“They decided to come after us. Almost like in 1937”

Sámi activist Valentina Sovkina, originally from the town of Lovozero in Russia’s Murmansk region, was forced to leave the country after a wave of searches targeting indigenous rights activists.

Sámi activist in exile. Valentina Sovkina had to flee from the Kola Peninsula. 

Photo: Sebastian Lerpold

LONG READ

Olesia Krivtsova journalist
Sebastian Lerpold journalist
11 March 2026 - 
THE BARENTS OBSERVER

Because of her work defending the rights of her people, Sovkina has faced bans on events, sustained harassment on social media, discrimination and even physical violence. The Barents Observer tells the story of her life — and her struggle to defend the right to be Sámi in Russia today.

A “search operation”

On December 19, 2025, the 62-year-old crossed the familiar border between Russia and Norway for what she believes may be the last time.

This time it did not feel like one of her usual trips abroad. There were no plans to meet relatives, no conferences on indigenous rights to attend. Sovkina was leaving Russia for the foreseeable future.

Two days earlier, on December 17, officers from Russian security services arrived at her flat in Lovozero. On the same day, the Federal Security Service (FSB) carried out searches at the homes of at least sixteen other people.

Security officers were looking for activists linked to the Aborigen Forum, a network of experts, civic leaders and organisations representing indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East.

Sovkina woke up to a knock on the door and at first assumed it was her son, who had forgotten his keys. Instead, armed security officers forced their way into the apartment.

“I asked them several times directly: ‘Is this a search?’” she recalls. “They replied: ‘No, it’s an inspection as part of a search operation.’”

Fled to Norway. Valentina relocated to the Norwegian East Finnmark region. Photo: Sebastian Lerpold

They explained that if it had been an official search, it would have looked very different.

“They said: ‘We would have burst in, thrown you to the floor, put you in handcuffs and turned everything upside down.’”

For four hours one officer carefully recorded the serial numbers of electronic devices, while another repeatedly demanded the passwords to her phone and computer.

Sovkina refused.

“So you have something to hide?” one of the officers asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “Photos of me in lingerie that I send to my husband.”

She remembers one of the officers commenting that her husband was “quite elderly”.

“Well, I’m not exactly young either,” she answered. “Do you think people stop having a life when they get older?”

During the visit she tried to unsettle the officers by speaking about omens and shamanism. On one officer’s wrist she noticed a bracelet made of shungite, a mineral often believed to promote physical well-being.

“You won’t have good health,” she told him, pointing at the supposed talisman.

That same day similar visits took place at the homes of other activists. Indigenous rights defender Daria Yegerova was later arrested by the Basmanny Court in Moscow and accused of involvement in the Aborigen Forum, which Russian authorities have designated a “terrorist organisation”.
Treated as “second-class”

Valentina Sovkina was born and raised in Lovozero, a Sámi town in the Murmansk region.

Much of her story revolves around the tundra and family life — and her childhood in a boarding school for disadvantaged children, which profoundly shaped her life.

She was sent there because of instability at home. Her parents struggled with alcohol.

“I don’t judge them,” she says. “Everything that brought them to that point was rooted in hardship. They simply weren’t needed by society.”

“What does a dysfunctional family mean? It means there are no separate beds, no desks, no school supplies. Everything is shared. We all slept in one bed — if there was a bed. Often we slept on skins.”

Their extended family lived together. Her grandparents spent much of their time in the tundra.

It was in the boarding school that she first experienced discrimination.

“The staff and visitors often treated us Sámi as if we were dirty,” she recalls.

They would say we smelled bad and look at us with disgust. They treated us like second-class people, as if we were somehow unworthy.”

Her family’s diet consisted largely of reindeer meat, fish and berries.

“That was simply the food we knew. Our homes smelled of the stove, of skins and of work. When you sew leather, scrape hides — there’s a specific smell, and it stays in the house.”

At the same time, that upbringing shaped her identity.

Valentina Sovkina. Photo: Sebastian Lerpold

“That’s when I began to understand who I was. We had our own food, our own way of life. Reindeer stood nearby, our grandfather would arrive and we would ride them. We wore traditional clothing, the malitsa.”

She remembers waking up to her grandmother singing luvvts — traditional improvised songs.

“My tundra, my tundra, how I miss you.”
“Waving the flag”


Valentina Sovkina began researching her family roots in the early 1990s, when she found herself in hospital. In the ward with her was another woman from Lovozero who unexpectedly said: “Did you know we are related?”

Sovkina recalls how she began sketching out a family tree by hand — drawing little squares, names and connections.

“That sheet of paper became the starting point of my journey back to myself,” she says.

Later, when she entered politics, people began referring to her as someone who was always “waving the flag”.

“I had the flag everywhere,” she says. “On my computer, on my phone, a badge on my cap. I was constantly showing it — saying: here I am, I’m here, I exist.”
“They came to our land”

For many years Sovkina represented the Sámi — an indigenous people of the Kola Peninsula — in dialogue with government authorities, industrial companies and international institutions.

In 2022 she was appointed a member of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, an advisory body to the United Nations.

Much of her advocacy has focused on opposing industrial projects affecting traditional Sámi lands.

Sovkina is a member of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Photo: private

She has also criticised what she calls the “decorativisation” of the Sámi — when authorities and tourism projects use Sámi culture as a picturesque backdrop while ignoring the real problems faced by communities.

Many of her speeches have addressed the rapid industrial development of northern territories.

In the Murmansk region a key actor is the mining giant Norilsk Nickel, whose subsidiaries operate across the Kola Peninsula.

According to activists, industrial expansion is destroying lands traditionally used by Sámi communities.

In recent years the Kola Peninsula has also become one of Russia’s key sites for the extraction of rare earth metals. Alongside nickel and palladium, attention has increasingly turned to lithium.

The Kola MMC is a regional subsidiary of Norilsk Nickel. 

Photo: Atle Staalesen

The Kolmozerskoye deposit, located near Sámi settlements and reindeer pastures in the Lovozero district, is considered Russia’s largest lithium project and a cornerstone of future battery production.

Expanding mining activity is pushing out traditional reindeer herding.

Compensation payments offered by companies, Sámi representatives say, fail to offset the long-term losses suffered by communities.

“I oppose Norilsk Nickel,” Sovkina says.

They came to our home. They want to take our land — the land where our reindeer graze. My grandfather is buried there, on an island in Lake Kolmozero.

“I understand the country needs lithium and other resources. But there are other places where extraction could happen. I don’t want them coming to our territory.”

According to Sovkina, state interests and corporate interests consistently override indigenous rights.

She points to the Association of Kola Sámi, which signed a cooperation agreement with Norilsk Nickel and receives funding from the company.

“Local indigenous leaders are often appointed from above and do not represent their communities,” she says.

“They are forced into partnerships with major corporations, which makes them dependent.”

In 2022, while crossing the border, Russian border guards took her aside for questioning.

FSB officers asked about her views on the Russian state, US policy — and finally about Norilsk Nickel.

“Ah, so that’s what this is about,” she replied. “You should have started with that.”
"To attack someone who wouldn't hurt a fly"

In 2014 Sovkina was travelling from Lovozero to the Norwegian town of Kirkenes, where she was due to catch a flight to New York for the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples.

That morning they discovered the tyres of their car had been slashed.

After finding another vehicle they set off, but police stopped them repeatedly along the road, searching the car and delaying them without formal documentation.

Border-crossing. Storskog is the only border-crossing point between Norway and Russia. Photo: Thomas Nilsen

“The reasons kept changing,” Sovkina recalls.

“At first they said it was a routine check. Then they said it was because of Ukraine — maybe we were transporting weapons.”

Near the town of Zapolyarny the car was stopped again.

As Sovkina spoke on the phone about what to do, a young man suddenly appeared and tried to snatch her bag containing documents and her phone.

“He started pulling at the bag. I held on — he pulled harder. Then he knocked me down and began dragging me.”

She fought back, kicking and shouting.

Meanwhile the driver was being held inside a police vehicle.

When he ran out to intervene, the police detained him — not the attacker.

“They grabbed the driver, not the attacker. The man simply ran away,” she says.

“It looked like a staged performance. A circus.”

The case was never properly investigated.

