Pascual Romero: Hey, strangers, we love sharing our podcast with you, but it takes substantial time and money to produce and release each episode. If you think our podcast is worth a buck or two, please head over to patreon.com forward slash squaring the strange and consider becoming a patron. Not only will you be helping us, but you’ll also receive some cool perks. Again, that’s patreon.com forward slash squaring the strange. Enjoy the show.

Ben Radford: Welcome to Squaring the Strange, the podcast that examines all manner of the mysterious and the mundane through a critical lens. So, let’s square the strange.

BR: Welcome back to Squaring the Strange.

0:01:09
I’m Ben Radford.

PR: And I’m Pascual Romero. And we hope that you’ve enjoyed the podcast so far and you’re just catching up on all of our back episodes. And we hope that you’ve enjoyed the podcast so far, and you’re just catching up on all our back episodes available on iTunes and elsewhere.

PR: Yep, looking forward to hearing back from all you guys. We get feedback pretty regularly. Always feel free to comment on our Facebook or send us an email at squaringthestrange at gmail.com.

0:01:34
BR: Always happy to hear from you guys. And this week we’re gonna be taking a look at a documentary about a music scene that I may be a little bit familiar with. But it is called Until the Light Takes Us and it explores a period in Norwegian black metal between the years of roughly 1991 through 1993 where a series of church burnings and a couple of murders got the black metal scene tied up in the satanic panic. But first, let’s see what’s popped up on the skeptic radar this week

PR: So Ben what are you skeptical of this week?

BR: Well on my skeptical radar was a disturbing story out of Kwamashu which is a town north of Durban, South Africa and there was an incident that occurred in late in late May and I’m reading from a news report here and there was looting that went on and there were several shops that belonged to foreigners that were looted in the in the towns and they they were apparently spawned by online rumors and stories.

0:02:56
And it says here, residents of Kwamashu were ripping the Amazombe, I’m not going to pronounce it right, but there you go, supermarket and butchery apart piece by piece. There was no police presence. It says, the violence stemmed from an apparent social media hoax that claimed that foreigners were behind the abduction of children. Earlier in the day, there were reports on social media that five girls were abducted in Kuamashu. It was actually part of a whole series of social media reports that foreign nationals were abducting girls, specifically across KwaZulu-Natal.

0:03:38
And, you know, there’s a couple things that jumped out at me. First of all, of course, it highlights the dangers of rumors. I’ve often found that when people, certainly in the West, think about rumors, oftentimes it’s sort of minimized. Like, oh, you know, I heard that someone’s sleeping with somebody else, or I heard, you know, whatever else. But of course, you know, as we’ve talked about previously on this podcast, rumors can have real consequences. We talked about the Pizza Gate conspiracy rumors.

0:04:12
And in this case, two things that jumped out at me. One was that the abductions were specifically about children. It wasn’t just an old man was abducted. it plays right into folklore and social and frankly moral panic concerns about the abduction of children and in this case girls and immediately of course that evokes all sorts of parental fears and community fears the question was why were these children abducted? The question should have been were these children abducted? And the answer is no, there were no kids abducted, girls or anyone else. it was all false social media rumors circulating or anyone else.

0:04:51
So again, the skeptic should ask, it’s a version of what’s called Hyman’s Categorical Imperative by psychologist Ray Hyman, a friend of mine, and he talks in his imperative, he talks about before you explain something, be sure there’s something to explain. So before you try to explain where did these girls go, back up a second, check your assumptions. Did this happen? Are there actually girls missing? In this case, the answer is no.

0:05:19
But again, it feeds into social fears, community fears. You know, why are kids being abducted? Well, obviously you go to the most dramatic reasons, right? Maybe sexual abuse or organ theft. I’ve previously written, as you know, about organ theft urban legends. And particularly ones in South Africa and also in South America there’s lots of legends about organ theft in in the idea that the foreigners specifically are praying on local children you see this in in Guatemala you see this in Brazil elsewhere where it’s this it’s the xenophobia it’s it’s one more reason to hate the immigrants yeah it’s one more reason to to be distrustful of of the white guy or the black guy or the Muslims or whatever it is.

0:06:03
And oftentimes these rumors are associated with Satanism, witchcraft, because that’s where people’s minds go to, right? Social media rumors, right? Rumors don’t get shared because they minimize dangers. That’s not how these things spread. Rumors get spread because they play on people’s fears and they want parents to get alarmed and share this with all your friends and neighbors and watch your kids because there’s a serious danger here. Sure. And in fact you know a couple years ago I wrote about a case in in Brazil where there was a woman that was that was attacked by a mob and murdered. She was just beaten to death and part of the reason was that there were rumors circulating circulating on social media that a woman was abducting children for use in magic.

0:06:57
She was a witch. To be clear, there was a witch hunt. We’re talking currently, these days, and witch hunts still occur, literally witch hunts. It’s important people recognize that witch hunts still occur in South Africa. They occur in Asia. They occur in India. And you know, it’s important, it’s weird when we talk about it, like, oh, this is some dusty archaic thing that doesn’t happen anymore. No, no, no, no.

0:07:25
They still happen. And again, in the case in Brazil, a woman, rumors circulated that a woman was abducting kids presumably for use in some sort of ritual. And these were shared and the description vaguely resembled this one woman who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and the mob descended upon her and killed her. It’s unfortunate that you have xenophobia, people being suspicious of other people because of where they’re from or rumors about them. In this case, these rumors serve as a cover for looting and rioting. There’s not just one thing at play here.

0:08:12
Even if they don’t necessarily believe that the owners of this market and butchery are in fact abducting kids, and probably, by the way, now that I think about it, the fact that it was a butchery probably feeds right into that. Probably feeds right into the, like, oh, they own a butchery. This girl’s missing. What are they doing with this, right? And it sounds outlandish to us. You know, in America in 2017, in New Mexico, but this is very real to people. And it is not, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility in many people’s minds that yes, this is, in fact what happens.

0:08:48
And so, and just parenthetically, I should point out that in South Africa, not far from Durban and KwaZulu-Natal, there have been rumors about muti-murders, that is murders in which people are murdered for their body parts. And I’ve written about this extensively in the case of albinos. Albinos have been tracked down in Tanzania, Kenya, and South Africa and elsewhere, because people believe that their body parts, fingers, toes, penises, whatever else, can be used in magic.

