By David Futrelle
The neo-Nazi internet tabloid The Daily Stormer is now declaring war on witches, and wants to bring back “the burning times.”
In a recent post on the site, contributor “Roy Batty” — presumably not the actual replicant from Blade Runner — reports the alarming (to him) news that the “Number of Witches [is] Drastically on the Rise.” As evidence for this claim, he cites a recent piece from a sometimes-fact-challenged far-right site called CNSNews.com asserting that
the number of witches (and Wiccans) has dramatically increased since the 1990s, to the degree that there may be at least 1.5 million witches in the United States, which is higher than the 1.4 million mainline Presbyterians.
As it turns out, this is an exaggerated misrepresentation of a questionable calculation based on a mistaken reading of a survey from Pew Research. CNSNews.com got the 1.5 million figure from The Christian Post, which got it from an article on Quartz, which claimed
the Pew Research Center … found [in a 2014 survey] that 0.4% of Americans, or around 1 to 1.5 million people, identify as Wicca or Pagan.
So basically a source claiming at most 1.5 million Wiccans and Pagans got turned into a claim that there are at least 1.5 million.
On top of that, Quartz got it wrong: the actual Pew study claims only 0.3% of Americans identify as Wiccan or Pagan. (The 0.4% is for all New Age believers.) If you do the math using the current US population figures you get a little less than a million following some form of Wicca or Paganism, fewer still if you only include adults. (Also, according to that same survey, there are roughly 4.5 million Americans who identify themselves as mainline Presbyterians; 1.4 million is the number the Presbyterian Church (USA) says are “active members.”)
But, whatever, there are a lot of witches out there, the number is apparently growing, and the Daily Stormer’s Roy Batty is feeling scared.
“I never really believed in all this bullshit,” he writes.
But recently… idk.
It’s hard to look at all this shit that’s happening in the world and explain it through economics. It’s hard to explain it even through the political lens.
He then tells a rather hard-to-believe story he claims to have heard from an unnamed “girl” who used to spend her summers in a tiny, rustic village, complete with a strange old woman who lived in an old house on the outskirts of town — and who once, the girl insisted, brought down a lightning bolt from the sky after scratching some weird symbols in the dirt outside the girl’s home while “muttering dark-sounding things” under her breath.
Now Batty isn’t quite convinced that witchcraft is real. But he doesn’t like the idea of strange women going around scaring people by scratching occult symbols in the dirt and muttering and whatnot.
All I know is that I don’t want to have to deal with that kind of shit in my life. And because my ancestors did such a good job dealing with it back then I never even thought about it as a real possibility.
But it is.
Think about it, you might end up with a freak as a neighbor in your little condo who likes to leave dark-looking squiggles on your door or dead reptiles under your welcome mat or something.
I guarantee you that it will freak you and the neighbors out because it is so antisocial and because it is just weird in a way that we’re not used to.
But alas, Batty continues, you can’t just punch the witches until they stop.
Witching is passive-aggressive. You can’t beat her up, otherwise you go to jail. You can’t admit to anyone that she’s spooking you and your kids out because the fedoras will mob you and chew you out.
Batty proposes a rather old-school “solution” to this old-school problem: bring back the so-called burning times.
He praises his Western European ancestors for doing
a very good job ridding Europe of its witches. People don’t realize how lucky they are to live in a witch-free society. Seriously. It’s like sanitation and roads and all the other things we take for granted in White civilization.
Now that witches are growing in number again, he suggests, what we in the west really need is “for an Inquisition to come back and purge the witches from our lands.”
In other words, literal witch trials — and the genocide of a religious minority.
Now, it might be tempting to see Batty’s post as little more than typical Daily Stormer trolling — especially given his casual, often flippant tone and his utter lack of interest in doing any actual research on the subject beyond quoting an incorrect number from a questionable site and relating a bullshit story he says he once heard.
But if you look at the comments under Batty’s post you won’t find a lot of jokes there. Yes, you’ll see a comment from someone called Willy declaring that “witches are insane cat ladies from hell who will steal you rhubarb plants.”
But most of the commenters seem to take this all very seriously — and to support Batty’s murderous “solution.”
