Podcasts/CaC-Ep13

Cult & Culture Ep. 13 feat. Lucien Greaves
Decr 19, 2019 17:41
Episode 13 features Lucien Greaves, co-founder of the infamous yet often misunderstood organization, The Satanic Temple. Known for using unorthodox methods to take a stand in favor of religious equality and separation of church and state (and most often coming out on top), Lucien discusses the founding of the Satanic Temple, project Grey Faction, how the Satanic Panic of the 1980s deeply affected him, and how to take on news outlets/interviewers who aren’t prepared to be proven wrong. Deeply insightful and quick-witted, the conversation delves into religion as a whole, pseudoscience and malpractice, bias, and the need to rebel against that which is oppressive in society.
https://pod.casts.io/podcasts/three-one-g/episodes/cult-culture-ep-13-feat-lucien-greaves

Transcript

[WIP]

Unknown Speaker 0:24 Welcome to Episode 13 of the cult and culture podcast. This episode features Lucian grieves the head of the Satanic Temple. This is probably one of the more insane, I don't in depth in depth. Just I don't know, like out there. I kind of I didn't think we would be doing this and we did it. Absolutely. Yeah. So if we have Satan's right hand, man on our podcast, what's next?

Unknown Speaker 0:51 I think this will probably be our last part. I want to explain how this all came about.

Unknown Speaker 0:56 Yeah. So someone hit me up or tipped me off to a post? Like a, I don't know, like a I think it was like a top five like, spooky songs curated by Lucian, like a Halloween playlist, kind of Yeah, I think it might have been and had dead cross on it. And I was like, wow, this is awesome. Because I had recently seen Hail Satan that the film, which I totally recommend seeing it, I'm an atheist, and it made me want to go join the temple. But yeah, so I anyhow, I, you know, I posted it online. And then somehow, there was a little bit of dialogue between him and I and I was like, dude, let's, let's get you on one of our podcasts. And, you know, a few days later, we were on a plane out to to Salem, Salem. Yep. I don't know. Without further ado,

Unknown Speaker 1:45 here it is. Here it is, ironically, Episode 13.

Doug Misicko 1:57 Just reached that level where people feel like, I'm reliable enough to endorse that agency, you know what I mean? Like, they they don't know, like, people who see, like, the work we do sure that I do go out and consistently give lectures and things like that, that. I think just knowing that people follow up is a big thing. You know, what I mean? Oh,

Unknown Speaker 2:19 of course, but maybe it's like, a lot of like, someone's like, like, I guess in a in a musical space, you know, prospective, they're like, Hey, there's this band, so and so and you're, you know, like a promoter or booking agents, like, I don't know, like that is or like, Hey, there's this band. Oh, yeah. I've heard of them. You know, so like, as long as like, you know, people, I'm sure, like the film coming out. People are like, Oh, shit, they're legit. Like, that guy can definitely go and speak at our event or whatever.

Doug Misicko 2:41 Yeah, I have to hand it to like some of the early invitations. I got, yeah, American Atheists and stuff like that. There was like, real concern where who we were, you know, well, well, I people were worried. We trashed the hotel room or but like, what the Satanist would do cuz this was early years, you know, all they knew was that Satan is from the scene. And then they were, you know, and I didn't have a proven track record speaking either. So I had to hand it to like the early organizer really, really do this? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 3:10 A lot of anti theist to that was involved in the atheist community who don't like religion at all, like any religion, even one that was pretty much there to like combat other religions that overstep their boundaries. Yeah, and

Doug Misicko 3:23 I spoke in America, like the pig mass thing, like it didn't see like some of those early reactions. That wasn't part of the film. But like, we got angry messages from like, people in the gay community who were like, we all need, you know, people looking at us now as Satanists, and all of that. Yeah, for being gay or whatever. And like, that was kind of confusing to me. It's like, fuck you. And, you know, we're, we're doing this as Satanists. And there's a lot of gay Satanists. So you're, you are you aren't? Yeah, sure. saying like, everybody's one thing I just didn't, we don't get that anymore. And I think it's because people are realizing more and more that we're not just this kind of like, you know, transient prank that's just kind of come out shared ever that, like, we do identify a Satanist or whatever. And we're not sending a message. Like, you know, gay rights is satanic or whatever, you know. So we don't really hear that criticism anymore. Sure. As we keep doing what we're doing, we kind of change like the dialogue in certain ways. That's cool. Yeah, I'm

Unknown Speaker 4:31 sorry. Well, that is it. Okay, so that like, my whole idea was like, Okay, let's start it square one. You know, like, I mean, I don't even know what square one actually really is. But I but you kind of even today, when we were hanging out, you you had sort of mentioned like, the Church of Satan and how they were like, the not into what you were doing, right, like or I mean, whoever's left from it, right because it's dissolved and

Doug Misicko 4:57 it's pretty much just the Twitter feed now Like, they're, you know, Anton LaVey wrote the Satanic Bible, in active organization congregation going in like the 60s, I guess kind of fell apart in the 70s would still be a thing. Now, if it weren't for the internet, and now they have a Twitter feed in. To be fair, they wouldn't like us, no matter what we were doing, you know, you'll always see them saying that what we're doing is on satanic, we could be doing the exact opposite, they'd still say the same thing. Because at the, at the end of the day, they simply believe they're the only ones who have the right to call themselves Satanists. And at least so admit to that because they, you know, they're pretty open about the fact that they will not recognize any other satanic group as satanic because their idea is that Levey codified Satanism with the Satanic Bible, in anything that deviates from that can't be considered properly satanic because Levey is the origin of Satanism in their minds. And the codification of Satanism exists only within the Satanic Bible. And that's what it's so they're kind of LaVeyan fundamentalists. Right. So. So anyway, you cut it there, they're going to be against it, whatever it is, they're against it.

Unknown Speaker 6:12 So what do you think about the 10? Satanic Bible? Christians? Yeah, what do you think about the Satanic Bible? Is that a, that's a two, is that too big of a question?

Doug Misicko 6:23 No, I mean, I read it when I was in high school, you know, and it was more about it being the Satanic Bible, you know what I mean, then then it was that it was a great literary work, you know, and I feel like there's these kind of core ideals in the Satanic Bible of like, personal independence and autonomy. That, to me, kind of translated into a more kind of, I think, liberal perspective that the Church of Satan went into. Because, you know, if you take Satan as like this icon for the rebel against tyranny, it doesn't make sense to me the direction the Church of Satan went, when they advocate for authoritarian politics, which they absolutely do, but they're, they're openly authoritarian. And even when we contested them on this one time, they, they said that they're proud of it, you know, that's the angle they take. And to me that that kind of runs contrary to the whole kind of Milton perspective of the Paradise Lost kind of Satan of the rebel against tyranny, even though they still kind of tried to incorporate that at least rhetorically in certain ways. But he did so like

Unknown Speaker 7:34 they do that now, as you said, like, as a Twitter feed. But do you think like when Anton Ave was part of it, oh, no,

Doug Misicko 7:40 as a Twitter feed, you think they're pretending to be us? You'll you won't hear much mention of authoritarian politics or anything of the type? It's very much about. It's a very, it's very libertarian on the Twitter. Okay, we'll talk about free choice and sharing the thing in the feed really don't go into that territory, but Levey wrote very explicitly about authoritarian, please state politics like that. But the thing was, is like, there's certain things I give people a pass on as being a product of their time. Sure, you know what I mean? And I got, I think Levey, was was definitely reacting to the situation in the United States between like, the 70s, and 90s, and crime, social ills, they were, they were really bad, you know, sociologists still look over that time period and try to figure out what, what causes that, you know, a lot of the cities were war zones. And Levey is feeling, you know, as kind of an older eccentric hermit was that, you know, there needs to be some kind of police, state politics or rain at all. And you can see that kind of apocalyptic mindset and a lot of the culture of the ad site, that kind of revenge porn action movies and things like that. There is an idea that things were getting worse, and just weren't going to get better, and that the only rational solution was, you know, larger police forces, martial law almost kind of thing. And so, you know, I think now we can kind of look at the data and see that kind of Levey was very much an advocate for social Darwinist politics, and he de racialized the social Darwinist politics, but the idea was meritocracy, you know, that the this the strong triumph over the weak and that the individual was to primacy over anything else in that kind of Nietzschean perspective that sympathy was a byproduct of weakness and weakness and other types of things like altruism wasn't was a reality. You know that. That silly argument that because it makes you feel good to do it, then it's not true. All true. Is it makes you wonder like, when was when was wanting something as a motivating factor, something that nullifies it? I don't know. But in any case, I just don't feel like there was necessarily the kind of evidence we have now to dispute those notions conveys time. Yeah. It the very at the very least, I like to think that at his best he was trying to take a scientific perspective on social problems. He was wrong. You know, I, I like to give him the benefit of the doubt and think that maybe if he could look at the world today, look at where the evidence was, maybe he did just his opinion. And actually, I met some people who were friends with with a Yeah. And they feel that he would have they feel that, at a certain level, he was a very liberal and progressive guy. But it was just the terror of the social circumstances. Sure. So but who knows, you know, he is dead. It I just feel like it's a shame that some of his followers can't follow more, in principle, rather than, you know, follow the letter of the law, to its contradictory conclusion.

Unknown Speaker 11:11 But what about the fact that to me, when I look at it, I guess, it just seems like the Church of Satan had so much, it was almost like, comical, or, you know, like, it didn't I don't know, like, there was like, so many goofy aspects to it, which is like, that's not gonna really help your, your, you know, your message, or your

Doug Misicko 11:30 it's been strange at the moment you have, you have a bunch of people now who identify with the Church of Satan who say that they've been defending this tradition of Satanism for 50 years, and they don't seem to know the history of their own organization at all. Because they look at some of the things we do, and say, like, Oh, we're just out there trying to provoke piss off Christians, or that we're just hot topic, goth kids or whatever. And it's like, well, we could very easily look at, look at them and say the same types of things. And I think the complete opposite.

Unknown Speaker 12:01 I mean, even especially from the from, like, what the film portrayed, it would just seem like, man, these people like are really taking this to like a, like a, you know, like a, like a democratic, socially politically aware level then, like with the Church of Satan just seem like kind of just like a campy, I don't know, oh, yeah, yeah, bad.