0:09:23
In fact, there was a scene in the film District 9. There was a brief scene that was exactly about that, about using body parts for magic. And so it’s important to understand the context here. The context is in South Africa today, in 2017, people believe that body parts can be used for magic, but people believe that there are those out there abducting them for these rituals. In some cases, there’s a grain of truth to that. Because it’s not that, of course, the body parts of albinos are magical. The danger is the belief that they’re magical.

0:10:00
It’s not that these foreign-owned businesses are using a cover for abductions, it’s that people believe it is. And that’s really the lesson that I got from this, and one more reason why people need to be skeptical of rumors and not share them. Urban legends, by their very nature, are plausible. There are no urban legends about space aliens. There are no urban legends about… I mean there’s conspiracies about them. But if you’re looking at it from a folkloric perspective, urban legends almost invariably involve things we can all relate to.

0:10:42
They’re a phantom slasher hiding under cars at the local mall. Is that possible? Sure, it’s possible. You know, it’s, it’s, um, it’s, you know, the little lady who wants to dry off her dog and puts a, put the poodle in the microwave, uh, you know, just all sorts of ones. And of course in urban legend specifically, there’s a very, very long standing and strong theme of xenophobia. Uh, you see, you know, the, the, uh, there’s all sorts of ones. The one that jumps to my mind is the California woman that goes to Mexico and sees a cute puppy.

0:11:18
And she brings back the puppy and she’s just so adorable but she can’t get over how cute this puppy is and then she brings it back and shows her friends and they’re horrified and then she realizes that it’s a rat. and the xenophobic theme about that urban legend is of course how dirty Mexicans are.

0:11:40
And like, oh, you’re this clean white woman, you’re educated and you went to this, you went to the evil place across the border and you didn’t realize just how nasty and evil they were and then you brought back this filthy animal that you thought was cute. I mean, there’s a huge thread of xenophobia, in some cases really nasty xenophobia. We should do a show on that. In some cases, really nasty xenophobia.

0:12:03
We should do a show on that. But in urban legends, it all sort of ties in with these sorts of rumors and stories. One of the problems is that the police were trying to dampen down the rumors. In the story I’m reading here, “it’s talking about the provincial commissioner says, it’s very disturbing to find that people continue to circulate fake information on social media, causing unnecessary fear and panic. Unfortunately, there are gullible members in our communities that believe everything they find posted on social media, platforms by faceless individuals who refuse to believe the authorities.” And so again, it’s, you know, the police themselves were called out for looting.

0:12:44
And I mean, at this point, they had two problems. They had, they were trying to dampen down and debunk the false rumors about the trying to dampen down and debunk the false rumors about the missing girls saying, yeah, I know you believe there’s missing girls here. There’s no one’s missing. And even if there is missing girls, there’s no connection to the foreigners that own this market. So they’re trying to deal with that on one hand. On the other hand, they’re trying to, you know, arrest and get control of the chaos of these looters and arsonists. So it’s just a mess.

0:13:15
But again, I just think it’s important to remind listeners and the public in general about why it is that you need to verify information and not just share stuff on social media that’s gonna outrage somebody or as a warning or whatever else, because they can have real consequences.

PR: Something that I try to do as much as possible on social media, because we’re all susceptible to sharing something that’s untrue or that’s misleading.

0:13:43
I’ll post something, you know, maybe I didn’t vet it enough, and someone will post a fact check on it that’s credible. It’ll completely refute what I’ve posted, and usually what I do is I immediately delete it. Now, some people accuse me of trying to pretend it never happened or it’s an integrity thing or something but the truth is that I do not want to leave something up even if I put a correction on it because someone might still just read the misleading headline and share it off of my…

BR: They’re not gonna scroll down to see that oh by the way this is totally debunked.

PR: Yeah and so it’s like on one hand I get that you know I want to leave the fact-checking up sometimes I’ll share the fact-checking if it’s a really big big article or something but most of the time it’s just any time someone refutes it credibly then I’ll just take it right down And I think people in general should try to do that as a practice don’t leave it up fellow skeptics I know a lot of you want to keep it up in the spirit of debate and you will retract your initial position on it or even you know you may post something with with with a disclaimer at the top that you don’t believe this and then you put your reasons, but anytime you’re sharing that on social media, you’re putting the link out there and people are still sharing it from you.

0:14:57
The reason I brought that up was because I think that the biggest problem with why these things are happening like this is how prolific the posting is, and because it spreads. If you can stop it, or encourage people to take things down when they’re wrong.

BR: Yeah, I agree. I think people have become their own sort of micromedia. We talked about this before on the show, but it’s all well and good to complain about mainstream media sharing and fomenting misinformation and rumors. And that’s legitimate. Yeah, criticize them, do all you want. But the fact is that if you take a closer look at it, that doesn’t go anywhere if people don’t share it. If you, you know, MSNBC and Fox and all these other outlets, they can say whatever they want, but if their audience isn’t sharing and liking and putting it around there, it doesn’t go anywhere. So the onus is on you Yeah, you know it to sort of you know clean your own house before you’re complaining about the mainstream media You know things up. We’ll be doing a show soon on effective skepticism Yeah, so a whole show a whole show on that and hopefully that’ll that’ll that’ll be helpful.

BR: So I’ve got a question for you.

0:16:36
So there’s a local newspaper, alternatively, called the Alibi, which you’re familiar with. In the back of the Alibi, there are bands that are listed. You’re being a musician band. And I would say a half to a third of the band names are entirely unreadable. I mean, they are literally unreadable. So my question to you is, why the hell do you do that? I’m totally serious here.

0:17:05
I’ve never understood that. I’ll just tell you my hypothesis. My guess is, it’s probably wrong, my guess is that there’s a certain sort of gatekeeper aspect. But please tell explain that to me if you would.

PR: So you’re that is actually you are correct That is one one answer That is definitely one answer. There are a lot of bands who Who use it as a total gatekeeper and it’s because they want to be esoteric and they want a specific group of people to be into them. Also,

BR: they like to be obscure. They prefer no one’s heard of them. I can see that as a marketing tool, sure.

PR: Yeah, sure, and that’s actually kind of interesting because it plays into black metal. Black metal is the sub-genre of heavy metal that’s the most common to have these very highly illegible names. So, yeah, part of it is that there’s a huge segment of that sub-genre that does not want to be liked by anyone but the people within the genre. It’s a very exclusive…

0:18:13
Trust me, I mean, if someone were to ask me for a professional opinion on black metal, I would immediately get shut down by black metal guys because I’m not what they call true cult.

