Author: Luther Blisset

THE CHILDREN OF SATAN by Luther Blissett

You Must Be Certain Of The Devil

“Here’s who’s trying us!” - Piergiorgio Bonora, pointing at a crucifix, in the courtroom “Paolo Borsellino,” Tribunal of Bologna, February 13th, 1997, 9:00 am.

“Dimitri, Bonora and Luongo should pay dearly and pay for everything, pornography on the Internet, teenagers’ suicides, violent TV, the new drugs, you name it. They are being sacrificed to expiate the ’sins’ of a world which reactionaries have always described as ‘gone insane’ and ‘out of control.” Such a new kind of McCarthyism is thousands of times more sly; it strikes only isolated individuals on a prejudicial basis, it digs inside their soul as if it were Stevanin’s field.”[1] Luther Blissett, “Hunters, record-keepers and chemical gelders,” Zero in Condotta, Bologna, September 13 1996.

The whole thing starts in Bologna on January 24th, 1996, when the Carabinieri arrest Marco Dimitri (33), Piergiorgio Bonora (21) and Gennaro Luongo (28), i.e. the top leaders of the Luciferian cult of the Bambini di Satana [Children of Satan]. This action is going to snowball into a big raid against Satanists and “paedophiles.” The charge is: “abduction aimed a lechery and sexual violence.”

Dimitri & Co. have been accused by Luongo’s 16-year-old ex-girlfriend, whose real name cannot be mentioned in the media. From now on she will always be called ‘Simonetta.’ Simonetta charges Luongo and the others with having chloroformed and raped her during a black mass. In the USA, where everything becomes an acronym, they call it SRA, Satanic Ritual Abuse.

The sixteen-year-old girl, getting over embarassment and the understandable hesitations, collaborated with the magistrature and narrated having been forced to drink a deadly potion which deprived her of any defensive power[…] The inquiries by the carabinieri proved [the potion] to be a mix of water and chloroform […] She maintains to have awaken from an odd sleep and felt numbed, with her pants stained and her stockings pulled off. But in the first instance she affirms that the violence took place in the head office of the “Children of Satan,” in the second she sets it at Villa Spalleggiari [R. Canditi, “The mass is over, go to jail,” Il Resto del Carlino, January 24 1996].

Simonetta’s story is full of gaps and supported by no evidence. Actually the Carabinieri haven’t ‘proved’ anything about the alleged ‘fatal potion,’ of which there are no traces, nor have they found any pot. Despite this, and although the defendants firmly claim their innocence, so-called “public opinion” immediately considers them guilty, thanks to the most-read local newspaper, Il Resto del Carlino. This right-wing rag is nothing other than the house organ of the Carabinieri.

On the following day the defendants’ lawyers state that Simonetta was conditioned by her family, which had been opposed to her affair with Luongo. According to the lawyers, two months ago she tried to retract her testimony by telephoning the Carabinieri. She wanted to admit that she had made up her story, and ‘threatened to tell the whole truth to Il Resto del Carlino.

In the meanwhile, The Carlino starts to bombard the readers with bullshit: On Friday the 1st Canditi writes about some floppy disks which allegedly contain . . .

the names of fifty underage people: some are just twelve […] Thus, rather than satanists, they were perverts […] It is possible that many minors have also been used in the “sacrifices,” but the circumstances are still to be cleared up […] Pornographic movies with children in erotic poses, file-cards of a large number of underage neophytes. . . .

Later on, those diskettes will be shown to contain videogames to run on Amiga, therefore incompatible with Dimitri’s Mac. As regards the underage members and their ‘use’ during ’sacrifices,’ Dimitri will explain over and over again that the “sexual rituals” consisted of intercourse betweeen ‘initiates’ of legal age. The under-18-year-olds were only allowed to ‘go to the office in via Riva Reno, buy the sweatshirts and the other gadgets produced by the Bambini di Satana Ltd.’

On February the 4th, The Carlino bears the headline: ‘Among The Initiates A Well Known Paedophile.’ The reporter Nicoletta Rossi writes: ‘William Andraghetti, formerly arrested during the anti-pedophile raid, was an initiate of the cult.’ No source is cited for this ’scoop,’ which calls in question a person who was framed in 1987 and virtually lynched by a violent press campaign [3]. He’s not going to be mentioned in the press coverage of this case ever again; it’s just one of the many pieces of shit that The Carlino threw in the fan at the beginning of the inquiry.

Supplement: Letter From A “Monster”

Dear Sir Luther and Messrs. editors of Zero in condotta,

I have read with much interest the article written in your most recent issue, titled “I Carlini di Satana, or: One year of sulphur candies” [2]. I’m William Andraghetti, the paedophile, and since I have been mentioned in the article, I decided to write to you to make some things clear. First of all I would like to congratulate Mr. Luther since I seldom happen to read such an objective and well-balanced article on a topic like satanism, which causes any pressman (Canditi counted in) to turn up his nose and make an outcry. I think that nowadays the categories of people the most mistreated by the media are twofold: satanists and paedophiles.

Then if a satanist is believed to be a paedophile (as in Dimitri’s case) or, vice versa, a pedophile is thought to be a satanist (as in my case), the press orgy will be unleashed in all its virulence, muddling up reality and imagination just in order to sell and create sensationalism.

In the article by Nicoletta Rossi that appeared last February 4th (”Among the followers a notorious paedophile”) there’s nothing plausible! I have known Dimitri but was never a member of the Children of Satan, neither did I participate in their rites[…] I have known Dimitri since 1985 when, still a young man, he attended with me an esoteric centre. Later, in 1987, when I was arrested on the charge of raping minors, our paths parted.

When the penalty was over in 1993, he was to phone me, wanting to have a chat in memory of the old times; he gave me a date in his office where he was operating already as the leader of the Children of Satan. He asked me, it is true, to enter the sect but I don’t consider myself a satanist and so I refused. We met just twice more: last time I spoke to Dimitri was in July ‘94; on that occasion he communicated that he intended to start up a chat-line devoted to satanism. Last time I phoned him was in January ‘95, I left a message on his answering machine, but he didn’t call back.