Doug Misicko 12:22 You know, it's fine. I mean, the theater is fine. The community aspects of the ritual, you know, people have fun wearing their capes and horns or whatever, it's a contained environment, you have more power to them. But I mean, to be fair, it's not just the Church of Satan that can ignore the deeper aspects of the Satanic Temple, we have a really difficult time sometimes getting media to pay attention to some of our more highbrow campaigns or more well thought issues and in our, our approaches to them, like people know, generally that we're fighting reproductive rights litigation. But, you know, we put out press releases about that, it's, it doesn't get the kind of bites that those real contentious headlines like Satan is putting up monument and park or whatever, yeah, those are the ones and then those are, then those articles tend to talk about our non theism as though that's just evidence that we're clever pranksters, don't really believe that, you know, they're not really Satan. This is kind of like the subtext, if not stated explicitly, sometimes in these articles, which does us a real disservice. But when we talk about like, our gray faction campaign, which I think I mentioned earlier, and could never even heard of, because we hardly get any press attention on this at all. But we have a whole segment of the Satanic Temple people who were really hard on fighting back against pseudoscience and particularly pseudoscience within the mental health industry. That goes to towards some of the issues that that were relevant in the Satanic Panic. You know, in in the mental health field that was a group of therapists, psychologists, mental health professionals, were advocate advocating for the notion of repressed trauma, and not just repressed trauma as an existing condition, but as something that can be drawn forth and memories could be,

could be brought to consciousness through the right kind of therapy, whether it be hypnosis, sodium mannitol, interviews, guided imagery, therapy sessions, that kind of thing. Where people are told that these kinds of imaginings of theirs are these hypnotic stream of consciousness thoughts in which they're trying to resurface repressed memories of abuse are actually true. And and for the most part, we found, you know, if not in all cases that these recollections are confabulations that have no basis in reality, you know, it's the same evidentiary basis for alien abduction, past lives, you know, you can get people to believe things that just aren't true through this kind of method of making them create memories. And so we've been trying to, you know, fight back against the therapists who still spread conspiracy theories and delusions to clients, mentally vulnerable clients. So there's, in some of these therapists Go, go out and conferences, and they'll talk about Luminati mind control, satanic ritual abuse, so igniting the Satanic Panic ship, it's been totally thoroughly debunked. I mean, it's horrifying, because, you know, people are coming them to get a better grounding in reality, you know, you have people who are, who are vulnerable, maybe went through traumatic events, and are trying to get that kind of grounding, and they're being sold crippling delusions, right. And there's very little oversight about that. Anyways, my point is, we've done a ton of work on trying to reveal this problem. And we've been filing complaints against different therapists in trying to fight back against conspiracy theories, being able to offer continuing education units at conferences and things like that. And we just don't get press coverage on that, you know, nobody really talks about it. And I think there's a certain I don't know, there's a certain plateau, we need to reach a certain new level, the Satanic Temple needs to reach incredibility, where people stop wanting us to be this clever, hilarious prank, and start accepting us for doing real, credible activist work in trying to make changes that are that go beyond just making people think about their own hypocrisy, because we've been clear from the start, we have our own affirmative values. People feel like we're always pretending to be like the other guys, so we can put a mirror on them. But we don't always do that. We don't always just mimic the Christian tactics that people write to us all the time. Well, can we discriminate against people come into our businesses? Because they're Christian? It's like, why would you want to do that? Why do we want to keep? Why do we want to increase the discrimination game? You know, what I mean? Sure, let's go back to people learning to live together and do things in a in a rational manner. And like, you know, we'd set up an environment where we can better get along, rather than each trying to, you know, fight fire with fire.

Unknown Speaker 17:38 So like, you know, let's say, that situation happens, where there's like a Christian that wants to, I don't know, what would they what would how would they encounter you? And what would it entail? Like, what would typically I guess, what would happen?

Doug Misicko 17:52 Like if we wanted to discriminate against No,

Unknown Speaker 17:55 no, no, like, No, you don't know the opposite of that, like embracing each other and like working together on something, or at least, at least like getting, you know, getting your, your, your ideals out to sharing them and kind of coming to like, some sort of, like, I guess, place of harmony, where you can coexist? Is that something that you would want to achieve? I guess?

Doug Misicko 18:16 Oh, yeah, for sure. Like, we don't, you know, it would just be juvenile if we were developing our own affirmative values based on just doing the opposite of what we think the other side is to assure, like, if they change their values, then we change our value. It's just,

Unknown Speaker 18:35 but not me the opposite. Because, I mean, we we both know that, like, Christianity is wrong. So you know, it's so it's not like, it was like the the opposite, but you're just like, Yeah, you know, you're, I don't know, like, to me, it's like, I would want to embrace that person and be like, let's just coexist, and maybe we'll learn from each other or,

Doug Misicko 18:52 you know, I think Christianity is only wrong and so far as Satanism is wrong, where it's like, if you take it from a theistic perspective, you're, you know, you're engaging in magical thinking and like I I've said before, and I put it in writing because I feel like I want that on record publicly that I stated it before it happened. But I see these kinds of religions academics talking about the future of religion and I see them speculating about on the horizon we're gonna see non theistic religions in infuriates me because I'm thinking like, you're willfully ignoring us non theistic religion has already arrived, right? This is like the primary I think, American base non theistic religion right now, I think what they're waiting for is there's going to be some progressive Christian sect that gains some kind of popularity. It's going to be a non theistic, Christian group, and then they're going to act like non theistic religion has been invented. Now it's arrived and it's going to get like Going to get the applause of the masses and people are gonna say this is where it's at. And I tend to think that a non theistic Christian group will have no beef with us, you know, but I think that's what's really gonna, that's what's in, they're gonna be no more wrong than us is what I'm saying. If they're non theistic, and they're just taking these kinds of principles and values and saying, I, you know, there's this Christ story is kind of a metaphor for our for what we believe or whatever, then whatever.

Unknown Speaker 20:31 Yeah, I mean, it is it has seemed like a sort of an evolution to some extent. I mean, I mean, I guess there's like The Rock Church, which is like, a bunch of hipster Christians, but um, like, they still hate homosexuals. You know, they still say it's like, you know, wrong

Doug Misicko 20:44 or No, yeah, they're just like the cool guy. Yeah. Like, the older guy who goes into high school and turns a chair backwards so that's okay. I used to be like you Yeah, whatever it was. I did it. Yeah. I should be dead or in jail.

Unknown Speaker 21:07 All the troops so where did like I mean, if you don't mind, can you explain like, where how you fell into to all of this? Like, is that too crazy of a story or long of a story? But I'd love to know, like, where you found it, you know, like this place?

Doug Misicko 21:22 Like, how I came to be who position I'm in now?

Unknown Speaker 21:27 Maybe not, like structurally with with the temple, but like, just your own beliefs?

Doug Misicko 21:32 Oh, yeah. I mean, I was. The thing is, I say I was deeply affected by the Satanic Panic. Can people expect that that means like, I was accused of cannibalism or something or like, or like thrown in jail for playing Dungeons and Dragons, or whatever it is that didn't know that happened, you know, and I never really saw, like, directly when I was a kid, people's lives being destroyed by the Satanic Panic, but it's really aware of it. You know, I was really aware that there was supposed to be Satanists in each community. And they were murdering babies and they had mobile crematoriums and that there were the sick calls. And they were they were everywhere having this the conspiracy theory was mainstream. Do you know as time grows, running these stories and like Sally, Jessy, Raphael, in Oprah, let's not forget, and she's tough law, you know, more so than I don't, she promoted the the book Michelle remembers. Now, it's really kind of kicked off the Satanic Panic. It was supposed to be a true story of a woman who recovered her memories of being abused by a satanic called. And she was a Catholic and her therapist was a Catholic. So she recovers memories of like the Archangel Michael, actually coming down appearing to her and fighting Satan, in Jesus Christ comes and removes the scars of her abuse, which also conveniently kind of took away any evidence that she had, you know, suffered, like, having parts hacked off of her whatever else was supposed to have happened. Anyways, these stories were taking this fact, I was I was I was small enough, where I didn't realize how, how wrong, you know, mainstream authorities could be uncertain issues. So there's, it's terrifying stories. So what's, what's the truth of that? kind of forgot about a while when I came back to the topic, you know, and I started, like, trying to find out who, who were Satanists. You know, like, was there anything accurate about this? Or were people who identified a Satanist? Were they doing any of these things? You know, or were they doing some of them? Like what, you know, what was it? So I started kind of going around. And I really, you know, as I grew up to, I began to see the corruption of institutionalized religions, you know, the story start coming out, you see, they're raping kids. You see, just crimes and scandals, you see, you begin to get the idea that being a man of the cloth didn't necessarily mean you have any moral grounding whatsoever, and you could really be a corrupt individual getting away with a lot just because people seem to give you a pass, you know, moral self licensing, they call it you know, and it's still somehow that scam still works. But anyways, so I really, as I was, you know, wondering what happened with the Satanic Panic growing really skeptical and in critical of mainstream religious organizations, really growing affinity just for the symbolism and narrative of Satanism, you know, based on kind of the Miltonic ID Satan rebel, you know, the tyrant God, you get those basic questions even, you know, you develop those basic questions, even as a kid, you know what I mean? What's wrong and now it's, you know, wait a minute, who's really the bad guy and this whole ad have an even story. And like, you know, even theorizing, you know, like, it's supposed to be that you, you know, develop an understanding if you're a reasonable person that the wrong person was denigrated, and this mythology or whatever, I don't know, who to like say, oh thing Satan related after a while. And at first, you know, I did gravitate towards the the Church of Satan, the Satanic Bible. But after a while, like all that rhetoric about please state bullshit, and the social Darwinism just didn't match what I was learning about human behavior, about social development. Yeah, like all those kinds of things. reciprocal altruism, you know, all these things I was learning I thought I thought about human nature, you know, we are cooperative by nature. And we should be, you know, just basic things just didn't didn't add up. So I began to feel that

they've kind of throwback, the 60s throwback, and I didn't think I would get back to Satanism. But I still really had a love for Satan. Was it something I necessarily advertised or needed to because at that point, it just kind of found people unless you're gonna, you know, be like, I am now a lifer, kind of vindicating this whole thing. But you see in the film, the hail satan, right at the beginning, like he had some guys working on a film in the basis of the film was that, you know, they wanted to do this documentary where it was like AccuTech, activists, documentaries, people, like bring up this past his saying it discredits us because, you know, we didn't have the as I said, in the film, we didn't have the hubris to think we could start this large international religious organization. But we did think that if we were doing the kind of activism we were doing that other people would see that, you know, people identified as satanist would kind of rally under that banner, and start doing these things themselves. So and we didn't think we'd get the attention for any of these things we were doing until we put up a film where we're doing that. So we started asking for equal treatment under laws that allowed broader exceptions for religious iconography or proselytizing on public grounds, saying, you know, if you do this, Satanists are allowed. I wasn't really interested in that film project. I was the Satanist that the guy, Malcolm, he was putting together this film project. And, you know, it required an alternative religious voice, of course, to ask for these privileges and exemptions. And he knew, you know, he knew a Satanist. And I was willing to consult on this film. But at the very beginning, I wanted to keep arm's length, you know what I mean? Like, I was not interested in being like, the publicly identified satanist and I still had feelings of terror because even though I said I didn't deal directly with people ruined by the Satanic Panic. By that point, I was well in contact with people who were worried about were ruined by a Satanic Panic, their, their family lives were destroyed, they were accused of things or whatever, because I had started writing about false memories being produced in the course of these irresponsible therapies and stuff like that. I was doing that before the Satanic Temple. So I was writing about these issues related to the Satanic Panic and I was already going after these these mental health professionals such as yourself or was yeah as as myself. And so

Unknown Speaker 28:49 you know, who you writing for? What was it like what was the most of

Doug Misicko 28:53 this stuff I had to post independently because editors are afraid to take on you know, everything's like clickbait articles written in the course of two hours in a lot of times, editors will look at things in if it looks like there might be legal issues if you're calling out a specific doctor. They don't want to touch you, you know what I mean? You're gonna upset on your own. So I published a few things that I can say in skeptical inquire, Skeptic magazine, things like that. But that's really preaching to the choir. Right? But looking into all these past cases and everything, there's this idea that if you're publicly identified as a Satanist, not far to follow our accusations of like child abuse or whatever, in some of these people. Like, you know, the accusation alone, no matter how debunked was enough to ruin their lives, right. The accusation can be totally debunked, but you'll still see it attached to their names, right? So it just seemed like suicide to me to be like, identified as like a public face of Satanism. However, I wasn't going to let these guys do a film. In misrepresent Satanism, right? So at the beginning, at that time, it was like it didn't matter, theistic nontheistic, whatever, there were certain kind of core values, you know, certain kinds of symbols and stuff like that. And I was keeping the distance didn't want my face on any of it. And I was telling him like, you know, no, this is how this needs to look, this is how you need to frame this. And then they had that actor like at the rick Scott rally, and I'm trying to coach him, you know, and we did that rally. And I see him talking in the news and like, he did a great job. He was, he's a nice guy, great guy, I get along with them. But like, what it was, like I said in the film, like, you just can't leave it to somebody else who doesn't have a background in this to do like real time interviews, you know,

Unknown Speaker 30:46 I already done like TV stuff before that, right? No, no, I thought you said that.