During later interrogations, one investigator suggested the officers had merely been following orders.

“I asked: whose orders? He said nothing. And I realised — even if they had killed me, it would still have been an order.”

It was after this, says Sovkina, that her attitude towards the state changed completely.

Now I am absolutely certain that I am not safe. You have shown that you can attack someone who wouldn't hurt a fly. You have completely changed my inner compass. I believed that the state was capable of protecting me."

She did fly to New York after all — a day late. She still has her passport. Other Russian participants in the conference were less fortunate: some of them were unable to leave, and some had their documents confiscated at the airports.
“The authorities don’t want us to be independent”

Pressure on Sámi activists long preceded the recent criminal cases under “extremism” and “terrorism” laws.

Sovkina says the first signs appeared when authorities began systematically obstructing attempts to organise meetings.

Whenever she arranged seminars or discussions in Lovozero, venues suddenly became unavailable.

Valentina Sovkina in Norway. Photo: Sebastian Lerpold

“They would say there were fire safety problems, or a burst pipe — always something.”

Eventually she concluded it was pointless to request space in public buildings.

“People who wanted to help were warned they might face consequences — that they could lose subsidies.”

She is convinced the FSB was behind the pressure.

Sovkina recalls how an unknown man came to an open event in Lovozero and asked permission to participate. He introduced himself as a ‘physical education teacher,’ but, as Valentina says, ‘it was immediately clear from his bearing that he was a security officer.’

"I told him, 'Sit down. We have no secrets. You can write everything down. We won't even speak in Sámi — we'll speak in Russian so that you can understand everything."

For two days, climate and oceanography experts discussed climate change, risks to the territory, long-term and short-term planning for Lovozero, and measures to be taken by the administration in the event of avalanche danger and other threats. After the meeting, the ‘physical education teacher’ approached Sovkina and asked a question:

"I still don't understand — what are you doing here that's so dangerous?"
Fighting the governor

Until 2010, Sámi Day, celebrated on February 6, was marked by the raising of the flag near the Murmansk regional administration building. However, activists later began to encounter problems.

Sovkina recalls how, in 2010, activists planned to raise the flag at the administration building. The governor did not appreciate the idea. "They went so far as to cut down the flagpoles so that we couldn't raise the flag near the building," says Sovkina, "so that there would be no topic for discussion. It turns out that even the government discussed it...

"How can we allow the flag to be raised? What if LGBT people come and demand the same thing?"

The Sámi responded with a protest: they came to the Murmansk administration building with drums and horns. Valentina was offered a compromise: "You raise the flag for half an hour, then take it down." She agreed, and the flag hung for a whole week.

It is not in their interest for us to be independent, it is not in their interest for us to be financially secure. We always talk about our territories, about the ancestral nature of these territories. We do not live in four districts. We live throughout the Murmansk region and have always lived here."

In the autumn of 2024, the authorities added the Free Nations of Postrussia Forum to the list of “terrorist structures" and declared 172 other initiatives to be its ‘structural subdivisions.’ The list included anti-war and decolonial projects, as well as movements for regional autonomy.

In addition, the Ministry of Justice recognised the ‘Anti-Russian Separatist Movement’ as extremist — an organisation that the ministry essentially invented itself by analogy with the ‘International LGBT Movement’ and the ‘International Satanist Movement.’
"This story is as old as the world itself"

Since 18 December 2025, Daria Yegereva, whose home was searched at the same time as Sovkina's, has been in custody. The indigenous rights activist and representative of the Selkup people is accused of ‘aiding terrorist activities.’

Sovkina condemned the persecution of activists.

"It is particularly outrageous that the Russian authorities are accusing activists of terrorism, for which people who have not committed and never called for violence are now being given monstrous prison sentences of 15 or 20 years in Russia. These sentences are not intended to “combat terrorism” but to intimidate. They have targeted those who have led and continue to lead a traditional way of life for centuries, herding reindeer, fishing, hunting and gathering wild plants on their own land. They preserve their knowledge, their knowledge of nature, bit by bit."

We must call a spade a spade: this is not a fight against terrorism, it is political revenge."

This is direct punishment by the state for the fact that representatives of Indigenous Peoples dare to appeal to the UN, speak about violations of their rights, participate in the work of international bodies and tell the truth about what is happening in Russia. The Russian authorities are deliberately criminalising the very idea of cooperation with the United Nations.

"This story is as old as the world itself — accusations of separatism, unwillingness to allow indigenous peoples to participate in decision-making, and the desire to maintain control over territories. This is exactly how colonial policy manifests itself," says Valentina's husband, Bjarne Store-Jacobsen.

Bjarne remembers the day of the search at Sovkina's house well — he watched what was happening from his home in the municipality of Nesseby, 100 kilometres from Kirkenes. Barents Observer journalists met with Valentina there.

The atmosphere at Valentina's home in Nesseby, Norway. Some of the work was done by her students. Photo: Sebastian Lerpold

Like Sovkina, Store-Jakobsen is a well-known Sámi activist. At the beginning of his political career, he became one of the key figures in the Sámi rights movement, in particular opposing the construction of a hydroelectric power plant in Alta, northern Norway.

Despite their similar political backgrounds on opposite sides of the Russian-Norwegian border, the activists did not meet until they were older. In Norway, Store-Jakobsen worked as a journalist throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and in 2005 he was elected to the Sámi Parliament of Norway. Three years after returning to politics, the parliament sent him to represent the Sámi in international Arctic cross-border cooperation.

The council was established in 1993. Thirty years later, in 2023, Russia was removed from participation in this cooperation after launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Despite living on different sides of the border, Sovkina and Store-Jakobsen maintained their relationship, meeting regularly. In 2020, they got married.

"She had a few days to leave the country. Otherwise, she would have been arrested," believes Bjarne Store-Jakobsen.

Valentina Sovkina and Bjarne Store-Jakobsen married in 2020. Photo: Sebastian Lerpold

The decision to leave Russia was difficult for Valentina, and she sometimes thinks about returning. But the possibility of ‘terrorism’ charges and the concern of her loved ones pushed her to take this step.

"It seems that my departure is an escape. But that's not in my nature. Sometimes I think I'm ready to drop everything and go back — and let everything burn. I want to know what's going on in my family. But if I'm deprived of the opportunity to speak, it won't do anyone any good."

Sovkina is currently awaiting a decision from the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI), to which she has applied for a residence permit on the grounds of family reunification. The UDI documents hang on the wall of her office.

Despite the fact that she now lives a normal life, Sovkina cannot shake the thought of returning to Russia. Even the understanding of the possible consequences — including imprisonment — does not deter her.
Echoes of Stalin’s terror

Today Sovkina draws a direct historical line between the repression of indigenous activists and events remembered by the Sámi as the “Sámi conspiracy”.

During Stalin’s purges in 1937–1938, Soviet authorities accused Sámi intellectuals and community leaders of forming a “counter-revolutionary nationalist organisation.”

They were charged with espionage, ties to Norway and Finland, and plans to separate the Kola Peninsula from the Soviet Union.

Among those arrested was Vasily Alymov, director of the Murmansk Regional Museum of Local History. About thirty other people were also repressed along with him. Most of them did not return: 15 people were shot, and 13 were sentenced to 10 years in prison.

When asked how often she herself was accused of separatism, Sovkina replies, ‘Practically all the time.’ After one of her speeches at the UN, a pro-government media outlet published an article in which accusations of separatism appeared on every other line.

"I read it and thought: my God, it's 1937 all over again. Another “conspiracy”, another search for enemies where people are simply talking about their rights."

"In essence, they have now decided to take us “under their wing”. The “Sámi conspiracy” involved doctors and scientists. And all because they were preserving their knowledge. What power that must be! That's why I have no moral right to give up."

"But I have an inner feeling that this will all end quickly. I believe in that."

Ex-CDC Vaccine Chief Scorches 'Bigoted Bully' Rand Paul For Saying ‘Lifestyle’ Disqualified Him From Job

Pocharapon Neammanee
Sat, September 6, 2025 

Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a former top official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, completely unloaded on Kentucky Senator Rand Paul Saturday morning after the Republican lawmaker criticized his “lifestyle.”

