I’ve come across some reviews of a book, written within the past year, about the recovered-memory aspect of the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare: Try to Remember: Psychiatry’s Clash over Meaning, Memory, and Mind by Paul R McHugh.

A review by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, in Metapsychology, contains the following:

If you read carefully the acknowledgement section, as I did, and look into the background of the publisher, you will discover another aspect of the author’s public life. Paul McHugh, in addition to being a psychiatrist, is part of the right-wing cum religious network which was has been so influential in the United States since the 1980s. The Dana Press, which published this book, operates as part of the Dana Foundation, headed by William Safire, speechwriter and ardent supporter of Richard M. Nixon. And so the “memory wars” in this context turn out to be part of the “culture wars” in United States politics, with promoters of repressed/recovered memories being on the left, and their opponents being on the right.

This is not accurate. In fact, the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare cut across the left/right divide, with both supporters and opponents on both sides. As Beit-Hallahmi goes on to say:

I must admit that this idea took me by surprise. While the fantastic accusations against parents certainly reflect a refusal to respect tradition and authority, and feminists were prominent among them, the sex and Satanism allegations drew the support of many religious individuals and organizations. Most of those who challenged the repressed memory movement were by no means right-wingers.

Correct.

McHugh’s political and religious views clearly have no bearing on his sound analysis of what ails psychiatry and the whole “mental health” industry in the United States and around the world.

I agree.

Here are some other reviews:

• Review by Steven Poole, The Guardian, Saturday 3 January 2009
• Notes of a Psychology Watcher, Thursday, October 23, 2008
• One on One: Confronting the politics of the couch by Ruthie Blum Leibowitz, Jerusalem Post,
• Review by Robert Michels, American Journal of Psychiatry, June 2009
• Review by David Pilgrim, Times Higher Education (U.K.), 1 January 2009
• Destructive Delusions: How therapists and ‘victims’ seized on the idea of repressed memory, leveling false charges and ruining lives by Theodore Dalrymple, Wall Street Journal, November 20, 2008
• Memory on Trial: Psychotherapy as expert witness by Caitrin Nicol, June 1, 2009

These reviews are a good overview of the “recovered memory” aspect of the panic.

Also I found an interesting relevant news article, Unraveling The Secret Of “Alters”: Doctors Are Of Two Minds About Multiple Personality Disorder by Tracy Smith, CBS News, March 8, 2009. Personally I suspect that McHugh may be going a bit too far with his denial that MPD/DID exists at all.

I recently came across a very interesting blog post about the “Satanic Ritual Abuse” scare of the 1980’s and early 1990’s: Inconvenient untruth, San Fernando Curt’s Blog, Talking Points Memo (TPM), June 22, 2009.

San Fernando Curt observes that the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare isn’t talked about very much anymore. He quotes and links to a Summer 2001 Women’s Quarterly article, Sex, Lies, and Audiotapes – hysteria over rape and sexual child abuse by Rael Jean Isaac, who points to the role of feminists in launching the panic. Curt claims that the reason why the SRA scare isn’t talked about very much anymore is because the feminist movement is, allegedly, a sacred cow whose mistakes no one dares discuss.

I disagree.

Curt writes:

The bad part, the downside of some movement ideas, is never addressed, never discussed. If the “right” people commit the outrage, it’s flushed down the memory hole. In a reversal of how this trendy bit of ugly slander gained traction through incessant publicity and repetition, its progenitors are protected de facto today. The subject merely has been “disappeared” from polite discussion; as relentlessly presented the crazy charge was then, so energetically ignored the entire episode is now.

But I’m not aware of any society-wide taboo on criticizing the feminist movement. Maybe such a taboo exists in Curt’s neck of the woods, but certainly not here in New York, and probably not in most other parts of the U.S.A. either.

I think there are plenty of other reasons why the SRA scare isn’t discussed much anymore. One reason may simply be the notorious American propensity for seeing last year’s news as “ancient history.”

Another reason is that the existence of false accusations of child sexual abuse is still an uncomfortable topic for many people. To this day, I suspect that a lot of people may still be afraid to speak up in defense of accused child abusers, out of fear that they might be suspected of being, themselves, perpetrators of such horrible crimes. To whatever extent discussion about the SRA scare is actually taboo, as distinct from just being seen as old news, I suspect that the main real reason is an attitude that only perpetrators would be concerned about the possibility of anyone being falsely accused.