Doug Misicko 30:52 No, not not. No. You know, I, I had no interest in it either. You know, like public speaking for good health. You know, like, the clips in

Unknown Speaker 31:02 the film were from something before the film came out. Which they're like, What? Weren't you talking

Unknown Speaker 31:09 with CNN, or one of the other news

Unknown Speaker 31:13 media outlet? Was it? There was one there's a there's a clip in the film where you're on TV speaking about

Doug Misicko 31:18 that statement? Yeah. Well, I mean, what before What are you talking though? Because like I was, it was still in relation to the Satanic Temple.

Unknown Speaker 31:28 Okay. Yeah. But but so you're going back to the start of the film where you were trying not to be the face of it. But you were right, right.

Doug Misicko 31:35 Right. Yeah. My face was already there. I was in the background, right. I just felt that level. I still didn't think anybody recognize me, right. So I felt like, you know, and you see, like, I even changed my hair color a bit. No more sunglasses or whatever. Like, nobody, nobody will see this, right. So I felt safe on that. It wasn't until we did the pink mass. And I was like, I'm putting my nuts on the grave. But I was like, alright, she's gotten gone too far in, like, is hilarious is that was it felt like an act of suicide to me? Because I'm like, Alright, there's no going back, you know, like, what am I going to do with my life? Now? You know, like, I'm in this to the end. Yeah, right. This is it. And I either I either vindicate this, or I, or I die with it, right. So that's when shit got really serious. And that's when it was like, you know, cameras off guys. There's no no documentary, you know, this is like, this is the real deal. Now. That's, that's what it's been ever since. So, you know, it's a real weird kind of dichotomy there. Because, on the one hand, was hilarious. And we're like, Yeah, fuck you. But on the other hand, I'm like, awake at night staring at the ceiling being like, what the fuck have I done. And I really did have sleepless nights because like, when we first started with a bathmat campaign, you know, asking to put our monument up next to the 10 commandments might have been, I, you know, I wasn't media trained or anything. I started getting interviews all the time. And, you know, it might not be apparent to anybody, a lot of people just heard of me, watching the hail satan film, then realize, like, I've gone through stretches of time, where like, I've done interviews from morning tonight, you know, in a lot of those are local press, or whatever. And a lot of that articles that's just like, that just show up and are forgotten after a couple hours, you know, a lot of podcasts and things like that. And like, I never really looked into how big they were. But sometimes they're huge. And sometimes they're small, but I was doing a ton of interviews. And I felt a desperate need to do every one of those interviews to clarify anybody's misconceptions, anybody's errors, whatever. And like, I would get to that point where it would be like a PM, in Massachusetts, and I be thinking like, okay, I can rest now because like, even on the West Coast, they're wrapped up for the day or whatever. And I would just be all up all night, because I didn't want to give up on the night, you know, because I didn't want it to start again the next day. You know, like, I just feel like, I ended up falling asleep on the couch because I felt like, you know, I just I couldn't resign it because, you know, like, I couldn't resign the night because that was the only time I felt like the activity had stopped and I was safe from any other pushback, you know, took me a while to get over that like it was got to the point of being like almost almost phobic. You know, like I wasn't going to I wasn't going in my bed. I was passing out on the couch. And I was like, you know, I was getting like, to the point also where I didn't want to leave my place like I had to, I had to think about I was thinking like alright, I'm turning agoraphobic. So I would actually have to like tell myself like, Okay, tomorrow by noon, you know, going out, you know, I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna if I'm working on My laptop, I'm gonna do it in a place, you know, like, I could just let myself hole up. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 35:07 So so when you were getting all that, like when I was growing getting all this, like, the all these interviews I mean, you learned to navigate through them right? Like there's like the shitty questions you make it make it better, but then there's like the stuff where they're trying to fuck you up, you know, like how do you deal with that? Like? Who do you have a publicist? Or who is like who is helping you filter out the crap? Are you

Doug Misicko 35:30 telling me like I'm always quick to say like, for me to tell my own personal story like, diminishes all the work of all the people around us who have done so much. But I will be the first to say like, I take full fucking credit for how the media was handled at the beginning and everything and in, you know, I wrote the press releases, I kept the comments on point, I argue that in the debates, you know, I, you know, and to me, like somebody who never wanted to be in the public eye, and like, goes into the public eye under that intense scrutiny. There's a massive amount of stress to be like invited on Fox News. So I don't know what they're really going to ask you. You know, like, the producers come on, and they say like, it's about this or what Megyn Kelly's producers lied to me about for everything. Yeah, of course. Tucker. Carlson's did not turn 1000s producers were cool. Actually. Much of a dick. He is like his producers were on the level with me. Like both times, you know, they had me on the show twice. That was fine. But like, wait, they had twice why it's why they had me on twice. I think. I think he was angry about how things went the first

Unknown Speaker 36:42 time the angry at you because you were able to like keep your

Doug Misicko 36:45 Yeah, so I think the second time was revenge. Like, it didn't work out either. Because the first time he had me on was about that, about that veterans monument that we that I showed you that downstairs and I he wanted to he wanted to delegitimize us as a religious group. Yeah, he was trying to say that we were just trying to make a mockery of, of religious people in their faith. And we're beating up on these small town people who set up a Christian Veteran's Memorial. And I don't think he expected me to not care about that argument at all and to use his own words against him because he sees himself as his champion of libertarian free speech. So I just kept hammering on his cognitive dissonance about free speech. I was like, as it doesn't matter what you think of us as a religious group, you know, we have a right to be here. And, and then he started questioning how many people were in the satanic I told him, and then he said, he didn't believe it. And I said, doesn't matter if there could be two of us, you know, yeah, we still have a right to open forum for free speech. I think that really pissed him off, because it forced him to agree with me. He kept wanting he say, we weren't legitimate, he didn't expect me to say, Who cares? You know, like, I really don't care what you think. So the second time he had me on, I think he thought he really had the knockout punch, right? Because we had just released a press release, where it was like, the big thing in the news was the bakery in Colorado. wasn't going to make the cake for the gay couple. And we put out a press release. And we said, Alright, if a bakery is not going to make a cake for a gay couple, they have to make it for Satanists, because religion is a protected class, you know, so order a satanic cake, you know, and we have like, this template for like, a nice seat in front from the same room. Yeah. So Tucker Carlson had me on and I think he was thinking like, Okay, this is like, my crowd can get behind this. Here it is. They're trying to compel people against their religious beliefs to do what they don't want to do. So he had me on he's like, I totally disagree with making people compelling. People do that. And I don't think he expected me to say what I did, which was like, Okay, fine. I can, I can agree with that. However, let's not make like the gay Baker, be forced to make a cake for the evangelical bigots. So I was like, so either give protected class status to sexual orientation, or take it away for religion. And at that point, I think he was just like, fuck, here we go again. I have to agree with this. And then he started speculating that I had had a bad childhood. And then he ended the interview by yelling that I should go back into my hole. And at that point, go crawl back in your hole. He said, wow. And I was like, I totally won. Like, knockout punch right there. But anyway, so I was saying, like, before you get comfortable with that, it's terrifying to know that, you know, you're gonna be before an audience of millions, you know, before a hostile in the

Unknown Speaker 39:48 wrong audience, right. Yeah. Or maybe the right. It's a

Doug Misicko 39:51 hostile Interviewer Who's going to be doing everything they can to try to discredit you and like, this is at that point to like this biggest audience I have been in front of fuck that up. Nothing else matters. You know what I mean? Like, that's my one performance and that's it. So, but you also know going in, that being nervous is what's really gonna fuck you up. So you're just like, all I have to do is not get nervous, like, and that's like trying to not think of blue elephant or whatever. You know that you did it. Yeah, now I feel comfortable thing now. Now, when people comment, they're like, may you seem totally comfortable. And like Good Morning Britain or whatever. I'm like, well, who's gonna, you know, at that point, I was actually, I was actually disappointed that Piers Morgan wasn't there. Because, you know, he's he's notoriously a prick. And I thought this is gonna be a hostile interview. But the British you know, they were terribly polite. I was, I knew I was going to be disappointed as soon as I was in the green room and a producer came back and was like, so here's some of the questions they're gonna ask you. We're gonna see if this is okay with you. And yeah,

Unknown Speaker 40:58 yeah, have you on like, yeah, everything you stand for here. Yeah, and

Doug Misicko 41:01 I had some like Candler from the distribution company and a producer left and I said to her, I was like, Do you think they're just fucking throw me off? And she's like, Oh, no, this is gonna be this is gonna be really nice. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 41:12 Did you do you have any any other situations like that, that were that were pretty brutal or like combative.