One commenter declares:
The Book of Exodus states, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” This one line from the Bible is proof enough for me to believe that witches exist and should not be suffered to live.
Another adds:
k*kes are promoting witchcraft and other forms of Satanism/demon worship on normie television for kids/teenagers.
There is a supernatural world out there. Demons are real, if you doubt this, be happy you have never seen or experienced ‘meeting’ one. If you do encounter any demons, call out to Jesus Christ for assistance. Verbally. He will help you.
Listen to Gregorian chants if you’re being accompanied or stalked.
And look, I know this sounds crazy if you aren’t used to this supernatural mumbo jumbo, I get that. Trust me though. I wouldn’t say this kind of shit for no reason.
Still another says that while he thinks witches today are just “larping … they should still be killed.”
It would be easy to dismiss this comment itself as a sort of internet LARPing, were it not for the fact that Nazis in the US have already started killing people.
We live in fucked-up times.
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@AsAboveSoBelow:
Your Vegan Witches serve as a reminder of the etymology of the word “cauldron”–coming from the Latin calidarium (“cooking pot”) by way of Old Northern French chaudron–which may well tie into the Welsh and Spanish words for soup (cawl and caldo respectively.)
Toss in Bulb of Onion, Cloves of Garlic, Twist of Lemon, and Glob of Miso, and that’ll be a Potent Potion of Protection from Cold and Flu.
@Weird Eddie; @Stephen I Dutch:
Feline nutritionist Natascha Wilkes actually found a use for her kitties’ game offerings: she sent them to a food lab for nutritional analysis, to determine what balance of nutrients would best approximate a cat’s diet in the wild:
http://tcfeline.com/nutritional-analysis-of-mice/
@Moggie
That aspect has been heavily overstated. A couple of prominent Nazis were members of the semimystical Thule Society, but that’s about it.
@Katamount
The Episcopalian Church is a branch of the Anglican communion, with ~1.8 million members in the US.
@Weird Eddie
Yeah, Wicca was invented by Gerald Gardner* in the thirties from a mixture of Margaret Murray, the more accessible bits of Alasteir Crowley, and his own desire to hang out with naked women. Gardner claimed that he was continuing a tradition which had survived underground since pre Christian Europe, but he was lying, or at best misinformed. As for other modern traditions of witchcraft… it really depends on what you mean by witchcraft. Thr Appalachian regions have a long tradition of Granny women and cunning men who practice herbal medicine, provide protective charms, and occasionally divination (‘bible-cracking’ is popular, where you open a bible at random, close your eyes and jab your finger at a verse; in theory, that verse will have relevance to your situation). Are they witches? Are members of shamanic traditions? (That Finnish fellow mentioned earlier might or might not count, depending on when and where you’re talking about).
Re: Christian witches, there’s a number of interesting traditions, though I can’t prove they survive to the present. The Inquisition found many magicians in Iberia and Western France who insisted even under torture that they only did good magic, healing and protection etc. They were let off witha fine and a warning to stop. Italy’s benandanti sent their spirits out at night to battle evil witches, and were reputed to have healing powers. The Inquisition didn’t approve.
*He claimed to have got the basics from a group called the New Forest Coven, which, if they existed, push the invention back 15-20 years.
… oh… lord…. Ivanka and e-mail… shall we call this the “margarine-mails” scandal???
no sentient being could not know, in 2018, that using a private server to conduct government business is… frowned on
… “oleo-mails”?
… lard….??
In response to Ivanka’s e-mail gaffe, the president was heard to say “Lock her up!!”… “… no, NO, not HER, Hillary!!!”
@Weird (and tired of trumplings) Eddie:
“White genocide” in South Africa is a blatant propogandic Nazi lie.
Long story short, no(white)body cares about the situation so nobody has a lot of (white-man-verified) concrete information on what’s going on (no major western media coverage, no western advocacy group statements, etc)…so in swooped the nazis to fill in the blanks with a metric ton of utterly made-up shit. And one or two tours by literal slavery apologists doing cherry-picked interviewing.
For more, I highly recommend this video, if you’re able to watch:
https://youtu.be/dvlk9Fir5SU
@ Victorious Parasol:
Rhubarb does take a few years to establish in a garden, so if there local grocery doesn’t have any in stock, I could see a rhubarb-lover being tempted…
An’ it harm none, do as ye will.