Such attitudes are not limited to feminists; they are common among people who just haven’t thought much about the justice system and about the danger of false accusations in general.

Two other problems with Curt’s analysis:

1. Though all too many feminists did play a key role in launching the SRA scare, another feminist, Debbie Nathan, was the first major journalist to debunk the panic.
2. The feminist movement was not the sole culprit. Another factor was the scaremongering about “Satanism” that had been going on amongst evangelical Christians since the early 1970’s or so, starting with The Satan-Seller by Mike Warnke. Regarding the “recovered memory” fad in particular, another major breeding ground was self-help groups like Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA). Regarding the daycare center panics, another causative factor, as Debbie Nathan has pointed out, is that the 1980’s were a time when a lot of women felt guilty about leaving their children in daycare centers and hence were easily panicked about threats to their children there.

Searching Google News for “Satanist,” I came across an opinion piece, Hugs! The Lamest Teen Moral Panic Ever by Pareene, Gawker, Thu May 28 2009, which begins with the following sarcastic reference to the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare of the 1980’s and early 1990’s:

In the good old days of the culture wars, your teenagers, after years of being raped by Satanist daycare workers, were all organizing “Rainbow Parties” and smoking weed three times more powerful than the stuff you smoked all the time in high school. Now they are just hugging?

The Gawker piece is a commentary on the New York Times story For Teenagers, Hello Means ‘How About a Hug?’ by Sarah Kershaw, May 28, 2009. The Gawker piece exaggerates a bit. What is presented in the New York Times story is hardly a full-fledged “moral panic” about hugging.

Other commentaries on the New York Times story include the following:

• Is Hugging Bad for Teens? by Joel Schwartzberg, nj.com (New Jersey), Friday May 29, 2009,
• Casual Hugging the Latest Teen Trend to Come Under Fire InjuryBoard.com, May 29, 2009

On a more serious note, some of the articles referenced another teen fad, about which, apparently, there is indeed a full-fledged moral panic today: “sexting,” which has been punished rather harshly, according to ‘Sexting’: Harmless Fun Or Child Pornography? InjuryBoard.com, January 20, 2009.

Today I surfed onto a blog belonging to a fundamentalist/evangelical Christian named Hank Hanegraaff, who runs something called the Christian Research Institute (CRI).

He seems to be, in some ways, one of the more honest and reasonable evangelical Christian public figures. Back in the early 1990’s, CRI published some articles debunking the “Satanic ritual abuse” scare , for which I would like to thank him. Back then, standing up against the SRA scare required quite a bit of courage.

In most other ways, though, I still have to regard him as being very much in the enemy camp, for reasons aptly summed up here on RationalWiki (although, as I’ll detail later, the RationalWiki page contains some inaccuracies).

Anyhow, I would like to call attention to some things he says that are of interest both to Satanists and to Pagan Witches.

Hanegraaff on Satanism and Pagan Witchcraft

Although I do appreciate the stand he took against the SRA scare back in the 1990’s, his page Satanism and Witchcraft: Is Satanism the Same as Witchcraft? contains some erroneous statements about Satanism. For example: “Now, while witches deny the existence of Satan as a personal being, most Satanists affirm just the opposite. All Satanists believe in, call on, pray to, and worship Satan, although they may differ on their individual conception of Satan.”

The best-known and most public form of Satanism, LaVeyan Satanism, is atheistic, and certainly does not “affirm … the existence of Satan as a personal being.” Of course, we theistic Satanists do exist too. But even some theistic Satanists (those who revere Satan as a deity) are allergic to the term “worship,” and even some theistic Satanists do not regard Satan as “personal.”

Hanegraaff then says, “Furthermore, Satanists generally believe that magical rituals, ceremonies, and sacrifices are the keys to increasing personal power. Thus, they regard sacrificial offerings (whether symbolic or actual) as a legitimate and even desirable means to achieve their own ends.” Even among theistic Satanists, most do not believe in “sacrificial offerings,” as far as I can tell.

Hanegraaff seems to have accepted many Pagan Witches’ would-be monopolization of the term “witch.” He uses the term “witch” (lower-case W) as a synonym for “Pagan Witch” (an adherent of a specific modern religious movement). He correctly notes that Pagan Witchcraft does not include Satan in its pantheon, but he seems unaware that the word “witch” (and the existence of self-described “witches”) pre-dates the modern Pagan Witchcraft movement.

