Blog Drive-Through

I was observing and thinking about things while I had temporary access to internet, so I figured I should write about them while I have the time.

I notice that there is a good deal of shaming that goes on between Satanists about how to conduct activism against religious oppression. I admit that I have read things by other Satanists that make me cringe and worry what people who are already biased think, but I will summarize something I said to someone else: The onus is on the anti-Satanist bigots to listen and to be guided by what is right, not on us to make ourselves more palatable. Someone who is hell bent on squashing out the free expression of minority religions is not the type of ally we want if we can only get them to behave by sweet talking them into it. As soon as they meet someone who rubs them the wrong way, their support is gone. There must be a fundamental grain of commitment to justice in the people we are trying to gain as allies. There are different styles of communication that work with varying degrees of success on different types of people. Some people will never listen, no matter how polite and well learned we are. Our time, energy, and reserves are better spent on people who are halfway there to begin with. People who believe everyone should worship freely but Satanists are a little suspect, people who believe Satanists are misguided but certainly capable of being good people, etc. For the others, the ones who won't bend, who are dead set on a path of destruction, we put legal pressure on them.

We already have enough trouble with infighting between different types of Satanists who are convinced their version of Satanism is the ONLY acceptable version, so it would be nice if we could reduce that by being more accepting of other people's activism styles. Certainly if someone is resorting to unethical tactics- i.e. fighting religious oppression with a different form of oppression, death threats, and so on- they need to be called out as often, loudly, and publicly as possible. But for the others, who are simply a bit passionate and a bit less eloquent, they need support, too. As they say, united we stand, divided we fall.

To be clear, I do think that there is a place in religious activism for being diplomatic, well spoken, and knowledgable. But what I see is anxiety among Satanists that causes them to lash out at their own in ways that damage our community from within. Nobody can ever be the Right Kind of Satanist in a world where the majority believes Satanism is fundamentally bad. Not everybody has the energy or ability to be perfectly presentable when fighting for our cause.

Satanism is for all people who feel an affinity for Satan. It's not just for people with big vocabularies or access to research materials that allow them to be more impressive to bigots.

If someone is setting themselves up as The Voice for Satanism, I would be more concerned about them portraying Satanists as a monolith than what tone they use.

I'm going to think about this more during my hiatus, but for now, I've said what I needed to say.