to happen next. They are gonna do what they are gonna do and there isn’t much i can do about it. I just have to be myself, stay as strong as i can, and do my best. That’s all. There is nowhere to run and i am in no shape to try. I realize how isolated and vulnerable i am.
Affirmation – A poem by Assata Shakur
I believe in living.
I believe in the spectrum
of Beta days and Gamma people.
I believe in sunshine.
In windmills and waterfalls,
tricycles and rocking chairs.
And i believe that seeds grow into sprouts.
And sprouts grow into trees.
I believe in the magic of the hands.
And in the wisdom of the eyes.
I believe in rain and tears.
And in the blood of infinity.
I believe in life.
And I have seen the death parade
march through the torso of earth,
sculpting mud bodies in its path.
I have seen the destruction of the daylight,
and seen bloodthirsty maggots
prayed and saluted.
I have seen the kind become the blind
and the blind become the bind
in one easy lesson.
I have walked on cut glass.
I have eaten crow and blunder bread
and breathed the stench of indifference.
I have been locked by the lawless.
Handcuffed by the haters.
Gagged by the greedy.
And, if i know any thing at all,
it’s that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.
It can be broken down.
I believe in living.
I believe in birth.
I believe in the sweat of love
and in the fire of truth.
And i believe that a lost ship,
steered by tired, seasick sailors,
can still be guided home
to port.
Felo’s (they/them) notes:
Chapter 6:
This chapter really hammers home the point I heard persuasively made by Craig A. Johnson on some podcast (possibly Straight White American Jesus?) while promoting his book, How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism. Which is that while fascisms have many recurring themes, such as racism, xenophobia, rugged individualism, nationalism, etc., it is the misogyny and strict gender roles that is at the very core.
MiR as a whole:
As painful as it was to read, I’m glad I now have this under my belt. I knew going in it would be bad, but I definitely didn’t expect it to be as bad as it is.
The way I often heard it talked about, even unfavorably, within Satanism, gave the impression that its racism was incidental, even if overt (or that it was, say, “ambiguous about Jews”).
So my main takeaway is that this text fundamentally cannot be understood outside of a (proto?) white supremacist worldview. So much so that it makes for an interesting peek into full throated white supremacy early on in the invention of whiteness as we know it today.
What Tony should have cribbed instead:
So many books have inspired and informed my Satanism that it’s difficult to narrow down. Any one of which would be far superior to Might is Right:
Restricting my scope to something published before 1969, and was obscure enough that LaVey might have thought he could get away with pretending to have written himself, I’ve landed on French author, artist, and reluctant philosopher, Georges Bataille (george buh-tie). His work explored eroticism, transgression, and a kind of materialist mysticism, as well as anti-fascism. A difficult figure to sum up in brief, but someone worth keeping an eye out for.
Georges Bataille: The Sacred Conjuration (1936):
Parting thoughts:
It was an unfortunate choice of source material to have cleaned up and passed off as his own. But at least LaVey did clean it up and pass it off as his own.
It just gets worse when found out to defend, praise, and write a foreword to it.
But worse still, by a significant margin, to volunteer to illustrate new editions and advocate for a new, “more evil” volume.
As David recently said in the FSS Discord, and probably again during this recording: “the fact that Might Is Right is so directly related to the two biggest Satanic organizations that have ever existed (Church of Satan and The Satanic Temple) do make it necessary for any Satanic organization that wants to exist outside of their wake to exorcise this influence by opposing it head-on.”
To paraphrase Angela Davis, given the legacy we’ve been handed, it is not nearly enough for our Satanism to be non-racist, our Satanism must be anti-racist.
Let us become completely different, or else cease to be.
Hail Satan.
TST sued us from April 2020 to September 2024, and we are still here.