“You know, he doesn’t know me,” Daskalakis told CNN’s Victor Blackwell. “He doesn’t know my husband, and he doesn’t know my family. So I’m not sure why he feels willing to comment on my personal life.”

Dr. Demetre Daskalakis slammed Republican Paul Rand as a "bully." John Lamparski via Getty Images

Daskalakis, a gay man and advocate for LGBTQ+ health, defended himself from a barrage of MAGA fury this week following his recent resignation from the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R), who was once the center of online mockery for liking a hardcore porn video on Twitter, flew over to X to repost photos that showed Daskalakis scantily clad or wearing leather gear. Cruz asked his followers, “Would you trust this guy to make sensitive medical decisions for your family???”

Daskalakis responded to Cruz’s comments on X, writing, “I guess you can’t argue against the fact that public health is being destroyed… so instead you repost my instagram.”

Related: Republican Senators Grill RFK Jr. Over Chaos At CDC

The former vaccine chief called the attack “so 2022,” a reference to when right-wing critics called him a Satanist after they spotted a pentagram tattoo in one of his shirtless pictures. He noted at the time that the tattoo included the words, “I believe there’s a light even in the darkest place.”



Paul’s longer form attack on Daskalakis came Tuesday in an interview with The Hill. The senator expressed opposition to infant vaccinations against hepatitis B, and said that Daskalakis was the “biggest proponent of doing all this.”

“A guy that is so far … out of the mainstream, I think most people in America would discount his opinion because of the things he said in the past. He does not represent the mainstream of anything in America,” Paul said.

The Kentucky lawmaker and licensed ophthalmologist went on to say Daskalakis “should have never had a position in government,” adding that he “brags about his lifestyle.”

“You know, this whole idea of bondage and, you know, multiple partners and all that stuff,” Paul told the outlet. “He brags about that stuff, but he’s got no business being in government. It’s good riddance.” 

Daskalakis told Blackwell on Saturday, “I don’t care what the senator says about my personal life.”

“My record of public service, ending outbreaks and protecting the public health stands for itself,” he continued.

Daskalakis then took aim at Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr., saying Paul has “adequate evidence” that Kennedy is “hazardous to the health of American children and other vulnerable people.”

“So, I mean, I think that really he should take that up rather than being a bigoted bully toward me or others. I mean, I think he’s a doctor, right? Doctors aren’t supposed to do that,” Daskalakis said.

Related...

Pro-Trump New York Post Utterly Shreds RFK Jr. In Brutal Editorial: ‘Paranoid Kook’


Ex-CDC Vaccine Chief Accuses RFK Jr. Of Lying To Congress: 'Just Continually Making Things Up'


'MADMAN!': Lawrence O’Donnell Goes Scorched Earth On 'Dangerous Nepo Baby' RFK Jr.

‘Liberalism Much More Dangerous and Harmful than Satanism,’ Dugin Says

 

‘Liberalism Much More Dangerous and Harmful than Satanism,’ Dugin Says

Paul Goble

Tuesday, July 29, 2025

            Staunton, July 28 – Aleksandr Dugin, the influential advocate of neo-Eurasianism, says that liberalism is “much more dangerous and harmful than satanism,” a remark that suggests at least some in Moscow would like to ban some invented “International Liberalism Movement much as it recently banned a non-existent “International Satanist Movement.

            Doing so, precisely because these groups don’t exist and so the powers that be can define what constitutes “liberalism,” there is a danger that Dugin’s words are the opening salvo of an attack on liberalism in Russia, one that could result in increased persecution. (On such bans and their use, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/07/banning-groups-that-dont-exist.html.)

            Dugin made his comments in the course of a roundtable discussion of “Russia as the Center of Orthodox Civilization.” He specifically contrasted Western civilization based on liberalism and Russian civilization based on Orthodox Christianity and the traditions of Russian statehood (business-gazeta.ru/article/678746).

            “A distinctive characteristic of Western civilization,” he says, “consists in the fact that it seeks to escape from its roots and constantly distances itself from them … “Our civilization in contrast constantly returns to its origins … That is, “the West proceeds by the denial of its roots while we do not.”

            That makes Russian culture a model for emulation by others and thus a universal civilization while the West is not universal despite its pretensions to being on because it keeps rejecting its past in the name of a future that its past does not define, the Russian neo-Eurasianist says. 

ANARCHISM IS RADICAL LIBERALISM 

 

Kansas Satanists to defy governor with ‘therapeutic blasphemy’ in black mass at Statehouse

Sherman Smith, 

Kansas Reflector

March 12, 2025

TOPEKA — All hail civil disobedience.

Gov. Laura Kelly intervened Wednesday in satanists’ plans to conduct a black mass on March 28 at the Statehouse by declaring they would not be allowed inside

The satanists plan to defy her undivine wisdom.

“We will be showing up on the 28th,” said Michael Stewart, founder and president of the Satanic Grotto, which organized the event. “We will be entering the building and attempting to perform the mass, and if Capitol Police want to stop us, they will need to arrest us.”

The Satanic Grotto’s plans to conduct a black mass in the Statehouse rotunda stimulated considerable attention online — and outrage from the Catholic Church.

In cheeky social media posts, Stewart describes satanists as “the scariest thing in the dark.”

But in an interview, he said he was planning a safe event, with nothing to be afraid of. His said his group has about three dozen members, primarily from Kansas City and Wichita, and is nonviolent.

“The black mass is a satanic version of the Catholic mass, meant to reflect our own pain and anger of us being subjected to religion that we never gave consent to,” Stewart said. “It was imposed upon us. So the ritual is sort of — you can think of it as therapeutic blasphemy.”

The group describes itself on its website as an independent and nondenominational church whose members are feminist, LBGTQ+ allies, and anti-racist — “Nazi Satanists can f---- off.”

The Satanic Grotto’s event listing on Facebook shows 26 plan to attend and 116 are interested in the event.

Chuck Weber, of Kansas Catholic Conference, said in a March 6 statement that such an “explicit demonstration of anti-Catholic bigotry will be an insult to not only Catholics, but all people of good will.”

“The Catholic Bishops of Kansas ask that first and foremost, we pray for the conversion of those taking part in this event, as well as each person’s own conversion of heart during this scared Season of Lent,” Weber said in the statement.

The governor entered the arena Wednesday, when she issued a statement declaring her concerns about the event. She said there are “more constructive ways to protest and express disagreements without insulting or denigrating sacred religious symbols.”

She acknowledged the right to freedom of speech and expression — “regardless of how offensive or distasteful I might find the content to be” — and that she has limited authority to respond to the planned event.

“That said, it is important to keep the Statehouse open and accessible to the public while ensuring all necessary health and safety regulations are enforced,” Kelly said in her statement. “Therefore, all events planned for March 28 will be moved outdoors to the grounds surrounding the Statehouse. Again, no protests will be allowed inside the Statehouse on March 28.”




Stewart said the governor’s office didn’t call him before issuing the public statement.

“This is a Democrat governor bowing to religious and Republican pressure,” Stewart said. “There was enough outrage that she had to do something, but she’s so chicken to actually stand up for anything, the best she could do was try to shuffle us outside and make it look like she has done something to save her own hide instead of standing up for religious and free speech.”

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com

‘Jesus is better than a psychologist’: AZ GOP wants chaplains to be in public schools

Photo by Edward Cisneros on Unsplash

Caitlin Sievers,

 Arizona Mirror

March 12, 2025

Republican politicians who accuse public school teachers of indoctrinating students with a “woke agenda” are pushing to bring religious chaplains into the same schools to provide counseling to students.

“I think Jesus is a lot better than a psychologist,” Rep. David Marshall, R-Snowflake, said during a March 11 meeting of the Arizona House of Representatives’ Education Committee.

Marshall said that he’s been a chaplain who provides counseling for 26 year

Senate Bill 1269, sponsored by Flagstaff Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers, was modeled after similar legislation passed in recent years in Texas and Florida.

The proposal would give school districts the option of allowing volunteer religious chaplains to provide counseling and programs to public school students. Districts that decide to allow chaplains would be required to provide to parents a list of the volunteer chaplains at each school and their religious affiliation, and parents would be required to give permission for their child to receive support from a chaplain.

