MANIFESTO
Some contemporary problems
Most religions today are entirely insufficient or counterproductive for guiding their adherents towards anything but being devoured by the innumerable threats of real life. None of them inspire the resilience or pragmatism to combat those obstacles, let alone to ability to thrive and prosper in spite of them. Virtually nowhere to be found is a cultural or religious movement that celebrates strength of character against a bitter, hostile world that demands servility and passivity, which is not also incomplete, contradictory, or deceptive in some way.
Christianity and its Abrahamic cousins, Islam and Judaism, ask us to sacrifice our entire personalities at the altar of a being whom is false at best and an abomination at worst. Our objections to this need not be elaborated as they are often the starting point of all Satanism. However it can be expanded: There are many miniature gods in the world around us who would lead us away from being true to ourselves, and these must be exposed, denounced, and overthrown at every turn.
Idealism, in its various contemporary New Age incarnations, says that we must merely think differently and the world will match our desires. Instead we must say that there is such a thing as a harsh and undesirable fact, and that such problems are best overcome by admitting their existence rather than attempting to pretend them away.
Buddhism and some of its “Eastern” cohorts say that life is struggle. We can only agree. They then ask their adherents to suppress and overcome their own wills in order to find peace. Any authentic being would rather die than embrace such a “peace.” It is the “peace” of a conquered nation that has accepted its occupiers – it is a false peace of self-repression, resulting in no less dissatisfaction than Christian guilt and denial.
Atheism is an empty shell. It defines itself more by what it is not than by what it is. While opening new gateways of thought, any who reject the notion of deities must replace that devotion with a new personal core. All too often, all that is left is a superficial materialism, the pursuit of toys and vanity without a life of purpose or significance.
In the world of politics we are faced by a similar crisis. All the options presented are downright useless for the working majority. The conservative Right, besides being self-hating and socially repressive, has no solution to the gaping contradictions in our economic system. They point and shout at government spending without admitting that all government spending has merely been in the name of advancing the free market system, or band-aiding it together as it falls apart.
The leaders of the liberals and social-democratic “Left” fail to live up to their own principles – if we allow ourselves to believe that they have principles to begin with and are not merely knowing or unknowing puppets of capital. Most of the time they never implement “their” solutions, and behave identically to conservative politicians. Even if and when they carry out their proposals, they merely delay the problem. Amidst a chaotic and plutocratic market economy that crashes itself over and over again, the artificial government-led stimulation of the economy only rolls the problems of today into tomorrow. You know things are bleak when greater emphasis on even this flawed approach would be far superior to what we have now.
Of course the Far Right, attractive though it may be for unabashedly standing up for its positions, is a mass-hysteria that will only cripple and unravel society should it gain any hearing. Assaults on immigrants and racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities do absolutely nothing to address the true economic pain of most working people. Such campaigns distract us from the class struggle that ought to be raging, and only empower a bizarre maladjusted clique of neanderthals when they do not empower mainstream conservatives (which such campaigns often do).
In terms of the Far Left, we can only ask – where is it?
The Right has terrible ideas, and at the moment, the Left has no ideas. This absence of a real expression of the working majority in politics entirely corresponds with the social malaise of defeatism and cynicism that pervades many of our personal lives. So many people shuffle along with everyone else to Church and pray that things will improve. Those of us who have too much dignity for such a pathetic spectacle still find ourselves grasping at the air in terms of any better answer.
Christianity and its Abrahamic cousins, Islam and Judaism, ask us to sacrifice our entire personalities at the altar of a being whom is false at best and an abomination at worst. Our objections to this need not be elaborated as they are often the starting point of all Satanism. However it can be expanded: There are many miniature gods in the world around us who would lead us away from being true to ourselves, and these must be exposed, denounced, and overthrown at every turn.
Idealism, in its various contemporary New Age incarnations, says that we must merely think differently and the world will match our desires. Instead we must say that there is such a thing as a harsh and undesirable fact, and that such problems are best overcome by admitting their existence rather than attempting to pretend them away.