@Dormousing_it, @VP
Rhubarb leaves are a rough but highly effective abortifacient. Don’t know about the US, but that were one of the services the wise ones provided here in the UK back then. (It’s also why most manor houses have large rhubarb beds – servants will play, you know.)
From what I’ve read, the ‘Nazi occultism’ memeplex derives from “The Morning of the Magicians” by Pauwels and Bergier, who used Rauschning’s “Hitler Speaks” as a primary source. Unfortunately, the latter work has been determined to be highly unreliable.
At least we got “Hellboy” because of it.
@ Jane Done:
I watched the first five minutes, I don’t have time now to watch the rest. The beginning reminds me of “The Blair Witch Project”… which nicely ties this topic in with the original!! 🙂 🙂 🙂
I haven’t seen any evidence of state-sponsored murder of white farmers. The right-wing pundits clamoring about it don’t even offer non-credible evidence, just testimony, usually not first-person, and innuendo. I’m sure there are white farmers being murdered — the murder rate in South Africa is pretty horrendous right now. And if there are white farmers being murdered by black people just because they’re white, well I’m not f’ing surprised. The brutalist white-minority dictatorship ended in this generation, and there is likely a STRONG sentiment of… vengeance. One of the right-wing Nazi propagandists in the news is Simon Roche:
seen here at the 2017 Charlotte U-White-U-Right rally… no doubt one of the “very fine people” the blunderbuss-in-chief spoke of….
@Jesalin
That’s one of the bits he cribbed from Crowley, but he modified it; the original was “Do What Thou Wilt shall be the whole of the Law”. There’s a lotta arglebargle about True Will involved too.
Most of those are things the right are greatly in favour of, and half the rest are things they’re happy to deny are real problems. I feel like they don’t have nearly as much to complain about as they claim they do!
Regarding Jordan Peterson he put out a statement within the last two or three weeks denouncing anti-Semitism, so I would imagine some of his far right fans have suddenly decided he’s their enemy now.
Tim Gueguen, you imagine correctly. The kerfuffle on the Peterson Reddit resulting from that was almost comical. The conflict between the affronted fashies and the apologetic Troo Bleevers was full of sound and fury.
@Bina
Well, you’ve got to see it from teddy’s point of view… telling implausible stories and spreading hate filled, misogynistic, racist, bigoted bullshit and christian apologetics was his game. Who the fuck does peterson think he is, coming from nowhere and raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from internet assholes? He doesn’t even have a fucking sword.
Etc etc. I expect milo feels the same way, except less religious and less slovenly.
I don’t think Milo and Teddy need be too worried about JP stealing their suckers – we’ve clearly passed peak Jordan Peterson. These days, whole threads mocking him can go without a single fanboi turning up to defend their hero for days.
@Dormousing_it
Well, my brain – on hearing “witches” and “rhubarb” close together – immediately turns to Pratchett. It so often does.
Nanny Ogg is caught saying “rhubarb rhubarb” to blend in with a flaming torches-bearing mob. I’m pretty sure it’s in Maskerade, but it might be Carpe Jugulum instead. Is it possible someone wildly misunderstood?
Hopefully women in Ohio are aware of this option. They may need it far sooner than anyone imagined if that current bill doesn’t get vetoed in time & the case makes its way to the Supreme Court.
@ Shadowplay
Not particularly. The leaves are toxic, and might kill you if you’ve got kidney issues. The roots will give you the shits and might possibly stimulate uterine muscle contractions, but the link is pretty tenuous. Rhubarb extracts have been used as laxatives in pregnant women in more recent years (actual clinical trials, and stuff) without any obvious issues with miscarriages. Sure, it has been claimed to be useful for abortion for a good couple of thousand years, but that doesn’t make it so.
Pennyroyal is much more effective, though it is still pretty toxic as are most other herbal abortifacients. I wouldn’t want to place any bets on whether dubious herbal toxins or back alley surgery is the more dangerous option.
