A Snap Shot

The British Aristocracy c. 1880

Hush by James Tissot
British Aristocrats at Play

In 1880 the wealthiest, most politically powerful Aristocracy on Earth was the British Aristocracy. It Politically and Economically dominated Britain and through their domination of Britain, the British Empire. What follows is a brief snap shot, so to speak, of the British Aristocracy at its height c. 1880.

Self Abuse Insanity

And Mark Twain

Mark Twain

In the 19th century Doctors all over the Western World were bravely fighting a mighty scourge that threatened to destroy society, the family and finally all civilization. They bravely fought this mighty “scourge” despite the insidious way it infected the purest of minds, leading them down the road to degradation, decadence and depravity, (The three Ds). In their never ending battle to fight this evil the Doctor’s never for one moment slacked their vigilance and gave the enemy any respite.

Satan Worship

Evangelical Meeting
One of the most interesting phenomena is the world wide worship of Satan, also known as the Lord of this World, Lord of the Flies, King of Demons, Father of Lies etc. An interesting feature of this worship is that most of the worshipers do not know that they worship the Prince of Darkness and Lord of Desolation.

This should not surprise us as Satan is indeed a cunning and ruthless enemy who will use any and all methods to corrupt and destroy the human race and lead us all to perdition. The techniques used by the Deceiver are indeed clever using the human desire for justice, truth and hope as a means to corrupt humanity.

The chief Satan worshippers today, numbering at least in the tens of millions if not hundreds of millions are many if not most of the vast horde of Evangelical / “Born Again” Christians. That they worship Satan is of course obvious, along with their hatred of Jesus. Of course here is where the trick comes in; the vast majority of these people truly believe that they are followers of Jesus and haters of Satan. Their sincerity is not in question. The chief fault they have is an over weaning arrogance that they know the truth and all others are damned and their blissful certainty of their “truth”. They are so committed to the sin of pride it isn’t funny. Further so many of them know in their hearts that their neighbours are damned and they feel superior while piously feeling utter condescension to those not similarly “saved”. They profess love while showing over and over again the most malign hatred of those who think differently from them and their obsession with the sins of others is positively creepy. Further they are obsessed with sex and such trivial things as people swearing and having pornography.

I can remember a broadcast of the TV show 60 Minutes, about Evangelicals that presented two very wealthy looking Evangelicals, who owned prosperous businesses, who intoned in their expensive suits that they were saved because they accepted Jesus as their “Personal Saviour”, whereas Mother Theresa of Calcutta, (who died in 1997) was not saved and her good works meaningless. It requires a very special awe inspiring arrogance for those two wealthy men to feel more virtuous / godly than Mother Theresa. Just exactly what works of a comparable indication of sheer virtue did they do? It is pretty obvious that Mother Theresa’s acts indicate a state of virtue that these men couldn’t achieve if their lives depended on it.1

Also their motivation for their faith is not love of God, Virtue, or their Neighbour, but sheer mindless fear and expectation of reward. It goes like this; if you don’t want to go to hell and suffer for all eternity then you must worship God and follow Jesus. If you do follow Jesus you will be rewarded with an eternity of utter bliss in heaven. From the Evangelical point of view works generally do not count; what counts is belief in Jesus as your “Personal Saviour”. In certain versions of this belief just genuinely saying and believing this before you die is an instant get out of jail free card.2 All your sins are washed away and no matter what perverse, sick, murderous things you’ve done are forgiven because Jesus rewards his grovellers with eternal bliss in heaven. Just utter the magic incantation and all is forgiven and you go to heaven. In other words getting in good with Jesus doesn’t require that you DO anything, just that you massage Jesus’ fragile, inflated ego. So you can be as vile as want so long as just before you die you utter the abracadabra.

Yup sucking up to Jesus pays well and all this love and devotion is prudent. After all for a tiny investment you get an infinity of pleasure and wealth. Talk about a huge return on a really paltry amount of work. After all the only investment is a mouthing of accepting Jesus as your “Personal Saviour”.