Buddhism and some of its “Eastern” cohorts say that life is struggle. We can only agree. They then ask their adherents to suppress and overcome their own wills in order to find peace. Any authentic being would rather die than embrace such a “peace.” It is the “peace” of a conquered nation that has accepted its occupiers – it is a false peace of self-repression, resulting in no less dissatisfaction than Christian guilt and denial.
Atheism is an empty shell. It defines itself more by what it is not than by what it is. While opening new gateways of thought, any who reject the notion of deities must replace that devotion with a new personal core. All too often, all that is left is a superficial materialism, the pursuit of toys and vanity without a life of purpose or significance.
In the world of politics we are faced by a similar crisis. All the options presented are downright useless for the working majority. The conservative Right, besides being self-hating and socially repressive, has no solution to the gaping contradictions in our economic system. They point and shout at government spending without admitting that all government spending has merely been in the name of advancing the free market system, or band-aiding it together as it falls apart.
The leaders of the liberals and social-democratic “Left” fail to live up to their own principles – if we allow ourselves to believe that they have principles to begin with and are not merely knowing or unknowing puppets of capital. Most of the time they never implement “their” solutions, and behave identically to conservative politicians. Even if and when they carry out their proposals, they merely delay the problem. Amidst a chaotic and plutocratic market economy that crashes itself over and over again, the artificial government-led stimulation of the economy only rolls the problems of today into tomorrow. You know things are bleak when greater emphasis on even this flawed approach would be far superior to what we have now.
Of course the Far Right, attractive though it may be for unabashedly standing up for its positions, is a mass-hysteria that will only cripple and unravel society should it gain any hearing. Assaults on immigrants and racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities do absolutely nothing to address the true economic pain of most working people. Such campaigns distract us from the class struggle that ought to be raging, and only empower a bizarre maladjusted clique of neanderthals when they do not empower mainstream conservatives (which such campaigns often do).
In terms of the Far Left, we can only ask – where is it?
The Right has terrible ideas, and at the moment, the Left has no ideas. This absence of a real expression of the working majority in politics entirely corresponds with the social malaise of defeatism and cynicism that pervades many of our personal lives. So many people shuffle along with everyone else to Church and pray that things will improve. Those of us who have too much dignity for such a pathetic spectacle still find ourselves grasping at the air in terms of any better answer.
A new Satanic Left
First and foremost, while not abandoning the social issues which have defined the Left since the 1960s, the Left must re-embrace class struggle as its central defining cause. As Satanists we can admit that economics and money are at the root of most of the reasons that anyone does anything, and reaches into all corners of our culture and even our personal lives and decisions. Unlike the guilt-ridden sections of the Left, we can celebrate the fact that human society is driven by our desire to accumulate more. We can acknowledge that economics is the cause of most conflict -- and possessing less in the way of guilty ethical quibbles, we can happily enter that conflict, with 98% of the US population as the "have-nots uniting against the super-rich.
The Left must abandon its pathetic attachment to “respectability” and “working within the proper channels.” It must be confrontational and gain its strength from “rousing the rabble.” It must embrace rowdy demonstrations, which serve to press the weight of the majority onto an unaccountable political elite whom usually feels like no one is watching as they hand away our laws, tax money, and futures to their corporate sponsors. We must be willing to part with or be tarnished by any label that gets in our way. We must be willing to be called radicals and traitors. We need no guilty, apologetic Left, but a Left of revolting wage-slaves and demonized “Others.”
The Left must overcome its naivety. It must cease hoping for bipartisan progress with people whose sole occupation in life is to disadvantage the working majority, and their congregations of stupid sheep-like followers within the working and middle classes themselves. Our enemies are immensely powerful on multiple levels – armed force, social gravity, influence over the production of ideas and information, and all the money anyone could ever want. They see no reason to surrender their power, and will not change anything unless we bully them into changing it. Any attempt to negotiate with them will probably only lead to losses for us. We need to admit and expose the fact that the “democracy” we live in is a fraudulent continual sale and purchase of the law by wealthy campaign contributors, serving as an effective façade for the dictatorial relationship between capital and its wage-slaves. For this reason we must also part with the pathetic blank-check pacifism which cripples the mainstream Left, especially in terms of our domestic enemies. May we escalate to whatever level of force we are confronted with, as Malcolm X suggested.