Doug Misicko 41:18 When I've been on like broadcast or whatever, anything? Yeah, like one of my favorite ones was one of the earliest ones where there was a time with the bathroom at monument where everybody wanted to debate me and I had I had these debates I'll schedule and they were debates with like politicians. So I was in this was before I'd done like my Fox News appearances. So I was still in nervous. Yeah, I was still in like, I don't think I can do public speaking kind of mode. And I was also thinking like, okay, these politicians pander to the Evangelicals a lot. But they've made their career debating people and things like that. They're not really this dumb. And so they're like, train they get right. Yeah. So I was thinking like, this is this is going to be difficult. And so Huffington Post live had me on with a legislator from Oklahoma guy, Paul Wessel off, I think it was his name. And he was, he was speaking in defense of putting the 10 commandments monument on the on the public grounds. And I, I just, I taught him a new asshole. You know, I started talking about the responsibilities of a public representative. And I was, and I started yelling at him that his responsibility as a public representative was to ensure that there was equal opportunity and availability for all points of view, you know, he was supposed to represent Oklahoman Hindus, Jews and Muslims and even Satanists, you know, and so far is like, it's like a quality of law was concerned. And then there was a pause. And his response was, Well, that's your opinion, I have my own and I was just like, holy shit, these guys really are that stupid. You know, there was nothing. There was no curveball or whatever. I felt it after that. Everybody backed out of their debates with me. And I was like, and I was thinking like, Alright, I'm the one hand I could credit myself for doing really well. But I was also thinking, like, I probably only had to do well enough that some of these politicians looked and were like, Okay, if it's not going to be a one way beating and the satanists like, I can't debate the Satan. Do you know what I mean? Like, if the Satanist is gonna make any type of credible showing, like, I can't do this. Yeah. So that was like, That was disappointing, because

Unknown Speaker 43:41 I wonder about some of them. Like they probably are trained to debate, you know, I mean, do you really think so? Did you have any of that? Did you? Did you like go and like, get like, I don't know. No, no, I didn't get to be like on public speaking. I don't know.

Doug Misicko 43:55 It was funny. Like, I heard Penny Lane. She was the director of hail satan. She was doing a podcast with Penn Jillette. In Las Vegas. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. And it was really weird. I felt like that. I'll be voyeuristic in a weird way. Like, I shouldn't be listening to this. They were talking about me. It's really a bizarre thing to hear. But Penny said like, Penny mentioned how the first question presented to me at Sundance was some way just so happened your eye. And in time, it was like, Well, how did that go? And she was like, she was talking about me. She said, he has this amazing ability to give these great, eloquent answers to the question, you didn't ask it in a way that you don't recognize it. It wasn't the question. Yeah, it wasn't an answer to the question you're asked. And it was like, Penn was like, I guess that's his, you know, that's. That's what makes him the guy for the job or whatever. Yeah, I think like that. Just During my introduction into this, like, by fire, you know, I had trial by fire, and I just had to go through these things. And so I've been through enough interviews where people ask really stupid questions looking for a specific type of answer. And I already know, the points I want to get across, and I'll find a way to work those in instead.

Unknown Speaker 45:22 Yeah, I mean, it's, it's kind of like, I mean, we always get like, you know, it's like the band interview, like, what are your influences? And I mean, I'm always like, who cares? What like, like, yeah, I can list off these bands like that. That's fine. But what's really important is why did I like all this weird shit? Like what in life in the, in the, the world I live in made me go to that, like things not musical are really more important. So it's kind of like, you know, you and I, yeah, I'm sure I'm, I bet you got that question a million times. You know, I was curious, like how, like how

Doug Misicko 45:55 I've gotten good at detecting, like, what they want me to say to and knowing when to not knowing just how to never say it, because there was one interview, I got burned on in Oklahoma, where it was like, the guy interviewing me was trying to make the case that we were just making the film because like, you know, we had done the rick Scott rally thing. And like, we were done doing any type of film, we weren't working with Penny, we weren't working with CNN, nobody at the time now, because, you know, did like a 45 minute documentary about us, too, that people don't remember anymore. But, you know, this guy kept asking about making a film. And I was like, we're not, we're not making a film. And then he's kept going on. Like, he kept coming back to it. And he's like, Well, Couldn't there be a film made about you guys at some point or whatever? And I was just like, okay, somebody could, you know, we get offers make films. So then he made his article about, you know, pulling, like certain quality, yeah, film might be made kind of thing. And it was like, Okay, I see what that guy is doing. Now, I know, when people are doing that, just know when to stop and say, No, you know, there's nothing more I'm giving you on this, you know, like, asked and answered.

Unknown Speaker 47:04 But I mean, the thing is, it's like not it's like a film. It's not like, you know, I don't know, Mel Gibson making one about Jesus. It's like, it's a whole other world of documentation. So what was his point? And like criticizing you on that?

Doug Misicko 47:21 It's the same. The, you know, there's always the question about our legitimacy as a religious organization. And people want to say that it's like, the religious aspect of this, like, the whole Satanism thing is just just a facade cover up for some other agenda.

Unknown Speaker 47:38 You know what I mean? Or like, you're just secret capitalists, and no,

Doug Misicko 47:42 well, we always get the question from, like, even people who are inclined to support us like, so is this. So is this theater? Is this political? Is this a religious movement? And it's like, no, ask all these different things as though they're mutually exclusive. And like, we're just kind of like, mature and it's all part of it. Yeah. Like, it's,

Unknown Speaker 48:02 so you'll say it's all of that. Well, yeah,

Doug Misicko 48:05 I mean, it's but it's, it's all it can't be disentangled. You know? Sure. Like,

Unknown Speaker 48:10 I mean, everything. To me, I think everything is political.

Doug Misicko 48:13 And everything's theater to like, you know, if you if you look at religion, a lot of the, you know, what religious organization doesn't use are to pomp and imagery, and like, I mean, what's the what's the ritual, you know, theater, right. And there's nothing wrong with that. Or like, when people see that we engage in what they call prankster ism. So they think there's something inauthentic about, like, what? Why, like, it needs to be stone sober. And

Unknown Speaker 48:42 I mean, that's what Christianity was all about. pranksters, you know, but like, not not fessing up to the fact that it was a, you know, it's like, let's, let's trick everyone.

Doug Misicko 48:52 Yeah, yeah. I liken us to like the, this the stage magician who doesn't claim to have supernatural powers, like it's still is effective, you know, it's still a great spectacle. It's but you're not, you're not. You're not trying to diminish people in any way. You're not trying to, to fool them, or, you know, or I don't know,

Unknown Speaker 49:19 well, I guess maybe like, there's this, I guess, with certain other religions, there is this form of oppression, you know, and that's something I

Doug Misicko 49:26 was, yeah, it's a difference between authoritarian conditioning and trying to give people these tools to develop their own creativity and enrich themselves. There's a whole dialogue we kind of have going on now that one of our one of our people, are coordinators, putting together a book about our rituals. And one of the most interesting emergent properties from this community in the Satanic Temple is how it handles rituals because we've never told people we never really told chapters. You know explicitly how to handle ritual within their, within their chapters, and like, there's only a certain amount of thing somebody like me can do to author, the culture of the Satanic Temple, right? At certain point, you have to just see what people make of it. In it could have been that we became populated by people who really liked the atheist prankster narrative. In weren't so much into the idea of Satanism. That's not what we ended up with, we ended up with people genuinely attached to non theistic Satanism, and they liked doing rituals and things like that. But the rituals in the Satanic Temple are very creative. They're like, we have rough templates, there's no like real scripts where it's like, you say this, and somebody says this back, it's not this, like, stand up, sit down, shit is participatory. And people like, make these rituals for specific events sometimes, and they change these rituals to match what they want, you know, what they want to get from it, you know, and in an in a lot of them are very cathartic. And they're, you know, there's a lot of applied psychology involved. Like we had a destruction ritual here, people wrote down these different things they wanted to be rid of in their lives, and they lit them on fire and stuff like that. And in that kind of circumstance, you know, people were breaking down in tears and things. It was very emotive for them. It was very, very cathartic, and very, very interesting. But I think it's interesting that we never told people that that's what ritual is in. That's what developed from this philosophy of de authoritarianism. And you see, the distinct difference between churches and religions that are premised on authoritarian conditioning were their rituals are very much about you stand up at the right time you repeat after these lines kind of thing. It's authoritarian conditioning. And like, our rituals are the opposite. They're supposed to be personally enriching and, you know, creative processes. I think I think that's a beautiful thing. You know, that's something I'm really proud of to see.

Unknown Speaker 52:11 So, man, okay, because for me, when I would look at like, Satanism, it seemed almost like an I don't want to say the wrong thing, but it seemed like true anarchy, right, like self governing. Is that something that seemed right to me? Like, I mean,

Doug Misicko 52:30 yeah, I mean, I was talking about something that's been the great pride of seeing this developed and Satanism. Like, that ritual aspect. I mean, there's disappointing aspects to like, like, what? Wow, just like originally, the idea was that there would be no kind of central authority for the Satanic Temple at the time. I had, like, you know, this was before, like, anonymous, the hacker group kind of became synonymous with like, 4chan, right wing bullshit, whatever, in there.

Unknown Speaker 53:09 That 4chan stuff is synonymous with with the anonymous now.

Doug Misicko 53:16 Yeah, Anonymous was more kind of like a but it seemed like 4chan, 4chan, brainchild, right. That's where they did a lot of there. Now, 4chan? Yeah. It's really known for its like white power shit. Yeah. But yeah, anonymous seem like they're not Yeah, anonymous, right? These hacker anarchists, right. And there was no like central authority to anonymous, it was just like, people believed in certain principles. And they held up the banner of anonymous. And like, I kind of had these idealistic notions at the beginning that that's what the Satanic Temple would be right? There would be no governing body of the Satanic Temple, people would get the Satanic Temple. And they would call themselves a Satanic Temple, and they would be doing these things. And it was like, but it was pretty early on where I was like, Okay, I'm a public person. And I can't run the risk of like some South Florida chapter, like, marching with the Klan or something like that. So it's like, cuz I'll crash and burn like so. We have like, kind of a basic structure in place of like, how do we regulate this right? And I feel like, that's kind of the situation we're in now is like trying to balance maximum autonomy against like those principles of anti authoritarianism. It's just seeing what the real limits are. And it's always kind of an open question, because it's not so much a question of like, increasing centralized authority, of course, for its own sake, but increasing centralized authority for the sake of all of those who identify with us so they can feel reasonably secure, that they're not going to be suddenly associated with some heinous activity or some heinous statement because we weren't Keep track of what other chapters were doing. So now, you know, we just do have this governing body where chapters want to do anything public facing release a statement or whatever, they run it by us first. And we just look over whether there's legal issues, whether there's other like, health considerations, liabilities, you know, injuries, whatever, you know, potential for injury, that kind of thing, and either give it or approval or not, but we've tried to develop a culture within our council where the, the overriding question is, why not, rather than making the chapters justify why, you know, we want to give them kind of real creative freedom to do what they do. And we only want to really veto that if there's serious concerns that this would make the rest of the organization look bad or whatever. So it's just interesting to see what the what the limits are to that, you know what I mean? Because we start out with that mindset of complete anarchy, right? And then the more we develop, the more we have to put a system in place,

Unknown Speaker 56:05 but not like complete anarchy, because that seems like this sort of weird, like nihilistic punk rock idea of just like, Fuck it, you know, like, Fuck the world. It's like, no, no, no, no, like, just keep your shit together and don't don't harm or oppress other people. Like, I mean, it kind of seems like that's the sort of general guideline, if you can apply the word guideline to anarchy, you know, it seems like that would be like the, the sort of place to, you know, reside in, I guess, live in or exist in or whatever.