Of course not all the Evangelicals are so crass about what their about and many do in fact try to meet rigorous personal demands often about what amounts to moral trivialities. But in the end it all doesn’t matter because nothing pleases their puffed up dictator of a God like grovelling idolatry and adoration. If you don’t grovellingly adore Jesus he might throw a hissy fit and cast you out and punish you because he as a huge ego and really thin skin, and he punishes any personal slight with terrible natural disasters or by giving you a loathsome disease. God as a control freak asshole.

Also if you suck up successfully you will avoid the horrors of the final days before the second coming, (No it isn’t about good sex with repeat performances), by being raptured into heaven where you can watch the Antichrist battle with God for dominion of the Earth, while God along with the Antichrist kills by all sorts of means billions of people. Then at the end you can watch all the unsaved being dragged down to burn in hell forever. For one of the joys of heaven will be that you don’t have to care about the torments of the damned and according to some Evangelical Satanists you will positively enjoy the torments of the damned. Yep kissing the big one’s ass will really pay off.

Given this concept of God the only reasonable conclusion is that this God is Satan, the Deceiver. Certainly this God seems to be a massive, thin-skinned, adulation demanding tyrant and thoroughly Satanic. Of course when combined with how little he/she really demands of humans, aside from ass kissing, it is even more obvious that this God is Satan.

Aside from the followers who are mainly deceived there are the shepherds of this flock who are indeed a nest of vipers and swine. I truly find it very hard to believe that most of this crew of Satanic High Priests don’t know what they are really doing. It seems quite apparent that they are indeed, deliberately out to lead astray and find souls for the Lord of Darkness - Satan.

If the pride and arrogance of their followers is annoying so is the even greater pride of their leaders. Not so much the pride of arrogant belief, but the pride of believing that humans are there to be fleeced and that they, the leaders, have an absolute right to enjoy the fruits of their lies and deceptions. Of course for many of them their contempt for their followers is immense.

The love of power by these people is sometimes a horror to behold. They enjoy sitting at the right hand of earthy power, but not for the purpose of admonishing and correcting, but for the purpose of exercising power and getting more. Especially what they long for and desire, with great desperation is power over others so that they can coerce and oppress with Satanic joy others who think differently.

Also there is their monumental, earth encompassing greed. These are the most devout worshipers of Satan in the guise of Mammon Lord of Wealth. They will resort to virtually any trick to extort money from the desperate, pathetic and lonely and of course the sincere believer. There was the outrageous case of Peter Popoff who scammed millions from desperate people through fake faith healings which were nothing but tricks. One of which included people radioing messages to him to received in his ear, by means of a radio receiver disguised as a hearng aid so that he could fake learning about people’s illnesses through the “power of the Lord”. Shockingly Peter Popoff is still in the faith healing business, presumably with a better bag of tricks. Sadly he is only one of many such fakes.3

To all this, alone with their view of God as a petty small minded tyrant is a powerful indication that they do in fact worship Satan.

One sort of wonders if upon dying all these Satan worshipers will be so in tune with the Satanic mindset that they will think Hell Heaven and Heaven Hell.

1. I can’t remember the name of the 60 Minutes show but it aired in the 1980’s.

2. Jack Chick, who manufactures huge numbers of mind numbing comics, had a comic that makes this point, involving a murderous criminal who murders his victims without remorse and is tracked down by a very virtuous Police Officer and eventually executed for his deeds. Our killer accepts Jesus as his “Personal Saviour” and goes to heaven. (He expresses NO remorse) The Police Officer who caught him and lived a virtuous life does not accept Jesus as his “Personal Saviour” and goes to spend an eternity burning in hell. The particular tract mentioned above does not seem to be in print anymore. Jack Chicks publications can be found at Chick Publications Here.

3. See Randi, James, The Faith Healers, Prometheus Books, Buffalo NY, 1987. The legions of fraud and humbug in the Evangelical world looked at in this book includes, Jimmy Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, W. V. Grant and many more. For a take from an Evangelical who is sick to death about the overt and subtle cons in involved in much Evangelicalism see Slacktivist Here.

Other Book Consulted.

Standaert, Michael, Skipping Towards Armageddon, Soft Skull Press, Brooklyn NY, 2006.