BR: Poser!

PR: Yeah, it’s pretty funny and I’ve been in those worlds and I have a lot of friends who are very popular black metal musicians. So it is kind of funny that I wouldn’t be taken seriously, yet you can find pictures of me with these guys on the internet. So yeah, so part of it is just wanting to be obscure and wanting to just keep people out of the club. And that’s a big one. Another big one, frankly, is just utter tongue-in-cheek, like, making fun of the genre kind of self, self, yeah, very self, almost self-deprecation, you know?

0:19:00
And…

BR: We’re so obscure, we don’t want you to know our name. Yeah, and it’s so… The Nameless Band.

PR: And it’s really funny because they will do things like make these huge, you know, that looks like a pile of sticks or something, you know? It looks like a pile of sticks or something. And it’s just, there are just, maybe you can make out some X’s and Y’s.

0:19:20
BR: Like spaghetti and twigs. Yeah. And that’s your logo.

PR: Yeah, so that’s definitely part of it. I was in a band called Pathology, which is a somewhat known band, not a black metal band, so it’s called Slam, which is another extreme metal. I mean that rabbit hole is so deep it’s not even worth getting into. But it’s a very heavy, down-tuned, heavy, heavy band. And our logo was nowhere near as illegible as some of them, but even that one was pretty messy looking. And part of that was we were kind of in a world called gore grind, which is, you know, and it is what it sounds like.

0:20:02
It’s very gory imagery and lyrics. And-

BR: Gwar, horrorcore stuff?

BR: Yeah, it’s kind of, it’s in the spirit of Gwar, I would say. It’s definitely, it’s a little more violent and serious, but think of it as kind of like, if Gwar is like the musical equivalent of like the Toxic Avenger, you know. Where we were kind of the musical equivalent of like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you know.

0:20:26
BR: Okay, I love the analogy here. Okay

PR: But and so yeah, so at all levels there’s kind of different reasons for it. Like for Pathology it was because it’s a very violent looking logo and it’s meant to sort of evoke that slasher movie aesthetic. Think, you know, think Tobey Hooper. Don’t think Charles Manson.

0:20:47
You know, I’m not revering it, I’m presenting it as a scary, frightening tale. I think that, yeah, I use some pretty extreme imagery and I wouldn’t recommend presenting that to children, but at the same time, it’s all very tongue-in-cheek.

BR: Well, let’s be honest, kids can’t read your logo anyway.

PR: Kids can’t read the logo, they can’t understand the lyrics.

BR: I can’t read the logo. It’s pretty funny, but yeah, it’s a very esoteric thing. A lot of people do it intentionally to remain obscure, to be esoteric. And the truth is that there is a certain level of publicity that a band ends up getting anyway because of it. Because what happens is it invites you to figure out who they are.

0:21:31
BR: And the other thing, of course, is that fans of the band will recognize the logo anyway. So I mean once you once you know that this says you know Death Nostril or whatever. then doesn’t matter how legible it is. That’s the death nostril.

PR: It really is a branding thing at its core whether they want it to be or not, whether they want it to be or not. Because it’s kind of the same thing, you know, you look at like there’s Bauhaus has that little face logo and when you see that logo, you know it’s Bauhaus.

0:22:11
And when Prince went by the artist formerly known as Prince and that symbol, when you see that symbol now, you know who it is. You know, one of the more famous black metal bands in Dark Throne, their logo is fairly easy to read when you really look at it. But at a glance, it just looks like a jumble of lines. I think they’ve really capitalized on it because they have more t-shirts, even in hot topic and stuff, but places that usually are really super off limits by black metal standards. But you’ll see their stuff all around because it’s just such a branded thing.

BR: And yeah, and it was just thinking, that’s always one of the appeals.

0:22:48 I mean you talked to us before but it just sort of made that connection. Kids want something their parents can’t recognize. It’s sort of a password, right? It’s a secret like, you know, my parents can’t read this and that’s great. Like, you know, those in the know know what it is. And they’re like, oh, what is this illegibleI don’t know, dad, I don’t listen to that crazy stuff. Like, argh!

PR: Yeah, no, that’s true. And that’s, you kids are always going to figure out a way to sort of get under their parents’ radar.

0:23:25
BR: that’s been itching me, been irritating me, and puzzling me for years. So thank you for that.

PR: Yeah, sure, sure.

Celestia Ward – Hey Squares, Celeste here with your skeptical fortune cookie for this week. Let’s see what we’ve got. There’s a sucker born every minute. Well, I feel kind of dumb for paying $15 for this cookie now. But anyway, as most of you know, there’s a sucker born every minute is one of the more of you know, there’s a sucker born every minute is one of the more famous quotes from American showman P.T. Barnum, and it’s something you still hear quite regularly in your average casino, carnival, or timeshare presentation. P.T. Barnum may have defined himself as a showman, but there was much more to the man. He was mayor of Bridgeport, he served two terms in the Connecticut legislature, helped found Bridgeport Hospital, and created America’s first aquarium, and believe believe me, that’s just a partial list of his long biography. Despite openly saying that his main goal in life was to fill his own coffers, Barnum was one of the first skeptics to put some of his own money on the line, offering $500 to any spirit medium who could prove their supposed powers.

0:24:44
Barnum walked a fine line between entertainment and hoodwinking. He showcased hoaxes like the Fiji mermaid and he became known as the humbug king. Humbug being a term for hype or over the top promotion, which P.T. Barnum practically invented. But he also crusaded against predatory forms of deception. And he testified in court against William Mumler, a noted spirit photographer who was brought up on fraud charges back in 1869. Yeah, there’s a sucker born every minute, but P.T. Barnum would far rather have had those suckers spend their money at his grand traveling museum than give it over to fraudulent grief vampires.

0:25:21
Well, I’m going to enjoy these stale bits of $15 cookie, and I’ll let you get back over to Ben and Pascual.

BR: So, this week we are talking about a documentary called Until the Light Takes Us, which you and I saw just a couple nights ago. And I had actually seen it about three or four years ago. A friend of mine had flagged it for me because it’s got a lot of interesting aspects in terms of skepticism and Satanism and the satanic panic and stuff like that. So I thought this would be a great topic to touch on. It’s not often talked about.