Terminology aside, his description of the beliefs of many Pagan Witches is essentially correct, though a bit overgeneralized.

Nevertheless, like nearly all fundamentalist/evangelical Christians, he then says: “Witchcraft and Satanism are equally satanic in the sense that they both oppose God’s teachings and are demonically inspired (Deut. 18:9-14; cf. Gal. 5:19-20).” To Pagan Witches, he concedes only that “we must draw the distinction between these two religions so that we can respond to them with intelligence and in a relevant manner.”

Similarly he says, in a blog post titled Our Heavenly Father:

In fact, Jesus made it clear that there are only two kinds of people in the world: those who should refer to Satan as “our father” and those who can legitimately refer to God as “our Father who art in heaven.” There simply is no other option.

Note to Pagan Witches: Statements like the above are the best you can possibly hope for from most fundamentalist/evangelical Christian leaders, including even the relatively reasonable ones who understand that Pagan Witchcraft is not Satanism. As Hanegraaff’s example illustrates, it is easier to convince fundamentalist/evangelical Christian leaders that Satanists aren’t all a bunch of baby-eating monsters (and neither are Pagan Witches) than to convince them that any religion other than their own isn’t “Satanic” or “demon-inspired.”

Note to Satanists: Hanegraaff’s statements are a good example of what Satan means to those Christian leaders who promote belief in the Devil. To him, Satan rules the entire human realm outside his little Christian box. Note that Hanegraaff does not equate Satan with any particular economic system (such as laissez-faire capitalism — most fundamentalist/evangelical Christians are not socialists, and many are Republicans). Nor does he equate Satan with war (which I suspect he regards as sometimes justified), or the death penalty (which I suspect he regards as sometimes justified, too, though I could be wrong about this), or even vengeance (many conservative Christians would not be above filing lawsuits under certain circumstances, for example). Rather, he equates Satan, primarily, with all theological doctrines other than his own.

The RationalWiki page on Hank Hanegraaff

Earlier, I mentioned this RationalWiki page about Hank Hanegraaff. While I agree with its sentiments for the most part, it contains as least two inaccuracies:

(1) Although Hanegraaff is indeed a creationist and has written a book denouncing evolution, his is apparently not a young-earth creationist. He seems to be neutral on young-earth creationism vs. the scientifically accepted age of the universe (as explained here).

(2) He does not absolutely forbid all birth control. (For example, he published Should Christians Use Birth Control? by H. Wayne House, which takes a middle-of-the-road position on contraception.)

But he does indeed oppose all abortion and does believe, apparently, that full-fledged “human life” begins at conception. And he does indeed have 12 children, and dismisses overpopulation as even a potential threat. (I wonder, does he even know what exponential growth is?) And, of course, he opposes gay rights.

The Rational Wiki page also links to a page of personal accusations against Hank Hanegraaff by a daughter of Walter Martin, founder of CRI. I have no idea whether the accusations are true. H.ere is his reply to some of the allegations.

The RationalWiki page also says that Hanegraaff’s “reputation as a voice of intelligence and moderation within evangelical Christendom” is “wholly undeserved.” No, it’s not “wholly” undeserved. As the RationalWiki page goes on to acknowledge, he frequently debunks claims by the wackier evangelists. And I don’t think it’s fair to call him a “stopped clock.” It is true that even the most reasonable (relatively speaking) fundamentalist/evangelical Christians, such as Hanegraaff, hold some very irrational and deleterious beliefs. Even his attitudes are clearly bad news for the rest of us. But we should acknowledge a spectrum here, rather than descend to black-and-white “they’re all exactly alike” thinking.

Below are some of the articles Hanegraaff published against the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare of the 1980’s and early 1990’s:

• The Hard Facts About Satanic Ritual Abuse by Bob and Gretchen Passantino
• Second thoughts about Recovered Memories by Paul Simpson
• The Bondage Maker: Examining The Message and Method of Neil T. Anderson. Part Four: Spiritual Warfare and the Myth of Satanic Conspiracies and Ritual Abuse by Bob and Gretchen Passantino (part of a series of artcles listed here)

Recently, there seems to have been revival of classic libels against Jews, such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and ye olde blood libel, in many parts of the world.

