Is it dead-naming to refer to “Lucien Greaves” as “Doug Misicko”?
No, it is not.
No, it's not. He is not calling himself names like "Greaves" or "Doug Mesner" out of a sincere desire to identify differently than his gover
Sometimes well-meaning people ask this question sincerely, but in practice, it usually feels like people raise and deploy the specter of dead-naming as a way to distract from all of the other criticisms of The Satanic Temple and its owners that are completely indefensible.
He is not calling himself names like “Greaves” or “Doug Mesner” out of a sincere desire to identify differently than his government name but because he is attempting to make it more difficult to hold him accountable as the owner of a collection of for-profit and tax-exempt corporations he solely or jointly controls totally.
Moreover, we’re still being sued by The Satanic Temple in ̷f̷e̷d̷e̷r̷a̷l̷ ̷c̷o̷u̷r̷t̷ ̷a̷n̷d̷ ̷n̷o̷w̷ King County Superior Court.
TST is also still suing Newsweek and its reporter (but maybe not her anymore!) for writing about us. In addition, the Temple is now suing a TikToker in Texas for talking about our case. Check the pinned post for more.
One of the co-owners of the Temple claims he's stepping down as national spokesperson after noted transphobe and reactionary dingus David Si
What happened?
One of the co-owners of the Temple claims he’s stepping down as national spokesperson after noted transphobe and longtime reactionary dingus David Silverman was touring The Satanic Temple’s headquarters/art gallery in Salem with Christine Shellska.
Satanic Temple owner Doug “Lucien Greaves” Misicko took a picture with Silverman (and Shellska) in front of TST’s “Baphomet with Children” statue.
Instead of apologizing or even explaining his seeming endorsement of a person now primarily known for being loathsome, Misicko doubled down and blamed everyone criticizing him.
Wait, that’s it?
Yeah, and it’s been tearing The Satanic Temple’s membership apart for the past few days to the extent Misicko is promising (again) to step down as national spokesperson.
OK. Back up. Who is David Silverman? Is he the Nazi lawyer guy?
That’s Marc Randazza you’re thinking of, but it makes sense that you’re confused because there are a lot of these figures. TST is awash in them, and that’s part of the problem.
"Lucien Greaves" and The Satanic Temple have a lot to answer for
How can The Satanic Temple's defenders think grotesque bigotry by TST owner "Lucien Greaves" is merely "an imperfection" to be celebrated?
When confronted with examples of Doug “Lucien Greaves” Misicko’s pattern of reactionary words and actions over the past two decades, usually, The Satanic Temple’s sycophants offer one of a small handful of stock excuses to deflect and otherwise resist actually dealing with it.
Their most recent tack has been “Lucien Greaves has changed! Actually, ‘The Satanic Temple is a church for imperfect people‘, which is why our religion is great!”— an excuse that exceeds parody but more seriously points to the dangers of what is now required of TSTers by way of loyalty.
And yet as we have said, “When it comes to The Satanic Temple, there’s always more and it’s always worse.”
Starting February 26, the admin(s) behind The.Satanic.Wiki began releasing more clips on Twitter and Kolektiva from audio and corrected transcripts of old Internet radio shows The Satanic Temple’s co-owner Doug Misicko used to make with his friend and longtime collaborator Shane Bugbee, primarily from the incomplete audio of a show called The ABCs of the Alphabet.
This was back when Misicko was using the pseudonym “Doug Mesner” rather than “Lucien Greaves” as he mostly does now.
These conversations—intended for public consumption!—are incredibly bad, but of course all context added to them makes them even worse.
We’ve censored the slurs below, but in the actual audio clips, they are presented as they were said at the time: in full and without obfuscation or shame.
