Quick Fundraiser Update

EDIT TO ADD: GOAL MET, FUNDRAISER CLOSED.
This post will remain for historic reasons.

While I appreciate the contributions of people who have given generously – even if I don’t make the goal, what’s been given already will make things less difficult – I’d like to see more and smaller donations.  So far I only have two words to rhyme.  Buy your way in with a 3-5 dollar donation and make me rhyme some whack shit.  It’s requisite.  I’ve already written the beginning of the poem, but it needs more rhymez!

To remind how this works, I’m running the fundraiser through April 21st, tho I might cut it short if I reach the stretch goal early.  Donate at least $3 and you can suggest a word to me that I will rhyme in a rap.  If I don’t make the goal, this rap will be a text poem.  If I reach $500 I will record myself rapping.  If I reach $600 I will do a short video.  Help cover the wages I’ll be losing from a medical situation, thanks!

link to my ko-fi

The Satanic Temple is Still Bullshit

I remember this cute chubby wild-eyed dude breathlessly extolling satanic ideals when The Satanic Temple was newer, on some TV interview, I feel like it was in the great lakes area?  Principled blasphemy seemed their higher calling, something I can really get behind.  So when I found out they were egregiously exaggerating their ability to help people get abortions to snake funds from real abortion activists, that the founders are an unashamedly ableist eugenicist and a buddy to alt reich fucks, that they are shady as all hell on the business side, and that they are willing to dump millions of donated dollars into SLAPP suits against their detractors?  I was like.  Fuck.  I’m fed up with living in a world run by liars and thieves.  I gotta go take a nap.

But shitheads never sleep, so they’ve appealed the latest round of their repeatedly failed SLAPP suit against some queer satanic people in my home state, while still also suing a half dozen other people who don’t deserve it.  Give if you can, to my homies or to anybody who is opposing these crypto-fascist con artists.

edit to add: SRSLY THO

Anybody not bothering to read this for comprehension because it’s about those guys that made you chuckle one time, consider that if I had more traffic on this blog, they would already have hit FtB with another SLAPP suit, like the Richard-Carrier-ass hateful bitches they are.

 

If You Hail Satan, Come Correct

Woof.  I wanted to like The Satanic Temple and Lucien Greaves, but I randomly came across the real scoop on what low-down fash-friendly piles of shit they really are.  Representing myself as satanic, I feel the need to address this, and while I’m at it, help fix some of the harm they are doing in the world.

To start with, I need to make clear that I do not believe every member of TST is fascist or a scumbag.  Some just haven’t gotten the facts yet, and some who have feel too invested to acknowledge the truth.  To those of you who are good people, I hope you work things out.

But I also hope you can realize you don’t need TST and can represent Satan in your own ways.  There is absolutely nothing stopping you from walking away from TST en masse and starting your own Satanism.  Maybe it starts small, a facebook group or a twitter account, but it can turn into something just as big and certainly better.

 

Eugenics and Nazi Friendliness

I was ill-informed and had little idea that modern satanists were so cozy with antisemitism and nazism until I fell down this unfortunate rabbit hole.  What in the name of Hell is the point of rejecting Christ only to wallow in the shit ideals of his worst fanboys?

Lucien Greaves has made some half-assed apologies for antisemitic comments made on a radio show in 2003 as that came to light recently, and in the narrow context of that clip one could think of his comments as being more antitheist than antisemitic – he was saying jewish religious belief is his problem and jewish blood is not, in disagreement with the hosts of the radio show he was on.

But broaden that context just a little bit more, and things look much worse.  Why did he not rebuke the whole proceedings when his pals on the show went full sieg heil?  Why didn’t he bail?  Because he knew they were nazis going in, and he was OK with that.