I’m not Jewish, but I have a personal interest in this topic, as a member of another, much smaller religious minority which has frequently been a target of what can best be described as warmed-over anti-Jewish propaganda. Also, I live in New York and have had quite a few Jewish friends.

Below, I’ll discuss some classic anti-Jewish claims, with links to sites refuting them.

I do question whether these beliefs have become quite as widespread as some folks claim. Pro-Israel hawks have seized upon the promulgation of anti-Jewish libels as a justification for their own intransigance, which makes me wonder whether some of them might be exaggerating just a tad. Nevertheless, the revival of traditional anti-Jewish nonsense does indeed seem to be a real and growing menace.

• The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
• The blood libel
• “International bankers” and the Federal Reserve System

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Alas, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion seem to have gotten very popular these days, especially in the Middle East. Worse yet, they are part of the official ideology of Hamas and possibly some other groups too. According to The “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and Antisemitism by Shaul Wallach:

… With the birth of the State of Israel and the eruption of the Arab-Israeli conflict, they became part of state-sponsored antisemitism throught the Arab world. Antisemitic ideas had already been spread by Christian missionaries in the Middle East since the early 19th century. This activity erupted in the Damascus blood libel in 1840, which was followed by many recurrences of the libel in other Arab countries in the latter half of the 19th century. European antisemitic works were already being published in Cairo in Arabic before the turn of the century. The Protocols were translated into Arabic from the French edition by al-Khuri Antun Yamin, probably in the late 1920’s. Many editions appeared starting in the 1950’s, mostly in Cairo and Beirut. President Nasser publicly asserted their authenticity, and his brother, Shawqi Abd’ al-Nasir, published an edition in 1968 entitled “Brutukulat Hukama Sahyun wa-Ta`alim at-Talmud” (“Protocols of the Learned Men of Zion and Teachings of the Talmud”). In the same year, an Islamic congress which convened in Cairo produced some papers containing antisemitic themes which had been rampant in prewar Europe. Unlike its counterpart in Europe, antisemitism in the Arab world seems to be officially sanctioned and promoted. It forms part of religious sermons and appears to be part of public education.

The Protocols today form part of the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and its allied Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), whose part in the Palestinian intifada is well known. The statement that the “enemies” or the “Zionist invasion” are behind “secret societies” such as the “Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others” around the world for purposes of sabotage is repeated three times in the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Mention of these organizations, together with the claim that the “enemies” were “behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about”, reveals direct borrowing from the Protocols and its predecessors. The Protocols are finally mentioned by name in Article 32:

… The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (“Brutukulat Hukama Sahyun” in the Arabic original), and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.

In summary, use of the Protocols by modern day Arabs is living testimony to the transplanting of classical European antisemitism into present-day Arab society.

Double-checking this, I found a copy of the Hamas Charter, 1988 on a pro-Palestinian website. Sure enough, it does indeed contain the above-quoted passage.

The Protocols are being promulgated not just in the Middle East, but in various other places too. See the section on Contemporary usage and popularity, especially the sub-section on Other contemporary appearances, in the Wikipedia article on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

In addition, there are a lot of folks who aren’t Jew-haters per se but who believe that the world is run by “the Illuminati.” a claim which has many parallels to and is historically intertwined with the Protocols. Anti-Illuminism has been used to scapegoat not just Jews but also Freemasons, Pagans, occultists, “Satanists,” atheists, gays, feminists, environmentalists, and the values of the modern secular West in general.

So, I think it’s important to educate people about the Protocols.

I should mention here that I don’t, currently, take any definite stand regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict, other than to be suspicious of the propaganda of both sides. There’s a lot I have yet to learn about the Israel/Palestine conflict. But it’s clear to me that the spread of nonsense about Jews isn’t helping the situation any.

An excellent debunking of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion can be found on the “Emperor’s New Clothes” website, in the following series of articles by Jared Israel:

• ‘The Protocols of Zion,’ Part One: Weapon Against Democracy
• ‘The Protocols of Zion,’ Part Two: Illogical, Sloppy, and Incoherent…
• ‘The Protocols of Zion,’ Part Three: Reader Comments: ‘I am no Antisemite. Why do some parts of “The Protocols” Ring True?’

