Satanism - Libertarian or "Fascist"?

By Faustus Scorpius

"There is nothing inherently wrong with fascism, given the nature and needs of the average citizen... Now it's not so much a case of avoiding fascism, but of replacing a screwed up, disjointed, fragmented and stupefying kind of fascism with one that is more sensible and truly progressive."

- Anton LaVey

The inanity of the Libertarianism at present being insinuated into American Satanism is itself nothing but a product of the inanity of American "culture". It is ironic that those Libertarians claiming to embrace "the deity of rebellion" should themselves be conditioned results of the U.S. mass education, entertainment and media System. Far from "rebelling", these Libertarian-Satanists are simply parts of the status quo.

The Libertarians have embarked on an anti-Fascist crusade. Their chief spokesman is Jeffrey Deboo, editor of DARK REFLECTIONS, whose principle articles so far dealing with what he sees as "the Fascist infiltration of Satanism" (sic) are the widely reprinted "Nazism, Racism and Satanism", and "Fascism and the Deity of Rebellion". The most notable thing about his position is that it is based entirely on empty rhetoric, without the wearisome need to resort to actual historic specifics. Erroneous Libertarian assumptions are considered sufficient, in his delusional state, for "Fascist Satanists" such as Michael Moynihan and myself to be awed by his intellectual acumen.

THE REBELS OF FASCISM

Mr Deboo's main point is that since Satan is the archetype of rebellion, his individualism is antithetical to totalitarian ideologies such as Fascism. He contends that "Fascist Satanists" such as myself would not be tolerated by Fascist regimes. What Mr Deboo doesn't realize is that Fascism was founded by the "individualists and eccentrics" he thinks he's championing. The first fasci was established in Italy in 1918 by the Futurists led by Marinetti. The latter went on to found the Fascist Party with Mussolini in 1919. Marinetti became head of the Fascist Writer's Union, was elected to the Academy, and the influence of Futurism on Fascism was maintained for the duration of the regime. Marinetti and that other leading Italian eccentric and individualist D'Annunzio regarded themselves - and were regarded by the regime - as the precursors of Fascism.

Other avant-garde writers and artists such as those around Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis and the Vorticist movement in England, supported Fascism as the defence against the stupefying effects of democracy on culture. Ezra Pound in particular saw Fascism as the opponent of plutocracy which he considered to be infecting all forms of human activity. He was granted radio facilities by the Italian Government to broadcast against plutocracy during the war. In contrast with the Allied victory the Americans incarcerated him in an animal cage, after which he was confined for years in a lunatic asylum, and denied literary awards solely due to his politics.

What Mr Deboo et al don't realize, because they have no political or historical knowledge, is that the American Revolutionary War against England was of precisely the same order as the War between the Axis and the Allies. Both were fought over the issue of plutocracy.

REVOLT AGAINST THE PLUTOCRATS

Ben Franklin wrote: "The Colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction."

What Franklin was referring to was the "Colonial Scrip" the colonies had issued according to "the demands of trade and industry", without recourse to the usury of private banking. The Bank of England replied by putting through Parliament in 1764 an Act prohibiting the issue of Colonial Scrip. The Scrip was devalued by 50%, and Franklin stated that within a year the streets were filled with the unemployed. The American Founding Fathers in the Constitution provided the Government with the prerogative to issue its own credit. This right was undermined over the decades through various mechanations, culminating in the Reserve Bank Act of 1913.

Likewise, the Axis powers and Fascism generally, sought a system of "autarky", or national economic self-sufficiency. The Fascist states gained prosperity while the democracies under the thralldom of plutocracy suffered economic depression until the War. Compare Franklin's statement with Hitler's in 1937: "We have come to learn that the value of the currency lies in the capacity of the nation." Additionally Germany pulled out of the world trade system and instituted a system of bartering surplus products.

Mr Deboo, despite his imagined adherence to the "deity of rebellion", condemns one of the few epochal rebellions in history.

WHIG LIBERALISM AND SOCIAL DARWINISM

Another feature of Libertarian-Satanism is the misapplication of Darwinian evolutionary principles to economics in what is called "Social Darwinism". The latter was formulated by 19th C. Whig Liberalism to rationalize unrestrained capitalism without the need to consider the consequences to the nation as a whole. Contemporary Libertarian-Satanism is merely an attempt to revive the corpse of 19th C. Whig Liberalism. It is a doctrine that has latterly been tried without success in several countries including New Zealand.

