The Frontman: Douglas Misicko, better known as Lucien Greaves and Doug Mesner
Although The Satanic Temple attempts to present itself along politically progressive lines, Douglas Misicko has collaborated with a significant number of individuals holding prominent positions in white supremacist and neo-Nazi movements. In 2003, Shane Bugbee published a new edition of a book called Might is Right with illustrations by Misicko. Originally published in 1890, Might is Right is considered an influential work among right-wing extremists. Amy Bugbee, wife of Shane Bugbee, calls it “a cornerstone […] of the modern White Power movement” (Suffering and Celebration 90). The then most recent edition of Might is Right, published four years prior to the Bugbee edition, was published by “14 Words Press,” an openly neo-Nazi publishing house, and features a variant of the swastika on the cover (RationalWiki editors; ADL, “Triskele”). The preface to Bugbee’s 2003 republication of Might is Right which Misicko illustrated was written by Katja Lane, the co-founder of “14 Words Press” and wife of the white supremacist terrorist David Lane (1938–2007), who is remembered mainly for coining the “Fourteen Words” slogan (which has become popular among so-called “white nationalists” and goes, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children,” [ADL]) and for having been a key member of “The Order,” a neo-Nazi terrorist group best known for carrying out the assassination of Alan Berg (1934–1984), a Jewish radio talk show host (“Art Talk – Shane Bugbee”). The afterword of the edition of Might is Right illustrated by Misicko was written by George Burdi (1970–present), who, as the frontman of a band called RaHoWa (a syllabic abbreviation for “Racial Holy War”), was an influential figure in the Detroit-based neo-Nazi skinhead “hate-rock” scene of the 1990s. Burdi was also a leader of the Canadian branch of the World Church of the Creator, a neo-Nazi religious cult whose pseudo-theology inspired his band’s name. Misicko, along with Shane and Amy Bugbee, gave a sympathetic interview to Burdi during a 24 hour long “Might is Right” podcast recorded on September 11, 2002. (Although Burdi claimed to have left the neo-Nazi movement behind him after being imprisoned for assault in 1997, a 2017 interview with Burdi on FSN.tv, a Youtube channel run by German neo-Nazis, demonstrates otherwise [FSN, “Interview mit George Burdi”]).
A number of signs clearly point to Misicko’s continuing sympathy for and affinity with right-wing extremists. In March 2016, Misicko announced that he would be boycotting a Satanism-related conference called “Left Hand Path Consortium” in solidarity with Augustus Sol Invictus (also known as Austin Gillespie [1983–present]), a neo-Nazi lawyer and occultist who had been slated to speak at the conference before organizers apparently decided that it would be best to exclude him (Greaves, [Facebook post]). As a lawyer, Invictus/Gillespie defended a white supremacist named Marcus Faella (1973–present) in court (Pierson Curtis). Faella was a leader of a neo-Nazi terrorist group called “American Front.” Faella’s rival for leadership in the “American Front” was James Porrazzo, a former member of a now apparently defunct, ostensibly “pro-North Korean,” third positionist political cult called “Rural People’s Party,” some of whose members, including Joshua Caleb Sutter and Jillian Hoy are suspected to have gone on to form an openly pro-human sacrifice and pro-terrorism, Satanic neo-Nazi cult called “Tempel ov Blood” (@eggfordinner; Thayer, “White Power and apocalyptic cults”, “U.S. Soldiers Uncovered”).
