" The Constitution? Human Rights? I’m not really interested in that, personally. I have irrefutable evidence that you are a member of a club with reprehensible ideas and hereby you are fired, Mr. Devilworshipper! No, you don’t get any chance to reply. You can fight your dismissal, if you wish: are you prepared for the entire media of Holland at your door? For I guarantee I will make sure they’ll be there. Or... do you rather consider the peace and safety of yourself and your little family, and will you sign here?"

A week before October 10, I spoke with a Magistra of the Church of Satan in America. We were considering the safety measures for a yet to be published article on Satanism in a Dutch newspaper. She was amazed about our caution.Wasn’t Holland a liberal, broad-minded country where everything is possible and allowed or at least tolerated? Hell, there were Satanists considering moving to Europe, where everything was so much easier!

Holland is a Janusfaced country , I said. To the outside, indeed, it is said to be the "land of unprecedented freedom and possibilities". In reality this tolerance does not exist but in the cities of Western Holland (Amsterdam, Rotterdam) and maybe not so because of acceptance rather than indifference (though the motivation doesn’t matter, actually). What happens in Holland time after time is the mowing down of everyone who sticks his head above ground level. "What will the neighbours say" is the most important motive to or don’t do things. The price for openly being different is isolation - when you’re lucky. Only a TV-personality can permit himself more. The mistake that’s being made at this time is the thought that every television-appearance turns one into a television-personality and therefore people go to fathomless depths to get regardless which part of their body on the box.

Maybe I was a bit pessimistic, I thought afterwards.

On October 10, the article in question was printed, more than page-large. The title "The Sinister Double Life of a Satanist" made one suspect the worst, the picture - all put in scene for the satisfaction of the photographer - might as well have been taken from a how-sees-Hollywood-Satanism movie. But all in all the story, though laid on and adorned with the personal interpretation of the journalist, wasn’t too bad, certainly considering the fact that the journalist’s first and hard to talk him out of starting point had been a public performance of the Black Mass; it had costed us considerable effort to convince the man that we did not constantly linger before our altar, even worse, that the ritual aspect is no more than that: an aspect.

Somewhere in Smallvillage that morning someone had risen in a bad mood. She (let’s call her "Mary" - full details available) read the paper and thought: "hey, I think I know these people, I never actually saw weird things and they have a house full with living pets but I have seen candles burning occasionally and they have curtains before the windows and their music is weird indeed and I’m bored stiff anyway, see what I can get out of this". She sprints to the telephone and makes sure that the address of the family she has in mind gets nationwide attention as "the address of those people in the paper". Let’s call them the family Devilworshipper.

Three hours afterwards the bell rings at family D’s door. Local TV. "Does family D. Live here?" Miss D. gave a start. "How on earth did you get to us?!" Ah, sources that must remain protected. A call with the chief editor of the station, Mr. Smits. "Miss D., I wouldn’t complain if I were you, for we just as easily would have filmed your face and the rest of the family, your housenumber, the cat and the car. Serves you right. Creeps."

The family D. was still optimistic yet, though they got a bit nervous with the growing crowd of lanky youth that started gathering around the house during the course of the day, and the weird telephone calls they constantly received. The local TV-station made a wonderful sticky item filled with worried civilians. "I think it’s terrible, this Church of Satan in our village. I do have children, you know!" Well, so did the family D.!

During that day the worked up crowd grew from 15 to 30 people and the entire population of Smallvillage went by walking, cycling and driving the car through the street, overstretching their necks to catch a glimpse of The House That Accomodates The Church Of Satan. When evening came they started calling slogans, threatening and screaming.

