Copyright issues aside, I think this is one of the most troubling aspects of the TST / Sabrina affair: this way of putting on the same level a somewhat dark representation by a TV series of Satanism and real persecutions on religions actually oppressed. And what arrogance to react so insultingly to this criticism a few days after the worst anti-Semitic massacre on American soil.

I find the use here of the concept of “alleged Satanism” very dubious, to say the least, and I think it is important to distinguish the accusation of Satanism, which is old, from the existence of groups that actually identify themselves as Satanists, which is much more recent (the very end of the 19th century, if I believe Ruben van Luijk in Children of Lucifer, The Origins of Modern Religious Satanism (OUP, 2016).

An example to explain what I mean: the Yezidi have been and are still heavily persecuted because they are wrongly considered Satanists. However, it is their suffering and their history, and we can not appropriate them on the pretext that we consider ourselves Satanists.

Similarly, it is not because the accusation of satanism was generally wrongly used to persecute many groups in the Western world that we, as Satanists, can pretend that we have a history of persecution comparable to that of the Jews.

We can empathize with the victims, use our Satanic identity to struggle against the political and social othering of people or group of people, but in the end, we were not the victims.