Using facts, logic, and humor, Jared Israel does a great job of showing how ridiculous the Protocols are. It begins by showing how elites have used the Protocols for their own purposes, nut just to persecute Jews but also as a weapon against all kinds of political reform. He also provides a Transcript of Philip Graves’ articles published in the London Times, August 16 to 18, 1921, which originally exposed the Protocols as a hoax.

(Note: I do not necessarily endorse everything else on Jared Israel’s website. Among other things, he is very much a partisan of the Serbian side in the Yugoslav wars, a topic on which I don’t yet know enough to take a definite position one way or the other. Also, he’s very pro-Israel. I don’t yet have a definite position on the Israel/Palestine problem either.)

Other good refutations of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are listed on David Dickerson’s website.

Shaul Wallach’s article The “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and Antisemitism, which I cited earlier, also contains a brief history of literary precursors to the Protocols. Some other bits of relevant history can be found on the following pages:

• The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Anti-Masonry and Anti-Semitism by Leon Zeldis
• History of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion on the website of the Masonic Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon
• The Myth of the Judaeo-Masonic Conspiracy by W. Bro. A Israel, Master, in a collection of pages about Masonry on the website of Gary L. Dryfoos at M.I.T.
• Anti-Masonry Frequently Asked Questions on Mastermason.com
• Part 4: The “Illuminati Conspiracy”: The original, anti-Semitic version in The New Antipas Papers by S.R. Shearer, an evangelical Christian who is critical of the grand-conspiracy claims of other evangelical Christians such as Pat Robertson. Another, very similar page on the site is The Origins of the Illuminist Myth: The Fabrication of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Shearer’s info on the Illuminist myth is said to be primarily from two sources: Warrant for Genocide by Norman Cohn and Organized Anti-Semitism in America by Donald Strong.
• Protocols of the Elders of Zion on Carpe Noctem by Kristi and Mark Fisher
• Who Is Irma Plavatsky? Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, and the Internationalization of Popular Culture from the Dime Novel to The Da Vinci Code by Massimo Introvigne, Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), 2006

(P.S., 6/10/2008: In my list of refutations of the Protocols, I previously included a link to a page by one Henry Makow. I subsequently deleted that link because it turns out that, while Makow disbelieves in anti-Jewish conspiratorial claims, he believes that Jews were framed by “the Illuminati.”)

The blood libel

By far the most egregious anti-Jewish myth is the old-fashioned blood libel, the idea that Jews ritually murder Christian (or Muslim) children and use their blood as an ingredient in matza dough, among other ritual uses.

To me, this idea seems so blatantly obviously false that it hardly needs to be refuted. Jews are forbidden to consume blood, even the blood of farm animals. (See Leviticus 17:14 and Deuteronomy 12:23 in a Christian Bible.) Human sacrifice is forbidden too.

Besides, I live in New York. If there were any truth to the idea that Jews routinely kill Christian babies, there would be an awful lot of missing Christian babies around here.

Nevertheless, an astonishingly large number of people seem to believe it these days. Google “Jewish ritual murder” and you’ll find lots of websites by people who insist that Jews really do kill Christian or other non-Jewish children. And, if you Google “blood libel,” you’ll find plenty of stories about how it’s being promulgated offline, too. A few such stories are here:

• Leading Egyptian Newspaper raises Blood Libel, Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), November 6, 2000. (Note: For some controversy about MEMRI, see the following articles in The Guardian, U.K.: Selective Memri by Brian Whitaker, Monday August 12 2002, and Media organisation rebuts accusations of selective journalism by Yigal Carmon, Wednesday August 21 2002)
• Blood Feast on Snopes.com, apparently drawing on the following WorldNetDaily article: Saudi news: Jews use teen blood in pastries: Columnist in daily paper claims ‘fact’ of ritual by ‘Jewish vampires’, March 13, 2002
• Another WorldNetDaily article, Saudi Media Revise Blood Libel, September 19, 2002, on the website of Teach Kids Peace, which also has a petition asking “the US and Canadian Governments, European Union, Arab League, and United Nations to stop the Palestinian Authority from promoting a culture of hatred, encouraging violence, and glorifying suicide bombing.”
• Passover and the Blood Libel by Steven Stalinsky, New York Sun, April 12, 2006
• Arabs Attack Jew in NYC, Blood Libel Returns to Russia by Ezra HaLevi, April 27, 2008
• The section on Contemporary blood libels in the Wikipedia article Blood libel against Jews

I’ve linked to several others in a recent post on my LiveJournal blog.

