The judges accepted the bizarre theory that the book promotes hostility to Russia, in addition to LGBT activism and extremism.
by Massimo Introvigne
It is a pity that Russians no longer study Marx. He would have taught them that history often repeats itself twice, the first time as tragedy and the second as farce. And sometimes tragedy and farce happens at the same time. The persecution of religious minorities in Russia is a tragedy, but parts of it also include an undeniable element of farce.
The list of books published by religious and spiritual minorities in Russia is very long. The state-owned domestic news agency “RIA Novosti” informs us that on September 3 “The Satanic Bible” of Anton Szandor LaVey, the deceased leader of the Church of Satan, was added to the list by the St. Petersburg City Court, following a request by the local Deputy Prosecutor (and in fact confirming a 2021 decision banning a different version of the same book).
The court accepted the Deputy Prosecutor’s claim that “According to the experts’ conclusions, the text of the book is a plot with internal logic, the content of which consists of propaganda of a religious counter-cultural system based on the ideas of destruction, hatred and violence and the rejection of values traditional for Russian society, as well as propaganda aimed at forming a negative attitude towards confessions traditional for Russia.” The judge also believes that one of the aims of the book is the “propaganda of the LGBT movement.” The “LGBT movement” is in itself banned as an “extremist organization” in Russia.
Whatever one may think of “The Satanic Bible” and LaVey, two things are certain. First, when LaVey published “The Satanic Bible” in 1969, his aim was certainly not to produce anti-Russian propaganda. At that time, Leonid Brezhnev reigned in the Kremlin and LaVey had no special quarrel with him. And while in the “Satanic Sex” chapter LaVey explained that Satanism approves of all forms of sexual relations between consenting adults, the “propaganda for the LGBT movement” was not a main theme of the book either.
Strictly speaking, the main theme of “The Satanic Bible” was not even Satan-worship. It was the promotion of a lifestyle based on self-indulgence and the enjoyment of the pleasures of life without being encumbered by the Jewish and Christian notion of sin, supplemented by a potpourri of references to magic taken from different traditions of Western esotericism.
It seems that the “experts” consulted by the St. Petersburg Court are related to the Russian anti-cultists who have insisted for years on the ridiculous theory that LaVey’s Church of Satan and the CIA cooperate in anti-Russian ventures. In 2022, even an Assistant Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation proposed the preposterous claim that LaVey’s Church of Satan was working with the Ukrainian government and that Ukraine, in addition to “denazification,” was in need of “desatanization.”
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