Satanists are probably more comfortable with the above than any other group of people. It is not necessary for us to convert Leftists to believing in Satanism, but only to convince them to act like Satanists.
The Left must abandon its pathetic attachment to “respectability” and “working within the proper channels.” It must be confrontational and gain its strength from “rousing the rabble.” It must embrace rowdy demonstrations, which serve to press the weight of the majority onto an unaccountable political elite whom usually feels like no one is watching as they hand away our laws, tax money, and futures to their corporate sponsors. We must be willing to part with or be tarnished by any label that gets in our way. We must be willing to be called radicals and traitors. We need no guilty, apologetic Left, but a Left of revolting wage-slaves and demonized “Others.”
The Left must overcome its naivety. It must cease hoping for bipartisan progress with people whose sole occupation in life is to disadvantage the working majority, and their congregations of stupid sheep-like followers within the working and middle classes themselves. Our enemies are immensely powerful on multiple levels – armed force, social gravity, influence over the production of ideas and information, and all the money anyone could ever want. They see no reason to surrender their power, and will not change anything unless we bully them into changing it. Any attempt to negotiate with them will probably only lead to losses for us. We need to admit and expose the fact that the “democracy” we live in is a fraudulent continual sale and purchase of the law by wealthy campaign contributors, serving as an effective façade for the dictatorial relationship between capital and its wage-slaves. For this reason we must also part with the pathetic blank-check pacifism which cripples the mainstream Left, especially in terms of our domestic enemies. May we escalate to whatever level of force we are confronted with, as Malcolm X suggested.
Satanists are probably more comfortable with the above than any other group of people. It is not necessary for us to convert Leftists to believing in Satanism, but only to convince them to act like Satanists.
A new Leftist Satanism
The entrance of Satanism into the world is a great development. However, Satanism will certainly not last into the new millennium if it does not change form. If Satanism remains a strictly religious and cultural movement which does not begin experimenting and expanding into the realms of politics and economics, it will become irrelevant in a world where these things increasingly cannot be ignored.
There is something strikingly similar between the Communist Manifesto’s closing declaration that the world working class has “a world to win” and Satan’s infamous rebellion against the tyrannical Abrahamic god. There can be no separation between being true to your self and revolting against social structures and forces which prevent the full expression of your potential. Who are you and what do you stand for? Who runs the world? These are two forms of the same question.
Ultimately all the far-flung causes of the world are only important insofar as they have an effect on our own interests. Politics may often seem impersonal, but appearances can be deceiving. We are fighting for ourselves. While seeing the life and vitality of our fellow beings physically or spiritually crushed under the heel of decrepit, parasitic elites may sicken us, in one way or another we ourselves are also under that same heel. Politics is meaningless unless its spirit is entirely derived from the realm of personal desire. If Satanism is to remain authentic, then it must be a formidable enemy to all tyranny and oppression – in real life. As much as a passion for freedom may burn in our hearts, the ugly truth is that we are often limited and defined by our material circumstances – so we must change them! The liberation of humanity from all repressive and irrational social structures is the free reign of Satan and his people on the Earth. Satanists should be indomitable warriors for their own prosperity and liberation – in real life. We must be a fighting movement. Whether by organizing or by shooting, using either the written word or our fists, Satanism is nothing if it does not become a genuine historical force.
Bah to introspective so-called travelers of the Left-Hand Path who believe that they can find freedom in isolation and drop off the grid into their own imaginary world, the boundaries of which are only more besieged by hammerings of real-world chaos with each passing day. The human species is irreconcilably, hopelessly interconnected with itself, if not by a thousand thousand economic ties, then by the simple fact of inhabiting the same planet. Therefore, self-honest, self-respecting people are necessarily concerned with matters of power, money, society, and politics. The world is in motion, and the world is embroiled in conflicts in which you are caught even if you are not aware of them. As Howard Zinn said, “You can’t stay neutral on a moving train.”