0:26:24
I think that this is an aspect that’s, when people are talking about the satanic panic of the 80s and 90s, a lot of times, certainly here in the States, we focus on America. Because there was so much here. But it’s nice to bring in some cross-cultural ties to it. So tell us about it.

PR: Sure. So Until the Light Takes Us is a documentary that’s based in the Norwegian black metal scene specifically.

0:26:48
And black metal is an extreme form of metal and heavy metal music, that is. And it kind of centers around a guy named Varg Vikernes, who is a black metal musician and the case of him burning down at least three churches and murdering one of the other musicians in the scene. It’s an interesting documentary because it mostly is just a series of interviews.

0:27:21
Varg himself is interviewed quite heavily in the documentary. The story is kind of led by a guy named Fenris, who is a musician. He’s in a band called Dark Throne, which is one of the originators of Norwegian black metal. And Fenris is actually a fairly likable guy, and he doesn’t necessarily relay the story, but he kind of provides a foundation for the story by kind of explaining his role in the black metal scene.

BR: And was he in a band with Vikernes, or they just were in the same circle?

PR: Same circle, but Varg did write some lyrics for Dark Throne in the early days. And actually, I say early days, but that scene from start to finish, meaning from when it really blew up to when Vikernes was convicted of arson and murder, it was actually only about three years.

0:28:16
So it was a pretty quick window of time that really launched Norwegian black metal. I mean, it shot off like a rocket after that.

BR: What years are we talking about? So 1992 he was involved in burning down at least three Christian churches in Norway Later, he was arrested and charged with the murder of a guy named Oisín Arseth, so he had committed the murder in August of 93 so that the crimes are 92 and 93 and the scene itself was pretty much 90 to 93 that you know leading up to that point

BR: now of course, church arsons, unfortunately, they’re not uncommon.

0:28:58
Nor are dead musicians. but there’s something unique about this particular world that really made it much more compelling and brought it into the national and international consciousness. Why don’t you talk about that?

PR: We’re going to skip around a little bit to kind of focus on where skepticism comes into play, but the main thing that really drove all of this into the spotlight was the church burnings themselves.

0:29:26
Even before the murder, church burnings started becoming kind of this stuff of legend in the metal scene and metal magazines were kind of reporting on it and tying it to the black metal scene, because the black metal scene was not shy about claiming to have burned the churches. In fact, Varg himself, basically, without implicating himself, he just simply said, we did it.

BR: I know who burned the churches!

PR: So needless to say, getting the case pushed through in court was not that tough, He actually had essentially claimed responsibility as a scene well before ever being charged for anything.

BR: Let me just set the stage, or why don’t you set the stage. I think when we talk about black metal and death metal, it’s easy to say the word, but there’s a whole look, worldview, gothic.

0:30:24
Tell us about that.

PR: Sure.

BR: Tell us about that so that it’s not just like a clean cut young man like, well, so I burned the church. There’s a whole aspect to it.

PR: Yeah, and it’s actually, it’s pretty fascinating if not a little scary, but the black metal, specifically this subgroup of Norwegian black metal musicians at that time who are largely credited for the state of black metal since. They held a lot of views and beliefs and it varied between bands and musicians and members but a lot of things you’re gonna see in in that world at that time is a lot of kind of reverting to pagan beliefs, very strongly pushing Norse mythology.

0:31:09
Unfortunately in the same way Hitler kind of romanticized Norse mythology, it was it was used as sort of a nationalistic cry. There was a lot of racism, great amount of homophobia, you know, and then there was the typical problems with heavy metal like sexism and, you know, brutish behavior and things like that. So, black metal at that time in that scene had a real heavy dose of this kind of nationalistic, religious, pagan, anti-Christian, uh… anti-christian, dark gothic, lots of corpse paint, they painted their faces white with kind of black all over and you know and

BR: basically anything that might annoy parents.

PR: It is a very very counterculture thing and came from a lot of rebellion and the church burnings were an extension of that because and this is you know there is there’s a little bit of history to it in terms of the long history.

0:32:05
The churches were, in fact, many of them were placed on sites that were pagan or at least believed to be pagan ritual sites. This was not an uncommon thing in those days of Christianity for them to literally move in with a church and just drop it on top of the local place of worship.

BR: For better or worse, that was not uncommon and certainly not unique to that area.

PR: No, absolutely not. When pressed for a reason for burning the churches, it was in response to the Christian church being placed on a sacred pagan site.

0:32:39
Whether or not that’s absolutely the case is questionable. I think a lot of them are just drunk kids trying to cause havoc, but I get it. That message is very strong in that subculture at that time, so it’s not unbelievable that they’d do it for that reason.

BR: Was Vikernes himself doing these, or was he part of a bigger group that decided to target the churches? How did that come about?

PR: Several members of the black circle were convicted of arson and tangentially of murder, the same murder that Varg committed in 1993.

0:33:18
BR: In the documentary, one of the tragic things is these churches are old, super old, hundreds of years old. Regardless of your position on Christianity or the feeling that churches are supplanting pagan places, these are historical places. And I think that’s really part of why people were so upset about it. Part of it was, of course, the sort of symbolic attacking of Christianity. Part of it’s like, guys, this has been here for 300 years or 500 years, whatever it is.

PR: And as I kind of mentioned while we were watching the film, from an historical and architectural standpoint, I think that that’s the greater tragedy in the minds of most of the people who were hurt by this because you know Norway is not known for being a terribly religious country even in you know 25, 30 years ago wasn’t hyper religious by any stretch and And so the the group themselves the core members of this group referred to themselves as the black circle or the inner circle, and Varg was that was basically I would I guess you’d say the de facto leader. I’m not sure he ever claimed to be the leader, but he’s the one that took the heat for it, so to speak.

0:34:35
BR: Well, it’s interesting, seeing the interviews with him, he’s very charismatic. Absolutely. He’s very well-spoken. He’s a very intelligent guy. Yeah. And you can see how somebody who, when you’re listening to what he says, there’s little bits of truth to it. It’s like, what he says, there’s little bits of truth to it.

0:34:57
And it’s, you know, I could see how, you know, people would follow him and just say, wow, he’s really deep. And it’s like, you know, he seems to know what he’s talking about, and, you know, he’s referencing these, you know, Odin mythologies and this and that, and he seems very put together and very compelling until you sort of take a step back and say, well, hold on here, I’m not so sure about that. On the church burnings, if I’m not mistaken, that was sort of the first time that Satanism per se got associated, in the public’s mind anyway, with the church burnings. Is that right?