Despite ample concerns that the proposal violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and that it would open up schools to legal liability for any bad mental health advice a chaplain might provide, the bill has already passed through the Senate on a party-line vote. The House Education Committee also approved it along party lines.

Rogers told the Education Committee that the existence of any requirement for the separation of church and state in U.S. law “was a myth,” adding that she sees no harm in bringing religion into public schools.

Rogers, a far-right extremist, has embraced white nationalism, and in 2022 spoke at a white nationalist conference, calling the attendees “patriots” and advocating for the murder of her political enemies.

She has also said she is “honored” to be endorsed by a prominent antisemitic Christian nationalist and regularly trafficks in antisemitic tropes. And Rogers has advocated racist theories, appeared on antisemitic news programs and aligned herself with violent anti-government extremists.

Democrats on the committee raised the alarm that Rogers’ bill would violate the Establishment Clause by allowing chaplains with religious affiliations to counsel students, while not providing the same kinds of services to students who don’t follow a religion or who follow a less-common religion with no chaplains available to the school.

An amendment to the bill, proposed by committee Chairman Matt Gress, a Phoenix Republican, requires that the chaplains be authorized to conduct religious activities by a religious group that believes in a supernatural being. The amendment would also allow a volunteer chaplain to be denied from the list if the school’s principal believes their counsel would be contrary to the school’s teachings.

Both of these changes would allow districts to exclude chaplains from The Satanic Temple of Arizona, a group that doesn’t believe in a higher power but promotes empathy and has chapters across the country that challenge the intertwining of Christianity and government.

Oliver Spires, a minister with The Satanic Temple of Arizona, voiced his opposition to Rogers’ bill during a Feb. 5 Senate Education Committee meeting.

The legislation, Spires said, would disproportionately impact students from minority religions who see Christian chaplains providing support to their peers while no chaplains representing their religion are available.

“If a district listed a Satanist on their chaplain list, would they have your support?” he asked the committee members.

Gress’s amendment would preclude that.

Gaelle Esposito, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, told committee members on Tuesday that school counselors are required to undergo specialized training to prepare them to help students — requirements that religious chaplains wouldn’t have to meet, even though they’d be providing similar services.

“They will simply not be equipped to support students dealing with serious matters like anxiety, depression, eating disorders, self harm or suicidal ideation,” Esposito said. “Religious training is not a substitute for academic and professional training in counseling, health care or mental health… Even with the best intentions, chaplains may provide inappropriate responses or interventions that could harm students.”

But as Democrats on the House Education Committee argued that Arizona should provide more funding for trained counselors and social workers to help students with mental health issues, the Republicans on the panel said that students are actually struggling with mental health issues because they don’t have enough religion in their lives.

“I’ve heard that there is a mental health crisis afflicting kids,” Gress, a former school board member, said. “Now, I don’t necessarily think in many of these cases that something is medically wrong with these kids. I think, perhaps, there is a spiritual deficit that needs to be addressed.”

Rep. Justin Olson, R-Mesa, said he’s been frustrated by the federal courts’ interpretation of the First Amendment to require the separation of church and state, claiming it has made the government hostile to religion instead of protecting it.

“I heard comments here today that this is going to harm kids — harm kids by being exposed to religion? That is absolutely the opposite of what is happening here today in our society,” Olson said. “We have become a secular society, and that is damaging our society. We need to have opportunities for people to look to a higher power, and what better way than what is described here in this bill?”

Democratic Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, of Tucson, called SB1269 “outrageous” and “incredibly inappropriate.”

And Rep. Stephanie Simacek, of Phoenix, pointed out that the courts have repeatedly ruled against allowing religious leaders to be invited to share their faith with public school students. She described Rogers’ bill as indoctrination that gives preferential treatment to students who have religious beliefs over those who don’t

“No one is saying that you may not go and celebrate your God, however you see fit,” Simacek, a former teacher and school board member, said. “But this is not the place, in public education, where our students go to learn math, reading and writing and history.”

Florida’s school chaplain law, which went into effect last July and is similar to Rogers’ proposal, has received ample pushback from First Amendment advocacy groups, as well as some church groups who said that allowing untrained chaplains to provide mental health support to students would have unintended negative consequences.

The option to bring chaplains into schools in Florida has not been particularly popular, with several large school districts deciding not to implement a program allowing them.

Proposed legislation similar to SB 1269 has been introduced in red states across the country this year, including in Indiana, Nebraska, Iowa, Montana and North Dakota.

The bill will next be considered by the full House of Representatives. If it passes the chamber, it will return to the Senate for a final vote before heading to Gov. Katie Hobbs.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com.

Robert Morris, Texas megachurch pastor and former Trump adviser, indicted for child sex crimes

U.S. President Donald Trump is greeted by Pastor Robert Morris as he arrives for a roundtable discussion with members of the faith community, law enforcement and small business at Gateway Church Dallas Campus in Dallas, Texas, on June 11, 2020. Credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Robert Downenand
The Texas Tribune

March 13, 2025

Robert Morris, the Dallas-area megachurch pastor who resigned last year amid sexual abuse allegations, has been indicted in Oklahoma for child sex crimes that date back to the 1980s.

Morris is a former spiritual aviser to President Donald Trump, and Gateway — one of the nation’s largest megachurches — has been particularly active in politics. In 2020, Trump held a “Roundtable on Transition to Greatness” there that was attended by then-U.S. Attorney General William Barr and other prominent Republicans.

Morris faces five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office said in a Wednesday evening press release.

The indictment comes less than a year after Morris resigned from Gateway Church in Southlake after an adult woman, Cindy Clemishire, said Morris repeatedly sexually assaulted her while she was a child in Oklahoma in the 1980s. Morris was at the time working as a traveling preacher.

The video player is currently playing an ad. You can skip the ad in 5 sec with a mouse or keyboard

In a Wednesday text message, Clemshire said through an attorney that she was grateful for the indictments.

“After almost 43 years, the law has finally caught up with Robert Morris for the horrific crimes he committed against me as a child,” she said. “Now, it is time for the legal system to hold him accountable. My family and I are deeply grateful to the authorities who have worked tirelessly to make this day possible and remain hopeful that justice will ultimately prevail.”

Clemshire’s disclosures last summer set off a political maelstrom in Texas and nationally, and prompted prominent Republicans to call for Morris to resign. Among those who said he should step down was Rep. Nate Schatzline, a Fort Worth Republican.

Schatzline is a pastor at Mercy Culture Church, a Tarrant County congregation that was founded with financial support from Gateway. Since then, Mercy Culture has become an epicenter of fundamentalist Christian movements and a staple of that Tarrant County GOP often hosting political events and figures.

Gateway has been similarly active in local politics: Ahead of contentious local school board elections in 2021, the church was accused of violating federal rules on political activity by churches after it displayed the names of candidates, including some church members, who were running for office.

Morris denied the allegations at the time, saying that the church was not endorsing candidates but thought the church’s roughly 71,000 members would “want to know if someone in the family and this family of churches is running.”


The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org

David From Queer Satanic on Power Dynamics, Anarchy, and Satanism

Jan 28, 2025

From The Child and its Enemies by mk and sprout

YouTube link here: https://youtu.be/QuV0cZSUdMQ?si=4jOJw1iD7DMXb8SS

mk: Hello and welcome to the And Its Enemies, a podcast about. Queer and Neurodivergent Kids Living Out Anarchy and Youth Liberation Here at The Child and Its Enemies, we believe that youth autonomy is not only crucial to queer and trans liberation, but to anarchy itself. Governance is inherently based on projecting linear narratives of time and development and gender onto our necessarily asynchronous and atemporal queer lives.

And youth and teens are at the center of this form of oppression. Our goal with the podcast is to create a space by and for youth that challenges all forms of control and inspires us to create third barrel ageless networks of care. I’m your host, MK Zario. I’m 16 years old, and I’m a transmasculine lesbian poet, theater artist, movement journalist, and insurrectionary anarchist in the Great Lakes region.

With me today is David from Queer Satanic.

