Last, at about 0:57, you claim that TST’s “head of ministry is really good friends with alt-right celebrities like Milo Yiannopoulos.” Your statement is false. TST’s head of ministry was friends with Yiannopoulos, long ago, but they have not been friends for many years.
As we begin, this is fucking bonkers on its face, right?
Essentially TST says, “Yes, Greg Stevens and Milo Yiannopoulos used to be good anti-feminist friends during GamerGate and play minigolf together. But that was way back in 2016.”
Maybe it’s just a function of getting older, but that sure feels a lot more like “just the other day” for a grown-ass man who was in his 40s when he joined The Sastanic Temple after having been active in the “men’s rights” community since the mid-1990s, based on his own website’s articles.
For those who’ve forgotten, 2016 was the year that Yiannopoulos, then-senior editor of Breitbart, was on his “Dangerous Faggot” tour.
Yiannopoulos, back in that far-off year of 2016 was saying things like:
Alcohol also has another effect, of course. It makes us have romantic flings that we sometimes regret, and which women are increasingly encouraged to regard as rape. Despite progressive propaganda, a regrettable drunken fumble does not equate to rape.
It should be remembered that the researchers only measured reported rapes, not convicted ones. With college-age women effectively being taught that regret equals rape, is it any wonder that advocacy research papers are able to concoct high numbers of sexual assaults?
…
Moral panic about “rape culture” has led to gross violations of due process against male students on campus, who can now be hauled before campus kangaroo courts to answer charges of sexual assault with no adequate legal representation and very low burdens of proof.This isn’t about protecting women. It’s about man-hating. It’s a confected moral panic directed against young, male, mostly white American college students despite the fact that American college campuses are among the safest places for a woman to be, and despite the fact that rape rates have been dropping for 30 years.
Breitbart.com article, “Feminists and Progressives Attack College Football with More Dodge Rape Statistics“
Greg Stevens also called himself an anti-feminist back around that time, though he likely didn’t go as far as his good friend.
For that and many other reasons, a local Satanic Temple chapter tried to protest Yiannopoulos attending an event at Cal Poly before Doug Misicko a.k.a. “Lucien Greaves” called up Breitbart to let them know The Satanic Temple unequivocally defended Yiannopoulos’s “right to free speech”. Misicko would claim in an interview later that year he didn’t know anything about the guy.
“I’m not sure what danger [Milo Yiannopoulos has] caused to anybody. I’ve never read his material. I’ve never listened to him speak,” Misicko said. “Even still, after having defended his right to speak, I still don’t give a shit about what he’s saying. I defend the principle of Free Speech, and when you defend a principle, you don’t only defend it selectively. If you can’t support it when it incidentally doesn’t benefit you, you’re not supporting it at all. You can’t claim that you believe in Free Speech, only insofar as you agree with what’s being said.”
We’ll come back to this at the end, but for now, for people in their 40s who have decades of history, threatening to sue someone over your definition of “many years” is quite something.
Bonus: The Satanic Housewife didn’t even bring up the Mike Cernovich stuff.
So if you didn’t gather that, Greg “Priest Penemue” Stevens — “longtime leader in The Satanic Temple”, current “Director of Ministry” and “Executive Producer of TST TV” — spent more than 20 years and the vast majority of his adult life being part of the men’s rights, anti-feminist, rape-apologist sphere until some point in his 40s when he claims he woke up and realized the error of his ways.
According to The Satanic Temple’s legal team, referencing that might lead people to the wrong impression about TST’s current Reproductive Rights Campaign, which has brought in a lot of money but has no victories to speak of.
Something we think has been forgotten but is worth emphasizing: Stevens was editing a book for “male supremacist” Mike Cernovich in the “long ago” year of 2015.
For those of you who need help getting up to speed on this:
About Mike Cernovich
Source: Southern Poverty Law Center
Cernovich is one of America’s most visible right-wing provocateurs, known for boosting or generating massively successful conspiracy theories like #Pizzagate. He made his career on trolling the liberal establishment by accusing people of pedophilia or child sex trafficking.
Armed with a law degree, Cernovich claims to defend “free speech,” in particular the freedom to harass women and make misogynistic, violent comments. He came to prominence through his role in #Gamergate, a coordinated campaign of harassment against women in the gaming industry. Bankrolled by a divorce and by the sale of his books, Cernovich operates at the fringe of the conservative mainstream, acting as a pass-through for thinly-sourced and conspiratorial scoops. In May 2017, he joined forces with popular conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to co-host a show on Infowars, moving even deeper into the world of conspiracy theories.
Stevens remained friendly with Cernovich for several years after editing the book, which, due to Cernovich nuking his past tweets, means conversations have to be gathered from old-style manual retweets and replies now, and Stevens was shrewd enough to delete many on his end, too. This relationship is likely why the book’s cover is still hosted on Stevens’ website now, though we can’t find record of if it was actually used beyond this stray reference in a “both sides bad” article, which of course doesn’t include disclosure of Stevens’ involvement in the same book.