Jump-to links:
“Lucien Greaves” wants to write a “[ableist r-slur] story”
“Lucien Greaves” on the Oklahoma City Bombing and the bad PR of killing children
“Lucien Greaves” talks about “The View” (TV show) and network [n-slurs]
“Lucien Greaves” on Black co-workers and cunnilingus
“Lucien Greaves” talks about the KKK and killing [Jewish people]
“Lucien Greaves” talks eugenics and “who decides”
“Lucien Greaves” on “N-words”
“Lucien Greaves” makes his case for fascism
“Lucien Greaves” really hates Detroit
The Satanic Temple’s co-owner “Lucien Greaves” on public displays of religion like Judaism and Islam
“Lucien Greaves” recalls his pilgrimage to fascist Italy
“Lucien Greaves” talks about arson and high school bullying as Nazi national anthem plays
“Lucien Greaves” on burning down churches (and temples) plus why we should nuke the “Holy Land”
“Lucien Greaves” and the OfficeMax gay Hindu organ harvester “prank call” story
“Lucien Greaves” on domestic abuse (he blames the victims)
“Lucien Greaves” explains the (true) importance of abortion access: “It’s not so much about dead babies as less people”
The titles The Satanic Wiki gave them are fairly short, and it’s often difficult to describe fully all of what makes them terrible. For example, while Misicko is talking about arson and high school bullying, Bugbee plays the Nazi anthem along under Misicko’s story; how do you best emphasize and summarize that?
In any case, if you still have friends who are supportive or otherwise ignorant of The Satanic Temple, and they don’t want to read a long article about it, any of the below clips should encapsulate quickly why these people are not to be trusted.
(For those not up to date, while these clips are from 2003-2004, the issue is that Misicko and Bugbee were close up through 2013 when Misicko tapped Bugbee to help re-launch TST after the first attempt failed, and their leaked emails and gravestone-teabagging stunt together demonstrate how little change had actually happened in that decade. More of that history here.)
A lot of people hear about The Satanic Temple and think they're very cool and do a lot of good work.
We would question that (the Temple is ineffective at what it promises to do while its owners have troubling histories and keep TST's finances opaque in regard to where money actually ends up).
What few people know, and presumably none of the members and supporters of The Satanic Temple who themselves are plural know, is that the Grey Faction also claims Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is fake.
Full thread and more under the break.
The Rings System @TheRingsSystem
TW: S*t*n/ic words mentioned
We just found out that @/satanic_temple_ has a project named grey faction, which among it's many goals that align with supporting the false memory syndrome foundation, involves disproving/disbelieving in DID. We are incredibly disappointed and hurt.
Right on it's home page.
"The notion that traumatic events can be repressed and later recovered is the most pernicious bit of folklore ever to infect psychology and psychiatry."
"A position we have made crystal clear: Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder (MPD/DID) is not “fake,” but typically iatrogenic, cultivated by unscrupulous mental health professionals."
"We do not believe people diagnosed with DID are “faking” their symptoms; we believe people really do suffer from symptoms of mental illness... However, we are skeptical that people really can have multiple personalities... in an objective sense."
They also reduce alters down to "behavioral components" such as rocking back and forth. Which is especially reproachable to take mentally ill folk's description of their lived experience and twist it into something so 2 dimensional as this. Especially when it strips us of agency.
There is an important line to walk when it comes to the era of the false memory syndrome foundation. There are true, horrible instances of carceral care and medical malpractice forced on patients that must be addressed. But you cross that line when you disbelieve survivors & DID.
We're just really, really fucking disappointed in the organization that was supposed to be leftist, and is leaving one of the most harmed & stigmatized communities to rot in the pursuit of taking down some of the very the people who harmed us the most.
The Satanic Temple @/satanic_temple_
Calling for standards of mental health care that don’t allow for the propagation of crippling conspracist delusions is leaving which community to “rot”? In pursuit of taking down whom?
The Rings System @TheRingsSystem
Also, I want to make it clear that this thread does not contest your fight against “recovered memory therapy” of the 80’s (rebranded incarceration & forced meds). That’s important work, and we are all working against the people who incacerated our community for decades
This thread is specifically about my disappointment that in that fight against people who used sodium Amytal, incarceration, etc as “treatment” you choose to drag down the people who were hurt by it as well. (folks with DID).
Specifically, by all the quotes that I have mentioned. They are the focus of this thread. Many members of the grey faction constantly repeat these ideas, which invalidate, harm, and strip agency of a marginalized population (folks w DID). That’s what’s disappointing.