David: Howdy my name is David Johnson. I use he, him pronouns. I’m 30 or 40 years old, and I’m a Satanist and anarchist from Seattle by way of West Texas. I spent most of the past five years as the target of a series of lawsuits by an abusive religious organization.

mk: Oh, wow yeah, in this time of heightened state repression, I think a lot of us view state repression as something that’s driven by police and that type of thing, but it’s so true that high control spaces of all kinds can weaponize it, and I’m so sorry that you had to deal with that.

David: Yeah. It’s a it’s a legal system, not a justice system.

That is the important thing to keep in mind.

mk: So what exactly is queer satanic and what exactly is satanism? Can you tell us a bit more about all that for people who may not be familiar?

David: For sure. Yeah. I would start with what satanism is because I think maybe not your listeners, but in the general public, people have an idea of satanism that is mostly formed by the satanic panic of the.

Late 70s, 80s and 90s. The static panic basically was this conspiracy fantasy that there was a shadowy cabal of people at every level of society and they were worshiping a literal, supernatural evil being called the devil and they did ritual abuse and sacrifices and blood magic and all of this stuff.

And that is almost completely untrue. I don’t think at the level of there being like a conspiracy, like lots of people like that, it’s completely untrue. I think there probably have been some people who have had mental issues or they have just. Tried to justify the things they’re doing by saying the devil made me do it.

I won’t say that’s never happened, but that wasn’t a widespread thing. And for years, that’s the idea that people had about satanism and that’s never really existed. What has existed since the late 1960s and Anton LaVey is a sort of inverted Christianity. You may have seen one of the major symbols of Satanism is an inverted cross.

You just take a Latin cross, you flip it upside down, now it’s sacrilegious, now it’s blasphemous. That’s how a lot of things work with Satanism. But because Christianity is so many different things, a lot of them in contradiction with each other, a lot of them in conflict with each other what you are inverting can change a lot.

The the Satanism of Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan which was originally could have developed in San Francisco in the late 1960s and 70s it looked at Christianity as being too egalitarian too charitable too much about denying the body. Therefore, his version of Satanism was, we’re going to do the opposite of that.

We’re going to be all about power and about how you have the right to hurt anybody that comes into your home. And one of the positive things, they were actually pretty legitimately More open minded less judgmental about all kinds of sexuality, transsexuality, asexuality, that was actually for 1960s pretty good but everything else was he was surrounded by hippies and he was looking at like the kinds of Christians that were in San Francisco and going, I want the opposite of that, I want something that worships power and might I would say that’s a bad figure to take the 1 thing, about Satan is that he fought God and he didn’t win.

That’s the in the Bible. That’s the version of the story that, Satan rebelled with the 3rd of the angels. And it didn’t work out well for him. He got sent down to hell. So if you’re worshiping power and might. It doesn’t make a ton of sense to me that you would pick the devil for that.

But again, it’s not really that complicated. They just look to Christianity and flip it upside down. Alright, so that is the only form of Satanism that really exists up until closer to the present. There’s always a bunch of these offshoots that come from the Church of Satan, like the Temple of Set.

Is a group that comes about in the 70s, those group they do start to explicitly worship a supernatural deity. They’re still a lot smaller, though. A bunch of different, just family situation was messy. His daughter, 1 of his daughters, 2 of his daughters his ex, they’ll break off and form the 1st church, the original, the truth, whatever it is.

But. When it dies in the end of the 1990s, Satanism just doesn’t have a place to go up until in 2012 there was a guy named Kevin Soling who was a a landlord, I guess he was looking for like fun things to do. He wanted to make a prank documentary film about the nicest satanist you ever met, and he met a guy named Doug Meko, who now goes by Lucian GREs, and him and a third guy tried to make a prank documentary film project about satanism that at some point just became a real organization.

That’s what the Satanic Temple is. And over time, that sort of evolved into what if Satanists were progressive? What if, instead of I don’t know, being edgelords who associate with Charles Manson and, right wing things, what if Satanists supported bodily autonomy and they supported cleaning up the side of a road and that kind of thing?

And so that’s where we’re at at the present moment of what Satanism is. There is small groups of people who call themselves Satanists, who maybe do worship a literal supernatural figure or they’re demonologers, they’re Luciferians. There’s a whole bunch of folks where there’s not that many of us all together.

We’re all very weird that exists, but most of us are non theistic Satanists who use. Satan or the devil as a figure of rebellion and because the systemic temple had very good marketing, but did not live up to its ideals is also shed off a series of different collectives, organizations and so forth that are trying to live up to this ideal of if Christianity is about worshiping power, if Christianity is about saying that God is on the side of the bankers and the soldiers and the kings and all the people who have Everything, and they must deserve it.

If Christianity is the prosperity gospel and saying that you’re only a pork or you didn’t try well enough. That sounds like I’m on the side of the devil. And I want to choose the force that is rebelling against that choosing the force that says I will fight tyranny, no matter how omnipotent it is, because tyranny has to be opposed anywhere.

So that was a long description of sadism. Does that make sense?

mk: Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing all that history around how it was really decentralized and based around these various groups with their incredibly different orientations toward it, like anarchism, but maybe with some Less great undertones.

David: I guess I would go back. You said decentralized the history that I’m aware of is a bunch of like highly centralized small groups.

mk: Oh, absolutely.

Yes. I guess mean that there are so many different takes on it.

David: Yeah, exactly.

mk: Yeah. So can you share a bit more about the legal side of things like what the legal developments have been with queer satanic and how you’ve navigated that?

David: I did not get around to saying what is queer satanic? Because it was not ever supposed to be a thing. I was someone who joined the satanic temple in 2019. And I was coming to it with the idea that it was a anti reactionary group. It was like, what if atheism, but it had certain positive values and community.

And we even had committees, which I don’t know that should be a green flag for other people. But for me, it was like, oh, there’s committees. You join things, you vote on stuff. There’s collaborative decision making but at some point in early 2020, it became clear that wasn’t the actual structure.

It was like the formal legal structure of. And when a series of like past abuses in the organization came to light and the leadership chose not to respond to that with anything but like insults and threats and like wanting to tell people like to get out or whatever it became apparent that this was not a group that was good or healthy.

And so me and a few other people got kicked out. And when we got kicked out, we also met other people who had to. Left or been expelled locally and actually, in fact, there’s a much bigger deal. And so I had been the social media manager of the Washington state Facebook page. I did, I would say 90 percent of the posting for it and other things.

And when they kicked me out and didn’t reach out to me, tell me anything. I basically, I couldn’t log into a discord server anymore. That’s how I found out that I wasn’t a member. I waited about a week. And then kept getting news articles sent to me and past statements from, the founders found 1 of the 1 of the founders had tried to be a cargo cult Messiah in the past found out as this whole history that Lucian Greaves or Doug Masico where he had these white nationalist ties, and he had been really big into eugenics and forceful sterilization and stuff.

And so I posted. On the Washington state chapter page, just these articles, past member statements and such. And that led to this is that temple TST suing me and 3 other people almost picked at random out of this group that they had kicked out. And they just kept coming after us in a series of lawsuits starting at the federal level.

He got dismissed. It’s I think, so they started all of this starts around April of 2020. Right as the COVID 19 pandemic is really picking up in the United States and it just seems so ludicrous to sue for members of what I thought was a legitimate religion over a Facebook page.

And we got it dismissed the 1st time in February of 2021 and they refiled and they I think got it dismissed again the next time in January of 2023. And they appealed that to the 9th circuit, and they also refiled something a couple of months later in a state court. So you can also pursue litigation through state court.

The same time you’re doing other aspects of it in federal court and that went on from April of 2020 until October 24th of 2024 when we got the last. very much. Part of the case dismissed again, and there wasn’t any appeal to it. We kept winning, but they kept filing more things and we kept having to pay our lawyer to do the legal work to answer them and get new dismissals.

And that was extraordinarily expensive stressful and time consuming.

mk: Oh, wow that really speaks to the way that the legal system can be weaponized, even when one side is obviously being petty and, trying to exert control rather than even pointing out a legitimate violation of any law.

Yeah. From a theory standpoint I understand that the Satanic Temple has been profoundly abusive, but can Satanism itself ever be relevant to youth liberation in your opinion, or even be liberatory? Or would you say that these types of groups that have used it to be incredibly high control have tainted it for the anarchist movement?