When I heard about the arrest and the charges of rape of a minor, I nearly laughed since I knew very well that Dimitri is homosexual and that he didn’t give a damn about women, and even less would he have raped them. Dimitri is not the violent kind (and few people know he’s a vegetarian). Neither do I grant any trust to the story of the three-year-old child who had allegedly undergone abuses: Dimitri is not interested in children. I think that Dimitri got arrested in order to eliminate from Bologna an awkward sect of satanists which, in such a bigoted and provincial town, caused too much scandal. The only way to shut down the Children of Satan’s office was to arrest their leader[…] I always asserted in my book Journal of a Paedophile that justice will never exist for “deviants,” and my trial events proved me right: I was condemned for abuses which never took place and was forced to suffer an ignoble persecution through the media (the same persecution Dimitri is undergoing now). All this leads me to conclude that for some categories of accused — yesterday the “gang of paedophiles” and today the “gang of satanists” — there will never be true justice or any tutelage. I would say to Canditi (and his acolytes) that it’s simple to cry at monsters and rapists, and fake indignation for these events. It’s harder, instead, to look for the truth and respect people still waiting for judgment, (or to be committed for trial), and, before cursing, all of us should examine our consciences keeping in mind that before the definitive verdict the accused MUST be considered innocent […]

To Dimitri, in case he should read this letter: I make my best greetings and send the wish that his vicissitudes come to the best end, and I’m convinced that the charges brought by Lucia Musti are totally groundless. A big greeting to the editorial staff of Zero in condotta and Luther Blissett […] An ordinary different man. — W. Andraghetti, “Letter from a monster,” Zero in Condotta, Bologna, October 11th, 1996

The defendants’ lawyers start to make themselves heard. They denounce “a disparity between the prosecutor and the defense. The GIP [Judge for Preliminary Investigations] has acquired additional documents on whose grounds she has decided to not release the Children of Satan. We were not aware of those documents, thus we were not allowed to confute them.”

The lawyers appeal the GIP’s decision to continue the defendants’ detention. On Friday the 12th, the Tribunal of Re-hearings decides on their release from prison. Three days later, a headline on The Carlino blares: ‘Dimitri’s free, I’ll Kill Myself.’ The reporter Biagio Marsiglia writes that Simonetta has attempted suicide. She was about to throw herself down a bridge in Casalecchio di Reno [near Bologna] but a heroic Romanian truck-driver saved her life. Marsiglia, who waxes so lyric that he doesn’t care about the Presumption of Innocence, comments:

The sixteen year old is going to live protected from now on. Someone will be close to her, will follow her and will try to make her forget those strange rites devoted to Satan that, in a November night marked, her forever.

Some people begin to suspect the whole thing to be a scam. The investigations have been entrusted to the Vice-District Attorney Lucia Musti, a protagonist in search of the spotlights. The whole inquiry benefits by the ‘advice’ of the Gruppo di Ricerca e Informazione sulle Sette [Group for Research and Investigation on Cults]. This group claims to be non-confessional, and yet its office is in via del Monte, just inside the palazzo of the Curia [local ecclesiastic authority]. This ‘advice’ may actually include pressure from the Curia’s ultra-reactonary head, Cardinal Giacomo Biffi.

In fact, Dimitri is a scapegoat; hidden powers have been at work since last summer in order to frame him. Before long, thanks to the fervour of the GRIS and some exorcists (yes!), the Children of Satan will be overwhelmed by additional charges, including an SRA on “Federico,” a less-than-three-year-old little boy. Simonetta will keep bearing witness, adding more and more grotesque details to her incredible story. Most likely it’s the investigators themselves and The Carlino visionary hacks who inspire her accounts.

Back to the attempted suicide: one year later (February 12th, 1997), during an interview on La Repubblica, Musti herself will admit that it was “a bluff […] due to Simonetta’s usual urge to show off […] It is her way of looking for affection and attention.”

The story about “Federico” emerges on February 22th, 1996. On the pages of The Carlino, Canditi mentions:

A three-year-old child […] dragged into a black mass, during which he’s supposed to have been made to lie down in a tiny coffin or a tomb, wherein a skull was. Reality or imagination? The story assumed worrying outlines because the person in whose custody the minor was gravitates around the Children of Satan.

A few days later people will learn that the child’s parents (’particularly careful persons who always select the TV programs he can see’) have taken him to a priest who, according to Canditi…is said to have given the child a strong blessing in an attempt to “armour” that young soul against the Evil one’s attacks.

Who Traumatizes Who?

Exactly one year later, during the trial, we’ll find out that this priest, one Father Clemente, was the first to tell stories of SRAs to Federico’s mother, and to link the child’s problem to Simonetta’s vicissitudes, which he himself and the GRIS have been handling for months. Moreover, Simonetta was exorcized as well, and more than once, by Fathers Clemente and Francois Dermine (a Canadian priest at Diocese of Ancona). Simonetta’s parents asked help to the GRIS, which introduced the girl to a psychologist.

Federico’s parents start to bear down on the child, showing him the photographs of Dimitri and Bonora published on The Carlino, asking him if those men are the “bad ones” he talks about. Moreover, they make him re-construct the alleged ritual abuse by using Lego toy soldiers, an erroneous procedure. It is possible that the mother, a psychologist herself, is aware of the American literature on ritual abuse ’survivors.’ Certainly she ignores the fact that, after the disintegration of the McMartin trial and the acquittal of all the defendants, the validity of that literature and the testimonies on which it was based has been questioned, deconstructed and exposed (see D. Nathan & M. Snedeker, Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt, Basic Books, New York 1995).

On February 25th Canditi informs his readers that . . .

The inquiries made by the carabinieri of Medicina […] proved that the three-year-old child is telling the truth when he says he had been slipped into a coffin or a tomb.

According to Canditi, the same Carabinieri who found chloroform in a non-existent pot (which reminds us of the Mad Hatter’s non-birthday party) have replaced judges and experts, and have ‘proved’ the truth of an ‘account’ that will never be precisely ascribed to anybody, not even during the trial! During the early sessions of the trial, we’ll find out that these Carabinieri of Medicina, whom Canditi praises so much, turned out to be quite bizarre “consultants,” i.e. exorcists and demonologists belonging or at least linked to the GRIS: one Father Francesco above all, an alleged ‘expert of black masses’ of the parish of S. Lucia, Florence (from the testimony of Marshal Cabras, February 19th, 20th and 21st, 1997). Thus Canditi’s sentence should be rewritten as: “the Carabinieri have verified that the words put into the child’s mouth match the paranoid fantasies of a clique of new Inquisitors.”

Anyway, the case of Federico is not yet considered the “second segment” of the inquiry into the Children of Satan. Canditi himself, in the above-quoted article, writes:

This step of the inquiry about black masses does not involve Marco Dimitri […] He has nothing to do with this dirty trick.

Little by little, we find out that “the person to whom the child was entrusted” was his baby sitter, who is also his 14-year-old female cousin. On March 1st, Candite writes:

According to the carabinieri and the psychologist [the rite] is not a fruit of fantasy. The reason: a child of that age is not capable of inventing detailed settings, recognizing people at first sight and accurately describing occult rites, unless he’d taken part in them.

If one thinks of what happened in the US, this is a foolish assertion.

From bad to worse: in the following days, The Carlino keeps behaving like that, first using the term ‘analysis’ inopportunely (actually Federico has never been properly analysed), then insisting on the fact that ‘the little boy describes […] scenes that he couldn’t have dreamed nor made up, because such scenes perfectly match the reality of facts.’ Of course Canditi cannot know this, unless he attended the alleged ritual himself! In the meanwhile, Simonetta repeatedly changes the date of the alleged rape. On March 4th Canditi lavishes some precious bits of objective journalism on his readers:

Dimitri looks like Calimero [4], so puny and so black. He cuts his wrists in jail and swallows bottles of tranquillizer to draw attention upon himself. The only thing he doesn’t do (at least it isn’t reported) is appeal to his Satan for protection from “persecuting” magistrates and cynical and heartless pressmen[…] A demoniac world made of dirty pigs rather than of Darkness worshippers.

