Scholars have noted that right-wing extremists have a pronounced tendency to project their own faults and alarmingly destructive, megalomaniacal ambitions onto others (Bronner 5, 37–38, 64–68, 116–117). This fact becomes particularly apparent when looking at the now “classic” antisemitic work The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, written (in fact, plagiarized) around the beginning of the 20th century in Imperial Russia by members of the tsarist secret police force. Further on, we will observe striking parallels between the role played by The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in the propagation of conspiracist ideation during the early 20th century and that played by another fraudulently attributed book titled Brain-Washing: A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics in the propagation of conspiracist ideation from the mid 20th century until the present, by groups like The Satanic Temple’s “Grey Faction” and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.

In A Rumor About the Jews, the political scientist Stephen Eric Bronner highlights the fact that although the Protocols claim to reveal the existence of a secret plot concocted by conspiratorial Jews hell-bent on totalitarian global domination, this “project [of global domination] was actually undertaken by fascists rather than Jews,” and furthermore that:

“The pamphlet was surely one source from which the Nazis gained a sense that world domination is possible and that the endeavor rests upon the willingness to deal ruthlessly with opponents and the ability to secure the unconditional loyalty of followers. […] The irony is unmistakable: the ‘elders of Zion’ were transmuted into the inner circle of the Nazi party while the chief rabbi of the Jews turned into the Führer of the Germans,” (116–117).

Bronner gives a number of examples of ways in which the Protocols “projects upon Jews the attributes of the antisemite”:

“[…] the antisemite seeks to dominate the public sphere and, thus, the Jew is accused of controlling it; the antisemite seeks to abolish the religion of his enemy and, thus, the Jew is condemned for seeking to abolish all religions other than his own; the antisemite wishes to employ the educational system for his own ends and, thus, the Jew is accused of perverting education […] The antisemite is a despot demanding a Führer and the destruction of modern liberal society while the Jew […] is condemned for imposing despotism in the name of a ‘supreme lord’ chosen by God,” (67–68).

Many of these examples have parallels in our present study. We have seen how The Satanic Temple (particularly via its “Grey Faction” sub-project) seeks to diagnose and label individuals as sufferers of an unrecognized, non-existent psychiatric condition called “false memory syndrome” (FMS) and, thus, accuses members of the medical community of conspiring to invent and perpetuate made-up psychiatric disorders, such as DID, ADHD, and “other psychological issues.” We have seen how TST seeks to erect its own religious monuments in public spaces and, thus, condemns the presence of others’ religious monuments in public spaces as a violation of the principle of “separation of church and state.” We have seen how Satanic Temple co-founder Douglas Misicko has sought to justify hatred of religious Jews and, thus, condemns the religious for hating Satanism. We have seen how Satanists wish to employ “unschooling” in order to indoctrinate children into the magical thinking principle of “acausality,” attacking the right to a quality public education under the pretext of offering children “free will” before they are mature enough to realize that it is an illusion and, thus, accuse psychiatry and the principle of causality of perverting education.

The meme of “the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 1990s” (interchangeably called “Anti-Satanic Witch Hunts” or “the moral panic over Satanic Ritual Abuse”), which forms the foundational myth of origins of the anti-psychiatry discourse propagated by The Satanic Temple’s “Grey Faction,” replicates this same phenomenon of psychological projection. By turning a critical eye on the notion of “moral panic” and examining the facts more closely, it will become apparent that it is the backlash to what was labelled “Satanic Panic” (increased public scrutiny of private sector conduct), fomented at first by groups like the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and now perpetuated in the present day by the Satanic “Grey Faction,” which ironically displays all the traits of itself being a moral panic. Like wolves in sheep’s clothing, the witch-hunters have re-invented themselves as the witch-hunted.

It will be demonstrated below that this absurdly concocted narrative of widespread persecution (i.e., of a “witch-hunt”) against innocent Satanists (or persons accused of being Satanists) in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s is in fact derivative of an actual witch-hunt: the 1950s anti-communist panic known as the (Second) “Red Scare,” which was fueled by early Cold War fears about “communist infiltration” and “subversion” of US society and government. The term “Red Scare” has also come to be closely associated with the practice of McCarthyism, named after the Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy who led the anti-communist witch-hunt. Although McCarthy was censured by the United States Senate in 1954 (Glass), the legacy of McCarthyism was (and continues to be) carried on by right-wing groups such as the John Birch Society, founded in 1958, and anti-communism never really disappeared. We will also see below how McCarthyism and the Red Scare were fundamental not only to the construction of the “Satanic Panic” witch-hunt narrative, but also to the anti-psychiatry discourse emitted by The Satanic Temple’s “Grey Faction.”

CONTINUE READING… 6.1 Echoes of McCarthyism: How Anti-Communist Scaremongering Gave Rise to the Satanist Narrative of “Moral Panic”

OR RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS (Anatomy of a Crypto-Fascist Sect: The Unauthorized Guide to “The Satanic Temple”)