The Satanic Temple @/satanic_temple_
We think people diagnosed with DID are the MOST vulnerable to these irresponsible conspiracist practitioners.
The Rings System @TheRingsSystem
Thank you. You could do better to support our community by believing our lived experiences, and stop encouraging and spreading discourse that directly invalidates what we experience.
You can say people “diagnosed with DID” are the most harmed, but that does nothing to address my point. You can say that and still believe our experiences aren’t real, still work to discredit our community. Undermining our experiences is not helpful if your goal is to help.
The Satanic Temple @/satanic_temple_
We focus on cases of recovered memory testimony that clearly are not accurate. We can’t ignore those because somebody else thinks it negates their experience, nor can we ignore the methods whereby those false claims are cultivated.
The Rings System @TheRingsSystem
Respectfully, addressing the cases where people were inaccurately convinced they had DID in carceral care settings does not require you to state on your website that your “crystal clear point” is that all DID is iatrogenic, and that multiplicity is not something we experience.
I am not asking you to ignore them, and I am not saying that I feel invalidated by them. I am saddened and enraged by what they underwent, and they deserve justice.
You can do that justice work without dragging down people with DID in the process. Without insinuating that our experiences are implanted and inauthentic, when many of our community has never once seen a therapist.
Adding this [The Satanic Temple’s tweet reply above] to the end of the thread, as it’s where we have continued our discussion of the issue at hand. I’d also like to note that they have offered to continue discussion with us off Twitter, and we reached out yesterday and are awaiting a response. I can keep folks updated.
When we checked in a few months later, The Rings System said, "No, they [TST] ended up not responding to my email chain and haven't made any of the requested changes to any of their online content."
Grey Faction did make some changes between April 2021 and June 2021, largely removing a much longer section titled "What about Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)?" quoted from in that thread, replacing it with:
The connection between Satanic Panic and MPD/DID is undeniable. Patients convinced that they were (or are) victims of ritual abuse are nearly always diagnosed with DID, and retractors -- people who come to realize their memories of ritual abuse are false -- typically find that they were misdiagnosed with DID. However, we recognize that the existence of misdiagnoses does not by itself invalidate an entire disorder. There is ongoing discussion and debate within the field regarding the nature of DID and its causes; that discussion is largely independent of our work combating the modern Satanic Panic.
So, quite a bit shorter.
By November 2021, then one further edit was made to this section, which is where it stands today:
...modern Satanic Panic. [code word 1: pseudoscience]
This isn't surprising, and we would bet we know who in particular added it back in.
Compared with corporate structures and legal case proceedings, we don't talk a lot about is how TST owner Doug Misicko has, under the pseudonyms "Doug Mesner" and later "Lucien Greaves", spent the last two decades at least involving himself in conflicts of mental health diagnoses based more at this point seemingly on a pursuit of personal grudges than any higher ideal.
The first version of that FAQ section from 2019 until January 2021 likely was the product of Misicko solely:
The modern tide of academic writing on MPD begins around 1980, and the 1980s saw a wealth of literature presenting the condition in very simplistic terms. Therein a case is made that even a single traumatic event in childhood could be so damaging to the psyche so as to fracture it into pieces, or “alters,” that are literal personalities within the individual. These personalities were reported to have their own life histories and accompanying memories, proclivities, tastes, allergies, and even eye colors. Memory, in particular, has been regarded as central to the condition ever since DSM-III R (1987), and memory recovery and processing was, and remains, the central component of treatment.
Due to the catastrophic fallout from the Satanic Panic, MPD has been the subject of controversy within the mental health community as well as in popular circles. Accordingly, the academic literature on MPD has evolved over the last three decades. Some of this was little more than obfuscation intended to stem the tide of push-back (e.g. renaming to MPD to DID to retain parity with a more circumspect DSM-IV in 1994). Some of the evolution, however, represents genuine nuance in part of the community. In developmental models of DID, for example, the condition is seen as a sort of coping mechanism for traumatic episodes that are part of an extended pattern of both trauma and love and support. In effect, an “alter state” here might not be so dissimilar from a sort of more durable “thousand yard stare” common in battle-induced PTSD cases. It would be a stretch to call this sort of state even a metaphorical personality. Even if it had some behavioral components (rocking back and forth, etc.) that were unique to it, it is a very far cry from the literal “alters” of the earlier writing.