Three months later, the net is tightened. On June 9th, Dimitri, Bonora and Luongo are arrested for the second time. The charges: ‘participation in the havoc of a corpse,’ ‘abduction of an underage person aimed at rape’ and ‘profanation of graves.’ Federico, writes The Carlino, it is alleged, is not the only child “sacrificed”on the altar of the Children of Satan. [The rite is reported to have taken place] in the presence of some twenty or thirty people […] Once inside one wing of Villa Ghigi… and in a wrecked weapon factory in Budrio [the children used] the skeleton of a woman that, during the black mass, was given the name of “Margerita.” [At the time of the arrest] Bonora was close to an iguana that in the satanists’ hearts took the place of the tarantula confiscated last January, piercing his skin to put another ring on.

This time the detention of the three defendants will prove endless and exhausting.

June 10th, The Carlino, under the headline ‘My Battle Against Satan,’ Biagio Marsiglia interviews Lucia Musti. Check this out:

The devil’s eyes. She goes to sleep chasing them away, she awakes defying them. She can feel them on her the whole day, but doesn’t fear them. Because she fights them […] She opposes to the devil’s eyes her eyes, those of a woman who wears the robe […] Today she’ll go in jail along with the investigating magistrate, Grazia Nart, for the ritual interrogation. Two women against the devil’s eyes.

No need of a comment. In the interview, Musti compares her inquiry to that of the White Uno [2]:

This inquiry is in some ways more difficult than that on the Savi brothers, more delicate of that against the “Fifth Mafia.”[5] There there were delinquents, assassins…but here we are discovering things much more horrible.[…] The satanists’ criminality isn’t that much different from that of the mafia.

Once he’s finished with the interview, Marsiglia drops a bomb with a certain understatement:

Testifying against Dimitri will also be the sixteen-year-old girl who in last January caused the inquiry to start. She’s the one […] being under the effect of alcohol and drugs, who allegedly held the feet of the child brought by the little baby-sitter cousin to the rendez-vous with the Evil One.

The ‘poor victim,’ the chloroformed girl, has changed her status and position. Now she’s a ‘repentant.’[6] On the following day, Nicoletta Rossi provides further details: Simonetta was not ’simply a curious outsider and the victim of a group rape’; she ‘wanted to become a priestess of Satan and was training for that.’ Rossi also confirms that Federico’s parents have taken their son to an exorcist two times, ‘even before any link to the Dimitri case,’ because ‘he looked possessed’[!]

The Harder They Come

Luther Blissett doesn’t begin to get interested in these events ’till July 1996. I think I must explain the reasons for this slowness of reflexes. In Bologna the trans-national collective pseudonym “Luther Blissett” is adopted by a large number of people coming from the “underground” “counterculture” and/or the “ultra-left” scene (squats, community radios etc.). Il Resto del Carlino has often been the target of LB’s actions; these were media pranks that would expose the reporters’ racism, sexism and professional misery. We would use the competing newspapers in order to claim authorship of such hoaxes.

Despite the attention we usually pay to the local news, when Dimitri was framed we underestimated the importance of the scam: we considered Dimitri nothing more than a charlatanish headbanger. An acquaintance of ours, who’s also friends with Piergiorgio Bonora, exhorts us to take care of the case. We start to gather information, and realize this thing is much bigger than we expected.

Dimitri founded the Children of Satan Corporation Ltd. because he hoped he would make some money out of gadgets, T-shirts and ‘esoteric advices.’ He became a victim of his own promotional activities (being hosted on tv talk-shows, posing before the press during black masses etc.) when he bumped into a clerical pressure group looking for a folk devil to lynch. Besides this, Dimitri and Bonora have the double misfortune of being a gay couple (which is a further reason for the obstinacy of their foes) but not a politically correct one (which means that most homosexual groups don’t want to handle the case). As to Gennaro Luongo, ill luck had it that his young lover was a neuropathic ice-cream vendor who falsely claimed to be eighteen; Simonetta’s mother did all she could in order to sabotage their relationship, until Luongo got tired and broke away. Simonetta’s vengeance came in the form of the chloroform-and-rape story.

Just as in Salem, Massechusetts, the witch hunt originated in the rancour of an Abigal who’d been seduced and abandoned. That rancour was readily channeled by a clique of priests, hacks and careerist magistrates. This was extremely easy given the climate of panic and suspicions that existed as a result of the arrest of Marc Dutroux, the “monster of Marcinelle.”

Later on, the psychological malaise of a little kid was misunderstood by his parents, staunch Catholics who first went to Father Clemente, then directly to the GRIS office. The case was immediately mislinked to Simonetta’s testimony. We’ll find out that she heard about Federico from the mouths of Prosecutor Musti and the investigating authorities. First she said she didn’t know anything, then, converted by a light from heaven on her way to Salem, she confessed her participation in the alleged sexual ceremony. In the following months, she will vomit forth a running stream of incredible details, including the ritual assassination of an African immigrant and a Roma (”gypsy”) child. It goes without saying that the inquisitors will never find a single corpse. Moreover, Simonetta will involve people at random, e.g. the mother of Federico’s baby-sitter/cousin (all charges being dropped at the Preliminary Hearing, October 28th) and, later on, Marquis Ippolito Bevilacqua Ariosti:

I’m Ippolito Bevilacqua Ariosti. I’m fifty; I work in farming and estate trading. I’m a practicing Catholic. A girl whom I have never known accuses me of having raped minors, pushed drugs and taken part in satanic rituals with one Marco Dimitri, whom I only saw on tv […] The girl also says that we made human sacrifices, stabbing 21 times a non-European in the basement of my country residence, Palazzo de’ Rossi. I came to know this the other day, reading Il Resto del Carlino, which cites me as indicted for homicide . It is not true […] When I read that I’m suspected on the basis of those ignoble statements, I was astonished… I think I have the right to have the press inform without slandering my name, and to have the justices investigate, verifying the facts and not allowing absurd calumnies. [P.Cascella, “The Marquis’s rage: ‘I’m not a satanist,’” La Repubblica, Bologna, January 24th, 1997.]

We decide to take the field. How? Luther Blissett doubts that traditional “counter-information” (based upon the ascertainment of “the Truth”) is very effective. On the reverse, s/he wants to push things to their limit till the usual interpretations of facts are overturned and disintegrated. It is necessary to venture into the inner depths of the system of simulation, to overload and divert paranoias, to make their game (”disinformation”) more paradoxical, to pass on to the media bounty killers the most incorrect information (i.e. accounts of absurd conspiracies, unbearably ambiguous evidence etc.). Make the Absolute Weapon out of the system’s inner logic, media homeopathy: we will outlive the intoxication (moral panic) by increasing the dose of venom (conspiracy psychosis). This can immunize us and allow us to expose the absurdity of their stunts.