Doug Misicko 56:34 Yeah, I mean, you do want to have a system in place to for, I mean, you just want the optimal system in place, right? You want it want to encourage collaboration, and have everybody open to, you know, having a voice in which they feel they can approach, you know, solutions to different problems.

Unknown Speaker 56:53 And the world's changing and people are changing. So it's like, it's interesting to think about, like, how you said that the Church of Satan, people were, like, upset with what you were doing? And it's like, well, and you can obviously, it's speculation like, what would elevate, do or think or feel now, you know, it's like, so like, the world has changed. So like, the going back, like the mindset of, of the Church of Satan is like, not necessarily relevant to, you know, the,

Doug Misicko 57:19 the most facile response to the Church of Satan, as they're so obsessed with the idea of the strong, overcoming the weak that it's like, well, I guess you're watching that in action with the Satanic Temple taking premacy over Oh, I mean, in a very real way. That's true. I mean, I mean, we have something that's it's more relevant, I think, and more appealing and readily understandable and

Unknown Speaker 57:47 more mature, can we say that like,

Doug Misicko 57:49 and I and I think like our conception of what Satanism should be, is more intuitive to people who view who looked down upon Christian beliefs as being theocratic and autocratic and totalitarian. Like to go it in rejection of that in the direction of a different type of, of tyranny is it's counterproductive? It's it's, it's silly. So their, their views are very right wing now, and very much associated with kind of the evangelical nationalists we fight against now. Oh, yeah. So it, it stopped making sense to people,

Unknown Speaker 58:35 but maybe those views were always there, sort of, to some extent,

Doug Misicko 58:39 with the Church of Satan. Yeah. Oh, yeah, they definitely were. Those were in place, those have been in place for a while. They just necessarily weren't associated with the Evangelical, right, in the United States. You know, because how, at a certain point, they were, you know, earlier on, they were rallying against probably the best things you can associate with Christianity, the idea of charity, the idea of mutual cooperation and things like things that aren't worth attacking anybody? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 59:16 I mean, it did kind of seem like they were like, if you were to like, look at them as like, the having that prankster aspect, it was sort of like this, just like, a bunch of fart jokes and shit like that, you know, you're just like, come on, like, if you're gonna be a prankster at least, like have there be some kind of substance to it?

Doug Misicko 59:30 Well, that's why it was hilarious to see them acting like they were appalled by the pink mass that we had done and that this was something that like, it's just makes us all look bad. I mean, seriously, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 59:45 Okay, and then so you also had mentioned like this, the struggle or like I guess the combativeness that you've you get with with atheist organizations, like that's just seems that's just it's like a bummer to hear that you know, I mean,

Doug Misicko 1:00:00 it's not it's not really I mean, let me clarify, we just see some of the shit on social media, okay, where people who identify themselves as atheists get all pissed off. But for the most part, like the irrelevant atheist organizations have been really, really good to us like

Unknown Speaker 1:00:18 you're fighting the both fighting the good fight like like, it seems like there's power in numbers like everyone can kind of like, come to agree on most things like we should probably just be chill or whatever, you know, there's

Doug Misicko 1:00:29 a, there's a, there's a problem in, in just dialogues in general now where people completely lack nuance. So you have some of these atheists who have this talking point where religion is poisoned, religion is toxic religion is the root of all evil. And I would have them revise that. And so why don't you move your concerns over to superstition in recognize that you can have non theistic religions you can have, you know, religions that aren't toxic, you know, that aren't premised upon beliefs that are intellectually insulting and backward. And in, then we're, we're fighting the same fight, but you have some people who, they can't revise their thinking to the point where they can see,

Unknown Speaker 1:01:14 you're getting more to the root of, yeah, the root of the problem. Right, right. Is religion is pretty much in between, you're saying get rid of the superstition. All right. And then yeah, it makes sense.

Doug Misicko 1:01:27 And I expect them to recognize this when it's pointed out, and when they hold on to this notion that no, you know, you can't be a religion because you're not applying superstition to it in I will never have anything to do with the religion because I have this as an atheist or whatever. It's like you're or they are demanding second class status as citizens because when I point out to them, like, look, you know, in our legal system, religions are conferred certain rights and privileges that the non religious aren't. So you should insist that non theistic people can claim exemption and privilege of religion, or else you You're, you're willfully rendering yourself second class status. Right. But that that doesn't work either. So what would that be some of them

Unknown Speaker 1:02:23 like eight like, so like, it'd be like the all the religions, and then the atheism would be like, not a religion, but represented as some sort of like, entity, right? I guess I don't know how they address it or call it or,

Doug Misicko 1:02:36 you know, that if I remember correctly, the American Humanist Association, they're openly atheist, but they, they've caught on there. They're willing to call themselves a religious perspective. And they should, yeah, because the humanists are different than atheists in which in, in the way that they do try to define affirmative values applied to what they do believe in, as opposed to just asserting what they don't believe in. Right. Yeah. And so as a community, they should have just as much right to a religious privilege, privilege and exemption is anybody else? And sometimes I think they do I think they've won some cases also, in you know, that's a step in right direction. But like I said, you know, it's not gonna be generally recognized till there was a Christian non theistic group.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:29 Sure. What other like, this might be a strange question to answer but what other religions do you think kind of fit in line? Not in line, but like, can kind of coexist with, with you, like, in your, in your, in your opinion, like what? You know, like, it's, like, I don't know, like, for me growing up, like, in the, like, the Hardcore scene like punk and hardcore, there was like, all of a sudden, it was like, Krishna bands, and you're like, What the fuck is this? Like, we all you know, we like yeah, we hate God, or we hate Christians or whatever. And then there's like, Krishna like, that's and people were like, we have it they're like, they're vegetarian. And they're they're peaceful like you know that there's they're still jacked up religion like and it's fucked up and weird and like, but and so there was like this weird backlash with like, a lot of punk bands and stuff like thinking like, why are Krishna is accepted? Because they are, I don't know, like, is there something like that? You know, because I also struggle with like, you know, I go to I do, like, I go to yoga a lot. And like, there's this like, you know, kind of, like, integrated into this weird thing. And I just, I can relate and I can't accept certain I feel like it's like this sort of like white privileged world that people that you know, like upper class world that people are coming from so like, what religion do you think that's recognized is accountable I suppose, or like, practical

Doug Misicko 1:04:51 there's a lot to that question. Because we do get Christians writing to us and saying like, hey, we we get it you know, like we do. don't agree with you guys on like, theological issues, but we agree you have your rights and you know that you have the right to believe what you believe in the state shouldn't be involved in picking and choosing, you know, property religions. And like I told you earlier, like they rally at the end of hail satan wasn't shown, but we actually had Christian Christian ministers speaking on behalf of the issue of pluralism. So, you know, like, not all Christians, you know, yeah. I mean, it's, it's just too big, right. But a lot of the minority religions, which are any non Christian religions, now, you know, they, they don't have a bad thing to say about us. And like, we've had Muslim groups like, happy about us doing what we're doing and speak on our behalf and stuff like that. And just the same, it's kind of, it's almost uncomfortable in a way for me, because it's like, I don't ever want to not criticize the backward conservative superstitious elements in any religious group, but people are on high alert when it comes to criticism against Islam. And I also feel like, we and I understand that, right? Because, like, I feel like American Muslims get shit on a lot. And I don't think there's a whole lot in the way of like, you know, I mean, maybe I'm ignorant to it. And I, you know, I'm familiar in Detroit, there, you know, I grew up, there's a huge Muslim population there. And I didn't know much about their religion, because they never pushed it on anybody. They never tried bringing it into politics, you know, so to me, Muslims were like, This really benign group, you know, they were just, you know, people in the community or whatever. Just the same, like, my sympathy is a Satanist often goes towards the ex Muslims who everybody shits on, you know, you get these Muslim heretics who are felt used by their past as Muslims. And I'm like, All right, they're like the satanists of the, of the Muslim world in in, you know, they end up being called Islamophobic, and things like that. And I think as they left, because they openly criticize, like the fundamentalist, you know, the fundamentalists in their religion in it does trouble me when people like, in the liberal progressive camps, jump on that bandwagon of shitting on the ex Muslims for being Islamophobic or whatever. Yeah, just because they don't want to be seen as like, the Fox News style. Islamophobes. So but there's also, you know, two types of Muslim or Islamic critics, you know, there's, there's the type who understand that there is benign Muslims in the way that there's benign Christians, and that it's a huge religion, and that, like one population of it isn't necessarily indicative of the entire population that has some kind of cultural attachment to it. But that doesn't mean that some of these old archaic brutal texts are not counterproductive, or shouldn't be critically screwed. scrutinized. Yeah, you know, and then there's the the ones who who criticize, you know, or, or those are the ones who defend, you know, there's a tight pool, who criticize Islam because they are racist, or they are they are the Fox News, anti Muslim type. There are others who have the more nuanced criticisms, and sometimes they're accused of being, you know, just the same as the Fox News Islamophobes or whatever else. And I don't know, it just becomes a real hairy dialogue. You know, you don't even necessarily want to get into unless you have the opportunity to offer all those caveat. Yes, you know,

Unknown Speaker 1:09:02 so maybe there's like this sort of, like pyramid of obviously Christianity, one. I mean, look at we look at we're calling this 2019 Thank, you know, like they won. So they're the ones that are like,

Doug Misicko 1:09:12 don't know, they're oppressed, if you hear it from their point of view, but they're able

Unknown Speaker 1:09:15 to bully like, well, the other they're fearing, it's like a white supremacist, they're like, they want to keep that supremacy, you know, so they're, they're like, well, let's bully these other smaller, you know, mindsets or religions or whatever. So maybe that's, but again, too, it's like you can't say all because there are yeah, there's two people that you know, that I'm that I feel I am close to in my life that are Christian and I'm like, God, I just wish that all Christians are like this, but unfortunately, it's just a small fraction of them that I've encountered on this planet so far that I can like Gree with and respect.