Tempel ov Blood, which may be considered as a US branch of the UK-based Satanic neo-Nazi sect called the “Order of Nine Angles” (although it is likely that the original incarnation of the latter was as something analogous to a UK branch of the US-based, Church of Satan-derived Temple of Set [see: 6.1.1]), is known to have ties to the neo-Nazi terrorist group “Atomwaffen Division” (Hatewatch Staff, Hanrahan). Additionally, Porrazzo is alleged to have attended an event at the headquarters of The Satanic Temple in 2015 and to have received political funding from a self-avowedly fascist and Satanist publisher of far-right, neo-fascist literature named Adam Parfrey (1957–2018), whom Misicko personally eulogized on social media after he died in 2018 (Trident, Feral). It was Parfrey’s company, Feral House, which published the pro-Satanism, pro-Nazism book Siege: The Collected Writings of James Mason in 1992, which would go on to become the bible of Atomwaffen Division. In a statement of solidarity with Invictus/Gillespie, which remains on Facebook where it was originally posted in 2016, Misicko opines, “Fascism legitimately has a place in discussions upon political philosophies,” and affirms that “[Invictus/Gillespie’s neo-Nazi] perspective […] legitimately falls somewhere on a broad spectrum of recognized ‘Left Hand Path’ philosophies.”
In 2017, Misicko was adamant in demanding the defense of the “free speech” rights of Milo Yiannopoulos, who, as an editor and writer for the far-right media outlet BREITBART NEWS under its executive chairman Steve Bannon(who would shortly thereafter become chief executive of the Donald Trump presidential campaign and later the USA’s first ‘White House Chief Strategist’), worked to bring neo-Nazism into the mainstream by courting a number of right-wing extremists in order to amplify their voices under the concocted “Alt-Right” label.
Notable here is Bannon’s open flirtation with Satanism in the immediate aftermath of the election of Donald Trump. Business Insider reports that in November 2016, Bannon declared, “Darkness is good […] Satan [is] power,” (Tani). Among the individuals Yiannopoulos collaborated with under Bannon’s direction was Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer (1985–present), an American man with a large swastika tattoo on his chest who is also an administrator at THE DAILY STORMER, a neo-Nazi online media outlet (Bernstein). After low-level members of The Satanic Temple announced their intention to protest an event featuring Yiannopoulos at the University of California, Berkeley, Misicko quickly chastised them, disavowed TST’s willingness to protest the neo-Nazi-promoting “Alt-Right” figurehead, and shared a Breitbart article on Twitter announcing TST’s position of defending Yiannopoulos’s right to “free speech” (Pringle, Greaves, Sangs).
In August 2018, Misicko announced that he would be working with a lawyer named Marc Randazza to sue Twitter for alleged “religious discrimination” for temporarily suspending his personal account and that of The Satanic Temple on the social media platform. Randazza is infamous for defending neo-Nazis and white supremacists in court cases. He is currently defending several neo-fascists on trial in connection with their roles in the infamous August 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia “Unite the Right” rally (Domonoske). Among the defendants in the case (Sines et al v. Kessler et al) are Augustus Sol Invictus, Jeff Schoep (leader of the neo-Nazi group “NSM,” which, besides its known ties to “Joy of Satan Ministry,” also has numerous links to crime, including child abuse and terrorism [CBS5; Morlin; McKinley]), Andrew Anglin (an editor at the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer) and white supremacist terrorist James Alex Fields, Jr. (the member of the “Alt-Right” neo-Nazi group “Vanguard America” who drove a muscle car at high speed into a large group of antifascist protesters during the Charlottesville neo-fascist rally, killing an anti-racist protester named Heather Heyer and injuring numerous others [Justia]). Many of the defendants are affiliated with groups which are in turn affiliated with the “Nationalist Front,” an umbrella organization through which numerous right-wing extremist sects have united, including the previously mentioned NSM and Vanguard America (Tanner). Among the co-founders of “Nationalist Front,” we also find sects with names like “Aryan Terror