The Devil’s in the details: Satanism in the media
My fellow Satanists and I were devastated to read the news last week that churches in East London had been vandalised by people setting fire outside the church doors, and scratching pentagrams, as well as the words “hell” and “666” on the doors. We abhor any kind of behaviour of this kind towards people’s places of worship, and our sympathy goes towards those people who were affected by these base acts.
Satanism in the media
This incident, and the subsequent reports in the media, also caused me to think about Satanism, and the way it is portrayed by news outlets. Of course, due to the tendency of Christians to blame adverse events as the work of Satan; we, as Satanists get blamed for a lot of things, too. Not only is this unfair to us, but, as I will explain in this piece, this can be damaging and dangerous to society as a whole.
For some of the less scrupulous tabloids, branding something as Satanic can be a useful tool, suggesting that a person or an incident holds a deeper level of intrigue, fuelled by the fervent mind evoking Hammer Horror style scenes of sex rituals, blood sacrifices, the slaying of virgins and similar tropes. It’s a way of journalists mentally titillating readers, imagining lewd displays of depravity and horror, as they tuck into their tea and bacon sandwiches each morning. This, of course, sells newspapers and generates clicks, which, in turn, generates that all-important advertising revenue. These depictions, alongside stories of disaster and shamed celebrities, are a modern day equivalent of the village stocks, putting wrongdoers in a place where they can be pointed and laughed at, spat upon and reviled. It safely depersonalises them, reassuring the readers that they are nothing like those people that they despise, pigeonholing them with a name, from which they can make often wrongful assumptions, and keep them at arms length, away from the rest of society.
How this all began
The inception of this practice came from the Satanic Panic of the late 1980s and 1990s. Following the creation of the Church of Satan in 1966 by Anton LaVey, as well as the use of Satanic themes in heavy metal music from bands such as Black Sabbath onwards, a moral panic (a phenomenon I’ve written about before) erupted in the media, suggesting that children were being converted to commit suicide or murder by Satanic messages in rock and heavy metal music. While this was widely debunked by various sources, including the FBI, the same tropes are still used by the media to this day.
How Satanism is seen in today’s media
To take some examples, and I apologise in advance for exposing you to them, the stories written that term people “satanists” or acts as “satanic” are often poorly researched, using one source of truth, based upon some rather questionable facts:
- The Daily Star claiming that Jimmy Savile, a British TV personality who was found to be a predatory sex offender after his death, could have been a Satanist, due to the claims made by a group called Society X in a video laden with spurious claims and conspiracy theory regarding secret societies and how they control powerful and influential people in the UK.
- The Express claiming that a blood moon will bring about Satanic rituals, on the basis that ponies in Dartmoor have been killed and brutalised, and the journalist has read some questionable sites on the internet. One of which actually advocates using proxies such as dolls and teddy bears, instead of live animals or people in a sacrifice, but the journalist chose to ignore that bit.
- The Daily Mail describing a Satanic sex cult in South Wales, who used imagery from Aleister Crowley’s Thelema in their rituals, and committed sexual assault on children and young adults. Despite being called The Great Beast, and being associated with Satanism, Crowley never actually referred to himself as a Satanist, and followed a more gnostic path, based around his theistic beliefs, and sexual and narcotic explorations. The story actually says, near the bottom, that the perpetrator used the rituals “as a cover for his own perverted ends”, implying that he wasn’t an actual Satanist, despite titling the piece “The Satanists of Ash Tree Close”.
- The Sun scares its readers with the prospect that a couple, who murdered a man in a “Satanic ritual” in Germany, could come back to the UK, where they had taken several holidays. Aside from the fact that these two people are clearly mentally unwell, they also never describe themselves in the piece as Satanists, despite being labelled as such in the headline.
As well as the poor journalism, and each story being surrounded by sensationalist headlines and exploitative pieces about celebrities in the pages they are displayed on, the sad thing here is that each story has one thing in common — they describe people who are clearly unwell, and need significant psychiatric help. However, instead of focussing on the plight of the victims, each newspaper chooses to sensationalise the story, ghoulishly focussing on the acts of the perpetrator, to provoke a reaction from readers.
The problem
This is where things become a real problem. Much in the same way that we have seen with school shootings in the US, these media outlets have chosen to draw attention to the actions of the person doing the harm, which makes them notorious. This notoriety gains them fame, especially with other individuals who are inclined to view their actions as laudable. We’ve seen this with the Columbine School massacre, which is seen as the blueprint and inspiration for many of the school shootings which followed it. Clear evidence has been found that very misguided individuals actually celebrated the actions of the two men who carried out the killings, and their celebrations were based upon incorrect facts circulated by the media at the time that the perpetrators were loners and outsiders, when they were not. Caitlin Doughty explains this very well in her video “Why Did We Get Columbine So Wrong?” below:
As well as school shootings, this also applies to Satanism. Impressionable people can see the news reports of people committing these atrocities in the name of Satanism, assume that’s what Satanism is, and be persuaded, through their own warped sense of logic, to carry out their own acts. Whilst the journalists and the newspapers might see calling things Satanic as harmless, adding a bit of spice to their story, they could well be providing fertile ground for further acts to be carried out. On our Facebook page, we encounter at least three people each week contacting us, honestly asking how they can join and sell their soul to the Devil, in order to gain money, power and/or wealth, actually believing such a thing is possible. It’s not too much of a jump, especially if someone is suffering from certain mental problems, for them to see these news stories, and assume that they could perhaps achieve their aims by sacrificing humans or animals in the name of Satan.
So, what is Satanism, then?
We in the Global Order of Satan do not believe that murder, child molestation, sexual assault or damage to property is at all Satanic. A quick look at our six pillars, which act as guidelines for living a Satanic life, will show you that our principles are based upon rational Enlightenment values. These values include “respect[ing] the inviolable body, autonomous will, and sovereign right of every individual to guide their own life and being”, instead of debasing or abusing others, and that “science, evidence, reason, and critical thinking should guide our beliefs about our universe”, instead of believing in superstition and magic to achieve our aims. It is our duty, as modern Satanists, to challenge the myths and fallacies that affect the world, including those disseminated by other religions, or, in the case of this essay, by news outlets.
We do not believe in a literal supernatural entity of Satan, or God, but seek to exemplify the figure of Satan as depicted in literature such as Milton’s Paradise Lost, challenging religious hegemony and questioning the accepted norms. Many people in today’s world are affected by others forcing their religious beliefs onto them, from women being denied safe abortions, to people being accused of being witches and burned alive, to children being denied education about LGBT relationships in schools. We, as Satanists, seek to oppose people who feel that their religious beliefs give them a right to impose their will on others, by laying bare the fallacies of their argument, and campaigning for the rights of those affected.
Conclusion
Following this, we would like to see an end to media outlets labelling the actions of unwell people as Satanic, or making up stories which are untrue, and we will be challenging those who perpetrate these damaging fallacies in the name of gaining advertising revenue. We want to encourage a world where people’s misery is not sold for clicks and likes, but portrayed in a considerate and sensitive way.
Hail Satan.