Thus, there is a range of interpretation as to what DID even is within the relatively small segment of the mental health community that entertains its legitimacy as a traumagenic disorder in the first place. There is also sometimes a troubling dichotomy in the way it is discussed in public-facing venues vs. within the “trauma community.” One encounters eyebrow-raising statements made at ISSTD conferences by individuals that would be difficult to recognize from their relatively respectable academic writing, for example.
This is an intolerable situation for a supposedly professional community. Foundational ambiguity of this magnitude, an unwillingness by some practitioners to talk openly about their real views, and the pervasive use of a clearly dangerous treatment method mean that patients currently diagnosed with DID should be treated by qualified professionals outside this circle.
Here's an interview Misicko, again as "Lucien Greaves" gave to one of TST’s in-house journalists back in 2018.
In today's guest post The Satanic Temple's Lucien Greaves answers questions about Dissociative Identity Disorder and the Grey Faction initia
Lately, it’s been a popular hobby of those who are still trying to legitimize DID to merely illustrate by way of PET or MRI that their are demonstrable indicators of DID, which avoids all of the real questions in this entire controversy, which is whether or not the condition is primarily or entirely cultivated in therapy, or the result of earlier trauma.
I’ve met with and corresponded with, interviewed, and read the case studies of many people who felt that they very much did, at one time, have Dissociative Identity Disorder, but who came to realize that the condition was iatrogenically imposed, meaning that it was a dysfunction that was created and cultivated for them during the course of the therapy itself.
So, in short: If there are, somewhere, credible rare cases of naturally occurring (as opposed to iatrogenically created) DID, we still have very little understanding of what that would look like because the scientifically ignorant quacks who have inextricably tied their theory and treatment to Recovered Memory Therapies.
In a former attempt at a career as a self-styled journalist under the name "Doug Mesner", Misicko devoted a lot of time and energy to for lack of a better term debunking Dissociative Identity Disorder entirely.
Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder) remains one of the most controversial diagnoses in the American Psyc
In 2013 in Vice, under both pseudonyms "Doug Mesner" and "Lucien Greaves", Misicko explained that one of his goals with The Satanic Temple was to "destroy this harmful pseudoscientific practice", although you can read that more or less charitably as you see fit:
In 2009, I went to a “Ritual Abuse/Mind-Control” conference in Connecticut where I listened to “experts” elaborate upon their beliefs in Satanic Ritual crimes. I thought they would be a fringe grouping of delusional people holding firmly to incredible beliefs, hurting nobody but themselves. What I found instead was a twisted subculture of licensed therapists, and their clients, who subscribe to a pseudoscientific belief in “dissociative amnesia”: The theory that some events—particularly sexual abuse—can be so uniquely traumatic that the conscious mind cannot comprehend it, and thus those memories are “repressed.” This school of “therapy” breeds conspiracy theory and literally indoctrinates clients into false beliefs in a Satanic threat. Clients are encouraged to “remember” episodes of abuse that are presumed to have been concealed from their conscious minds, and when the evidence doesn’t match their confabulatory false memories, they explain it away as evidence of a much larger conspiracy—a Satanic conspiracy. With the false veneer of science, these “experts” in dissociation have kept a witch-hunt alive. Innocent people have been convicted and imprisoned on the “evidence” of recovered memory testimony, even though this is the exact same “evidence” we have for alien abduction, and is the same “therapeutic” process by which people practice “past life regression.” I have a long and complex body of writing, much of which can be read at www.process.org, where I detail in a number of articles how this cult-like therapy subculture continues to ruin the lives of innocent people. So one of my own goals is to destroy this harmful pseudoscientific practice, and dispel the myth of an international Satanic conspiracy. The broader goal of the Satanic Temple in general is to advocate for all of those who are unjustly maligned, demonized, or marginalized—victimized by conspiracy theorists and dogmatic supernaturalists. We seek to assert the rights of religious non-believers and skeptics. We also hope to provide the philosophical framework by which our membership may hone their cognitive tools and never fall victim to those forces.