Some toned-down variants will claim that it isn’t Jews in general who kill Christian babies, but just one weird Jewish sect. Offhand, that claim seems extremely unlikely to me too. Here’s an account of controversy over one such allegation: The Blood Libel Returns by Rachel Neuwirth, American Thinker, February 25, 2007. According to this article, there is no evidence for the allegation other than confessions extracted through torture. More discussion about Ariel Toaff’s book can be found in Did Jews Drink Blood? Giving Proof To Blood Libel? by Emil Steiner, Washington Post blog, February 8, 2007. As the latter page points out:

Toaff, a professor at Bar Illan University, near Tel Aviv, bases his claims on confessions “extracted by torture” during a “medieval trial” in 1475. Suffice to say, this might not be the most reliable source, and even Toaff only goes so far as to say the accusations “might have been true.” Still, for centuries, this so-called “Blood Libel” has been used as an excuse for the segregation and annihilation of Jews, which is why people are in such an uproar over the new book. What seems to have been forgotten in the shuffle though is that Toaff is describing a “deviant sect” of fanatics some 500 years ago — a time when all types of brutal behavior (NAFW) took place. And even if there is some truth to his claims, to consider them indicative of an entire religion would be like believing the Branch Davidians are representative of all Christians. Admitting that these events may have taken place and examining the evidence empirically is not anti-Semitic; however, believing they provide justification for centuries of genocide is.

Alas, quite a few websites have indeed seized upon Toaff’s claims as one more excuse to hate Jews in general.

Other websites promote other, more recent alleged instances of Jews killing Christian (or Muslim) children for various alleged ritual purposes.

I have not yet studied any of these claims in detail. For now I’ll just say this: If I were ever to encounter any real evidence of any such crime by any Jews whatsoever, I would be inclined to suspect that it was not the accepted practice of any actual Jewish religious group, but that, perhaps, a few very disturbed Jewish teenagers might have decided to act out the myth. After all, there do exist disturbed teenagers, from Christian and other non-Jewish backgrounds, who have acted out other popular myths, e.g. by committing atrocities in the name of “Satanism.” So, if a few Jewish kids were to do something similar, that would just be one more way that Jews are like everyone else. To generalize it into an indictment of Jews per se would be absurd.

Some young Jewish men have enjoyed pretending that the age-old myth is true, as a joke. (See, for example, the satirical song Christian Baby Blood by Jewmongous, of which see also this review.) I have to wonder if, perhaps, some of the alleged evidence for the blood libel might be based on a misunderstanding of similar macabre humor.

As I said, I haven’t yet studied this matter in detail. I haven’t yet found a website devoted to comprehensive, detailed refutation of “Jewish ritual murder” charges. I hope some historian will put up such a website. There’s definitely a need for it these days.

The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance have a collection of pages on Blood libel, host desecration, ritual murder, & other largely anti-semitic fables, which give some of the history of the anti-Jewish blood libel plus historical parallels to witchhunts and persectution of other religious groups.

“International bankers” and the Federal Reserve System

Closely related to Protocols-style grand-conspiracy theories is the idea that thw world is secretly run by a cabal of Jewish bankers, primarily the Rothschilds.

Various right wing groups have advocated grand-conspiracy theories featuring “international bankers.” Such theories don’t necessarily target Jews. After all, the Rockefellers and the Morgans are WASPs, not Jews.

Nevertheless, banker-conspiracy claims have often been linked to Protocols-style Jewish-cabal claims, via the idea that the Rockefellers and the Morgans are somehow “owned” by the Rothschilds. And one of the most popular banker-conspiracy writings is Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins, who also believed in the traditional anti-Jewish blood libel.

So, if one is going to debunk anti-Jewish claims, it helps to be familiar with “banker” claims too, and their fallacies.

Some common claims, e.g. in popular Internet videos such as Zeitgeist, are the following:

1. That the Federal Reserve System is nothing but a private banking cartel, “as Federal as Federal Express.” In fact, it’s an odd mixture of public and private, neither strictly a government agency nor strictly a private entity either, nor is it a for-profit entity. It has a Board of Governors who are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. But it consists of 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, each of which has “member banks,” which are private banks.
2. That the Fed’s profits go into the pockets of member banks, at the expense of the U.S. Treasurey. In fact, only a small portion of the Fed’d profits go to member banks. The member banks are required to keep some of their own money at the Federal Reserve Bank, and they earn a dividend on that money. But those dividends are only about 2 or 3 percent of the Fed’s profits, most of which go into the U.S. Treasury. (See the Federal Reserve systems income and expense tables for 2005 and 2006.)