PR: Yeah. Stateside, we were already pretty well into the Satanic Panic. I mean, the Satanic Panic spans an era that really starts in the 70s. well even earlier I mean because the church of satan was the 60s. So I mean a lot of this hysteria it just hit a fever pitch going through the late 80s into the early 90s and the church burnings were a great media spectacle that they really glommed on to and they’re like oh these black metal guys. I mean, obviously they’re satanic and So they they were very quick to call it satanic the record shop that they hung out at that was owned by Uranimus was was called the Helvet and that’s just means hell right but But otherwise save for a little bit of light imagery and things like that It was never the the mission statement and it had always been about paganism and this Germanic nationalistic paganism almost.

0:36:33
BR: Yeah, that’s what struck me. It seemed like, of course, there’s a hodgepodge of elements. You have Anton LaVey’s brand of Satanism, you had racism, as you mentioned, nationalism. What I saw happening, in this case in elsewhere, was of course the public and journalists cherry pick whatever they want. there’s a hodgepodge, there’s whatever angle you want to build into it, you can find it. If there’s enough bands, there’s enough lyrics, there’s enough shows, enough interviews, there’s enough random people doing random stuff, sure enough, whatever whatever angle you want to build this into, you can find it. And I think that’s pretty much happening. I mean, I was reading a book you gave me called Lords of Chaos.

0:37:17
And there’s, let me just read a quote here. He talks about the interviewed vicarness and he says, he explained his justification for the church burnings. He said it was, quote, to show Odin to the people and Odin will be lit in their souls. Again, this is, you know, if you want to know why someone did something and you ask them and they tell you, did something and you ask them and they tell you, believe it! Believe it, right? He did not say he did it to appease Satan. He was very, very clear. And the fact is, of course, that these traditions have nothing to do with Satan, but the news media affixed that label to it.

0:37:54
And it reminds me of how here in America, Halloween has become associated with Satanism among fundamentalist Christians. And it’s bizarre. I wrote about this for Discovery News a couple years ago. You find, of course, that there’s no connection between Halloween and Satanism at all. In fact, Satanism goes back to early pre-Christian traditions. You know, Samhain and other things like that, that have… Satan and Satanism is a Christian invention.

0:38:28
They created it and so these beliefs evolved before there was such a thing as Satan. So a lot of these pagan beliefs, they wouldn’t recognize Satan if it hit them in the head because that’s not part of their worldview.

PR: I refreshed myself on Geraldo’s famous Satanic Panic piece. I can’t remember the name of it. Satanism, you know.

BR: I think it was Satanism, trying to kill your kids.

PR: Yeah, and watching it now, and especially with the frame of reference I have now, it was just a reflection of how everyone was acting.

0:39:04
It’s not like Geraldo drove this to be. He didn’t make the satanic panic. He just took part in it.

BR: He fueled it for all the ratings he could.

PR: and it was pretty amazing because he found law enforcement that would back up the claims of Satanism he found he found every kind of quote-unquote expert you could think of psychologists you know and he even had members of the Church of Satan and the Temple of Set which I think he had it was Anton LaVey’s daughter if I’m not mistaken and and the guy from the Temple of Set who actually was a standing colonel in the military at the time.

0:39:45
So we’re talking like a guy who probably has, it’s like he makes, he’s the kind of guy who makes those like conservative Satan-fearing types, he’d make their heads explode because on one hand he’s like this true patriot, but on the other hand he’s the Satanist. And Geraldo, you know, really would just steamroll him with the dumbest, most unanswerable questions. But, long story short, that whole circus was just rolling and churning as these church burnings were happening. So the second year of a church catching fire, whatever caused it was immediately satanic. That lightning was satanic. I don’t know, because it was just, they were looking for any reason to make it part of the panic.

0:40:24
And that moral panic was prolific. And I mean, just to think of the fact that a handful of church burnings in Norway became front page news in the States in terms of Satanism was pretty remarkable.

BR: And, you know, keep in mind, of course, how popular American news media is and was. I mean, so it’s not like this is some local station. This is Geraldo Rivera and others as well. I mean, he’s he’s one of the most egregious ones, but there are many, many others.

0:40:57
You know, mainstream respected news media. I mean, you know, I can just picture the newsroom conversation among the editors. They’re like, well, so the church burning had to do with, you know, getting Norwegians to recognize their native traditions that are being supplanted by American consumerism, right? Can we just call it Satanism? Yeah, that’s the ticket. Let’s just call it Satanism.” And they went with it.

PR: And I’m sure that almost that exact conversation had been happening in the Christian churches since the dawn of, you know, at least the dawn of the strident, conquest-based Christianity that put churches on pagan sites.

0:41:34
It was always about demonizing the pagan and the heathen beliefs. I mean even the very symbols of Satanism as we know them like the pentagram and things, I mean those all come from old pagan traditions and you know pre-Christian traditions. They have nothing to do with the devil because the devil was something that was created by Christianity and slapped onto figures like Baphomet and religious figures and gods that came from frankly perfectly well-meaning religions that predated Christianity or if not well-meaning just you know de facto naturalistic kind of belief.

BR: Yeah it’s funny if you actually know something about Satanism and and all that it’s just fascinating that you know the public has this like immediately like stop and freeze in their tracks and they just have no idea yeah I’ve talked to Satanist and  their like yeah I don’t I’ve talked to Satan, isn’t there?

0:42:25
Like, I don’t really believe in Satan. It’s like the Satan that you think I believe in, I don’t even know what that is.. It’s like, it’s just such a charged word. And of course, it immediately conjures, it conjures visions of sacrificing babies and goats and satanic practices and consorting with witches. And there’s all this freight and this baggage that comes along with it.

0:42:50
And of course the news media play right into that. this baggage that comes along with it.

PR: So it doesn’t surprise me. And I think that at the core of this documentary, that to me is really the topic that is so important for us on a skeptic show to talk about because, you know, we’re not skeptical about what happened and we’re not skeptical about, you know, who these people are or what they represent.