Brigade” and several others which claim affinity with “Combat–18,” a neo-Nazi terrorist group based in the UK which was formerly led David Myatt, who inspired to so-called “London Nailbomber” neo-Nazi terrorist attack of 1999 (McLagan) and was also the founder the previously mentioned human sacrifice-advocating “Order of Nine Angles” (Introvigne, Satanism: A Social History 357–358), a UK-based Satanic group whose sympathizers in the United States formed the also previously mentioned “Tempel ov Blood,” which has built discernable links with the so-called “Alt-Right” (Buntovnik, Ryan, Hatchet). Notably, the entire membership of the Los Angeles chapter of TST withdrew from TST in protest over Misicko’s decision to work with Randazza, its members apparently either having tolerated Misicko’s numerous other fascist affiliations up to that point or else having been incredibly ignorant (Burton). In an essay published on August 7, 2018 titled “Down the Spiral of Purity” Misicko disingenuously defended his choice of lawyer by painting Randazza’s legal work with neo-Nazis as a matter of “defend[ing] […] offensive speech,” despite Randazza’s active role in a case involving neo-Nazis whose actions clearly go beyond “hate speech,” into the realm of terrorist violence. The title of Misicko’s essay (“Down the Spiral of Purity”) may be an oblique reference to the cult of personality dedicated to Charles Manson—a well known piece of trivia surrounding the album “The Downward Spiral” by the band Nine Inch Nails, later remixed as “Further Down the Spiral,” is that the album was recorded in the same house where members of the Manson Family committed the Tate murders (Ali, Novak). Additionally, the terms “purity spiral” or “purity spiraling” are neologistic jargon used by followers of the neo-Nazi “Alt-Right”; according to a February 2018 post on “r/DebateFascism,” a neo-fascist forum on Reddit, the term is frequently “mentioned in right[-]wing circles these days.” Among the top results of a September 2018 search query on Youtube for “Alt-Right Read Siege” (note: “Read Siege” is a loose label for an assortment of neo-Nazi “Alt-Right” groups influenced by the cult of personality of Charles Manson) was a video (which has since been removed) titled “Hitler on Purity Spiraling,” which featured a voice reading a passage from Mein Kampf accompanied by a photo of Adolf Hitler. There is even a neo-Nazi website called “ThePuritySpiral.com,” which is affiliated with something called “Radio Aryan.” A post on a white supremacist (neo-Confederate) blog titled “Dixie Patriot” defines “purity spiraling” as “the Alt-right version of being called a ‘right-wing nut job’.” Given the subject matter of Misicko’s essay (defending himself from accusations of cozying up too closely to a defender of the so-called “Alt-Right”), his choice of title (“Down the Spiral of Purity”) can be read as a clear dog whistle to his neo-fascist friends. In a move to clamp down on dissent within TST and “prevent elaborate conspiracy theories,” Misicko moved in early September 2018 to make all TST chapter heads sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) which would include “a broad […] ‘non-disparagement clause’ that prevents former chapter leaders from […] making disparaging commentary related to the organization even, or especially, upon their departure from [TST]” (Mehta).
During the previously mentioned “Might is Right” podcast, Misicko also granted a cordial interview to Tom Metzger, a former “Grand Dragon” of the California Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and founder of a neo-Nazi group called White Aryan Resistance. Metzger is perhaps best known for helping to popularize the figure of the “lone wolf” as an ideal model of organizing white supremacist terrorism (ADL, “Tom Metzger/White Aryan Resistance”).
It’s worth taking a closer look at the content of Douglas Misicko’s interview with Tom Metzger on Shane Bugbee’s podcast to get a better idea of just how steeped in far-right, racist discourse The Satanic Temple’s spokesman was in 2002. This interview provides a vital piece of the contextual backdrop which must necessarily color our understanding of Misicko’s more recent displays of solidarity, sympathy, and elbow-rubbing with prominent white supremacist and neo-Nazi figures in the so-called “Alt-Right” movement and the decision to work with a lawyer currently involved in a case whose defendants are neo-Nazi terrorists.