The show itself was the “Might Is Right 24-Hour Radio Special” in honor of a new printing of racist / antisemitic book “Might is Right” – and Greaves (as “Doug Mesner”) was invited because he illustrated the book.  Whatever terms or qualifiers he’s used for it (he had a site called “dysgenics” as late as 2018), Greaves has wholeheartedly endorsed eugenics on many occasions.  As recently as the founding of The Satanic Temple ten years after his appearance on that show, he was willingly associating with and involving the sieg heiling host of that very broadcast.

(Quick aside – the event hosts may or may not have identified as nazis and they didn’t actually say “sieg heil” but I don’t give an earthly shit about distinguishing between flavors of antisemite and the finer points of their ideologies.  Another guest on the show was prominent KKK figure Tom Metzger – in a segment of the show Greaves (Doug Misicko in the transcript) happily participated in.  Y’all are nazis; eat shit and die at your soonest convenience, thanks.)

(Aside Deux – because this is an atheist blog network and the “thought leaders” of modern atheism seem to think some nice guy version of eugenics, as a concept, can be salvaged for good, I should emphasize that ain’t true.  I’m not up to linkspamming support of that point, but feeling tempted to give nazi ideas an inch of your mental bandwidth should give you great pause.)

Anyone who would oppose the hypocrisies and injustices of cultural christianity has to decide for theirself what they will propose in the wake of christianity’s defeat.  Because you’re not going to defeat xtianity at large, of course (only they can do that to themselves lol), but you are going to win some hearts and minds away from the pews and pulpits.  What are you giving them in exchange for what they’ve given up?

For some opposing xtianity is enough, like dictionary atheists who are iconoclasts without a care.  LaVey was in the pitiful thrall of Ayn Rand and his satanic bible owes its soul to her “objectivism.”  His Church of Satan and the satanic movement generally from that point on carried those values of cruelty and greed forward.  This was the movement from which Greaves emerged, only differing in that he was more fully atheistic than his predecessors.  Or maybe just more ableist.  From what I’ve seen, ableism was always his biggest hobbyhorse.

OK, greed as a value does seem to oppose the charity spoken of by Jesus, so satanic, right?  Wrong.  If we were just going to oppose xtianity as described in the bible, maybe.  But I don’t give a fuck about that.  I want to oppose xtianity as it is practiced in my culture, and all the harm it does – most of which is fueled by greed.  If you’re not doing that – fighting for the ability of people to enjoy life, fighting oppression – what’s the fucking point?

In their stances on gay rights and reproductive rights and religious freedom, The Satanic Temple has lured in thousands of progressive people – taken their time and money.  But was this truly deserved?  The organization is rotten at its core for the same reason the gnu atheist movement was: the founders centered ableism, the ability to feel superior to the “stupid” xtians, which is just about the quickest path to eugenics and nazism.

To this day, there are high ups within TST that have a history of consorting with nazi clowns like Mike Cernovich and Milo Yiannapolis.  TST have gone on record as being anti-antifa, and you know what you get when those antis zero out.

 

Reproductive Rights People Hate Them

Just because anti-abortion scumbags have had a great deal of success lately does not mean that the defenders of reproductive health have been failing at their jobs, only that fascists have been achieving horrific victories across the board.  But The Satanic Temple has opted to use that messaging to suck up activist dollars – to claim “We must accept the fact that traditional efforts to protect reproductive rights have failed.”

And what are they doing with the pro-abortion activist dollars?  They’re acting like $cientology in the way they veer between saying they’re a religion and denying that depending on what’s most advantageous in a given financial or legal situation, and not being at all transparent about where the money goes.

 

SLAPP Suit

All these issues and more led some Satanists in my part of the country to rebel, to make public critique of the organization.  The law protects criticism of religious organizations, but they’re still suing for business harm – a business when it suits them, a religion when it doesn’t.  The apostates are just regular people facing tens of thousands of dollars in legal expenses they can’t afford.  It’s a SLAPP suit working as intended, and you can see why I might find that something worth fighting against.

Support the Queer Satanic Apostasy.  Help defend them against the SLAPP suit.