David: That’s a great question. You have some experience with knowing people. In your age group who had looked into different kinds of Satanism, is that correct?

mk: Yes, I sure have. I’ve known many teenagers who have read maybe a little bit of LeVay because they wanted to be edgy and then been immediately grossed out by the bigotry and then decided not to, and that’s my sole exposure.

David: Yeah, that’s a better reaction for sure. Yeah, I don’t think I covered this and it’s like the overall history, but Anton LeVay’s book, the the Satanic Bible. I think he wrote it like under a deadline, and so it’s a bit of a mess. I’m, I would not say it’s a great work of literature in general.

And like you said, it’s got a lot of gross stuff in there but a significant portion of the first part, which he calls the book of Satan is this literally plagiarized from a book published in 1896 called might is right by Ragnar Redbeard. His real name was Arthur Desmond. And that, that’s.

It’s a pretty grotesque book that I think is best described as proto fascism. So this is, like about 20 years before official Mussolini fascism comes about. But it shares a lot of ideas in common. Whites, it’s yeah, it’s white supremacist. It’s deeply misogynistic incredibly anti semitic.

He’s, and also I think an interesting thing about this. That sort of shows what I was saying before about the inversion being, a problematic. Ragnar Redbeard in Might is Right hates Christianity because it’s too egalitarian. It cares, and his, and this guy’s evaluation of Christianity.

It cares too much about everybody and making sure everybody has basic needs met. Now, that has not been my experience with Christianity in my life. And if that is what was happening in Christianity, I think I’d have a lot fewer problems with it. Especially at the national political level.

But this guy. Looked at Christianity and said, it’s too nice. He cares too much about people. That’s what LeVay took out of it. But I think what’s interesting is that there are older appeals to Satan, Lucifer to this idea that because the Christians. Put all of these things into they’re they blame the devil for so much.

And there’s like this joke about how once again, Satan is the logical and compassionate choice. And I think that’s a thing that showed up in probably 1st paradise lost by John Milton. That’s the famous 1. But really throughout the 19th century. And there were quite a few anarchists who brought Satan up as a liberatory figure as someone who answers the idea that.

If you, as a Christian, are saying, listen to the priests, listen to the divine right kings, listen to the ones that God is blessing, it is actually proper then to say, I choose instead as my my mascot, I choose instead as like the symbolic figure that I will associate with the guy who’s fighting that stuff.

And I don’t know, have you ever read it was these. Like Fragments by Felix Pignol. Is that a thing you’ve ever come across before?

mk: I am not familiar, but I’ll definitely do some Googling about that. I am, I really am less than aware of, I’m not too educated on Satanism as a whole, beyond the way that it, beyond the ways that it’s influenced the anarchist movement, which of course have been quite a bit.

David: And this is, that sort of thing. This is 1854 and it’s called, The philosophy of defiance or pardon for Cain and at least the first fragment that we have of it says, give me any epithets you wish. I accept them all in advance. I have only one thought and envision only one glory. It is to strike everywhere and always as much as I can to the principle of domination.

Satan and his revolt is my father and in his courage, Cain is my brother. And it goes on in that idea that if I am going to fight domination, then the worst tyrant is God. However, God is not the only tyrant and you have to strike against all of these other ways that hierarchy and domination exists.

And Mikhail Bakunin has his own problems, but he has this famous passage about an in here set step Satan, the liberator. And so to your question, is Satanism something that is salvageable? I do not know if it is worth that. However, we can point back at earlier anarchists socialists people that were looking at.

Kind of a universe around them that was based on domination and oppression and they’re picking this figure that kind of everybody was familiar with And has been imbued with great power by Christians and then saying I choose to be on this side and empower myself To fight against you in this way and I don’t know that it works for everybody and I would say that for a lot of people, that idea of just you take something that is a thing you’ve come to understand is not correct and you invert it.

And now you keep the entire structure in place. You just do the opposite. That to me is really dangerous. That’s the thing that kind of happens a lot. And the much more important thing to do is deconstruction. We have to deconstruct and pull apart these ideas that fit together and have really harmful effects.

And really think about them and then reconstruct them into something that’s more useful. You can probably use Satanism to do that, but I think like for young people in particular, not just young people, but for people looking to radically make a break with their past, they think that if I do the opposite, if I do the inversion of it, then I have done this, and I would caution against doing that because you don’t always see how you were still preserving lots of these nasty awful things.

You’re just thinking you’re doing the opposite, but you’ve returned to the same place. Does that make sense?

mk: Yeah, so you’re saying that there’s almost a reactionary side to it because it’s so much about being against Christianity rather than for anything. And therefore, from a youth liberation standpoint, it might not always be the most useful, even if it’s technically salvageable.

David: Yeah. And also you, you might want to make your own stuff because I haven’t really got into this. Just the ideology of Satanism from LeVay on has the actual ideology that exists is bad. It’s Nazi adjacent. That’s not a that’s not a pejorative.

That is not me trying to say something that is inflammatory. Anton LeVay works with, White nationalists for a bunch of years. He literally was a card carrying Nazi in the 1970s. Now, he himself was not a Nazi. He just got along well with him and his ideas of like anti egalitarianism are ones that, that obviously work well with fascists.

Most Satanists are not fascists, but most Satanists haven’t thought enough about what rebellion really looks like. And I think a lot of Satanists embrace this aesthetic idea of rebellion. Without doing any of the work of actual rebellion if you choose and and almost like consumerist way, say, I have adopted a fashion and tattoos and jewelry and I bought this book and this alter and therefore I’m a rebel.

That confuses like what it actually takes to rebel, which often involves lots of very boring choices. Lots of friction for social interactions and things. And you can fool yourself into thinking you’ve made a bigger change than you actually have. Just because you are distracted by the pageantry of Satanism, that is 1 of the nice things about Satanism is it does have pageantry and ritual.

It does allow people to have. More than like atheism, just drains the life out of things for some people you just lose a lot of things. Satanism is like adding something back in for some people, but it can trick you into thinking that you have made a more radical change that has actually taken place because you haven’t deconstructed anything.

And you’ve just painted it black and said wow, it’s so different now. I would say oftentimes it’s not that different.

mk: Yes, that absolutely makes sense. Thank you so much for expressing that perspective. I feel like the same can happen with statism to some extent. Like, when youth and teens see a problem with statism, they often pivot to DSA style socialism, thinking that it’s the opposite of the government they’ve been exposed to, rather than, questioning the institution of government.

And to some extent, that can be helpful, because, in electoral politics, getting teens to actually care about voting is a struggle. However, From an anarchist standpoint that really misses the point of what liberatory organizing can be. So Yeah, thank you for pointing out that dynamic that tends to play out with Both christian hegemony and as we can see almost every other oppressive institution So last time we chatted about this you shared something about the necessity of actually questioning oppression rather than simply inverting it the way satanism might Do you see youth doing this kind of inversion at all when it comes to ageism, and how could we grow away from it?

David: Yeah, I do see that to some extent with ageism I think it’s pretty common to have people say boomer. And I believe most of the time boomer is intended. As like an ideology or like a way of viewing and moving throughout the world and treating other people. But there is a way to slip into old people are bad and, or people from a previous generation.

They’re the ones that are responsible for this which I think misses like, all kinds of power dynamics. I think like the fact that old people tend to be more conservative. Yeah. That’s true. But I think Martin Luther King Jr and Henry Kissinger were about the same age, but Kissinger got to leave, live 40, 50 years longer.

And less dramatic ways, just if you are a poor working person, you probably are going to have health problems you get from work, from stress, or you won’t be able to go get healthcare for something that is actually preventable and treatable. And if you’re not including in your ageism analysis, all of these other things of race and class and just all of these other axes that you can be oppressed by.

I think you can miss the just like huge amount of solidarity we have with people of all ages. When you meet someone who is I don’t know, 85 years old and remembers what it was like when it was literally illegal to walk down the street with. Something like I think in New York, it was like, if you had more than 3 pieces of clothing of like the quote, unquote, wrong gender, you could be arrested for that.

That was like, into the 60s. It’s that’s a thing that seemed like shocking. How can that even be? It seems ridiculous, but it was the way that people lived and also they created lives in that time. And being able to create this cross. Yeah. Generation solidarity is important and useful in lots of ways.