Besides passing in review all the articles published in the local press since the arrest and publishing the results, we plan an “old-fashioned” campaign of solidarity and a series of long-term and short-term hoaxes, both on the local and national levels. Through an informal survey, we get to know that in Viterbo (Latium) some multi-use name bearers have had more or less the same idea, although their local context and their reasons were different. Since February 1996, Blissett’s been cheating the local press (especially the Corriere di Viterbo) by spreading foolish rumors and fake news about black masses and similar things. S/he’s even invented a sort of anti-Satanist underground group called Committee for the Safeguard of Morality, CoSaMo, in the name of which s/he’s started to tip off the papers about the Evil One and his presence in the Etruscan countryside. No hack ever checks the facts, and such distorted information regularly ends up on the frontpages. It is the prelude to a maxi-prank that will have repercussions all over the country and will be sensationally revealed by LB one year later (see Appendix 2). We join the Viterbese brothers and sisters, and begin our homeopathic cure.

We happen to write for Zero in Condotta [ZIC], a fortnightly journal edited by Valerio Monteventi, who is a city hall counselor (he ran as an independent candidate supported by the Refounded Communist Party), as well as a former 1977-style ultra-leftist (and an ex-con), a former Green Party member, and an old-time enemy of law-and-order justice. Therefore, it’s from the pages of ZIC that we announce our first action:

I found by chance a human skull and some bones (very old stuff, which came from some college laboratory or avant-garde theatre). I put them in an old rucksack that I later deposited in the left-behind luggage office at the Bologna train station, enclosing this message:

Left luggage office. Item: human skull and bones stolen from the famous rite before their arrival. It was intended for the child. More things between the Appennin and the low Padany than your chronicles can contain. There’s also a Viterbo trail. By this message we also warn the public about our presence in town. ‘And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulphur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown: they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever’ (Revelation 20, 10). Signed: Cosamo.

We also enclosed in the rucksack an article from the Corriere di Viterbo of May 14th, 1996, of which I report the headline and subtitles:

‘HUNTERS OF “SATANISTS”

After the retrieval of a “spell of death” in the pinewood of Valle Spina, there comes an alleged Committee for the Safeguard of Morality.

“We almost captured a group of worshippers of the occult who were practising the rite of evil death.” In the city centre reappeared the number 666, indicating the “Beast of Apocalypse,” and swastikas.

(Several months later, Luther Blissett tips off the Viterbo press about a completely fictional satanic revival, spreads around remnants of weird ceremonies, invents opinion movements, and the papers publish all this WITHOUT ANY VERIFICATION!). Then I posted the ticket to the Carlino, to the kind attention of the worst hack, along with kind of a kidnappers’ message made out of paper headlines: “Collect the bag at the station. It’s about the Children of Satan. Important.” While I write I still don’t know if the reporter has picked up the parcel and if the swindle has reached its peak (the so-called punch-line). It’s not so important anyway. But if everybody decided to bust the bounty killers’ balls, if the press were contacted by an army of resolute mythomaniacs, all the speculation about “satanism” would be exposed as a joke, everything would lose credibility, and the pushers of indignation would be ridiculed once and for all. Come on, hurry up: all this silence can’t go on! [L. Blissett, “A skull for the Carlino,” Zero in Condotta, no.19, Bologna, July 12th, 1996, p.23.]

Enter the Hunters of Satan

Some are surprised. They ask: “Why the hell did you announce the prank before pulling it? Now the Carlino hacks will know and won’t be cheated!” You sure? The following piece appeared on the Carlino frontpage on Saturday, August 3rd 1996:

Enter the “Hunters of Satan”

A mysterious committee let the Carlino find a skull, bones and letters. The gloomy bundle was arranged in a rucksack. Are we dealing with the remnants stolen from Marco Dimitri’s sect?

Report by Biagio Marsiglia

A mysterious group, sworn enemy of the Evil One’s acolytes, kind of a team of “Satan Hunters”: their cry of battle is a quote from the book of Revelation, a promise of total war against the likes of Marco Dimitri, Piergiorgio Bonora e Gennaro Luongo, the Bolognese satanists ended in cuffs with the charge of rape of minor […] Now it will be the magistrature, and particularly the investigating magistrate Lucia Musti, who will handle the “hunters of Satan,” be they real or fake. The same magistrate who demanded the arrest of the three young members of the “Children of Satan,” who, according to a first reconstruction of the facts, are alleged to have organized and held a satanic rite involving a child only two-and-a-half years old. They slipped him into a coffin, close to a corpse, and finally raped him with a pencil. It is the same rite referred to by the authors of the anonymous letter that put the Carlino on the trail of the gloomy bundle. The missive, with the address printed by computer, was posted in Bologna on the 3rd of July, just after someone had taken the trouble of going to the station’s left luggage office, leaving the rucksack in custody. A simple action. It’s sufficient to pay five thousand lire; they give you a coupon and you go away. Sometimes the personnel of the big halls where the luggage and parcels are bundled open them and check the contents, sometimes they don’t. It’s evident that the rucksack (which was seized yesterday by the Attorney) had not been opened. It remained there for a month, until, for some reason, the envelope got to its destination (the crime news reporter) and was picked up. Cost of the operation was 295 thousand lire [approximately $160], because, after the 2nd day of deposit, the fee passes from five to ten thousand lire. This mysterious “Committee for the Protection of Morals,” staging its first coup in Emilia-Romagna, left traces in Viterbo.

The article is illustrated by two colour photographs of the skull and the rucksack.

We claim to be the authors of the prank by a press release that ends with this sentence: ‘I have made up these news - how many were made up by the Carlino? A journalist calls from La Repubblica; she says she’d like to write a piece but her editor disagrees. The whole story is too scabrous and the game of the battle of newspapers is not worth the black candle. The only newspaper to cover the hoax is a non-Bolognese one, Il Giorno. On August 10th, Diego Gabutti writes:

A wonderful story, one of those at the borders of reality, strong and massive, likely to give theological shivers: a cemetery in the moonlight, the devil’s worshippers are going to sacrifice their usual human victim. Bright white bones, a skull grinning and shattering its jaws, then the anti-satanist hunters attack. A great pity it isn’t true. It deserved to be, but no way: the story is tall and the Carlino swallowed it. The clandestine exorcists, alas, don’t exist. The whole business is a trick by Luther Blissett, the media guerrilla who for years has been pulling pranks on newspapers and publishing houses inventing news, stunning the media, countering the meaningless of the chronicle by even worse nonsense, blow to blow […] Were they only jokes, we would laugh and say amen. But there’s something disturbing in the mirages focused by Luther Blissett. Each successful prank of the mass media guerrilla hints at a radical doubt about the nature of information and reality. Might they be jokes, voluntary or involuntary it matters little, this news flowing before our eyes, including the one that this time inspired the guilty, pleading and recidivous [Blissett]? The “Satan Hunters” don’t exist. Why should the “Children of Satan” themselves exist?