So it's not that they don't know.
Misicko just doesn't believe in DID (there's also a whole thing with Misicko about C-PTSD we won't get into here) and directs The Satanic Temple and its projects like Grey Faction accordingly. There are many good people in TST and its various organs who legitimately want to do good work.
But Misicko is co- or sole-owner of all of the various corporations that make up the Temple, and there is no overruling him. He (and Cevin Soling) sit atop the hierarchy. You cannot reform it.
So think about that when you're thinking about organizations you want to support and provide resources to.
When it comes to The Satanic Temple, there's always more and it's always worse.
Edit: Speaking of which, one more thing
As "Lucien Greaves", Doug Misicko will sometimes claim to have attended Harvard, but it's not clear what evidence has ever been provided for this.
Co-owner Cevin Soling (a.k.a. Malcolm Jarry) seems to legitimately have several degrees, including post-graduate degrees, but he came from money, so that's not surprising.
For Misicko, we'd really like to see some evidence he ever did more than take some Harvard Extension School courses and hang around on campus.
Sincerely, correct us if that exists somewhere because our searching has not turned up anything, even admission or a stray reference to him being a student, much less an alumnus.
All of that is to say, Misicko doesn't really seem to have any authority for having strong opinions about this psychological and neuroscience stuff, but he speaks as if he does, directs Grey Faction to his interests as if he does, and the effects are quite harmful.
The least defensible of these is Misicko's continued role as one of the diehards championing the now-shuttered "False Memory Syndrome" Foundation. We're mentioned this before as it's specific to Misicko and TST, but New York Magazine's Katie Heaney wrote what's likely the definitive post-mortem on that.
Jennifer Freyd accused her father of sexual abuse. Her parents’ attempt to discredit her created a defense for countless sex offenders.
On December 31, 2019, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation abruptly announced it would dissolve. In some ways, this wasn’t surprising. Pam and Peter Freyd are both in their 80s, and nearly half the group’s board members are listed as “deceased.” The FMSF had raised more than $7.7 million since its founding, but the donations and dues tapered off over the years, and it ceased publishing its newsletter in 2011. The foundation gave birth to a number of offshoots; its Australian counterpart is also defunct, while the British False Memory Society remains active. The Satanic Temple, a religious group with chapters in 21 states, has a vocal false-memory subgroup called the Grey Faction. The temple’s co-founder, a 43-year-old man named Doug Misicko (who uses the pseudonym Lucien Greaves), earns a living creating content for 1,097 fans on Patreon. If the FMSF are the genteel, gray-haired grandparents, the Grey Faction are their online, cult-obsessed sons.
Misicko (as "Greaves") naturally responded with his own blog, calling the journalist a liar and worse names. This is sort of a pattern for him when he gets criticism from anyone except the far-right.
Other than the fact that under yet another pseudonym (Mikoto Niikura), Misicko continues to help run "False Memory Syndrome Action Network" a FMSF spinoff group, this association isn't exactly hidden, clearly.
It's just all done with the justification that "false memory syndrome" is primarily about the since-disproved Satanic panic rather than utilized for bog-standard sexual abuse excuses and apologism.
After looking at all the evidence and considering things , i decided to forgo becoming an official member of The Satanic Temple, but i still closely relate to and appreciate their values and tenets. In your opinion, is it morally sound for me to use these tenets as a guiding tool in my life and also consume media from people supporting them (buying books for information, watching videos, etc.)? I'm not considering myself a member, but i am heavily influenced.
Short answer: No, you should not.
The Seven Tenets are the intellectual property of a shit organization owned by shit people who do shit things, and you should not support them.
If you are drawn to the idea of specifically Satanic moral guidance, give the Global Order of Satan's six pillars a gander.
Long answer going into more about the intellectual property stuff below.
First of all, the Seven Tenets aren’t really anything special.