Doug Misicko 1:09:49 Yeah, I feel like I see the simple mindedness on both ends of the political spectrum, right, because on the one hand, I do feel like we can criticize Catholicism in ways We're not allowed to criticize Islam right? In because then you'll get that, that knee jerk reaction from the liberal progressive side where it's like you're one of those FoxNews Islamophobes. But you can say what you want about the Catholics and everybody's going to, you're going to applaud, right? They're going to say, Yeah, fuck them or whatever. But then on the other side of that, like, there, the Catholics still have this kind of religious immunity, where we don't talk about exorcism as being the dangerous superstitious practice that it is, you know, if it's it, that's kind of like one of these Western culture, religious things where, when we do the same things that, you know, so called primitive witch doctors do, yeah, like it's ignored, even though you know, they'll pretend like overseas or, you know, African witch doctors are somehow more primitive than us. And yet, we just ignore the fact that we have people killing their children all the time and exorcisms, you know. I mean, I get news alerts on exorcisms and people are dying all the time due to exorcisms. And yet, news coverage of exorcism always acts like exorcism is just this kind of undetermined phenomenon. You know, is there something to it is there you know, are there demons that possesses some people believe there are in often like articles about exorcism or the Vatican, like training a whole army of new exorcise now like exorcism is very popular now. It's growing in popularity, even as membership in the Catholic Church diminishes. And, you know, most of the articles you read about this, we'll just talk about two experts from the Vatican about demonic possession. And it's like, in that way, Catholicism Christianity gets a pass like that, in that that's a way you see, like really entrenched, kind of, or that kind of white privilege, like indoctrination that people don't even recognize. There was last month in October, there was a kid drowned by his father during an exorcism, in his mother was witnessing this happen. So she tried to call the pastor right before she called 911. Pastor didn't pick up then she called 911. The news article about this, that I think it was in Washington Post in Washington Post this like a progressive, like liberal paper, supposedly, it didn't, it didn't mention anything about the religion of this family. Turns out they were Catholic, right, you wouldn't have gotten this from the article. Instead, it pointed out that they were part of some Native American reservation tribe, as though that had something to do with it, right. And that's how those kinds of stories will go the exorcism stories, they'll try to point to it as being. And I think I was telling you about this earlier, when we first offered to put our private donation of Baphomet monument up to the next to the 10 commandments monument. There was this Satanic Panic in Oklahoma, how there was this fear, like was it was it really this legal circumstance now where they were going to have to have a satanic monument on the public grounds? And what would this do? You know, would it come come awake at night and like, come in children or whatever. I don't know what they were thinking. But they were thinking it was going to,

you know, unravel the moral fabric of Oklahoma, if that was there. In that time period, where there were all these articles about, you know, Satan is coming to Oklahoma, some Christian guy, decapitated somebody. At his brother's house, I think his brother was playing cards with this guy and his brother said that the murder his brother, had been watching videos on YouTube about his Christian beliefs at the point where he picked up this blade and hacked off the head of his friend, because he thought his friend was a practicing witch and into the occult or whatever. I don't know the guy may have been. But this was clearly a case of a Christian religious fanatic, lopping off somebody's head. And his own brother, who was there at the scene, said that he lopped off this guy's head, because of his Christian beliefs. And in the articles about this, they, you know, they talked about how this guy was mentally imbalanced. Which, you know, if the guy had been Satanists, that would have been the only thing they would have talked about this guy's a Satanist. And that's it. That explains why he caught this guy's head off. In this case, the chief of police, who was speaking to the press about this murder, actually said that they found no connection between the murder in ISIS or other Islamic beheadings and therefore, therefore There were no religious implications to the murder at all. I just now that really, that that's really the protective buffer? Oh, sure, yeah, you know, over our own, you know, own Western culture, religious identification that we have that people don't even recognize it sometimes until I pointed out even people who are inclined to agree with me on these things, you know, they don't even realize that this has been going on right in front of their faces until I show them you know, this is what exorcism does. You know, a lot of people get beaten during exorcisms,

Unknown Speaker 1:15:37 where was that out where the beheading happened?

Doug Misicko 1:15:39 It was in Oklahoma in 2014, that a guy chopped off and other guys had. And it turns out, a month before that beheading, there was another guy who popped off the head of one of his co workers, I forget where he was working. And it wasn't clear. I wasn't really clear what this guy's motive was, I guess he was just a disgruntled employee or whatever. But it was interesting to note that in that article, too, in 2014, they said that this guy had no connection to ISIS, or other WoW, Islamic beheadings. And they, in fact, went on and the article does talk about how he, in fact, was a Christian in there for this beheading couldn't have had anything to do with religion, of course, because we just don't do those kinds of things, right.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:28 I mean, I guess if you were, I don't want to talk shit about people in Oklahoma or wherever the you know, these things happen, but it's like, you can touch it.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:37 We'll leave it to you.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:38 But you know, it's like, it's like on every, every piece of money. It's like, you know, it's like, you have to pledge allegiance to the flag, and, you know, reference God in that and school. It's like, it's everywhere. It's every it's an every single day. So it's like, I let's give it to those people to not make the connection between, you know, the beheadings being a religious act, you know, like, I guess I see why that happened. I mean, I don't agree with it. But I guess I see why. They're just like, Oh, nope, don't see a connection, you know? Well, I

Doug Misicko 1:17:09 hope that something people get out of the hail satan film is, you know, just seeing some of those times that people have invoked the fact that In God We Trust is on money. It gives them some kind of exclusive license to the public forum. You see that in the scene where our chapter in Arizona is asking to give an invocation before the Phoenix city council. And in the public comments of the the city council meeting preceding the one we're, our chapter splits give the invocation. There were a few people who got up at the podium and held up dollar bill and they said, See, it says In God We Trust and to them, that means that we're a Christian nation. Yeah. And Christians have some kind of exclusive privilege. And they have, you know, they have less restrictive rights, and then everybody else they, they, they have a right to the public forum that we do not. And I think that's important for people to recognize because at the time, they accepted in God, we trust to be put on the money and like the 1950s Not even the ACLU pushed back because the whole argument was that it was patriotic and ceremonial. Nobody really took this as a religious statement. This was just kind of some I don't know if this was just kind of some statements about I don't even really know the argument, you know, I cuz I don't believe in it. You know, I, to me, it's explicitly a religious statement. But people didn't take it as such at the time. And I think that's a big mistake. Like, we get some people criticizing us sometime asking, well, what's the big deal? You know, let the Christians have their display in the public square, why you got to go in there and get some off. It's like, it's, it's not even for them. It's not really about the, the monuments just being there. That's not the only thing they want. Like, they could put their 10 commandments on any. There's a Christian church on every corner, you know, put your

Unknown Speaker 1:19:10 so they're getting pissed off because they're losing them their their power. Really.

Doug Misicko 1:19:15 Yeah, right. I mean, I hate to say that, like, this is the death throes of like, of like, their Christian identity or whatever, because, like, you realize they were saying that during the Revolutionary War, you know, yeah, we had reached the end of Christian government, that kind of thing. And we, we just see it keep fighting back,

Unknown Speaker 1:19:35 but it's like when you you hear the argument, like, you know, black power is the same as white power and it's like it's it's not it's they're two different things. You can't compare them. And you know, if you have this thing with like, you know, people that are white supremacist, worried about like, oh my god, white people are gonna become the minority. It's like, well, and then and then like, you're welcome to the fucking club.

Doug Misicko 1:19:58 Yeah, you Yeah, but you hear that most from people where there's no real, no real legitimate fear of them becoming a minority, or they are in time in their lifetime. So it's really bizarre to me that they care at all. It does seem like people who are in more diverse environments care less about being the dominant, you know, ethnic representation that feels like one of those rural, isolated kind of things where they feel like the barbarians are at the gates won't be ready to swarm in at any moment. Maybe that's the FoxNews crowd.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:39 Yeah. I mean, they're at least they're at least painting that picture for people, I think.

Doug Misicko 1:20:45 Yeah, they certainly are. I've, I don't tend to watch it unless I'm in the green room, you know. Yeah. And, and as far as I can tell, they're still talking about Benghazi,

Unknown Speaker 1:20:54 I'm still amazed that you are on there. Like, that's such a great accomplishment, you know, like, congratulations,

Doug Misicko 1:21:01 I, I'm proud of my Xbox. Yeah, I was telling you earlier. Like I tailor my rhetoric to, to actually make my argument to those those crowds. Sure. I, when I'm, when I'm on some, like conservative media, I make sure that I highlight those things that will challenge their cognitive dissonance. Yeah, I can legitimately speak to issues of religious liberty. And they're going to have to think of ways in which they can pretend we don't apply. You know, I'm the one who can talk about, you know, that kind of libertarian ideal of freedom of choice and like, non government intervention on issues of viewpoint. And that's the kind of rhetoric they've been putting forward to their benefits so often that they didn't think that anybody else could have a claim to it. And to some of them, like it's actually enlightening. I've, you know, it's almost uncomfortable to get messages from people who identify themselves as regular Fox News viewers, or when I got messages from people who said, they love Tucker Carlson watch them all the time, but they thought I did a really good job on the show. You know, you can be a little uncomfortable with

Unknown Speaker 1:22:18 why that right. I mean, maybe you maybe you got that little you planted that little piece of

Doug Misicko 1:22:23 Oh, no, yeah, no, it's a good thing. Like the knee jerk reaction is to be like, wait, I looked good to Tucker Carlson's crowd, you know, is that a good thing? But you see enough of the pissed off messages and be like, okay, everything universe is still in order. Right? There's some people it's weird to sometimes be comforted to see that the people you never reach are still there. Oh, yeah. Well, it's,

Unknown Speaker 1:22:45 I mean, this might not be the exact thing but like, there was this, this anonymous there's this article on anonymous how they were like ratting out the Klan, like they're giving out like, their, you know, names and their, whoever they were, like the, in the end where they were like, in the ranks or whatever. And I and I thought this article was great. And I posted it on Facebook, and all these people were like, you know, commenting in this in this one guy, like, chimes in, he's a Klansmen. And he's like, you know, it's weird, that like, sort of nuance that he had, because everybody was like, so he kind of chimed in and was like, this article actually is just like, really good promotion for the KKK. And then all these people are like, Who the fuck are you? And he's like, Well, I'm, this is me, I'm, I'm on the Grand Wizard of this in like, Nashville or something, you know, and sure enough, he was I looked at his profile, and I was like, this is like, pretty fucking frightening. And everyone's like, you know, fuck you. And they were just so mad at him, you know, and we kind of I was, I was, like, very, like, sort of skeptical and like commenting or like, to him, you know, and we kind of like, I kind of would try to say things like, that. I'm not, I don't want to piss this guy off, like, Fuck it, I can go on tour, and he'll just, like, go to the show and shoot me or whatever, you know, like, figure out, like, he can figure out who I am just like, I can figure out who he is. But we start having these conversations. And, um, you know, it's, it was interesting, and this isn't the same, but maybe sort of, I don't want to associate or relate to someone like that at all. But we that the end of our conversation like, came to that we both thought that Dave Chappelle was brilliant and he was we were referencing the the blinds lying Klansmen skit that he did on the Chappelle Show, and I was like this is crazy like you know there's pictures of this guy shooting guns and shit like and he's you know, there's pictures of him in like his purple FUCKING WIZARD row robe and I'm like, this is like the real deal and I'm having this like, non you know, aggressive conversation where everyone else is just quick to be like, Fuck you and but he was able to kind of like take the the I guess aggressiveness of all the comments and not let's not lose this shit. You know,

Doug Misicko 1:24:54 your confession that you had any civil dialogue with this guy will have a certain group of people system that you're not seeing that's that's a sure thing. Like, I mean, fuck him just for sitting here listening. So bad it is,

Unknown Speaker 1:25:11 well, it okay, I see that but like the same I know, plan and B are Nazis. Or KKK? It's like yeah, I mean, it was it was just it was such a weird thing to kind of like, converse with someone like that because it doesn't happen, you know, like I don't want to have a conversation with people of that leaf system. And I mean I whatever, I don't even know what my point is,

Doug Misicko 1:25:36 do you feel like you can actually change somebody's point of view? Like, I mean, the thing is, is like, I've, I've been called a Nazi just for just for questioning this whole notion that you should just go out and punch, punch Nazis. I was like, You should laugh at them. Like, when these guys do wait, so

Unknown Speaker 1:25:58 do you think people should punch Nazis or not punch Nazis?