This pattern continued for days. In fact, the entire story lasted for two weeks, but you only get the highlights. Properties -small ones so far - were damaged. Mud against the windows. When the car was under attack, family D. called the police. Enter Hendriks, Cop for Christ. "Family D., you don’t fool with me. I know what you people do. You breed babies for sacrifice, you mutilate animals, sacrifice virgins, abuse children and worship the devil. I have proof! I have my own therapy group in which a woman participates who has gone through all of this! The Church of Satan, you get in so easily, but you never get out again. That women has been persecuted for years when she wanted to get out! All you go through now is what you deserve. Murderers! Not you? At least your kind!" When Hendriks leaves the house, he has a little chat with the mob outside. "Yup, it’s them alright!"

Huh?

A call with the Mayor. "Mayor, we are perfectly normal people to whom the law is as valid as it is for everyone - both ways." Mayor nods, scribbles something down and passess on to the housing corporation (that later sends a guy with a job he ab-so-lu-tely needs to be on the attick for, where he, unfortunately, does not find the expected Chapel, as he tells forth very dissapointed) and to the employer of Mr. D.: "Yup, it’s them, I’m sure!"

Police at the door again. "We strongly suggest you leave the house now. Tvstation SBS6 is on its way to you, they have already called with the neighbours." Leave the house? What the f@#$! An email to the unreachable Barbara Pronk, SBS6-employee who wanted to do a serious item about Satanism and received a free information pack before the 10th. "Barbara Pronk, have you gone mad? Do you wish to destroy an entire family to get 5 minutes of hot item that everybody will have forgotten by tomorrow?" No reaction whatsoever.

Then the door-to-door newspaper of Smallvillage is out with a column. Some quotes. "The black mass, the sneaky gatherings and the baptism of new members take place at secret locations. (...) On his attick a black chapel can be found. On the altar a skull, a reversed cross, black and white candles that give the same light, a dagger and a chalice but a Satanic Bible as well and incense, much incense. (...) The Church of Satan has the reputation of committing ritual murders, afflict mutilations, abuse drugs and sacrificing children. (...) The most extreme sympton of Satanism is the destruction ritual. ... Luckily the destroyer needs to be familiar with his victim. A load off my mind, for I know no one in Mainstreet and I never ever want to deal with anyone from around there at all anymore." Wrote a man who signes his columns with GODDAMNED!!!

Or: not just the family D. dragged through the mire, but the entire neighbourhood as well.  

At this point in history the real leaders of the former Dagon Grotto - who do know the family D., but share no ideology with them - decide that giving true information about Satanism is NOT worth all of this. That people are being destroyed and almost lynched - the local gypsy population regularly drove past The House, openly proclaiming their intention to invade the house and finish its inhabitants. That three families on a row rapidly had to get a new secret telephone number to get rid of telephone terror. That the children were the saddest victims of the hysteria of all. That the local cable TV information service was filled with it. That someone lost his job over it, even when this is absolutely illegal. That, to be short, no one seemed to left to his senses.

The Dagon Grotto had to be taken out of Smallvillage. So it was done.  

How incredible: we have overestimated the mob. Overestimated their ability to read and reflect. We also overestimated the media and did not see that they literally are in for a kill to get high ratings for one night.

It was disconcerting to find out that human rights, police protection and protection from the Mayor, that nothing of the achievements for minorities in this country, for whom every effort is made to enable them living in accordance with their own culture and religion, applies to Satanists. In the Janusfaced country, ruled with the rod of political correct statements -what is being thought better remains unsaid - has finally found its last scapegoat. The core of our nature. Satan.  

All this started when the Dagon Grotto wrote a letter to several media about alleged "Satanic ritual" grave desecrations somewhere in the country, explaining that this had nothing to do with Satanism. Will we ever write any letter again to correct misconceptions about Satanism? Or shall we laugh out loud - when we feel like laughing again - and leave the mob to their delusions? The truth never set anyone free, as Dr. LaVey already said. Doubt does. If telling the truth doesn’t work, maybe we better follow Doctor’s idea: put on your cloak, devils horns, grab a sword, paint your house black, fill it with skulls, skeletons, fetuses in formalin, coffins, never laugh, frown and snarl, and invent something that might look like a portable crematorium. Give them what they want and make them shit a brick with fear. To hell with them all.