0:43:11
But what we are skeptical about is the narrative that this, that was sold on the back of these events. You know if anything it really was just doing everyone a disservice by not saying, hey there’s this somewhat organized group of sociopaths organizing and burning down churches and killing each other under the the idea that somehow they’re bringing paganism back to Norway. I think that if anything it detracted from Information that really should have been out there so people could understand You know the dangers of nationalism and things like that because you know it was it was religious, yes But the beliefs in the belief system that Vikernes in particular puts forth on a very regular basis is very similar to the Third Reich kind of kind of nationalist, this paganism thing that Hitler was into. And that imagery and all of that was very similar.

0:44:07
And it also includes a lot of the same bigotry and hatred, which to me is a guy that’s to this day very well respected by certain circles in the music world and by an entire scene. You know, he holds those beliefs to this day.

BR: Would not surprise me. Well, you know, essentially when you look at the church burnings, I mean, it’s part of, of course, a much broader tradition of, you know, having some incendiary, not to make light of it, but, you know, event that is meant to wake people up.

0:44:43
And you see this all the time. You see people who, you know, there’s a murder or there’s a terrorist attack or there’s some horrific, tragic event and the purpose is to wake people up. Like, look people, look sheeple, this is important, this is urgent. American consumerism is coming into our culture and it’s pushing out the old traditions. You saw this, for example, about 10-15 years ago, there was a guy named Luke Helder who did a series of bombings. He planted a bunch of bombs in mailboxes in the Midwest.

0:45:17
And I wrote about that for Skeptical Inquirer magazine. And his stated purpose was to wake America up. He wanted attention. He wanted to be… so there were people who were injured. I mean, I think someone lost a hand or something because of these bombs. And when he was arrested, he was happy to tell people why he did it. It was because he wanted… he was trying to draw attention to conspiracy theories in the government. You see this with terrorism, you know, the Omar Mateen shooting in Orlando last year. And basically all these terrorist acts, they’re all a form of this, you know, waking people up idea and getting people, you know, drawing their attention. And this is just firmly in that tradition. Not, I should add, in the tradition of Satanists.

0:46:00
Satanists, FYI, don’t have a tradition of burning down Christian churches. Have there been a couple? Sure. But as a body, as a tenant, that’s not really what they do.

PR: Seeing and speaking to a little more first-hand account of it, it really tamps down that scary image. Now, the scary image is very much a cultivated thing, and a lot of Satanists do want that. And part of the reason the Church of Satan, as Anton LaVey started it, I believe he himself had mentioned that we choose Satan as the mascot because it represents an idea that’s anti-religious and anti-Christian. But the truth is, most of them, I don’t know if all, but most of them are just atheists or people that would self-identify as agnostic and don’t actively worship Satan.

0:46:59
As a matter of fact, as far as I know, I’m sure it’s possible that people are out there actually worshipping Satan. But the organizations, the Church of Satan and the Satanic Temple, who actually are more of an advocacy group than anything, their traditions are very, for the most part, peaceful. and anything. Church of Satan has tenets that are essentially, they may sound a little selfish, but if anything, they are very much against senseless violence. And against…

BR: It’s very individualistic.

PR: Yeah, it’s like, don’t hurt someone unless they hurt you. And sure, that can be taken the wrong way. But by and large, if you do hear…

BR: As can the good book.

0:47:35
PR: As can most good books, sadly. But as can Catcher in the Rye, for that matter. But long story short, if you really do your due diligence and look into how many crimes actually have had a real tangible tie to something called Satanism, you never find, I’ve never found one that was directly correlated with any kind of satanic organization or cult. You know we can talk all day about Ricky Ramirez and people like that but these are fringe people who do not have a direct affiliation with these satanic cults as you know as we see them in the satanic panic.

BR: No you’re exactly right and I mean I’ve researched that a fair amount and you’re exactly right. What you find is that every now and then there will be some murder or some ritual killing or a seemingly ritual killing. And it’s by some disturbed teenager who listens to a bunch of heavy metal or whatever else and during the interview they’re like yeah Satan right? They throw it out there. And this sort of legitimizes the public. Oh look at that we we found one of the Satanists.

0:48:49
Well, hold on here. Lots of people, I mean, you had a couple years back, you had a couple 12-year-old girls saying they killed people for Slender Man. That doesn’t mean Slender Man’s real. It doesn’t mean that there’s actually a conspiracy of Slender Man adherents who are out there sacrificing for this online. So that’s one of the frustrating things as a skeptic, is to acknowledge, yes, there are a few people here and there who will self-identify as Satanists, as do people who self-identify as any number of other things, who do bad things. Granted, that does not imply that there is a clandestine group of Satanists, capital S, that are out there, you know, sacrificing babies or doing evil things.

0:49:36
PR: The key is parsing instances where people invoke the concept of Satanism or Satanic cults from an organized conspiracy to commit, you know, sacrifices and murders, because that has so far not proven to exist at all. In the cases during the satanic panic that people like Geraldo like to drag out of the dirt, if you ask any law enforcement or people who’ve actually been involved with these cases, by and large the opinion is, okay, yeah, we did find a bunch of cats dead in the woods or something, and then they’ll say, and it was probably a bunch of teenagers.

0:50:24
It was never, very few, if any, I guess just the guy that was on the Geraldo special, very few law enforcement when you actually look for these stories ever say, oh, it’s some kind of satanic ritual. They say, oh, well, yeah, we saw some imagery and this and that, and there’s a bunch of dead animals in the woods that were mutilated by a person. But again, most of them are like, yeah, it’s just some teenagers that live in the neighborhood, a bunch of little sociopaths running around. But it’s never a cult, an organized cult that’s out there doing that. And that, you know, to spin it back around, that whole mentality and that need to glom onto that Satanism idea is why the story in Until the Light Takes Us, which is kind of a broad overview of everything that happened.

0:51:18
It got pegged as Satanism as soon as the media could bite into it, essentially.

BR: So we had the church burning. I think that is the sort of, or at least to me, that’s sort of the core skeptical takeaway from the film and from the whole episode. Things that are not necessarily in any way remotely connected with Satanism is suddenly branded Satanism for the European and global community and to this day is associated with Satanism even though there’s literally no actual connection to it. So that sort of explains the skeptical angle on the church burnings and how the Satanism label ended up being attached to it for various journalistic and sensational reasons.