The Libertarian's "Social Darwinism" rests on a contempt for the "mass" or "herd" as a supposed application of "Satanic misanthropy" and "rational self-interest". The belief is that, like a century ago, the superior will rise to the top while the rest can sink or swim. This "Social Darwinism" is the misapplication of "the survival of the fittest" to economics. This is held to be true eugenics in operation, as opposed to Fascist eugenics which necessitates State intervention. What the Libertarians do not recognize is that the social organism is itself a collective survival unit. Altruism, which would be considered most unSatanic, is in origin ultimately selfish, true "rational self-interest", based on the principle, "you scratch my back; I'll scratch yours." The individual organism enhances its own survival, and thus the perpetuation of its genes, by subordinating itself to an organic social order. This is precisely what Fascism implemented on a political level.

The tendency among some American Satanists to be pre-occupied with their position of superiority above "the herd", which they view with revulsion, is reflected in their indignation at the prospect of any form of commitment to anything wider than themselves. It is a view that prevailed among the petty shop keepers and bankers in 19th C. England.

FAUSTIANISM, OR THE SCRAP-HEAP?

The result was that an oligarchy grew prosperous while leaving the bulk of its fellow citizens to rot, misapplying the new-found Darwinian theory as an intellectual prop. Results of this Libertarian vision splendid included the relegation of the unemployed to the work houses where families were seperated, where mothers had to keep watch lest their babies' fingers were gnawed; where three year olds worked in the pits.

One "Satanist" writing in The Black Flame lauded the deportations to Australia as a "Satanic" measure to rid England of its "human locust" (sic). (Bradford de Rastrick, "Some Thoughts on Pentagonal Revisionism" TBF Vol.5 #1 & 2).

Yet those who were deported were the very individualists who had the courage and initiative to organize labour unions, for eg (which surely made THEM the rebels against the status quo) or those that stole some scrap in an effort to feed their families. So far from Australia being the Establishmentarian "Satanists eugenic dumping ground" for redundant humanity, the Australians, in a collective Nietzschean effort of self-overcoming, soon developed a strong sense of national identity (reflected at an early date in the Eureka rebellion, for eg) and a uniquely Australian culture formed by such geniuses as the writer Percy Stephenson (friend of Crowley's and a pro-Fascist) and the Nietzschean/pagan painter Norman Lindsay.

What Whig-Liberalism represented was a colossal waste of a nation's most valuable resource, its citizens, because it eschewed any form of social organization and national planning.

The Libertarian-Satanists claim to advocate "meritocracy" via their laissare faire sink-or-swim attitude. Yet because they are ignorant of political and economical realities, they do not understand that there cannot be even a semblence of meritocracy until such time as plutocracy is eliminated. And that is precisely what Fascism did.

There can be no meritocracy as long as the individual is constrained by the insecurity of usurious mortgages and other interest rates on compound debt; or the possibility of unemployment by unrestrained world trade, free credit movement and transnational company relocations, over which he can have absolutely no control, whatever his personal merits.

But any attempt by the state to establish any form of social order is decried by the Libertarians as tyranny and an intrusion on their delusionary "freedom".

Fascism sought to harness its citizens to creative tasks. It gave each individual the opportunity to fulfill their potential without recourse to egalitarian fantasies. It enabled every citizen to be elevated culturally through programmes such as "Strength Through Joy". The results were seen even by avid anti-Nazis such as William Shirer who admitted that:

"The young in the Third Reich were growing up to have strong and healthy bodies, faith in the future of their country and in themselves and a sense of fellowship and comraderie that shattered all class and economic and social barriers. I thought of that later, in the May days of 1940, when along the road between Aachen and Brussels one saw the contrast between the German soldiers, bronzed and clean-cut from a youth spent in the sunshine on an adequate diet, and the first British war prisoners, with the hollow chests, round shoulders, pasty complexions and bad teeth - tragic examples of the youth that England had neglected so irresponsibly in the years between the wars."

It seems clear enough, from actual results, what regime implemented genuine evolutionary principles, true Social Darwinism.

In the final analysis the difference between the Libertarian-Satanist and the "Fascist-Satanists" are fundamental: the former see Satanism as nothing more than rampant individualism to the point of trivialising life itself; the latter see Satanism as a Nietzschean/Faustian imperative towards continuing human ascent - both biological and cultural.

Appeared in Key of Alocer #5