Doug Misicko 1:26:01 It depends on the circumstance. I don't think you can. I don't think you can just make this blanket statement that people have a moral responsibility to watch not to punch these guys when they're straight pride, or whatever. Yeah, because that I mean, I feel like they feel like that validates them, right. They feel like they're going out to war. And if somebody comes out and they're just going to punch them in these, for the most part are just boneheaded. Show assholes who want to go out and get it. Right. Is in sometimes I think it has less to do with the ideology and more to do with just wanting to go out and have some, some dirty hippie, you don't take a swing at them so they can get enough. Yeah, come out or whatever. And it's like, I feel like it's so much more harmful. Like, if you're marching down the street, everybody's mocking you and ridiculing you, you know, you should make a spectacle of it. Like I was saying like the KKK they come into a rally or whatever. People should be joining in that rally like putting on their fake buck teeth and playing banjos and stuff like that. maximizing their sisters and Yes, like that, and making like they're part of that whole group and getting the pictures with them and those guys a B, you know, then they would go home and you know, they wouldn't be saying like, those fuckers came at us if we you know, Yeah, cuz when you

Unknown Speaker 1:27:15 punch a Nazi, they're gonna just be even more of a Nazi.

Doug Misicko 1:27:19 But I see that but when I'm confronted by these guys, I often can't help but just be like fuck you, you know what I mean? Like, like we had all these death threats coming at us from white supremacist when we were doing our rally in Arkansas, you know in that scary because Arkansas, Arkansas right. I don't know what kind of bunkers with what kind of weapons are holed up in what we had some, some group of them that was making the call out to all white Christians to come in oppose this thing. And, you know, they're making all these threats and everything. And then of course, we got there and it's an open carry state, and people had guns and everything. And it was like, we had guys signaling to us from across the street. And they were on the Capitol grounds itself. You weren't allowed to have a gun, but just across the street on the peripheral you were in these guys had guns and like, I knew my back was gonna be to them when I was speaking. So I was thinking like, somebody, like, I was kind of surprised. Nobody took a shot, you know? So I stood at the podium. And then before me, were some of these white supremacist assholes with their flags. And even then, I couldn't help but insult them. Like I was, I had to make some comments about how here was here's here's the fucking master race, you know, these like, these, like doe dickheads you know, these these, these flabby shits were standing there, you know, holding up their flags or whatever. And I was saying I and I was kind of questioning that whole note like, the masteries here, they're not fine physical specimens. And I was like, and they're not they're also not the intellectual elite, you know, and then I said something like, I'm sure your mother's thought you're very handsome little boys or whatever, something like that. And

Unknown Speaker 1:29:10 well, you did that even with the guns and everything in the in the end.

Doug Misicko 1:29:14 Yeah, it's on YouTube. Just couldn't fucking help it Yeah, just even if I had gotten shot you know, I had last moments to like breathe out something I just been like, I still take you fucker seriously, and I'm still laughing Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:29 Yeah, but that would have been like I maybe that part of them probably knew like if we shoot them then you know, Falcone dies or survives where it's gonna just make you like even more iconic, right? You know, like, oh my god that there's more coverage. Yeah, I

Doug Misicko 1:29:44 don't know. One of those really funny though. I just can't win moments was after that. I had people you know, more from our side of the spectrum, who were very upset that I had body shamed them. I was like, okay, you know, no, it's fine. It's fine if you're flabby. Right. But also don't call yourself master race if you're neither intelligent nor physically Yeah, or physically fit. You know, you have, don't you have to at least be one of those. Right? Yeah. Like,

Unknown Speaker 1:30:20 that's great. Cuz Think about it like, like, you can't, but it's like, you know, it is one thing to like, take to be. I mean, I guess it's, I don't know, maybe it's like the woman asking you about your eye in the in the first question, like, from their perspective, like, is that the first shot? They're gonna take it you like something? That's not quite? I don't know. I don't but you're again, you're not you're not you're not trying to sell yourself as the master race. You know? I mean, right.

Doug Misicko 1:30:50 So I am allowed to, yeah, myself really fell out of shape. And

Unknown Speaker 1:30:57 I wanted to I wanted to ask you to about when we were talking about the Fox News thing is like, what do you what like, what about the opposite side? Like, do you ever talk to someone like from Democracy Now? Or, or NPR or something where it's like, this is a really well thought out conversation. And it does that happen? Maybe not quite as often as well,

Doug Misicko 1:31:14 usually, it's podcasts. And usually it's it's in, you know, when people approached me about podcasts, like, I often don't know how, how listened to these podcasts are so in the beginning, I was just saying yes to a lot of podcasts. And some of them were just like, a guy in his basement, and like, some of his friends listened to it. And then I but some of them, I found out later were huge. Like, there was this guy, Duncan Trussell. He was like his comedian out of LA. And it's funny because I thought he was just some guy in his basement, you know, and he had done one of the trunk histories, or whatever. So he messaged me quite a bit. And like, I was busy doing other other things. And I felt like I was doing him a favor. And like, I was fucking, I want to do okay, I'll do. I'll do your podcast now. And I did his podcast. And then like, that was one of the earlier things where a lot of people came to the Satanic Temple, just from hearing me on the dunk. And trust me, that's a good, that's a good crowd right there. Yeah. Yeah, so

Unknown Speaker 1:32:17 what other ones that like one of their like, I don't know, entities have like, kind of got you into the right crowd? Ah, it's I mean, the film in itself had to be I mean, I sought an independent cinema, you know, independent theater, which I feel like, I don't know. People they don't have do they have those in Oklahoma? I don't know. Like,

Doug Misicko 1:32:39 a Walmart? Yeah. Well, like I said, earlier, there was there was a 45 minute CNN documentary about us, Lisa Ling had this show. This? No, This American Life is NPR. Yeah, she has something similar, but it's in real life. And it was a 45 documentary, 45 minute documentary about the unveiling of the bathroom at Monument. And that was like, the biggest thing done about us at that point. And, you know, we gave CNN the exclusive to be able to come in, like, you know, and I'm very much one of those guys who is totally fine doing events, performances, or whatever, sometimes with no cameras at all, like no record of it, just because like, I even had this idea one time where we do like this whole stage performance thing, just do like a couple of venues in the film, you know, like, and never release with a script, just leave it to people's memories. Because I feel like it kind of takes something away from things now or there's always like, some HD quality video record of it, because like, you kind of miss the atmosphere and the mood or whatever. In certain ways. I think people's memory of that emotive quality in the place at the time is more accurate record of currency, like in verbatim on the on the HD footage, or whatever. So with even CNN when we were doing the unveiling, we limited them severely. It's to like one we limited them to like one camera on one spot. Wow, the event kind of thing. It was like a track though. Like it was like, you know, there was like a side lane or whatever that they could go through.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:30 But But why would you want to do that?

Doug Misicko 1:34:33 Because we didn't want to get in the way of the event. We're like, that was the most absolutely no cameras in front of the stage type of thing because we have like, a real thrash band playing and you know, people start marching everything. And we didn't want like, if we weren't careful with our media, like, all these offense would come off. They would just be staged events, right? Like the unveiling event would have been completely different. Like there would have been like a semi circle of media. cameras in front of the stage. And then the rest of the people were actually there for the event feel like they were just kind of watching a studio set, you know, like, it wouldn't be a real event at all. But there was a real authenticity to that event that, you know, CNN being there didn't take away from. But at the time, like Lisa Lang was really nice, you know, I did a lot of kind of, you know, background negotiations with what we would do and what we wouldn't do. You know, what we would agree to, and like, just like with Patty and her documentary, we weren't going to stage anything, we weren't going to reenact anything, you know, either caught it, or you didn't know, we weren't going to go that reality TV out where everything's actually staged type of thing. But I just remember, I had this moment of terror, that two hours before it was going to air, because I hadn't seen it, you know, the CNN piece. And I was, but you lived it, though. But I didn't know what they were gonna run. You know, I mean, I just didn't know what they're gonna say about Yeah. And so I was having friends over because we were gonna all watch it air, you know, they're just coming over. And I remember I picked up some liquor at the liquor store. And then when I was walking home, I suddenly felt like I got punched in the gut and I nearly dropped what I had purchased because it just like all of a sudden, this wave of nausea hit me and I thought what was I thinking there is no way CNN you know, is going to give us a fair shake. I was just like, What the fuck is wrong with my head? Like, why did I agree to any of this? I was like, This is it you know, this is like the This is why people's introduction to us like yeah, millions of viewers are gonna I was just I was catastrophizing, you know, I'm like, fucking ruined. By the time. By the time it aired, I was already drunk. And I was just watching a thing, like, here comes, you know, and I was just watching scene after scene. I'm like, okay, alright, that's fine. You know, next scene is same, like when I first watched Hail Satan, now the final cut, because I had no editorial control. But it's like, when I first see these things, it's like, I can't even see it objectively. It's like, I don't even remember what played only that. Only that it was accurate, or was it? Yeah, certain parts. So I think that was one of the things that brought us to a bigger audience at that time.

Unknown Speaker 1:37:22 So that aired before the film came out. Oh, yeah, that

Doug Misicko 1:37:25 was like a good couple years. Well, that film came out. Irritating story about that was Penny tried to buy some footage from CNN, because they have all this extra. They were following this route for a while and got, you know, I mean, they cut it all down to just 45 minutes. So they had a ton of material. In Turner, I guess, you know, it's turn on CNN. They wanted to charge something like some exorbitant fee like $500 per second of the flow age or whatever. It's like, no, they're never gonna use it. Yeah. Do you worry. Just a cactus is

Unknown Speaker 1:37:58 like they got ad revenue from the show they aired they should just be like, it's cool. Use it or whatever. But yeah, I get it, I get it, I guess.

Doug Misicko 1:38:04 Or we're never going to use it. Let's put a reasonable price on it. Yeah. Rather than not have anybody pay anything because it's prohibitively expensive. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:38:14 So you know, like, I always wonder, like, who I'm like, when you see things like documentaries, and it's like, not favorable. Like, they obviously didn't get the opportunity to veto anything like you did. You know, I mean, what what gave you like, the sort of, like, what was your feelings? When when you were like, Alright, we're gonna do this documentary we have, we have no way to veto anything. It's just gonna it is gonna be what it is, like, what if it just fucked you guys up? You know, like,

Doug Misicko 1:38:42 well, that that was, you know, that was a real possibility. But what what nobody could really know, especially from seeing the film is that night, it wasn't like, Penny Lane came along. And I, you know, and I said, Wow, somebody wants to do a documentary about us. Let's let's do it. The fact of the matter was, is like before Penny came along, wanting to do a documentary about us. A lot of people wanted to do documentaries about us. And so I had gone through a bunch of pitches already. And they were hard. No, every single time okay. In the effect was is that these people's pitches were often pretty insulting. Right? Yeah. They they felt they knew what the Satanic Temple was, they felt like we would be willing to do the kind of reality because some of these pitches were actually for reality show type things, you know, for, like, some kind of network doing like a series or whatever. In just like, a lot of them were also these kind of pitches where they were like, going to humanize the satanists. So the Satanic Temple, and I think they don't realize like how uninterested in that we are, like I've I, you know, I tried to give like media tips to our chapters and I don't want people to follow into that habit where they feel like we have to be respectable about our lifestyle or whatever, or ingratiate ourselves to the normal suit or whatever or, or bend over backwards to say like, oh, no, we don't do anything you'd be offended by. It's like, I'm more concerned with just like, just telling them no, we have equal access. We have equal rights under the law, you know, as in as long as we're not breaking the law. We don't care if we offend your moral sensibilities and the other way, you know, and which probably brings me back to your question somewhere, which I forgot what that was. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, about doing the documentary? Oh, yeah. Maybe decided to do that.