Many other claims are addressed in Debunking the Federal Reserve Conspiracy Theories by Edward Flaherty.

See also Jewish “Control” of the Federal Reserve: A Classic Anti-Semitic Myth on the ADL site.

In a news story from the Tenerife Canary Islands in Spain, Gruesome goings-on in Arona’s cemetery, Fortnightly Tenerife News, Spain – Mar 27, 2008, the first sentence says:

Voodoo, black magic or Satanism, call it what you like, the gruesomely shocking results have scandalized the residents of Arona and have angered and horrified the relatives of those whose bodies have been desecrated by some profoundly unbalanced individuals.

No, don’t “call it what you like.” Find out what it is. Don’t just go randomly slurring nonmainstream religions.

This news story also says:

This is far from being the first time that Arona cemetery has been the object of Satanist cults, but it is far and away the worst.
On previous occasions candles, coins and the remains of chickens have been found by the rear wall, evidence of bizarre nocturnal rituals.

“Coins and the remains of chickens” sounds like some sort of traditional (but fringe) African diaspora sorcery, not Satanism. Such sorcery is not the same thing as Voudoun, either. Voudoun traditionally does involve animal sacrifice. But the sorcerers who dig up dead human bodies and steal body parts are condemned by mainstream Voudoun. The cemetery-desecrating sorcerers are a hated and feared fringe.

All the incidents described in this article are most likely the work of either (1) traditional (but fringe) African diaspora sorcerers or (2) daredevil kids imitating the sorcerers.

Some interesting speculation: Does Climate Change Mean More Witch Hunts? by Freakonomics, New York Times Blogs, NY, 4/25/2008:

Times columnist Nick Kristof recently highlighted economic research showing that climate change may be driving up the rate of executions of suspected witches in East Africa.

Tough times in the Congo may have been behind the recent witchcraft panic there, where police arrested 13 people accused of using black magic to shrink men’s penises.

University of Chicago economist Emily Oster also found a surge in witch hunts [PDF] during Europe’s “little ice age,” from the 1500’s to late 1700’s.

Dubner and Levitt also wrote of some other surprising climate results over the ages, ranging from property crime, to life expectancy, to civil war.

What other unexpected consequences, whether economic, social, political, or otherwise, should we expect to see from climate change?

I suppose this is possible. Economic hardship does tend to lead to scapegoating. Here in the West, for example, it has been noted that indicents of racist violence tend to increase during economic recessions.

Meanwhile, still more news of full-blown witchhunts in Africa and India:

• Liberia: Mobs Burned Witch, Wizards’ Homes by J. Nathaniel Daygbor, AllAfrica.com, Washington – April 23, 2008
• Woman branded witch by villagers, set abalze Daily News & Analysis, India – April 24, 2008
• Woman branded witch, beheaded, Hindustan Times, India – April 21, 2008, and Man beheads ‘witch’ to avenge brother’s death, Times of India, India – April 20, 2008

On the other hand, another ongoing problem, in parts of Africa, is “witch doctors” who murder people for their body parts. The latest stories on this have to do with albinos being murdered in Tanzania:

• ‘It must stop forthwith’, Independent Online, South Africa – Apr 3, 2008
• Murderers target albinos in Tanzania, Malaysia Sun, Malaysia – Apr 3, 2008
• State protect albinos’ right, Independent Online, South Africa – Apr 8, 2008
• Tanzania leader appoints albino, afrol News, Norway – Apr 9, 2008

When calling attention to this sort of thing in the West, there’s always a danger of fueling racism. So, perhaps I need to point out that the more educated folks in these countries are taking a stand against these practices.

Hi everyone! I’d like to experiment with the idea of using WordPress categories/tags to create a de facto unmoderated forum, as a possible replacement for my Theistic Satanism forums on Yahoo, in the event that I decide to phase out the latter.

For every tag, WordPress.com has a page of all the recent posts on WordPress.com with that tag. So, if a bunch of us regularly use a sufficiently rare tag, that page becomes a defacto forum for all relevant posts by us here on WordPress.com.