On the same day, some friends of Gennaro Luongo’s write to the newspapers demanding that his detention be turned into “domiciliary arrest.”[6] They want the situation to be sorted out “clearly and quickly.” Dimitri, Bonora and Luongo are seriously weary, owing to their detention. The circumstances are so hard that we’re glad to see the adjective ‘alleged’ preceding ’sexual violence’ on La Repubblica.

We plan an autumn campaign, contact the novelists Enrico Brizzi and Stefano Benni, talk with Monteventi. In September, we announce a petition and a series of articles in Zero in Condotta. Here’s the headlines of L’Unita and La Repubblica of September 24th, 1997:

Children of Satan: “Here’s the counter-inquiry.”

Luther Blissett defies the Attorney and the press.

In the next issue of Zero in Condotta a special feature against the tendency to create monsters

A call concerning Dimitri: “Release him”

The front against the inquiry is born

We start to reconstruct the case in Zero in Condotta, study the casuistry of SRAs, order American books, search the Internet. Eventually, our focus shifts from the particular to the general, i.e. to the connections between the long wave of moral panic that comes from the US and the mass hysteria which is storming Europe. I decide to write a book. Zero in Condotta also publishes the text of our appeal.

Since the 6th of June, Marco Dimitri, Piergiorgio Bonora and Gennaro Luongo (also known as the “Children of Satan”) have been imprisoned in the Dozza jail on the most serious charges: moral subjugation and sexual abuse of minors. Such prolonged “provisional arrest” has prostrated them physically and psychologically. On August 9th, the lawyers of Luongo and Bonora demanded house arrest be granted to their clients, but to the Attorney they are “socially dangerous,” and as such not to be released.

A few months ago, in Bologna, house arrest was been granted to some Nazis responsible for a revolting “immigrant bashing” session in the center of the town. Does the court for re-examination consider the “Children of Satan” more dangerous than the fascists?

Despite the “presumption of innocence” and, although in the course of the inquiry doubts have arisen and keep on arising about the reliability of the testimonies, the accused seem to been found guilty already. A denigrating press campaign has upset the town since before the very arrest, preparing the field for whatever repressive choice is made; after the arrest, the tone became still more hysterical, and sensational disinformation surmounted the danger level. Very little room was allowed to the defending counsel, while the public prosecutor Lucia Musti could use all the information organs as platforms to display her theory (of a national “network” of pedophile satanists having Bologna as its centre) and to announce the opening of new “trails”: the “Campany trail,” the “Ligurian trail” and so on. Many of the articles published about the case were sheer fiction.

Now the methodical demonization (never was a term more appropriate) continues on a national scale, involving “death metal” music, “role plays,” and so forth. Censorship is demanded at the top of people’s voices. In the market of feelings, “indignation” seems to be the most demanded goods, but, as Nietzsche would say, “nobody is more false than an indignant man.”

All this in the guilty silence of the “warranter” opinion leaders, of the organizations for human and civil rights, of the homosexual organizations (Dimitri and Bonora are gay, and it isn’t hard to see enforced in this inquiry the equation gay=child rapist). These defendants are not “politically correct,” they are “ugly, dirty and wicked,” and almost nobody wanted to soil their hands with them.

We oppose such a climate of witch-hunting, and demand: 1) the release of Dimitri, Bonora and Luongo; and 2) a global reconsideration of the case in the local and national media: equal opportunities for accusers and defendants, hospitality for critical voices (which we hope will be more and more so). Luther Blissett Project - Enrico Brizzi (writer) - Valerio Monteventi (city hall counselor for the PRC) - Grafton 9 Bookshop

During the following weeks, we start to register reactions by the groups and individuals we have mentioned. On the 3rd of October, L’Espresso publishes a pseudo-investigation by one Enrico Arosio about an alleged “Satanic revival” in Italy. Arosio interviews Father Giuseppe Ferrari, spokesman for the GRIS, who says: ‘We have registered connections between Satanists and groups of autonomists and anarchists.’ Although Luther Blissett doesn’t have anything to do with the spectacles staged by nihilists and politicos, it isn’t difficult to decode the allusion to the Luther Blisset Project. Anyway, Cardinal Biffi’s talebans can’t hang us in the street . . . yet. An interesting detail: according to Arosio himself, the GRIS ‘works on behalf of the bishops, waving the flag of social panic.’

Likewise, three days later, Canditi points out that the Dimitri affair is causing more nervousness than the kidnapping of Aldo Moro.[8] It is a tongue-in-cheek reference that only a few people can understand: the comparison with the endless series of Moro trials would sound bizarre hadn’t Luther Blissett made clear the “political” weight of the events. It seems that both the GRIS and Canditi are warning - by coded references to terrorism and ultra-left subversion - anyone who dares criticise the new Inquisition. However, Canditi should know better: the vanguard of hate-spreaders is entirely composed by his colleagues, not to mention Lucia Musti herself, who ’s being interviewed every day.

July 1997: The Dimitri Case Is Over

It’s getting better, man! Fully acquitted. It was all false, there was no sexual violence, no child abuse, no ritual abuse, no human sacrifice, nothing at all whatsoever. The Children of Satan are innocent. One year of detention. Their reputation slandered in the media. Compared to Dutroux. Allegedly linked to a worldwide network of mad child rapists. At last acquitted.

Let’s take a look at the cast one more time: Simonetta a.k.a. Elisabetta Dozza (she’s eighteen, she’s not unnameable anymore) was a liar. Piss off, into the trashcan of history!

Musti, hideous and croaking deputy district attorney, presented the worldwith one of the most serious cases of cultural and judiciary persecution in the history of youth subcultures. She wanted to become the Di Pietro of religious intolerance, but didn’t realize that crowds applauding at careerist magistrates belong to the past. She too is going to end up in the aforementioned trashcan.

And what about the Carlino hacks and their shameful hate campaign made of absurd lies, crooked syllogisms, intentional misunderstandings, and cliches machine-gunned a la Joseph Goebbels? Shall those contemptible actions stay unpunished?

‘”How can you shoot the Devil? What if you fail?” is Verbal Kint’s rhetorical question in The Usual Suspects. Inquisitors and hacks should think it over. Don’t doubt my word: when your theory collapses, I’ll make your mistakes lie heavy on you, and by any means necessary.’ Luther Blissett, ‘Never Bet the Devil Your Head,’ Zero in Condotta, November 8th, 1997.

Footnotes

1. Stevanin’s field. Stevanin is a Venetian farmer who used to strangle prostitutes and bury them in his courtyard. After his arrest, the police dug holes all around his house, and, over the course of several days, several corpses were found. That was in 1994-5.

2. Sulphur candies. The surname of the most contemptible Carlino journalist is Canditi (”candies” in Italian).

3. Calimero. A small black chicken in a 1960’s Italian cartoon.

4. White Uno. The Savi brothers were a trio of Bologna policemen with a secret hobby: right-wing terrorism. In the early Nineties, they spread terror in Emilia-Romagna by robbing banks, killing passers-by at random, assaulting gypsy camps with machine guns and massacring African immigrants. They used to drive a white Fiat Uno; they were therefore called ‘the gang of the White Uno.’ They were arrested in 1994.