 

Full Disclosure:

TST and FtB have both employed the same lawyer in free speech cases, a man who is a strong partisan on that issue, but easy to find very negative articles about.  That lawyer is specifically named as one of the reasons for dissenters leaving TST.  Due to our prior relationship with him, I will not be addressing that one specific issue here and prefer it not be discussed in this space, except to say I understand and very much sympathize with those concerns.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, eh?

Remember our atheistical comrade of yore, Douglas Adams, and his cheeky mild-mannered British novels?  Sadly, he is non-living.  But worry not.  The spirit of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is alive and well represented by FtB’s own Abbey St. Brendan in this very professional and amusing little video.  This kind of thing takes waaay more effort than you might imagine, and content creators love positive feedback for that effort.  Enjoy it, and comment at her blog.  Or on the yewchewb, where, as the kids say, you may like comment and subscribe!

 

Support Your Favorite Indie Musicians

Guest post by The Beast from Seattle, cross-posted from his blog.

Just wanted to put the word out there — Bandcamp is waiving their cut of anything purchased on June 5th, starting at midnight PST. (You can check this site to see when the event begins in your time zone.) Many artists lost their primary income when concerts were cancelled. Streaming services pay very little for indie acts– You have to listen for over eleven straight hours on Spotify for the artist to earn one dollar. (Assuming about three minutes per song, and it’s likely even worse as it’s divided between labels, each band member, etc.) I cancelled my Spotify premium subscription and started giving that monthly fee directly to the artists. It feels great to actually own the music you love and not rely on internet speeds and corporate overlords. It’s also nice to send a word of encouragement with your order; they might even write back!

You can use this site to enter a Spotify playlist and get links to purchase the music on Bandcamp. A lot of labels and artists are donating their proceeds to charities, many focused on racial justice. Of those I particularly recommend Dais Records, Dark Entries, and Sacred Bones Records. Finally, if you’re into dark wave, minimal wave and post-punk music, I recommend everything in my collection! I’d love you to follow me there so I can check out your taste in music.

DON’T LOOK AT YOUTUBE until the 14th

It’s the Youtube Walkout! The 10th through 13th we’re supposed to avoid watching youtube videos. They’ve dropped some fucking egregious new terms of service, promising to delete any channel they deem commercially unviable. Since the videos disproportionately affected by this are producers of LGBT and progressive content, you know what this is really about.

Honestly, it feels like Blizzard’s ability to glide on by wholesale political and societal condemnation by waving around shiny video game trailers – together with their own virtual monopoly on internet video – has them feeling like they can get away with murder. In this case, the murder is anyone that might offend the censorious authoritarian regime that rules the Chinese market.

I’d link to some good videos on the background of this issue, but NOPE. Fuck that. In solidarity with all oppressed peoples and against these fascist ass-tonguing corporate monoliths, DON’T LOOK AT YOUTUBE until the 14th!

Chelsea Manning is in Jail Again

Chelsea Manning is back in jail and I can’t link to an article about it. Why? Tons of them, including the top google results, are including images of her pre-transition. You know damn well they’re doing it to try and make her look like a criminal too. Fuck the media for its transmisogyny, its bias, its willingness to support fascism without any prodding from the state at all.

Here’s a link to the fundraiser for her legal defense.

Report on Transphobia in Health Services Silenced?

You’ve probably read the article by the two-fisted reportress Siobhan O’Leary about a crusty transphobe with some authority over transgender people’s health care up in Canadia. Important stuff, and I’m unqualified to add to it.

But given revelations that crypto-transphobe slimebag Jesse Singal was having private discussions with other journalists about how trans people shouldn’t be allowed to write articles about trans issues, and given that article prompted a twitstorm of creeps defending creeps in journalism…

One wonders if the cancellation of this article is punishment for Shiv’s involvement in that debate, and advocacy for trans journalists. That’s all we get to do. Wonder.