Pierre Cloutier

The Pacification

Scales of Justice
One of the most disturbing features of our age is an unreflective nostalgia for the past. Usually it for a past that never existed and those that bemoan the passing away of that past are those that would not ever be caught dead actually living in that past.

One of the most prevalent features of this mindless nostalgia for what never was is the notion that in the past crime was less and we were safer.

This is a myth. Of course if you are talking about say the 1950’s then you would be right the rate of violent crime as in fact gone up considerably since then. However if you go back considerably further you find out something completely different. What you find is interpersonal violence on a truly massive scale.

Thus in Europe c. 1000 C.E. most European societies were characterized by blood feuds and codes of personal vengeance. This was combined with a code of personal honour which made it permissible to punish with violence all sorts of real and alleged violations of personal “honour”.1

Not surprisingly society was characterized by a vast amount of insecurity, instability and interpersonal violence. The lack of over arching institutions tended to create a fragmented society in which groups of individuals were pitted against other groups.

It was in England that we have the clearest picture of the emergence of a powerful set of behavioural and intellectual mores that began to inhibit the use of violence to settle issues of “honour” and real dispute.

A factor in the emergence of these norms was the emergence in pre-Norman times of the idea of the King or Royal government as the fount of the law. In this scenario the idea was that the King was the arbiter of disputes and attempts by private parties to settle disputes outside of this norm were violations of the King’s prerogatives, in effect a form of treason. Of course the spread of the idea of the “King’s Justice” via the system of Shires, local courts, Sheriffs etc., was not because of benevolence but because this provided a potent avenue for the extension of Royal power and just as importantly the extension of the Royal powers of taxation and expropriation. In other words it was good for the Royal treasury. In England the Kings profited by trying homicide cases through fines and confiscation of property.2

Even the rates of violence were by contemporary standards quite astounding. For example in 14th century London the rate was between 36-52 murders per hundred thousand per year. Oxford with its tradition of feuding, brawling and drunken students had a rate of over 100 murders per hundred thousand per year.3

Thus in quarrels with neighbours or drunken brawls some especially if they were male had a good chance of ending up dead, especially in a environment in which all sorts of slights were thought to excuse if not justify violence in response.

What happened was that the gradual process by which the “King’s Justice” was used to curtail violence among the elite, because of its threat to the Kings power and ability to collect revenue gradually percolated through all layers of society. Basically uncontrolled violence was viewed as a threat to both personal safety and the sanctity of property.

It is of interest that in contrast to England this process started much later in most of Europe.4

Now this process could only happen in England because of the emergence of courts and enormous pressure from the Royal administration and bureaucracy to use the courts to settle disputes rather than take personal vengeance or some other violent solution. This was so despite a violent culture that exalted violence as a solution to problems. Despite these problems by 1200 C.E., the government had managed to take one step forward by virtually ending the institutional blood feud. Royal courts were already instituting the practice of legally binding people to keep the peace. Also Royal courts had acquired by then virtually sole jurisdiction to try and punish violent offences or those having violent / severe punishment. Although the nobility might engage in a posture of violence and murderous talk there was already a tendency to use the courts instead and engage in rhetorical violence instead.5

By the 15th century violence was ratcheted to a new lower level. Frankly by then in virtually all of society there was a tendency for friends and neighbours to try to lower the level of violence and to prevent disputes from escalating into a violent resolution. Not simply because violence was considered immoral but because once blood was shed you would get the costly, time consuming intervention of the Royal courts which would hamstring peoples lives for what could seem like an interminable amount of time. The result was the flourishing of an entire culture of postured violence, of rhetoric and bluff all designed to SEEM threatening and violent but really just play acting. This was further redoubled by the ever greater use of the courts to settle disputes. The only acceptable violence was on behalf of God and the authorities all other violence was deemed illegitimate and in effect immoral if not evil.6

By the 17th century in contrast to countries like France were the institutional apparatuses of the State barely penetrated locally, England had a fairly well developed system of governmental authority to impose local order.

