8/8/88

8/8/88 was a Church of Satan event on Aug. 8, 1988, in San Francisco.

The Abraxas Foundation had brought together Boyd Rice, Adam Parfrey, and Nikolas Schreck — at least for a moment. Nikolas Schreck’s anthology The Manson File appeared on Parfrey’s Amok Press. Rice was listed as a contributing editor, and an image he made depicting Manson as an angel appeared alongside contributions by others in the Abraxas Clique, in addition to James Mason.

The Abraxas Clique had its greatest moment on August 8, 1988 with its 8/8/88 event, held at the Strand Theater in downtown San Francisco. It included Rice, Parfrey, and Schreck, all of whom were to have taken part in the Friends of Justice shows the year before. (Michael Moynihan was not yet embedded with them.) The three were joined by Zeena LaVey, the daughter of Anton LaVey. Officially billed as “An Evening of Apocalyptic Delight,” it was the most blatant display of the Nazi–Satanist nexus they had been creating, even though it remained cloaked in the typical ambiguity of the underground.

The 8/8/88 date referred to three things. According to Rice, Anton LaVey had done a destruction ritual at the same time, 19 years prior. And that very same night in 1969, the Manson Family murdered Sharon Tate and four others in Los Angeles.

Of course, 8/8/88 was also a neo-Nazi reference that no one in those circles would have missed, even if they chose to believe it was extremism for its own sake. Parfrey even admitted the reference was intentional, though simultaneously carving an out by claiming that Rice did it “as a way of making people anxious.” And certainly the presence of neo-Nazis at the event itself might have caused some people anxiety.

The main act was billed as NON, which for this performance included Schreck and Evil Wilhelm from Radio Werewolf and Parfrey on oboe. Zeena LaVey also took part, reading from of the Satanic Bible. Rice explained the billing to Mason this way: “James we’ll use whatever label necessary to put out our thought.” And while undoubtedly this was an overstatement, and the event was not a straight-up, ideologically motivated neo-Nazi event, it was also not not an event without real neo-Nazi elements.

The most damning part was a picture taken to memorialize the event. It showed a group, which included Schreck, Rice, Zeena LaVey, and neo-Nazi Bob Heick, giving a collective sieg-heil salute to the camera. Another shot of the group, obviously taken at the same time, included Parfrey and Nick Bougas, a White Supremacist who published in Tom Metzger’s paper. After the how, Rice and Schreck were interviewed sitting in front of Nazi flags. Both explained their extreme misanthropic views and expressed admiration for Hitler and the Nazis.

The performance was taped for a Geraldo Rivera two-hour TV special, “Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground,” which aired that October. Afterward, Rice expressed his displeasure at how it went, saying “it fell way short of its potential.” Although “the talent was there” — he included Parfrey, Evil Wilhelm, and Heick — Schreck was accused of having sunk the event.

Rice even complained that Rivera made him look bad.

What ended up on The Geraldo Show was twenty seconds of me appearing to exhort the audience to murder, saying, “Murder is the predator’s prerogative,” and, “There is no Earth without blood.” They took the most outlandish moment and put it on TV.

A strange complaint from someone who spent his career espousing outlandish cultural and political positions—and who spoke those very words knowing full well he was being filmed for national television.