5. Quinta Mafia [fifth mob] In Bologna, before the arrest of the Savi brothers, a careerist prosecuting magistrate called Spinosa started following an alleged ‘mafia trail’ and charged three people, the Santagata brothers, with being the ones responsible for the White Uno crimes. They were suspected of belonging to an alleged ‘fifth mob’ [the four mobs are: the Mafia (Sicily), the Camorra (Naples), the ‘Ndrangheta (Calabria) and the United Sacred Crown (Puglia)]. The Santagatas suffered a long detention before being released and replaced by the Savis. Guess who was Spinosa’s right arm during the inquiry? Her first name is Lucia.

6. Repentant. A former criminal or terrorist who decides to collaborate with the police.

7. Domiciliary arrests. When a person is provisionally detained in his/her own house.

8. Aldo Moro. The president of the Christian Democrat party, supposedly abducted and killed by the Red Brigades in 1978.

9. Maurizio Costanzo Show. The most popular TV chat show on Italian television.

10. Francesca Mambro. A famous prisoner. Former member of the Armed Revolutionary Nuclei, a 1970’s fascist terrorist group. She was sentenced for having bombed the Bologna train station in 1980 (83 victims), but she’s always claimed to be innocent. As a matter of fact, there’s no evidence. Even many leftists think she’s got nothing to do with the massacre.

Legal Appendix

Taken from the February 19, 1997 issue of L’Osservatore Romano [The Roman Observer, the official Vatican newspaper].

LEGAL AND JURIDICAL ASPECTS OF SATANISM

by Lucia Musti

Deputy District Attorney, Tribunal of Bologna, Italy

Even a minimal legal analysis of the phenomenon of sects relative to Italy requires reflection on a few principles established by the Constitution of the Italian Republic, the so-called Fundamental Charter, and found in articles 17, 18 and 19.

Basically, under Italian law citizens have a right to assemble “peacefully and without arms,” they have the right to associate freely, without authorization, for purposes that are not forbidden to individuals by Italian law. They have a right to profess their own religion, in any form, alone or with others; to publicize it and to worship in private or in public, as long as these rites are not immoral.

With this premise, it follows that sects as such do not concern the Court system; a contrariis, the intervention of the Court is necessary when a sect, whether satanic or not, commits, through its founders, priests or adherents, acts that are punishable by law, i.e., crimes. When such a situation occurs, the investigative and repressive machinery of the State is inevitably set in motion, through the combined action of the Criminal Investigation Department (Polizia Giudiziaria) and the Court. This intervention is justified by a basic principle of our code, meant to guarantee the right of equality among all citizens, according to which the public prosecutor is obliged to take penal action, obviously, if it appears that a crime has possibly been committed.

The illegal aspect of sects includes, for the most part, several types of crime that, by summa divisio, we can divide into patrimonial crimes, sexual crimes and, more generally, crimes pertaining to the sphere of personal liberty, and crimes against respect for the dead.

Sects Enrage in Fraud and Subterfuge

The least-common-denominator in the above-mentioned categories is the correspondence between the actual behaviour that occurs and the normative provision or legislative paradigm envisaged by our system of fundamental penal law. The positive assessment by the public prosecutor that this correspondence exists, requires that the investigative and repressive procedures referred to above be initiated.

Satanic sects carry out their illegal activity of a so-called economic nature by the perpetration of fraud, that is, by actions consisting of deceit and/or subterfuge on the part of an agent who leads the offended person into error, inducing him [sic] to dispose of his estate in a way that brings unjust profit to the swindler.

The crime of fraud is a psychological consequence of the offer, made by the sect, of magical practices for achieving a great variety of objectives in the areas of love, the family, work, etc.

Very frequently the fraud is followed by more serious crimes, such as extortion accompanied by violence and threats, forcing the victim to do or obtain something that realizes an unjust profit for the agent, with corresponding damage to the offended person.

This type of crime occurs whenever the victim, upon discovering that he has been tricked, refuses to pay the agreed sum for the magic promised but not received. In these circumstances, the dangerous nature of the sect is revealed by the violent demand for a sum of money, causing in the subject a true and proper situation of metus towards the Satanists.

In this regard, it must be emphasized that those who belong to a satanic sect are people of great weakness. Often the subjects are young in age, including minors, who are still maturing and, for the most part, are “orphans with a family,” that is, lacking adequate family support. Even when they are of age, their personalities are underdeveloped and above all, they lack even a minimum of appropriate values.

Fear of Sects Hinders Criminal Investigations

This intrinsic, overall weakness of those who come into contact with a sect implies, as the other side of the coin, greater criminal potential for the sect itself, which, as a consequence, has the advantage in carrying out its dangerous illegal activity.

The weaknesses of its members, which, as noted above, makes them easy prey to Satanists, has an important negative consequence for further investigation. Since we are dealing with persons tied to a sect by a very strong bond (at times even an oath of blood), co-operation with the Court, and, in general, with investigative bodies is reduced to a minimum, which impedes the course of the investigation and the collecting of evidence to be used against Satanists. To have been the victim of a crime, obviously, is not enough to persuade such weak individuals to file the necessary complaints with the investigative authorities. Thus, with regard to the investigation of Satanism, we face a true and proper omerta (silence), similar to what is found in Mafia-related crimes, with absolutely negative consequences for the authorities conducting the investigation.

Regarding the intimidating power of the membership bond, and of the condition of subjection and its resulting silence, a phrase taken from Art. 416 of the Penal Code (Mafia-related association), also seems to apply to Satanism, when one considers the particular condition of the members, who are tools in the hands of the Satanists, as mentioned above.

Other types of crime traceable to a sect have to do with personal sexual freedom, in the sense that during the rite it is necessary to perform certain sexual acts with consequent ejaculation [sic] in order to establish a relationship with Satan. The victims of such actions are usually women, very often made incapable of understanding and are willing by virtue of having taken adulterated drinks or stupefacients, or they are minors, even of a tender age. These latter have a particular significance in satanic rituals, in that the painful mistreatment of a child, who by definition is pure and close to God, means causing suffering to God himself and, thus, giving pleasure to Satan.

Obviously in these cases, whenever or not there are sufficient grounds for proceeding, the intervention of the Criminal Investigation Department and the Court begins immediately, since we are dealing here with serious felonies [!!!]

Another type of crime that can be committed by Satanists is included in Book II of the Italian Penal Code as “crime against respect for the dead” (delitto contro la pieta dei Defunti). In particular, we refer to Articles 407 (desecration of a grave); 408 (disrespect for graves); 409 (disrespect for a corpse); and 411 (destruction, elimination or removal of a corpse). The use of corpses is essential to satanic ritual. Therefore, these cases also involve the repressive and punitive intervention of the Court.

Although in Italy no alarming manifestations have occurred, such as the mass suicide of members, nevertheless the phenomenon of sects involves a serious danger because of the deleterious effects they cause to their adherents and because of the crimes that naturally result from the activities of the sects themselves.