Unknown Speaker 1:40:49 Because it is a great documentary. I mean, I left the theater feeling like

Doug Misicko 1:40:53 a penny is a great filmmaker, though. In fact, when Penny first came first suggested doing document it was first her producer, Gabriel, who said he really liked we're doing thought a documentary, it could be, you know, in the offing, or whatever. I thought, no, no, just I didn't want that done. However, I also felt that as a spokesperson for a bigger organization, I still had a duty to hear her out. But I was, but I felt certain my answer was going to be no, right. So she invited me to New York to meet with her and her producer, and she was also doing a screening of the film that she had just done, you know, recently at that time, which was called nuts. And it was about this quack doctor, early 20th century who was claiming to transplant goat testicles into guys to make them more versatile. No, it was a really well done documentary. And I, I really loved how she put together the narrative for you know, it was like, she, she obviously put a lot of thought into the narrative construction in ways that a lot of documentaries just don't think about narrative construction, a lot of documentaries are just like, a chronological timeline that goes, you know, in Penny's documentary was, I really appreciate the way it was thought out. And then when she was doing the q&a, she was talking about disputes she had had with anti vaxxers. And that made me think, Hey, maybe I can sell her on doing something gray faction related. Because I was saying, like, I never get journalists to cover how we fight back against quackery in the in the mental health care field. So I thought, you know, if she doesn't documentary goes in that direction, this could really work out, you know. So I talked with her afterwards, I started telling her all about this. And she said, Well, we could definitely work something, you know, work something in or whatever. And I think, you know, there's a segment in the Satanic Panic and hail satan. And I think that might be partially to fulfill some contractual obligation. A certain degree, I don't even remember at this point. But she really took her time to understand who we really are, and what this meant to us, you know, without coming to us in trying to say like, this is the story I want to tell about you guys without knowing what that story is. That was what made me shut down on everybody else. That was what made me, you know, say no, absolutely not,

Unknown Speaker 1:43:34 you know, to a lot instead of her controlling the narrative, she was going to let it

Doug Misicko 1:43:37 Yeah, she was learning what the narrative was. And she took, she took a lot of time to do that, too. And I also told her like, okay, ultimately, this isn't, this isn't just up to me, like, at the point where she had my endorsement. I also made her pitch this to our counsel, and come out a meeting and talk about the kind of film she wanted to make. And even at that point, you know, she wasn't given the green light, everybody wanted more information, put her through that, yeah, maybe get her run the gauntlet. But then at a certain point, like, once we did sign off and say, Alright, we're, you know, you can do the documentary, and we could only put certain restrictions on it, you know, we could only say what we wouldn't do. And I was saying, like, I'm not gonna let this become any type of a biography about me, you know, like, I don't care about, you know, telling my autobiographical tale and I, you know, as I've gone through my spiel earlier, I feel that that diminishes the work of all the other people you know, I should be speaking more as just like a spokesperson for larger movement kind of thing to the best of my ability. And we didn't want it to have any of those reality aspects, you know, not investigating the private lives of Satanists and setting up those kinds of situations in which Allah will see you argue with your family now about your religious convictions, like you know, I really wanted to speak To the issues, yeah, filament really did those it did. But just the same, we had no editorial control. And ultimately, she could have broken a lot of those agreements with us. And there's not much we could have done, you know, even if it did fall under litigation probably would have been worth it, you know, for them and sharing documentaries do that kind of thing. You know, you see people who've been followed around by cameras for, you know, years at a time still, you know, and apparently a

Unknown Speaker 1:45:27 problem was the process.

Doug Misicko 1:45:29 There's like, three years, wow, something like that. But, you know, you do see documentaries come out about people, like who'd been followed on by those camera crews and probably develop real relationships with them and like, the documentaries come out, and they look like shit, you know. So, in that was another thing like with the, like, I was saying with the CNN p. So, you know, beforehand, I, I almost collapsed in, in an anxiety over it. Like, knowing that they had a final cut of the film and knowing I had no idea what it was because it doesn't take long. And once you're wired, and once you have the cameras on you to just start acting naturally, to the degree where you lose sense of the fact that you're being filmed, you know, and you're wondering, like, shit, what all did I talk about? You know, what do I have to worry about here? What could this? What could the outcome of this be? Yeah. And even thinking about, like, what the worst case scenario is, in thinking like, oh, I don't think anything bad. You know, I don't think there's anything bad, but you also think, what could they make of anything? Yeah, it's, I mean, terribly stressful. It's like, there's three years of stressful Russia.

Unknown Speaker 1:46:47 I mean, they'll turn your words write, I mean, you said it, like, just get like pieces for like, you know, little quotes, and then just make it out to be something else, you know, yeah, I did this. This is not really necessarily related. But I was on this. My Ghost Story TV show is a joke with this friend of mine. And our whole goal was to talk about ghost farts. We said Go smart, so many times that are interviewed and they cut out every single one made it completely linear. And there's not one time that we said goes forwards. I was like, This is crazy that they can edit that and make cohesive conversations and like pieces, just chunk just taking chunks. You read

Unknown Speaker 1:47:21 one message to get the

Unknown Speaker 1:47:22 word is we got to say, like History Channel, like we're gonna do, like we got to talk about ghosts.

Doug Misicko 1:47:29 Instead, they have you talking about the channel seems like construct your best? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 1:47:36 no, it may not seem like we were like, legitimately there for like this real ghost story. And we're like, No, not even close. Whatever. Well, I have one one more question that I don't know. I don't know if you want to add anything, but like, I and this might be like, not the best thing to ask. But I know, you're like, you're like, what's the worst religion? Like I always think about like, his arm. Is it Mormonism? Or is it Scientology was probably Scientology but like, I wonder what your take is on that. Like, what is like the most fucked up recognized organ organized religion that that is that exists or not even just like, yeah, like currently, you know, like, it's still functioning as like a as a religion.

Doug Misicko 1:48:20 I think I you know, I, I think naturally as a Satanist, I really have. You know, I look really harshly upon the Abrahamic religions, you know, Judaism, Islam and Christianity. But of course, we have allies and people who identify with each but you know, I look at the texts. And I think that's the brutal and archaic and harkens back to feudalistic monarchist, you know, or even tribal times where it's like, I feel like we've really grown beyond that, but some people, you know, can really construct a positive message from it. So I don't really think it's a question of like, what the worst religion is, I think, I, I've developed the real belief that superstition, even if it seems benign, is going to metastasize into destructive forms, you know, whether it becomes those destructive forms and different subsets that do brutal things, or even like the idea of exorcism, I think people have this kind of idealization of it, that that that protects it from the critical scrutiny where it's like, okay, people are conceptualizing of their inner demons or psychological problems as being literal demons, and if they can have them expunge through this type of, you know, religious therapy, then what's wrong with that? What's wrong with that is that people literally believe it, and then sometimes they believe that their children are literally demonic creatures. Yes, and sometimes they murdered that like, so you might not see the harm in a superstition at time, but it comes out, you know what I mean. And there was a time when I thought that the idea of the soul was only something that comforted people and there was really no purpose and in pressing back against people who claim that they believe there is an eternal soul residing in somebody's body that leaves it after they die and goes into an eternal afterlife. Well, now you have this concept of a soul, I think, being the primary force in reproductive rights battles, where you're arguing about, you know, cellular fetuses that don't have any higher cerebral functioning can't have no have no perception of pain, have no no impulses of that type. And you have people arguing that they're nonetheless in sold, or they might not be arguing that, but they believe that, you know, and that's the motivating force behind their legislation so that that hurts, you know, and I remember during the Bush era, there was that pushback against stem cell research, and a lot of that seem to be rooted in the idea that stem cells were in sold, right. And, you know, people kind of forgot about that, but there's still a real dysfunction now in, in that kind of research, due to people's religious conviction falls back on the idea of the soul, and my dad has Parkinson's now he's, he's pretty, pretty developed in his Parkinson's, you know, and in this, this is the kind of realm that could really help people like him. So there again, you have another kind of like, comforting superstition that I think has negative consequences for people. And I think superstition in all its forms is ultimately going to manifest itself in destructive forms. And people like to compare the Islamic texts against Christian texts and, you know, try to determine which one is worse and which one is better. Yeah, it's, it's not really helpful. It depends on who's reading it and how they practice it, and how literally, they believe in it. You know, like, you can certainly find items in Christian texts that justify brutality and murder the same ways you can find it in Islamic texts. And like I said, you also find the more peaceful sects that look at things like jihad is entirely internal is an internal war that must be fought with oneself in order to attain, you know, whatever, whatever holy stature they want. So,

Unknown Speaker 1:52:49 here I am, like thinking I want to talk about like, magic underwear, or like a pyramid scheme with aliens or something, you know, like, the more absurd shit and you went to like, the literal like, super fucked up stuff. So yeah, I mean, I guess, I guess I didn't articulate my question very well, but you definitely answered it. I mean, I and I agree one. Oh,

Doug Misicko 1:53:08 I can I can envision benign forms of Scientology if you read Yeah, yeah. It's his problem is is it's run by. It's run by fundamentalists. You know, it's run by bizarre. Bizarre autocrat, you know, in David Miscavige, you know, it is a very centralized as a corporation. Oh, yeah. You know, you don't find like, you don't find a whole lot of like, dissident scientists illogical. sects. Yeah, they take a more liberal interpretation. You're either with Scientology, or you're not, you know, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:53:51 What do you think?

Unknown Speaker 1:54:09 And there you have it. That is episode number 13. With Lucien Greaves,

Unknown Speaker 1:54:15 we'd like to say thanks to the Satanic Temple, thanks to to you listeners. And please check out our previous podcast there on three one GS SoundCloud, and they're also on iTunes, under three one G podcast

Unknown Speaker 1:54:30 and don't forget to check out hail satan. Now streaming on Hulu, I'm sure other places and also check out the satanic temples website. Go there, make a donation, buy some merch. All of that helps keep this movement going.

Unknown Speaker 1:54:45 Thank you everybody. Stay tuned for the next episode. Later.