Mike Cernovich told me that he was called “ableist” for including posture exercises in his self-help book The Gorilla Mindset [QS – link to book removed].
Now, maybe Greg Stevens, the Director of Ministry formerly known as “Priest Penemue” has radically changed his life from when he was 40-something, having spent half his life in this political space. We hope he has and is better.
Stevens certainly doesn’t stand behind his “Sorry, ‘no’ doesn’t always mean ‘no’ ” article anymore.
But it does help establish that this wasn’t a passing fancy. He was a grown-ass man, and this is a period of more than 20 years we’re talking about.
Some people are already saying, “Uh, Mike Cernovich is clearly identifying Greg Stevens as a liberal and a feminist. This is just guilt-by-association.”
Yes, it is. Because it’s not a coincidence that Cernovich deleted his old tweets.
Content warning: racism, antisemitism, misogyny, sexual assault.
If references to sexual assault, in particular, is something that deeply affects you, you may want to skip Page 3, too, because it gets even worse.
OK, let’s continue.
[Cernovich] In his own words
“Next time, don’t settle for the make out. If possible, at least pull out your d—. If you can get her to touch it, even better. If not, just let her know that your c— is too swollen to go back into your jeans, and that, ‘either you’re taking care of this, or I am.’ Masturbating will set your anchor nearer the desired destination – p—- [s]port.”
—“When in Doubt, Whip it Out,” www.dangerandplay.com, February 2012“Rape via an alpha male is different from other forms of rape. We can’t really understand this, as our culture is too detached from instinct.”
—Twitter, September 2013“I went from libertarian to alt-right after realizing tolerance only went one way and diversity is code for white genocide.”
—Twitter, October 2015“Today we have a moment of silence for Trayvon Martin’s rape victims. Kidding! He got got before he was able to rape anyone.”
—Twitter, February 2016“Not being a s— is the only proven way to avoid AIDS. If you love Black women, s— shame them.”
—Twitter, February 2016“(((Echo))) exists because people got tired of seeing, ‘WE WHITE PEOPLE are evil and oppress blacks.’ Speak as Jews, not whites. Honesty!”
—Twitter, July 2016“If you’re a woman, go out and tell a group of men that that man raped you. See what happens. They’re going to believe you probably, especially if you’re crying and hysterical. It’s p—- privilege. If you own a p—-, men will white knight for you, they will risk their lives to save you, they will believe you. You go tell five men that I raped you they’re not going to believe me unless I’m really persuasive and my life will literally be in danger if you said that. P—- privilege is real, you got it. You also get the p—- pass.”
Source: Southern Poverty Law Center
—Youtube, “10 Types of White Male Privilege,” March 2017
Is it just some “edgelord” quotes designed to get attention? It is not. In fact, it would not be much of an overstatement to say that was Cernovich’s entire career.
Background: From free speech to rape promotion
Cernovich’s promotion of violent misogyny and defense of rape were the drivers of his rise to public view. As Cernovich explained in a 2013 tweet: “Do a Google image search for ‘lions mating.’ That’s basically rape and it’s also the natural form of sex.”
In 2003, Cernovich was accused of rape. As he described, “I was arrested by federal marshals for rape and my ex-wife came to bail me out of jail.” The charge was later dropped (Cernovich credits his lawyer for pressuring the plaintiff’s friend to testify against her) and his record expunged, but he had to do community service for misdemeanor battery. The accusation seems to have been fundamental in shaping his later obsession with rape and “false rape allegations.” Cernovich credits the experience positively for making him the person he is today, in a video immortalized by the website Cernovich Leaks:
“You know, I f—– a girl, she said I raped her, that cost me 50 grand, it cost me five years of my life … yeah but now look at me now. What if I’d not f—– her? Maybe I’d be some f—–’ schlub dude living a life of quiet desperation with three kids and a wife that hates me.”
…
Source: Southern Poverty Law Center
In 2011, after his divorce from his first wife, Cernovich set up an advice blog “Danger and Play.” On it, he offered lifestyle advice on fitness, food or alternative medicine, and openly advocated for violence against women and non-consensual sex. The blog, “an online magazine for alpha males” was inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s quote, “The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.”
Just keep reading up until the point where Cernovich’s book “Gorilla Mindset” comes up. Make a note of when you would tap out from professional and personal support of this person.
“Love you too, bb,” Stevens said to Cernovich in 2018, editing his book in 2015, interviewing him on his YouTube channel, and meanwhile writing enlightened centrism articles about how “both sides” go too far sometimes.
The Satanic Temple hasn’t been around that long, and it’s been a home to these sort of people and their friends for a significant part of it.
That is worth calling attention to.
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