In view of this situation, the author thinks that the weightiest task is not that of the Court and the Criminal Investigation Department, whose role is limited to investigation and repression, but is rather that of the family and of society, which must in some way provide support for young people and, in general, for those in difficulty, in order to avoid the useless and damaging recourse to satanic sects.

Letter of Support

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

The Hypermedia Research Centre of the University of Westminster (London, England) wishes to express its support for the defendants in the ‘Lasciate che i bimbi’ trial. We particularly would like to protest against the attempt to censor Internet Service Providers for distributing this text. It is not only technically impossible to stop the publication of ‘Lasciate che i bimbi’ in a global system such as the Net. More importantly, this case is an attack against the founding principles of republican democracy.

Since the 1789 French revolution, all democratic constitutions and declarations of rights have promised the formal right of media freedom to all citizens. Yet, they are never been able to exercise this right in practice. Instead, only those with large amounts of money and/or licences from government agencies have been allowed to communicate their ideas to the general public. However, at the end of the millenium, the Net now offers the opportunity to turn the formal promises in our constitutions and declarations of rights into reality for the first time. No longer will unpopular and heterodox opinions only be available through fanzines and other limited forms of publication. As access to this new communications system spreads, everyone will be able to publish and receive information on a global level.

Much of what will be disseminated will be frivolous, rude, childish and in bad taste. Some of it will mock institutions and ideas which most members of society believe in. However, political and legal authorities need to resist the temptation to censor such activities because important personalities are abused and ridiculed. Neither public or civil laws should be used to prevent the expression of political opinions except in the most exceptional circumstances. In a democracy, citizens can only hold the rich and powerful to account if they can publish their own opinions and receive information from others. It appears that the prosecutors in the ‘Lasciate che i bimbi’ case are opposed to this basic principle of media freedom - and hence to republican democracy as well.

What makes this case particularly absurd to people outside Italy is the attempt to prevent the dissemination of the text across the Net. Far from restricting access to ‘Lasciate che i bimbi’, the court action is encouraging people across the world to put copies of the original Italian version and translations into various languages on their sites. In defence of our right of media freedom, Net users will aid those in other countries whose democratic rights are threatened. The HRC has published ‘Lasciate che i bimbi’ on its site - although the text has been mirrored so many times as to make such a gesture redundant. Whatever the outcome of the case, the Italian courts cannot prevent people in Italy or elsewhere in getting hold of the article from the Net. More importantly, they should not do so.

We send our best wishes to the ‘Lasciate che i bimbi’ defendants. Ironically, despite their self-proclaimed anti-statism, these people are defending the democratic republican right of media freedom for people in Italy, in the other countries of the European Union and across cyberspace.

Yours in solidarity,

Dr. Richard Barbrook, Hypermedia Research Centre

Satan & the Paedophiles Rave on the Net

1. Dialectics of Unconstitutionality

The title of this piece is also that of the conference that will take place in Bologna on May 31st, 1998, co-organized by the Luther Blissett Project (North-Etruscan Unitary Command) and the Link Project center. Several semiologists, Internet activists, cultural workers and victims of religious persecution will meet up and talk about the new cultural “emergencies”. Since the Seventies, in the Italian political discourse “emergenza” means a re-definition and re-description of the “public enemy”, by which the suspension of rights formally warranted by the 1948 Constitution is made not only acceptable to the “public opinion”, but even necessary and desirable in order to ‘defend democracy’.

In 1975, some ultra-restrictive bills on public order, detention and imprisonment were passed under the name Legge Reale. Since then Italians have been living under the so-called ‘emergency legislation’, which was never abrogated. The emergency legislation was palmed off on the “public opinion” as indispensable in order to fight “terrorism”. Actually the Legge Reale allowed the police to shoot and kill with impunity strikers, demonstrators and passers-by, which happened several times since then. In some way, the emergency legislation established a judicial language which echoed that of the Holy Inquisition, e.g. the “terrorists” who surrendered were called ‘pentiti’ [repentants]. The main consequence was the so-called ‘cultura del sospetto’ [culture of suspicion]: the word of a “repentant” was (and still is) enough to keep people in jail for years without a trial, despite the ‘presumption of innocence’ warranted by article 25 of the Constitution. You don’t need to be an ultra-leftist affected by an ‘infantile disorder’ to realize that ‘formal constitutions’ are no effective obstacle to the unfolding of ‘material constitutions’ towards a society of global control and moral panic. There’s always a big emergency to justify unconstitutionality. “Democracy” as the rule is little more than a hoax, emergencies as exceptions are the real thing. The only reason why this cannot be called pessimism is that we’ll never accept things as they are. Luther Blissett has thrown herself heart and soul into counter-investigation and the exposure of emergencies. The Legge Reale set the precedent and provided the blueprint for any subsequent emergency law. An emergency bill is overtly unconstitutional and written in a hurry, under the pressure of media sensationalism. The parliament - no matter its composition - always passes the bill in one sitting and almost no amendments. Sometimes the bill is not even discussed in the parliament: the government - no matter its political stance - simply proclaims a decree (e.g. the infamous, shamelessly unconstitutional Decreto Maroni against soccer hooliganism, 1994).

2. The Rhetoric Of Emergencies

In the mid-eighties, “terrorism” was gradually replaced by a more manifold emergency: organized crime, drugs and political corruption (bribery). In the early nineties magistrates became popular heroes owing to the ‘Clean Hands’ inquiry on corrupted politicians. The more magistrates fostered the culture of suspicion, the more the “public opinion” would love them. In 1996 started the euro-emergency of “paedophilia” and child porn. The culture of suspicion snowballed into the craziest moral panic and caused a homophobic shockwave, the parliament passed an emergency bill on child porn and censorship was proposed as the solution to any problem. The intrusiveness of the judiciary reached new heights of absurdity. Social control is invading the soundings of individual personality. The latest emergencies are being constructed in order to scan and discipline cultural singularities. During the emergency of “terrorism” the state appealed to ‘the citizens’ duty’, ‘the rigor of the law’ and ‘the reason of State’. Those values and virtues were immanent to public life. During the emergency of crime and corruption the state still appealed to public virtues, but the most popular concept was ‘honesty’. Everybody would talk about that evanescent, indefinable value. As a virtue, “Honesty” is not entirely public: it is on the borderline between private and public life, a transcendent thing that has to do with the “soul”.

During the emergency of “paedophilia”, the disgusting nice-ism of the Ulivo culture can only give us simplistic, tautological non-explanations: the bad guys aren’t bad for any ideological reason (terrorists), nor because of greed and cupidity (bribed politicians, drug smugglers). No, they’re bad simply because they’re bad, there’s nothing else to say, they’re monsters, they’re wicked, the evil ones, they’re different from “us”. “We” are good people, “we” are “normal”. These notions of monstrosity and normality are introduced as *absolutely transcendent*, they have neither a history nor an evolution. They are considered *eternal*. Enter the “spiritual” emergency - alternative religions, ‘neo-paganism’ and ‘crazy cults’.