We Satanists have walked alone for long enough. The test of isolation is a great crucible for separating the chaff and the wheat, but the test of leadership is even greater. Many Satanists have sneered at anything involving the “mob,” the “stupid masses,” the “sheep-like majority.” And yet why should we deny ourselves indulgence in the satisfaction of collective effervescence? Why not seek the thrill of leaving a mark on the minds of the many, the sense of accomplishment derived from witnessing your essence echoing in the transformation of the crowd around you, the pride and glory of unleashing the mob’s terrible repressed energies upon society in the name of smashing what limits you? Whether we knew it or not, we have always been doing this – we have always been leading. By rejecting our culture, we have said No to the sickness around us. We may have meant this No as something for ourselves alone, but others have always taken note of our disturbing rejection of their inadequate culture, which they could sense also meant a rejection of their basic identities. Our No was never destined to remain a No, but to transform into a more conscious, mature Yes to a new, emerging superior society at a later time. Let now be that time.
There is something strikingly similar between the Communist Manifesto’s closing declaration that the world working class has “a world to win” and Satan’s infamous rebellion against the tyrannical Abrahamic god. There can be no separation between being true to your self and revolting against social structures and forces which prevent the full expression of your potential. Who are you and what do you stand for? Who runs the world? These are two forms of the same question.
Ultimately all the far-flung causes of the world are only important insofar as they have an effect on our own interests. Politics may often seem impersonal, but appearances can be deceiving. We are fighting for ourselves. While seeing the life and vitality of our fellow beings physically or spiritually crushed under the heel of decrepit, parasitic elites may sicken us, in one way or another we ourselves are also under that same heel. Politics is meaningless unless its spirit is entirely derived from the realm of personal desire. If Satanism is to remain authentic, then it must be a formidable enemy to all tyranny and oppression – in real life. As much as a passion for freedom may burn in our hearts, the ugly truth is that we are often limited and defined by our material circumstances – so we must change them! The liberation of humanity from all repressive and irrational social structures is the free reign of Satan and his people on the Earth. Satanists should be indomitable warriors for their own prosperity and liberation – in real life. We must be a fighting movement. Whether by organizing or by shooting, using either the written word or our fists, Satanism is nothing if it does not become a genuine historical force.
Bah to introspective so-called travelers of the Left-Hand Path who believe that they can find freedom in isolation and drop off the grid into their own imaginary world, the boundaries of which are only more besieged by hammerings of real-world chaos with each passing day. The human species is irreconcilably, hopelessly interconnected with itself, if not by a thousand thousand economic ties, then by the simple fact of inhabiting the same planet. Therefore, self-honest, self-respecting people are necessarily concerned with matters of power, money, society, and politics. The world is in motion, and the world is embroiled in conflicts in which you are caught even if you are not aware of them. As Howard Zinn said, “You can’t stay neutral on a moving train.”
We Satanists have walked alone for long enough. The test of isolation is a great crucible for separating the chaff and the wheat, but the test of leadership is even greater. Many Satanists have sneered at anything involving the “mob,” the “stupid masses,” the “sheep-like majority.” And yet why should we deny ourselves indulgence in the satisfaction of collective effervescence? Why not seek the thrill of leaving a mark on the minds of the many, the sense of accomplishment derived from witnessing your essence echoing in the transformation of the crowd around you, the pride and glory of unleashing the mob’s terrible repressed energies upon society in the name of smashing what limits you? Whether we knew it or not, we have always been doing this – we have always been leading. By rejecting our culture, we have said No to the sickness around us. We may have meant this No as something for ourselves alone, but others have always taken note of our disturbing rejection of their inadequate culture, which they could sense also meant a rejection of their basic identities. Our No was never destined to remain a No, but to transform into a more conscious, mature Yes to a new, emerging superior society at a later time. Let now be that time.