Publishing this post with the tag “theistic Satanism” will enable me to find the page for the tag “theistic Satanism.” I’ll then add a comment with a link to that page.

To put a tag on a post the first time, type the tag in the text field under the heading “Categories,” next to the “Add” button, at the top of the side panel of the page where you write a new post, and then click the “Add” button before you publish the post. To add the same tag again to a subsequent post, check the checkbox for that category/tag.

As we can do with the tag “Theistic Satanism,” so some of us can also do with the tags “Black Goat Cabal” and “Church of Azazel.”

To try out another neat feature, let’s experiment with trackback pings. In your post, put a link to this post. (Note: That’s a link to this individual post, NOT to the page for the tag, or to my home page.) Soon afterward, a link back to your post will automatically appear as a comment on my post.

I recently ran into the following two stories, both on the website of Baptist Press in Tennessee:

• A ticket from Satanism to holiness by Gwan Garrison, April 2, 2007
• Many Satanists prefer the shadows , by Joe Westbury, Posted on Apr 2, 2007

Gwan Garrison claims to be an ex-Satanist. Googling “Satanism Gwan Garrison,” I found the following earlier versions of the above two articles, on Christian Index, a Georgia Baptist site:

• The devil had my heart, but Christ wanted my soul by Gwan Garrison, Pastor, Franklin Baptist Church, March 29, 2007
• Satanism: a real force in the world March 29, 2007

His bio seemed awfully fishy to me.

I also found some witty and thought-provoking commentary on About.com, on Witchvox, and on J-Walk Blog.

On About.com, in an article titled “Satanic Panic, or ‘I was a Satanic Witch (No, Really, I Could Fly and Everything!)’,” Jennifer Emick sums up Gwan Garrison’s story as follows:

Baptist Pastor Gwan Garrison talks about how much he enjoyed “persecuting Christians,” and he’s sure to mention (with the amount of accuracy typical in these stories) his “Satanic altar” and his “crystals.” It’s light fare compared to some of these stories- no bloody sacrifices, no marriages to Satan- but there is a glowering cat and a high-voltage Satanic bible- and there is, of course, that ever-present character, the tirelessly persistent evangelical whose refusal to stop pestering the ungodly results in his miraculous transformation.

On Witchvox, Richard Brownbear remarks in a comment:

The same old “I had the world in the palm of my hand with everything that I wanted, but then gave it all up FER JAYZUS” manufactured story.

Of course, on Witchvox, there are also a few of the usual attempts by Pagan Witches to claim exclusive possession of the word “witch” (claiming that all witches, not just Pagan Witches, are “not Satanists”). These folks repeat some of the usual Pagan misconceptions about Satanism (e.g. “only renegade christians worship the christian devil because only christians believe in him at all”). But, surprisingly, there were not too many of those in the comments on Witchvox.

On J-Walk Blog, in a post titled “Protecting Yourself From Satanic Spells,” Gwan Garrison is quoted as saying, “The power over Christians was less effective, while those without a strong commitment to Christ were more vulnerable.” In response to this, someone named Sheldon says in a comment:

My experience has been the opposite. The more a person believes in Jesus, the more they accept that Satan exists. The more they believe Satan exists, the greater the fear of black magic, and the less amount of time I have to wait in line at the grocery store.

A Russian Orthodox public movement called the “People’s Council” has made some ill-informed, panic-stricken claims about Satanism:

• “People’s Council urges authorities to equate Satanists to terrorists,” Interfax-Religion, Russia – Apr 2, 2007

It released a statement claiming that “ritual murders” and various other nasty activities are all “characteristic of Satanic organizations.”

The statement is said to mention several ritual murders including the allegedly notorious “murder of three Optino monks killed by a Satanist on Orthodox Easter.” (I found no further information about this crime via Google.)

The statement also says, “There is an enormous number of Satanic organizations and groups acting in Russia today. Many of them are united in a single branchy network.”

Yeah, right.

The statement then goes on the mention the “Church of the Satan” [sic], failing to note that the Church of Satan has been an above-ground organization for over 40 years and does NOT endorse any kind of criminal activity.

I found the following blog entry:

• “‘Satanists as dangerous as terrorists! World at risk from Satan cults’ claim Russian Orthodox,” Signs of Witness

It closes with the comment, “It could be that Religious Right Hysteria is the real ‘danger to Society…’”