You can see in their history how the different things The Satanic Temple has been has shaped what now are the “Seven Fundamental Tenets”, and like lots of things, the fact that Cevin Soling and Doug Misicko control what TST is and ever will be is a fatal flaw that can’t be got around.
This latest version of the tenets aren’t necessarily bad, and if they weren’t proprietary intellectual property of two specific men, you would want to have various local chapters/congregations come together to revise them collectively every so often to—by consensus—create principles that spoke to the people actually involved and doing the work.
In another world, in a better version of TST that recognized it had become more than a prank documentary and stumbled into a genuine religious movement, and rather than trying to enclose as much of the commons as possible and profit as much as possible, the founders could actually have stepped aside and created a federation more like the Quakers/Society of Friends to grow beyond their control.
But we live in this world instead.
The Seven Tenets of The Satanic Temple.
Type of Work: Text
Registration Number / Date: TXu002170560 / 2019-10-24
Application Title: The Seven Tenets of The Satanic Temple.
Title: The Seven Tenets of The Satanic Temple.
Description: Electronic file (eService)
Copyright Claimant: The Satanic Temple. Address: 64 Bridge Street, Salem, MA, 01970, United States.
Date of Creation: 2013
Authorship on Application: The Satanic Temple, employer for hire; Domicile: United States; Citizenship: United States. Authorship: text. Rights and Permissions: The Satanic Temple, 64 Bridge Street, SALEM, MA, 01970, United States
Copyright Note: C.O. correspondence.
Names: The Satanic Temple
Now, it’s not clear whether they mean the for-profit corporation or the tax-exempt church here.
It's probably the for-profit because most TST stuff is registered under United Federation of Churches LLC dba “ ‘The Satanic Temple’ ”.
However, the above entry is registered only as “The Satanic Temple”, full stop, which was also the previous name of the church before they renamed it “The Satanic Temple, Inc.” and still appears on lots of documents that way.
Along with the use of pseudonyms on official documents and other instances of perjury, it ought to be a red flag to supporters of TST about the two owners and their business practices but so far largely hasn’t been.
"Oh, all religions do this."
We can assure you they do not, and it's not just some box they needed to check. Per Joseph Rose of the Hail Satan Podcast, The Satanic Temple threatened to sue him over him selling something with the Seven Tenets on them. Forget which episode.
But imagine the Catholic Church suing someone over selling a pamphlet with the Nicene Creed or Ten Commandments. It's ludicrous, but TST is, among other things, a for-profit corporation and its owners want their money.
TST co-owner tells story of "prank call" about a smelly gay Hindu organ harvester dating his OfficeMax manager
Via The.Satanic.Wiki
On Sept. 11, 2003, future co-owner of The Satanic Temple Doug “Lucien Greaves” Misicko, his friend and collaborator Shane Bugbee, and Shane Bugbee’s wife Amy Stocky hosted a 24-hour Internet radio stream with guests and callers to mark the release of their new edition of the proto-fascist manifesto Might Is Right.
The following year, Doug Misicko continued to appear on Internet radio streams with Shane and Amy.
“The ABCs of the Alphabet” was one such program.
This is an excerpt from one of those recordings.
CW: anti-South Asian racism, homophobia
Full transcript:
02:46 Doug Misicko
O-okay. Well, I have an organ theft story from OfficeMax (Amy Bugbee: Excellent.) Because I used to work at OfficeMax, and it suddenly struck me that every day I had been going into the break room and ignoring the fact that they had an anonymous tip line there that I could, presumably, call at anytime to give people "snitch tips". You know, if I needed to report my management for theft, or whatever else, or I was afraid to go to anybody else, I could call this number. So at one point, I decided to exploit this about daily. So one of the more "classic calls" I made to the OfficeMax tip line- snitch line, whatever you call it. So I called them and I reported that our store manager was gay, and that his friend had been proposing- propositioning people in the men's room, and it made me afraid to go in there and take a shit. I told them I had an eight hour shift, and I was afraid to go in there. Take a piss.
03:44 Shane Bugbee
Now, was this true?