0:52:00
So well, so what’s the deal? So why is why was he jailed for murder? So Vickernes he murdered His is I guess you’d say Associate in the in the music scene a guy who went by Euronymous his name was I believe it was pronounced Oistin Arseth So Euronymous was talking to Vickerness about I believe putting out a record So, Euronymous was talking to Vikernes about, I believe, putting out a record. Vikernes had a band, or has a band, called Burzum, which is actually his own band, basically. He does everything in it. And they had been talking about putting out some music.

0:52:42
Now, he tells the story as if he showed up in the middle of the night to talk about the record deal, believing that Euronymous was going to try to kill him. the record deal believing that Euronymous was going to try to kill him.

BR: This assumes that when you go to someone’s house in the middle of the night, they’re waiting there with a gun to kill you, as opposed to sleeping or watching TV.

PR: Yeah, and as a matter of fact, Euronymous was in his underwear when he answered the door. So this we’re talking a guy who probably wasn’t prepared, but again, we’re just gonna tell it from Vikernes’s angle it from Vikernes’s angle here, not that I believe him, but he shows up and some kind of scuffle ensues.

0:53:21
He says that Euronymous attacks him and starts going for a knife in the kitchen. And Varg then stabs him because he knows he’s going for a knife in the kitchen. When you listen to it in the film, he’s like, I stabbed him. Okay, you know, self-defense, a poke or two might be a stab, 23 times is a very deliberate amount of stabbing.

BR: That’s some work.

PR: Yeah, that usually, you know, again, he said he had a pocket knife and maybe there’s, you know, who knows. I’ve never stabbed anyone.

0:53:55
But 23 times definitely hints at being a little more than just a self-defense attack. You know, self-defense is stab a couple times and run while the guy’s, you know, dealing with being stabbed. You know, 23 times sounds more like a very deliberate attack.

BR: And apparently there was no knife in the kitchen that he was going for anyway.

PR: Yeah, there wasn’t a knife on the scene according to the report. Vikernes was very, um, he was very quick to take responsibility for having done it. He didn’t deny it when he was accused and he didn’t, you know, but he was, he, that’s where I kind of, my, you know, very unprofessional assessment of sociopath kind of comes in because he is, he just seems to think he was totally justified in what he did or at least he’s able to convince himself in a way that when he tells the story it sounds, you know, he’s just very factual about it.

0:54:48
BR: Now what about the other eyewitness right? There’s someone else there. There may have been two other people there we don’t know.

PR: Yeah. What’s his story? So Varg and his friend I believe his name was Sonore or something to that effect S-O-N-O-R-E. They drove back to Varg’s home after the murder. Now Varg painted a picture of his accomplice as being, he defended him actually by saying that he did not want to be involved in this and he did, he ran from the scene and Varg had to chase him down and get him to drive him back and you know I’m, I again the details are not real clear on…

BR: He didn’t want to be involved in my self-defense killing.

PR: His self-defense killing where he drove four hours and you know where he drove four hours and you know it’s a very very strange case and very strange defense but but yeah so his friend went with him and his partner was put on trial with him and sentenced to eight years of being an accomplice now Vikranus was sentenced to 23 years and I believe he got out in 2009 yeah and he, and he spent a lot of time in prison and was actually allowed, well, prisons there are a little more progressive than they are here, so he was allowed to do a lot of media interviews.

0:56:12
He did the interviews for Until the Light Takes Us in jail. He was allowed to, I believe, record an album while he was in jail still.

BR: That’s pretty nice. I could bang out a few books.

PR: And well, I tend to be a little more on the liberal side when it comes to incarceration, And while I tend to be a little more on the liberal side when it comes to incarceration, and I do believe strongly in trying to rehabilitate people, the man never seemed to have… I don’t know if I need you to have remorse for something, but you need to recognize that what you did was wrong, at least. And he-

0:56:45
In his interviews, he’s a very, very shockingly cold guy when it comes to describing murder, and he just he just ate up just poked him a couple time whatever You know he almost sounds like a hitman when he talks about it.

BR: Sociopath.

PR: Yeah, and again That’s that that assessment is you know not based on my expert analysis But it sure seems to ride with that I sound that way so yeah he spent a good amount of time in prison and Cultivated his beliefs did not go back on any of that just go back on any of that, just went a little further with everything, got involved with some neo-nazi things.

0:57:20
BR: What happened to Fenris, the other guy that is in the film?

PR: So Fenris actually, you know, he’s kind of throughout the film, obviously he knows Varg, and he actually does speak favorably of him. Fenris never seems to take a seems to take a stand on these pagan ideals and things that kind of drive the whole plot. But for the most part, it seems like he was only ever kind of tangentially involved. He never was involved in the church burnings, as far as he says. And I believe him. I think by the time all that stuff was happening, his band Dark Throne was kind of the big band on the social scene there and he talked about Helvet and the other members of the group, but it seemed like he was not with them through all this. But he was a really great focal point for the story because he’s sort of the filter that the story is told through. Now the documentary from a filmmaking standpoint isn’t amazing. It definitely has some really weird…

0:58:24
BR: It’s rough around the edges and it kind of wanders.

PR: Yeah, it wanders a lot. It goes into, you know, Harmony Corrine is in it at one point for some kind of like, might be related but not really like black metal dance performance art. And it is a little weird and there’s a sort of part that just sort of revolves around Fenris and photographer’s work that he had in a gallery in Oslo that was centered around all those guys.

0:59:00
BR: Yeah. And some tangents that I would not, you know, I wouldn’t say that it’s a great documentary. As far as I know, it’s pretty much the only documentary on this topic. So, you know, give him credit for that.

PR: Yeah, so you know give him credit for that. Yeah, it’s one of the most thorough Investigations from the standpoint of the opinions of Vikernes and how things happen from his perspective However, I think the best source and this is debatable. I’m gonna disclaim this by in any metal heads listening right now there’s all kinds of there’s all kinds of controversy over who’s the the You know the expert in the black metal world, which I will never claim to be. I never was really directly involved. I’ve toured with a lot of black metal bands. I know a bunch of the guys but the book that I recommend is one called Lords of Chaos. Most metalheads know that book pretty well. It was by a guy named Michael Moynihan and a guy named Diedrich Soderlund and they did a very comprehensive investigation of the entire satanic panic in the kind of metal underground framework.