In the Might is Right podcast, Misicko engages Metzger in a lengthy discussion in which Misicko questions Metzger about “Jewish bloodlines” and the racial policies of Nazi Germany (Bugbee and Mesner, “Might is Right Special” [note: the interview, which lasts 36 minutes, starts at about 19:27:30 and ends at 20:03:50]). At one point during the recorded conversation with Metzger, Misicko states, “I think there should be eugenics policy, population control policy. Something that ensures quality reproduction.” Although Misicko qualifies his pro-eugenics statement with the caveat that his ideal eugenics system would be based on IQ testing or “intelligence laws” (as opposed to being based strictly on racial grounds), it is known that IQ testing is culturally biased and that race is a cultural construct. Thus when Metzger objects that “[although] there are gray areas […] if you judge the black race by its whole, you must come up with the idea that they’re definitely an inferior race,”
Misicko tries to win Metzger over to his position by implying that eugenics would still decimate the Afro-diasporic population even if it was based on IQ testing instead of race when he argues, “But that being the case [i.e., the case being that posited by Metzger—that “the black race by its whole (is) definitely an (intellectually) inferior race”], you still wouldn’t have to enact racial laws, you’d just have to enact intelligence laws, and if that [black intellectual inferiority] was being the case, then that good segment of the population would have to drop off.” Here it is clear that what Misicko euphemistically posits as “that good segment of the population” is an intellectually “inferior” segment of the population whose “race” is disproportionately Black. What is essential to comprehend about this segment of the interview is that Misicko is attempting to sell de jure “IQ-based” eugenics to Metzger as de facto Black genocide. Metzger responds to Misicko’s idea by saying, “Well, we’ll leave you the project of raising the IQ of the black race to about 140 and I’ll be standing by when you’re successful,” prompting laughter from Misicko and his co-interviewers, Amy and Shane Bugbee. Shortly after that, Amy Bugbee (the wife of Shane Bugbee) chimes in to assert her belief that white people are not “necessarily the same species as blacks or Asians, you know, or any number of different races.”
Tellingly, the Confederate battle flag was prominently displayed at the studio where Misicko recorded with the Bugbees (see: 5.2), who also strangely claimed that they held their wedding ceremony “in South Carolina because it is legal to fly the Confederate flag there” (Sula). The interview ends with Misicko promising to send Metzger a “personalize[d] copy” of Might is Right.
That Misicko continues to run in the same far-right social circles is further evinced by the fact that he contributed (a chapter about The Satanic Temple) to Satan Superstar: A Handbook of the Infernal and the Immaculate in Popular Occulture (a book published in April 2018) alongside Boyd Rice, described as “a cult figure in the racial underground musical world” on Race and Reason, a TV show hosted by Tom Metzger that ran in the late 1980s (“Boyd Rice on Racist TV Show”). Rice appeared on Metzger’s show in 1986 or ’87 and spoke about his relationship with other musicians “moving more and more towards racialist stuff,” including David Tibet (who, like Misicko, is an associate of Genesis P-Orridge) and the band Death in June, which Rice eventually joined as a member and which he described as “very racialist-oriented,” (ibid.). Death in June is known to draw on Nazi themes (Hatewatch Staff, 7.4). According to Zach Black, the founder of “the Satanic International Network, the largest […] social media site for Satanists,” LaVey intended for Rice to take over as leader of the Church of Satan after he died (Merlan, “Trolling Hell”). Satan Superstar also features an interview with Nikolas Schreck, a neo-Nazi musician and son-in-law of Church of Satan frontman Anton LaVey. Like Rice, Schreck appeared on Metzger’s Race and Reason TV show (“Nazi Interviews Satanic Goth, Nikolas Schreck”). The title of Satan Superstar echoes that of Charles Manson Superstar, a 1989 film written and directed by Schreck that promotes the Charles Manson cult of personality, glorifying the cult leader as “one of the last true heretics of our time,” (3:35).
In the film—which also features pro-Manson commentary from James Mason, the neo-Nazi author of the Adam Parfrey-published Siege (1:05:30)—Schreck articulates the view of Manson as a founding father of neo-Nazi Satanism:
“Inspired by the exploits of [Nazi German] Field Marshal [Erwin] Rommel, the ‘Desert Fox,’ in the ’40s, Manson began a massive project of stealing and converting cars into dune buggy attack vehicles. They would be a new Afrika Korps that would rule this [California] desert domain far from the sick city. The motorcycle clubs that Manson had brought into the Family—the Straight Satans, Satan’s Slaves, the Jokers from Hell—would serve as auxiliary troops,” (34:57 – 35:30).