03:46 Doug Misicko
No, it wasn't! Not at all.
[Interruption by train ommitted]
04:26 Doug Misicko
Oh... No, so he says, "Has his friend over proposition you for sex in the bathroom?" And I said "No." And he said "Has he proposition anybody, you know, for sex?" And I said, "Dude, what is your fixation with gay sex?" And he said, "Hey, you- you called and I thought you were saying that this guy's propositioning people for sex and bathroom." I said, "I never said that. I said he's propositioning people in the bathroom that he's gay. That doesn't mean wants to have sex with every guy." And he's like, "Oh okay, I don't get it then." And I said, "he's asking people for their organs. He just wants the kidneys." And he said, you know "What do you mean?" I said, "He's this little Hindu fucker. He's this greasy, smelly, little hairy Hindu guy. And anytime somebody comes in the bathroom, he asked if he can take their kidneys for, uh, people overseas." And this guy was intrigued. These people, they were too stupid to hang up on me. So he said, "Why is he in the restroom asking people for their kidneys?" And I say, "Well, because he's got his whole office set up there. He's got wheels in a little table. He's got rusty tools and everything else. I'm just afraid that if I go in there at any point drop my pants the lights are going to be out and I'll be anesthesia-ized and I walkway minus a kidney." And this guy, he assigned me a case number and everything- I had like an anonymous number. You didn't have to tell them who you were, they assigned you a number. I used to call this crap every day was stories as outrageous as that. And what was the hard- the hard part for me was that I knew that they had to investigate him each time. And that somewhere somebody was getting these faxes. And they probably could tell it was me. But they couldn't do anything about it. And I was never able to see that end result. You know, I was never able to get the satisfaction of saying, "Oh, that son of a bitch did it again. It's not fucking funny anymore." Anyways, that's my whole story.
06:17 Amy Bugbee
Do you think they did something about it? Or do you think that the store was so lackadaisical, they didn't care?
06:23 Doug Misicko
I don't know. I actually called the FBI and one of my managers once for opening a program there, copying it and resealing it, and the FBI didn't do a whole lot in that case, but I can only... You know, I can only hope it fuck with somebody in the bureaucracy who had to go through the paperwork and was bitter about it. Because that's what they get for having a stupid as snitch line setup anyway.
06:48 Shane Bugbee
Yeah, I gotta say, Doug, you are one fucking havoc-wreaking motherfucker.
TST owner Doug "Lucien Greaves" Misicko alleges corruption, says federal judge should be impeached in Boston invocation case
While we were a bit surprised that the U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley has been patient enough to just not sanction The Satanic Temple again for behaving so badly, Doug "Lucien Greaves" Misicko has decided to tweet thru it.
Note: this is unwise.
Background: The Satanic Temple, headquartered in Salem, Mass., has been suing the city of Boston since January 2021 over not getting invited by any members of the city council to give an invocation during the past several years of intermittently seeking such an invitation.
Now-Mayor Michelle Wu was one of the city council members throughout the period that TST is suing in regards to, and the Temple has been doggedly pursuing a deposition of her in particular for almost a year. However, when TST announced they were going depose Wu last year, complete with a press release about it, they tried to make her come to Salem on Election Day... while she was running for mayor (she won).
The judge did not much like that, especially since TST owner Doug Misicko claimed in the media that they forgot it was Election Day, but TST lead counsel Matt Kezhaya admitted outright to the court he views litigation as a zero sum contest and was trying to make the process as painful to Wu and the city of Boston as possible. For this, the judge sanctioned him and rebuked him further when he immediately tried to appeal it.
More recently, Kezhaya has tried to force Wu to come give a deposition in Salem again, but he has continued to act in ways the court typically does not approve of. For example, Kezhaya has accused Boston's lawyers of working with the judge against TST, told his opposing counsel he won't talk with them on the phone because he can't trust them, but also admitted while taking deposition of a city official that he wasn't reading all of the Boston legal team's emails to him.
Finally, Kezhaya has threatened to file a bench warrant against Boston Mayor Michelle Wu to force her specifically to give a deposition. The city of Boston has opposed all of these things, referencing the protective order Wu got last year as part of the attempt to depose her on Election Day.