And you can definitely miss that. If you just go, young people are the greatest at everything. Old people don’t know anything. They’re bad. That’s not a useful way to look at the world, even though it is simple and easy to do.

mk: Yeah, one thing I see a lot with newer youth liberationists, or people who have maybe just discovered it, is this idea that every adult is by nature going to oppress youth and teens.

And I always have to say no, it isn’t the fact that some people are older, it’s the construct of age and linear time, and the idea of compulsory education and the nuclear family that gives them this much power. Just being straight isn’t in and of itself a problem, but the fact that straight people get societal power sure is.

But I think with age it’s harder to navigate because, it feels a lot more different to youth and teens because all they’ve ever known is adults holding power over them.

David: Yeah, exactly. And, it’s just it’s hard to it’s hard to deconstruct something that is that just embanked in society.

Like you’re saying, every law has ageism baked into it and also all these cultural things about just, who you’re supposed to listen to and who is not supposed to be listened to. And so it, I think it’s easy. And also I’m sure there is some utility and just rejecting something wholesale and saying, I think all of that’s wrong, and I’m going to do the opposite. That’s a thing. I think a lot of people go through as part of their development towards something else that is more constructive, something that is more long term viable, but. It’s a thing I think people should be more aware of just you don’t want to, you don’t want to stay in that place for very long, and it has its own dangers to it.

mk: Yes, absolutely. Especially because then you’re closing yourself off to a whole network of care. One of the most youth liberationist things I’d say I try to do is having equal friendships with people who are older than me, rather than always assuming that adults hold power over me. And that’s really helped with unlearning internalized ageism.

But for a youth 13 who sees every adult ever as an oppressor, that doesn’t really work out. .

David: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s like you can learn things, like you said the importance there is like how you are aware of what’s happening and like the power relationships that are actually at play.

And like you mentioned, the thing about like joining the DSA. I think that’s relevant to this, just in the sense that if you’ve identified the problem is ageism, or the problem is like the powers of age, you might miss the other ways that relationships can be toxic, abusive, etc.

I’ve solved it. There’s this one, there’s this one thing. This is the one thing. And once I fix that, it’s all fixed. That’s not how it works. This may seem like far field, but I sometimes see straight women in particular talking about how they wish they could just date other women, because then they wouldn’t have all of these problems and relationships.

And that sort of denies the full humanity of lesbian relationships. The fact that women can be awful to each other, like in very mundane ways, just because we’re humanity, right? And this is something that like you can very easily slide into there’s one problem in the world.

And if I just flip that upside down or, attack that. Then none of their problems exist. And that’s not how that’s not how these things work. And that’s less satisfying and harder. As long as you can only learn it by making the mistake. But it’d be better if you could learn it before making the mistake.

mk: Yes, absolutely. I think there’s something to be said. The idea that all bigotry comes back to the same societal forces of, coercive control and hierarchy. But at the same time, when that’s always the rhetoric, it can be hard to address things for what they are. Like, for example, when I was first organizing and hadn’t found anarchism quite yet, so I was in a lot of neoliberal spaces whenever I’d mention the existence of homophobia, whatever What people would say was, would just be, Oh, homophobia is the fault of capitalism and capitalist beauty standards.

And once capitalism is over, homophobia will be too. And it’s but what about homophobia in this very affinity group that we have the choice to not do so often? It’s a way that people let themselves off the hook in some ways. Do you see that dynamic happening at all with the. Reductive inversion of Satanism.

David: Yeah, I, and also like people just. In general so overwhelmingly Satanism is it’s a very white like space. And there are some very good historical reasons for that. Again, when Anton is I think the and Nazis are fun and white nationalists are like, not a problem.

That’s going to push out lots of other kinds of people. I don’t think it’s just that. I think a big part of it is that going back to that thing of you’ve embraced this identity of rebellion, but not done anything else. And I think that means that a lot of people coming into it feel like they’ve done all the work, and they haven’t done the work.

Yes, exactly. Like this idea

mk: that I don’t know if you’ve read the zine red flags, but it’s it’s all about ml groups Especially in smaller midwestern cities So obviously I read it because I am in the great lakes region and have to deal with this on a regular basis but their main thesis was that often people especially with white slash cis privilege will end up joining an ml group to feel like they’re doing something But completely ignore the inaction of said group, or the fact that all that the group does is like table with scenes at other people’s events and then leave.

Yeah. There can be a similar energy with the inversion around Satanism.

David: And I think, once you’ve done this thing where you’ve said the problem with this group is that they’re Christians. The problem is groups. They worship God, right? This is like a easy thing. I think a lot of expressions do.

I think they locate the problem with their church was they believe in God and that’s a superstition and you. You believe in sky daddy, or they say whatever their thing is, right? Christians are inherently bad, but then you say we’re not Christians, so we won’t be bad. It’s okay if we have the power because we aren’t the bad ones, so we’ll do good things with it.

As an anarchist, I think that’s really bad that’s a really dangerous, harmful thing. As if you haven’t reconstructed. I don’t like the

mk: existence of power. That’s harmful. Not the specific person who holds it.

David: Yeah I trust myself to some degree, but I don’t trust a future version of myself that like, unaccountable power over people for years, especially and in Satanism that happens quite a bit.

We’re like, because there aren’t these institutional guardrails because people in these groups are like coming up with it. And. Yeah. It’s very easy to come up with a group that works and is healthy and good when everybody agrees and things are going well. And it’s really hard to come up with something where but what happens if we hate each other and what happens if this person ends up being a domestic abuser?

What happens if those hypotheticals really need to be worked out ahead of time? And they often are not. And. Because this is a thing that people they adopt, like I am a satanist now and they mean it, they think in the same way. Some would say I’m Jewish. I’m Muslim, but I don’t think people a convert as easily to Judaism or Islam as the sadism supposedly, and also people don’t leave those things as easily.

And so these groups, these spaces tend to have a lot of people, coming through and burning out and cycling through and there’s there’s no institutional knowledge and no institutional accountability there. And that’s hard work. It’s really hard work to set up a group where people are actually equitable and accountable to each other, particularly when, 1 person is doing 90 percent of things.

I’m sure you deal with that all the time and other spaces that you’re in. We’re like, you want things to be fair, but there’s a. Misalignment of like how much people care or can give into some project. And so you have to balance that between like, how do I, the person who’s doing most of the work not take advantage of other people.

And also vice versa, like, how do I contribute to something that I care about when I don’t have the bandwidth to really manage it and own it or whatever. And these messy things are not simple answers and they’re not solved by just going. We don’t believe in God or we reject Christianity that doesn’t solve it because that’s almost like a veneer or a layer on top of this more fundamental thing of our hierarchy, accountability, interpersonal relationships.

mk: Yeah, so speaking of how we organize interpersonally, I was just wondering how did you organize as a kid and teen? What was your relationship to spirituality and to anti repression? And did you identify with the anarchist label at all? And what did that mean for you?

David: I, so I am the son of a Southern Baptist pastor.

I was in church three times a week, Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday night. And even back then one of the things that I would say, and I would still say this to this day, is that I’m not spiritual, but I am religious. Like I, I did not have a deep connection to spirituality then.

I don’t have it now. I just thought that’s the way the world works. God exists and does miracles and whatnot. And it wasn’t until I was in my late teens. And I think what it was I was studying the Bible and I was like actually studying like textual traditions and the documentary hypothesis and like Mark and priority and like these ideas about how.

When you’re a southern Baptist, when you’re an evangelical like the text is the whole thing. It’s perfect. But then like when you study that’s obviously not true. Like some sects, they use different versions of books. And there’s also like different not just translations, but like different versions of things you are translating.

That’s like that kind of chipped away at it. And then the other thing was there was a guy who was about my age and he unfortunately got cancer in his knee and they had to amputate his leg from the knee down. And then his cancer still came back. And I remembered was everybody was praying for the cancer to go away.

They’re basically praying for a miracle that God would intercede and suspend the natural rules of physics and biology and whatnot. To cure this young man of cancer, but nobody had faith that they would, that God could regrow his leg. And maybe this seems like silly to someone hearing this, but that’s obvious, but that was the 1st time that I realized that people didn’t really believe in miracles.