In France as indicated above the authorities were not much interested in imposing order unless it interfered with collection of taxes or seemed like incipient rebellion. Flying off the handle and the easy resort to violence to settle disputes were common so was widespread antipathy between different classes. Battles between poachers or gamekeepers occurred. So did extralegal violence to settle disputes. Life was riddled with assaults and homicides.7

In England by then the pacification had proceeded, culture and life was permeated with the idea that while threatening violence was in some cases permissible actually doing it was quite another matter. Instead there were the courts where people were encouraged and frequently coerced to go in order to settle disputes. In fact England by this time had acquired the reputation of being a very litigious society. And even if people did not go to court there was a powerful tendency for people to try to settle matters by informal arbitration before things got out of hand. Cash payments to settle issues was commonplace.

Even more remarkable English criminals had a strong tendency, compared to the continent to NOT accompany their criminal acts with excessive violence. For example beating or killing people you robbed was generally not done and was decidedly less frequent than elsewhere. In effect self policing had become common and people were restraining themselves as part of the effort to impose order.8

In the 18th century the decline continued so that by 1800 C.E., the murder rate was apparently below 2 per hundred thousand.9 The rather horrible list of capital crimes was tempered by procedural rules and juries who were increasingly reluctant to inflict violent punishment. England had for example no routine torture of alleged criminals as part of the process of investigation unlike much of the continent. Despite the truly Draconian penalties in law remarkably few people actually suffered the full legal penalties. According to the best available figures between 1749-1771 only 81 people were convicted of murder in London / Middlesex. Whereas in Rome, ¼ the size of London, in ½ that time period had 4000 murders.10

What the century saw was the emergence of a “Middle Class” ideology that emphasized politeness and civility and frowned upon any sort of violent assertiveness, especially violence. A key part of this was the campaign against duelling which was considered a reversion to barbaric and uncivilized manners and as such to be both opposed and suppressed as murder plain and simple. At the same time English criminals continued their trend of avoiding gratuitous physical violence and were commented on by continental visitors for being “humane” in comparison to continental criminals.11

This was accompanied by the decline and in fact “death” of the concept of personal honour that required the cultivation of status and the punishment of alleged and real slights to ones honour by means of personal action.

In the 19th centuries this developments reached a climax in that the growth of philanthropy, and a culture that frowned quite vigorously on the idea of spur of the moment violence as a solution to problems. Basically more and more people absorbed basic inhibitions to violence that even inhibited spur of the moment behaviour. The idea was that giving into those spur of the moment impulses indicated a failure to control oneself. To commit violence even in the face of provocation was considered a moral failure by the individual who was considered bound to use other non-violent ways of registering his anger or disgust and not just act out. Even criminals had by then absorbed the ethos that violent acting out was unacceptable. The ethos that emerged found displays of violence for entertainment profoundly disturbing and began to ban them even if they involved animals. There was also a climate of respectability and the idea of proper appearance that fostered a lower crime rate.12

The result was by 1900 the English homicide rate was below 1 per hundred thousand.13

Of course all this came at a price in conformity and exploitation but as indicated by reforms of the Victorian period, the continued decline in the homicide rate was not incompatible with significant political and social reforms which however much they diffused economic and political power away from the landed elite did not cause an upsurge in violence.

In most of western Europe they had to wait until the 19th century for the great pacification. In much of eastern Europe until the 20th century. As for 20th century developments there was in England and the in western Europe a rise in the crime rates in the 1960’s and 70’s although contrary to hysteria it was not a rise to unprecedented levels.

The fact is the great pacification worked and is still working at least in England and Europe.

1. Leyton, Elliott, Men of Blood, McClelland & Stewart Inc., Toronto, 1995, pp. 99-101.

2. IBID, pp. 99-103, Moore, R. I., The Formation of a Persecuting Society, 2nd Edition, Blackwell Pub., London, 2007, pp. 102-104, 123-128.

3. Leyton, p. 102. Leyton gives the homicide rate of 13th century England as 10 to 20 times the current rate, p. 103. This works out to 10-20 murders per hundred thousand.

4. IBID, p. 103.

5. IBID, pp. 103-105.

6. IBID, pp. 105-107.

7. IBID, pp. 107-108.

7. IBID, pp. 107-109.

9. IBID, p. 109.

10. IBID, p. 109.

11. IBID, pp. 107-112.

12. IBID, pp. 112-114.

13. IBID, p. 115.

Pierre Cloutier