1:00:07
It covers a good portion of the book is about the Norwegian bands that were involved with the church burnings and murders and such, but there’s also a good amount of detail that comes onto the that comes in onto the American side of things and talks about the rise of death metal in Florida, satanic death metal specifically, and bands that, from my personal experience, I know a number of those bands very well, in fact, and were pretty quick to capitalize on the satanic panic, which was sort of a ironic twist. In fact, I probably would have never gotten into extreme metal had there not been a satanic panic. Not because I was rebelling against my parents at all actually,

1:00:55
they were pretty cool about stuff I was into but just society at large was so scared of satanism. I was like, so you mean I can just put an upside down cross on a shirt and people just freak out? Like that’s amazing, great! Like I love that, like I want a reaction. It doesn’t have to be a good one, you know, but but anyway, so the book covers a pretty good deal of everything from the Norwegian scene all the way down to to Florida and the US and how the satanic panic kind of Played into the the metal scene and and while I think Black metal. Well, I don’t think I mean it’s pretty well established that black metal was not involved in the satanic metal underground, It was definitely involved in the media circus that gave rise to bands that actually did capitalize on it and did decide to adopt satanic imagery and things like that.

1:01:49
BR: So let me ask you this, I mean here we are, what, 15 years out, 20 years out?

PR: Yeah, it’s been actually about 25 years.

BR: 25 years out. So what’s, if you know, can you give us some thoughts on what the fallout What’s, if you know, can you give us some thoughts on what the fallout was? I mean, obviously this made a lot of news at the time. There was the Satan aspect, there was the burnings, there was the murder, pretty much everyone in that community either knows someone who was involved in or, you know, is, I mean, so this is, it’s a small community, I would guess, up there.

1:02:23
And so my question is, you know, what was, if you know, what’s been the fallout? What influences and repercussions have we seen two decades on from that?

PR:So it’s been, there have been a number of things that have happened. I think overall just the attitudes towards the music and towards the scene were taken, you know, well beyond just not liking it and, you know, putting these groups of people into, you know, under investigation, legal investigation. I mean, in Norway, everyone that was involved with Helvet and all those, I mean, there were actually other murders that happened too.

1:03:00
I don’t want to get too much into them because they don’t have anything to do with this particular documentary or story, but, you know, there was a murder of a gay man by a guy named Bjarte Itune and there was a suicide, a very famous suicide of the lead singer of a band called Mayhem. That actually gets touched in on in the movie that the band themselves used a photograph that his roommate took of his corpse on his bed.

BR: Very graphic.

PR: Yeah, very graphic image. Well, you’re always going to have, I mean, this is what you find. In any group, you always have some people who are extreme.

1:03:38
Right? group you always have some people who are extreme. I mean whether it’s rap or heavy metal, there’s always going to be some people who are just taking it too far or sort of go off in some weird tangent. And for people who are critics of that type of music or of that genre, they latch on to that like, well see clearly, and it just gets painted with a broad brush. And that’s why I think it’s That’s why I think it’s important for journalists and the public in general to recognize the nuances and recognize you know that saying all and every and those sorts of superlatives are probably wrong.

1:04:14
So, you know, if you have issues with certain people, certain band members, certain actions, call them out on it. Instead of just sort of like throwing this big blanket statement on this group of people, that many of whom don’t deserve it, and it’s probably just wrong.

BR: And that’s another episode of Squaring the Strange. Thank you for listening and supporting us and telling your friends all about our nuggets of skeptical wisdom and insight, if indeed you find them to be.

PR: Thank you very much. And we also would like to thank Amy Freshour-Kelley, who’s our sponsor-level patron. If you’re interested in what that means, go to patreon.com forward slash squaring the strange.

1:05:18
Patreon is how we pay the bills here. It’s how we keep up our server space and all that stuff. And it does cost us a little money to keep the website running and to keep the podcast up and streaming. So any donation is much appreciated. It can be a buck or a million bucks. It’s whatever you want.

1:05:38
BR: And by the way, I should add that we do still have a few remaining gifts for our Patreon donors. If you may recall, a few episodes ago we did a two-piece series on Jamaican folklore. And I brought back some duppy repellent. And so we still have a couple to give away for our donors.

PR: Yes, and it doesn’t matter what level you pledge, it’s just first come first serve. So come on by and see what the page is about. You also get a little bit of bonus content every month. We’re going to be working on, there should be a new bonus episode out very soon, and we’ll probably be doing some interesting new stuff. We’re going to probably stream an episode, live record it, and do little videos here and there just for Patreon subscribers and you also occasionally will get early access to content and things like that so we try to make it worth your while. Again thank you everyone who has become a patron that is a huge help and we’re doing our best to just at least make it worth our while because we really love doing this but it does take a bit of time and a bit of money.

BR: So please also if you remember and you like the show, please leave us a review on iTunes Those those things do actually get read and matter.

PR: iTunes reviews our rating Affects how far up the list we are when people search for skeptical podcasts and things like that So we greatly appreciate all your reviews unless they’re they’re bad reviews You can go ahead and just leave that on our Facebook or email. Yeah Unless they’re bad reviews, you can go ahead and just leave that on our Facebook or email.

1:07:16
BR: Yeah, it’s just, yeah, even better. In fact, if you’re really upset about it, just send me an email. I’m used to the typos, all caps, I’m used to it, that’s fine. And we’ll take that as a bad review.

PR: Yes, we might even read it on air if it’s funny enough.

BR: If it’s abusive enough.

PR: Yeah, if it’s abusive enough.

BR: Speaking of abusive enough, tune in next week. Tune in next week, we’ll be discussing one of my favorite topics, which is fairy tales. It’s funny when people go to my house, I have many books, as you know, because you’ve been to my house, but I’ve had people look around and wonder if it’s a library.

1:07:55
It’s like, no, that’s my house. On one particular, actually on a couple of shelves, I have books of folklore and fairy tales. And I’ve gotten a couple of people looking like, why is that adult man reading fairy tales? Well, because fairy tales are fascinating and I love them and they’re interesting and they’re far more interesting and relevant to the real world than most people would think.

1:08:20
And next week we’ll be talking about a skeptical take a skeptical take on a famous fairy tale called the Emperor’s New Clothes.

PR:Yes, and I think we’re going to discuss some things about that story that are surprisingly not as widely known as one would think. And we’ll be kind of dissecting how skepticism comes into play with it and how even the story itself applies to the real world at times. There you go.

BR: So tune in next time and until then, stay skeptical.

PR: See ya!