With that background comes U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley's orders today, granting the city of Boston's motions to quash The Satanic Temple's efforts aimed at Wu but declining to sanction them again beyond warning that more will come if they keep acting this way.
The full text from the case docket:
District Judge Angel Kelley: ELECTRONIC ORDER entered. Defendant’s 57 MOTION to Quash and Defendant’s 62 Emergency MOTION to Quash Deposition Subpoena to Mayor Wu are GRANTED. In light of the Court’s prior Orders granting the City’s motion for a protective order prohibiting the deposition of Mayor Wu [see Dkt. 47] and denying Plaintiff’s motion for a certificate of appealability [see Dkt. 51], the deposition of Mayor Wu as noticed may not go forward. The proper avenue for Plaintiff to seek modification of the terms of the Protective Order is through a motion for reconsideration. Any motion for reconsideration must state which additional facts, adduced through discovery in the intervening months, have materially changed the circumstances such that the deposition of Mayor Wu is now necessary. Such a motion must specify how such facts were adduced, what efforts the parties have made to discover the information Plaintiff seeks through the avenues permitted by the Protective Order, why the other witnesses the City has identified cannot be sources of this information and, why, on the basis of such newly discovered facts, there is reason to believe that Mayor Wu’s testimony will be of unique relevance to this case. Moreover, such a motion must further demonstrate that the above factors supporting modification outweigh the potential for the deposition to be harassing, duplicative, and unduly burdensome. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b) and 45(d).
The parties, particularly Plaintiff’s counsel, are further ORDERED to cease filing unsolicited status reports with the Court, as these reports have not provided the Court with any relevant information other than indicia that Plaintiff has not read or complied with its previous orders. The Court takes no action on Defendant’s motion for sanctions at this time, but will consider imposition of sanctions if Plaintiff’s counsel continues to indicate to the Court that he is not complying with orders or conducting discovery in good faith. (Kelly, Danielle) (Entered: 09/16/2022)
Reddit u/PorchCouchLawyer:
TST likely has a decent claim in this case, especially given the Shurtleff case recently decided against the City, but their lawyer is such a maniac that he is blowing the whole thing. Alleging corruption because a discovery dispute is not going your way is one sign of a terrible lawyer. He clearly cares more about media coverage than successfully litigating a case because he hasn't even bothered to advance a new argument about why the deposition is necessary (at least as far as I can tell from the article). TST should hire a real lawyer.
/end
Yeah, that's something of a pattern with The Satanic Temple's legal efforts. This judge has been extraordinarily considerate of them so far as well.
If you read the docket for this case already, you probably saw that Marc Randazza joined TST's side back in September 2021 and left in April 2022, so it's not clear who originated the Election Day strategy, him or the Temple's lead counsel Matt Kezhaya.
However, Kezhaya is currently appealing a different sanctioning for a lawsuit against another city, Belle Plaine, Minn., over a veterans' monument that TST wasn't able to install after fundraising for it. The facts of that case ended up being embarassing to The Satanic Temple, but the sanctioning came when Kezhaya re-filed an entirely new case after parts of the existing one were dismissed.
A similar invocation case in 2020 against Scottsdale, Ariz., also failed after a bench trial largely due to TST apparently misunderstanding how city governments work, and that failure was upheld on appeal, in part because TST tried to make new arguments not made at the trial, apparently misunderstanding how the appeal was supposed to work.
TST’s Motion for Reconsideration contained many new arguments that had not been framed in the Final Pretrial Order, including various facial challenges to the City’s policy for selecting groups to give invocations at City Council meetings.
However, there's no indication that The Satanic Temple's owners or supporters are bothered by any of this, as demonstrated by one such owner also blaming the judge publicly and the supporters agreeing with him without seeking any further insight into how donations for abortion rights fights are actually being used.
Most such people don't know any better, but a few have to have intensely motivated reasoning.
The core supporters who have survived so far cannot stop to consider, "Maybe TST just fucking sucks, ya know?"