Probably they just liked the taste. Not everything has a secret purpose, you know 😉
Reading this thread, I’m now wondering why alternative natural abortions aren’t a popular thing. Just given how ubiquitous it is otherwise. Why isn’t Goop on this? Don’t get me wrong though. I’m glad pseudoscience peddlers aren’t selling herbal abortions.
I guess it doesn’t fit in with perfect pretty wealthy white lady image people use to sell phony medicines and wellness products. Gwenyth Paltrow would surely never be flawed and human enough to have ever had an unplanned pregnancy.
@WWTH
I think herbal abortions are still a thing, it’s just that they tend to be ineffective at best, and deadly to the mother at worst. And some of them will cause birth defects if they fail.
Re: Rhubarb, I’ve never heard of it inducing abortions, although the old wives tale said that stimulating the bowels will stimulate the uterus. Hence why many women that are desperate at 41 weeks of pregnancy end up taking mineral oil and eating spicy foods, only to end up still miserably pregnant, but now with the runs. (Don’t ask me how I know this).
My experience is the only thing that induces uterine contractions during late pregnancy is sex and hysterical crying. In whichever order. Maybe together.
OT, how do you guys change your avatar? Mine looks like a red Swastika. ???
Re: Helen Duncan (Hellish Nell) there’s a fascinating review by Hilary Mantel of a study of her case
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n09/hilary-mantel/the-dead-are-all-around-us
re: rhubarb – I suspect the reason for having a lot of rhubarb around manor houses was that the British upper classes were often severely, and I mean severely, constipated.
The commonest remedy for doctors to be asked for seems to have been anything that could make you go, plus salves for piles etc. Rhubarb seems also to have been of of many things thought of as good for syphilis – though of course it isn’t.
As for witch trials – here in England we hanged them. rather than burned them, and it was not uncommon for people to be acquitted – at least initially: people were often accused repeatedly over the years until some charge stuck or they found a judge prepared to convict.
Whereas in some cantons of Switzerland and France, where torture was commonly used and where diabolic and “spirit” evidence was permitted, it was almost impossible to be acquitted. Which is very Trumpy indeed: who needs facts? Who needs information? The Orange One feels something is true, and as Newt Gringrich said, he’ll take feelings over facts any day.
We got a taste of what that was like during the Civil War when Matthew Hopkins managed to run his own personal reign of terror in East Anglia. One of the great unfortunate characters of history is a local baker called Meggs who had a mole on his arm, and decided to go to Norwich when Hopkins was running his witch trials in order to get his name cleared. He walked seven miles of his own volition – because he knew he was not a witch and that his birthmark could not be a witch mark. Except of course Hopkins thought different, and Meggs was hanged as a witch in the market place.
@Red R. Lion
There’s a lot of nonsense around non-medical ways to induce a late baby. One of my friends even resorted to moxibustion, which I’d never even heard of before.
Its easy for such things to get a reputation for effectiveness… mother is overdue, does a thing, goes into labor, decides it was the thing that made it work. In reality, the baby was very likely to come soon anyway, regardless of the things you do to yourself..
Lactation is supposed to help, too, but even that isn’t guaranteed. We froze a load of colostrum in advance of baby number 2 putting in an appearance, but they were still 12 days late.
Pay a visit to gravatar.com
@ marshmallow
Thanks for that link; it was an interesting read.
I also noticed this bit.
As people may know, there was an ‘Occult Bureau’ within the war department. They didn’t believe it themselves, but they knew some Nazis did; so they produced horoscopes in the method used by the Nazi astrologers to get an idea of what they were being advised.
They also hatched a plot where they produced a fake old book; ‘Nostradamus predicts the course of the war’. It predicted the course of the war to date quite accurately (unsurprisingly); but then foretold lots of doom and gloom. They then planted that in a bookshop they knew one of the German astrologers frequented, in the hope it would come to the attention of the Ahnenerbe and the more occult minded Nazis.
One of the ironies in that campaign is that Rudolph Hess believed in astrology and psychic stuff, and their prognostications helped fuel his flight to England in 1941.
The enraged Nazi leadership reacted by locking up all the psychics in Berlin and other cities in Gestapo raids, with their usual efficiency and brutality.
The amazing part — everyone of them was taken by surprise.
Joseph Goebbels noted that in his diary, and added, “A poor advertisement for their profession!”