They just believe that, like. You might get lucky about something. And so that was like the beginning of my splits from conservative Christianity and that worldview. And what’s interesting is that because it was Southern Baptist, I don’t know what the reputation is in other parts of the country.

And West Texas, they’re pretty independent. Each individual church controls their own budget. For example they, if you remember, you get to see. What everybody’s going to do with all the money you get to vote on it. You get to have deacons, which are in effect, they’re like elected people that have extra responsibility to pay more attention to budgets and do things like that.

And my father even was someone who his organizational style as again, this is a Southern Baptist pastor in West Texas. Some will come to him and say, Hey, can we do this? And he would say, What do you require from me to do that? And they would say nothing and say, great, go do it. His organizational style was like, trying to get other people to do things for themselves.

And I have come to find that is not the typical church experience. And I understand also why people have many worse experiences with their own religious upbringing, because this was if you wanted to do something, you got people together, you informed other people what you were doing to see if it was already happening or you needed support or whatever, and then you did it.

But it wasn’t until I was in my mid 20s and got through a whole like anti theist period, like I’ve shamefully had a Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and like anyone who believes in anything supernatural is foolish, that sort of thing. But I did get through that to a place where I no longer feel that way and no longer act that way.

And. I guess the thing that I see that is most relevant is how people act and treat one another, especially within structures. And I guess I, I haven’t seen a huge difference between how atheists and Satanists and Christians, treat one another because you have really rebellious Christians who break the law to make sure that immigrants can be protected from authorities or that they go out and they like March and put themselves in the harm’s way of police batons.

And you have atheists who are, transphobic and you have Satanists who are just like, we have to follow the law no matter what. And that, that’s how I guess I got to a place where anarchism is. Important in my life and seeing that power structures, like the way that like power structures exist is like the fundamental thing.

And then people choose their own veneer, which may or may not be relevant. But the real thing is how people relate to one another and have power and accountability with each other.

mk: Yes, absolutely. I am. I was really struck by what you said about the limits of faith based beliefs and how even when we’ve been in a community where that’s really common, it seems people don’t necessarily Literally believe that and maybe they’re there for the community Like I am remember having similar revelations not so much around religion because I didn’t really grow up with that but even around people’s political views because I was raised with some Pretty typical liberal beliefs before I found anarchism and often I’d be discussing politics with people And I would come to the conclusion like okay Nobody thinks this is going to work because people are still acknowledging the harms that state power is causing Yet they’re still advocating for states to exist not because they necessarily believe it but to have community so in a way it functions similarly even to ageism and Yeah so on that topic what advice would you have for kids and teens who maybe have an interest in Satanism or alternative spirituality or anarchism?

David: This is going to sound negative, but probably Satanism is not for you. That’s what I’m saying. Probably Satanism sounds cool. And I would caution you that it’s a lot more cringe than you think. And that’s okay. It’s okay to like cringe things, but you will run into people who think Satanism is the coolest thing that’s ever been.

That’s the greatest idea. And I do want to shoot that down. And it’s just another thing a lot of very boring ways. We as a counterculture community, we do deeply suck. And alternative spirituality I think has some of these same problems. You can, to be clear, find places and communities that like give you joy and fill things within your heart, your soul, and your needs for ritual, magic, et cetera.

Like these things are possible to exist. But. It is a lot more boring and the problems that like you’re leaving behind will probably be there at whatever you show up at. And I think that we really need to do a better job of thinking about identifying. Abusive organizations and even collectives than we are at present.

Did you listen to I did a talk with the Molotov now folks a couple of years ago about a general about cults.

mk: I actually have not, but I did read your zine on the Queer Satanic website about how to identify high control spaces, especially the bit about ML groups, because I’m not sorry if this is an overshare, but at the time I knew quite a few people who were involved.

In an ML group that was starting to have increasingly bigoted views, and I was trying to find resources for them and came upon your scene actually right before I joined the channel zero network.

David: Yeah, and then I think as an anarchist, it’s very easy for me to say, oh, yeah, ML groups they’re the ones that they’re all messed up.

But this also happens in anarchist spaces. And it also happens with, I think in our conversation, it also involves like business cults, because that’s a thing that, you get out into the working world and it’s wild how many people, like they’ll say completely unironically, we’re like a family and that’s super toxic in itself both what they’re saying and the way they mean it, and it operates in this way that is really exploitative and.

I think that is a thing that as you are going out into the world and trying new things you really have to keep at the front of your mind. Like, how is this group structured now, especially formally, but also informally, you have to like not fall into the belief that we are ontologically good.

We are at our core, essentially good. Therefore, whatever we do is good. Because that just makes you miss stuff. Often because these really abusive dynamics and the fringes they often are not abusive. The fringes they’re nice. They’re fun. They’re just like cute things. There’s an example that I just remembered that today of a pretty famous called the church.

The process church of the final judgment. It’s like back in the 1960s and they had these like coffee shops and they would print these essentially zines. These like newspapers. And for anybody that came and visited that, that seemed like a very cool thing. Oh, this is it’s artistic.

And isn’t this like fun. But then the people actually working in those coffee shops, and the higher up you got in this org the closer, the more sinister it got, the way they treated people. And I don’t want to say that there is nothing about satanism or alternative spirituality, or especially anarchism.

I am a satanic anarchist. I’m a satanic, anarchist, anti fascist. That is what I am. That is how I move throughout the world. However I feel like I run into people often, especially young people who have recognized that. The world around them, what they have been taught was not true that Christianity does not work the way that they were taught, a capitalism’s abusive, et cetera.

But then they go if this isn’t true, the opposite must be true. And that is something that you really have to work at not falling into you have to build your own things. You have to, when you join other things, be skeptical all the time be skeptical about yourself and the way you’re treating other people.

I know this is not super I don’t know, like rah here’s the thing you need to go out and do. It’s not empowering in that way, but I do think it is important that as you find the things that you like and love and fill you with joy and enthusiasm that you still.

Keep this thing in the back of your head of just what else is happening here? Where’s the money going? Who is actually like making decisions here? How could I change things if I wanted to? Because it’s a very easy human thing to just like silence all of that to go I’m sure everything’s fine up until the point where you find out that things are not fine.

They have not been fine for a long while.

mk: Yes, absolutely, and I do think that’s empowering in its own way, the idea that we can question the FND groups we’re in and make sure to be in spaces that feel genuinely supportive and horizontally structured, and don’t just mirror the hierarchies we see around us even if that can be the most accessible thing to do sometimes especially as a youth and teen, because MLs neoliberal spaces are, the groups on college campuses and the groups you might see at your middle or high school.

But we always have the choice to organize somewhere that feels genuinely liberatory. So I know you mentioned your Molotov now appearance, but is there anything else you’d like to plug or share?

David: Yeah, it definitely listen to Molotov now. I’m not part of that. They’re just a fun podcast. I listened to and we’re kind enough to let me be a guest.

Once my, my, my big thing is that so queer satanic as it existed previously was just for people being sued. We’re no longer being sued, which is great, which means that what we are beyond the wibbly wobbly idea is up in the air. What is not up in the air is that we are still paying off our legal costs.

So we still are deep in the hole to our lawyers who were good enough to work for us without us fully paying them. But if you can help us to pay our lawyers down please visit queer satanic. com or a campsite.

That will also have articles be written about other satanic organizations that are abusive cool satanic orgs that are doing things like the capital area, Satanists in the Washington, D. C. area. They do moon rituals, lunar rituals, which is just like a regular way to get together and recenter themselves global order of Satan as a international a group of kind of like local collectives who like federate and work with each other.

There are people that are out there doing cool things and we try to bring more attention to them. But if you’ve heard this, you’re like, wow, that sounds so great, David, I appreciate what you did so much. The best way to show that appreciation would be to give us money for legal costs.

mk: Yeah thank you so much for sharing your youth liberation journey and all of your advice on figuring out what spaces are high control and how to engage with spirituality in an actually meaningful way.

So this has been David from Queer Satanic and you’re listening to The Child and His Enemies. If you wanna learn more or join us on Discord and Signal, our website is the thechildanditsenemies.noblogs.org. I’m mk Zariel. Thanks for listening. Stay safe