3. Fuck Voltaire And Turn Out The Lights

The Musti-Blissett affair is the logical evolution of the Children of Satan affair: the emergency reflects (upon) itself. Our book ‘Lasciate che i bimbi’ deconstructed the theories behind a case of arbitrary detention, cultural persecution and character assassination, explaining that the judiciary scam had been organized in the catholic milieu and was backed by the Curia of Bologna [the local ecclesiastic authority]. That affair had a microcosmic importance. Bologna has always functioned as a symbolic key-point and a laboratory of repression. She’s always been administered by the old “Communist” party and described as a commendable example of social democracy. This party propaganda “won” the attention of P2/fascist/state terrorists (the 1980 train station bombing, two other train bombings in 1974 and 1984, the gang of the White Uno in the early nineties). Bologna also attracts the symbolic and material investments of the Catholic church: a town whose inhabitants are considered pleasure-loving, godless and even a little bit too decadent can’t help having the most reactionary Curia, the new Inquisition represented by the GRIS [Group of Research and Information on Cults] and the religious intolerance that provoked the arrest and detention of the Children of Satan. That trial was the prelude to a national witch hunt that’s starting these days, which explains why the Public Prosecutor Lucia Musti has just filed an appeal against the acquittal of the defendants and wants to ban our book. They can’t afford losing the trial, because they’re investing their credibility on a national emergency.

The Ucigos (one of our numberless intelligence agencies) has just released an official report on cults commissioned by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This alarmist document is so much based upon the grossest ignorance that the list of potentially dangerous cults in view of the 2000 Roman Jubilee (i.e. the Holy Year of Christianity, a colossal lunar park that will attract pilgrims from every corner of the world) includes innocuous cultural associations, New Age groups and even psychotherapeutic schools (e.g. the Associazione Italiana di Ontopsicologia). Anyway, this report is against the freedom of religion formally warranted by the Constitution at the articles 8 and 19. The Ucigos was certainly prompted by Cardinal Ratzinger’s Congregation of Doctrine and Faith (i.e. the former Holy Office). The report to the Internal Affairs is simply a lay version of the imminent encyclical against New Age, neo-paganism, neo-sincretism etc. The grandious project of the Monotheist International (the reunion of the Christian religions and a planetary agreement with Islamism and Hebraism) must not be disrupted by people who profess other values. The Pope needs a new emergency. Look at the European continent: the Vatican City is the only absolutist gerontocratic monarchy built upon the exclusion of women. Our politicians consider Italy a Vatican colony. Our false left wing has never been so subaltern to the Church. We have a government whose Minister of Health is a 50-year-old virgin (she made the Vow of Chastity!) who is against abortion, condoms and homosexuality. Thanks to the spectacle of the Jubilee, we have witnessed opportunistic conversions to Catholicism (e.g. that of the Mayor of Rome, formerly a member of the staunchly anti-clerical Radical Party), the capital is being devastated and plundered by building companies, and public funds are dissipated for this obscene circus. Priests and pious humbugs always get the last word about drugs, censorship and many other social and cultural issues. We also got a brand new Code of TV Self-Regulation written up by a bunch of sexophobic bureaucrats. A Sicilian priest who claims to be ‘a hunter of paedophiles on the Internet’ has become one of the main consultants of the Parliament on the issue of electronic communications.

Dr. Richard Barbrook has got a point: sometimes we feel as the last heirs and defenders of Enlightenment. Now that you got the picture, we can return to the latest emergency.

4. Towards The Absolute Emergency

As we wrote above, the persecution of the Children of Satan in Bologna had an experimental function. More useful information: on January 1997, a few weeks before the beginning of the trial, L’Osservatore Romano (the official Vatican daily paper) started to publish a series of articles about the dangers of Satanism. This series was edited by Giuseppe Ferrari, the president of the GRIS. Ferrari himself wrote the first piece, titled ‘The Phenomenon Of Satanism In The Contemporary Society’. He described Satanism as an absolute emergency, drawing alarmist conclusions from a hopeless mess of rumours, cliches and urban myths. No specific examples, no precedents, no statistics. Moreover, Ferrari extended to excess the definition of ‘Satanism’, including ‘other groups that do not intend to present themselves as Satanists and, for example, claim to practice pagan rituals in order to harmonize with the occult powers of nature. As a matter of fact, these groups are suspect and we can include them in the multi-form world of Satanism’. Such a mysterious sentence was aimed at accusing a whole constellation of various movements, cults and philosophies.

L’Osservatore Romano also hosted an article written by, guess who, Lucia Musti, who was prosecuting the Children of Satan. Her article, titled ‘Legal And Juridical Aspects of Satanism’, was a masterpiece of unconstitutionality, ignoring all the articles guaranteeing freedom of speech, creed and association, let alone the presumption of innocence. Musti took for granted the raving stories told by her ’super-witness’, the false “repentant” Elisabetta Dozza, and turned that bullshit into a matter of juridical speculation: ‘The victims of such actions are usually women, very often made incapable of understanding and are willing by virtue of having taken adulterated drinks or drugs, or they are minors, even of a tender age. These latter have a particular significance in satanic rituals, in that the painful mistreatment of a child, who by definition is pure and close to God, means causing suffering to God himself and, thus, giving pleasure to Satan.’

We’d like to know how many other cases Musti happened to handle before drawing such general and definitive conclusions. Yet more crap: ‘Regarding the intimidating power of the membership bond, and of the condition of subjection and its resulting silence, a phrase taken from Art. 416 of the Penal Code (Mafia-related association), also seems to apply to Satanism, when one considers the particular condition of the members, who are tools in the hands of the Satanists, as mentioned above.’ And so on. However, the Church not only represses, she also recuperates. It is impossible to understand her geopolitical strategy as a transnational superpower without making this important point and giving some examples. In 1991, once the Latin American ‘Liberation Theology’ was annihilated and capitalism’s spectacular sparring-partner (”Communism”) had collapsed, Pope John Paul II recuperated the phraseology of those movements and ideologies, especially the social issues which they had pushed onto the stage of history (albeit in a distorted way). The Pope issued an encyclical called ‘Centesimus Annus’ (to mark the hundred anniversary of ‘Populorum Progressio’, the first “social” encyclical). It was a brilliant exercise of hypocritical anti-capitalist rhetoric, which Toni Negri reviewed in an article titled ‘The Fifth International Of John Paul II’ (no English translation available yet).

In 1997, during the national Eucharistical Congress which took place in Bologna, Bob Dylan played and sang for the Pope and shook John Paul’s hand. After decades spent claiming that rock is the music of the Devil, suddenly several bishops and Catholic opinion-leaders started to draw distinction between ‘good rock’ (or ‘white rock’) and ‘bad rock’ (or ‘black rock’). They argued that white rock’s mass liturgy as ratified in Woodstock, at the Live Aid etc. effectively creates a community, nay, an ecumene. Simultaneously, the Church started to attack techno and rave culture, which is hardly surprising. Catholics cannot recuperate techno, because the liturgy is too different, there’s no stage, no rockstar playing a sacerdotal role and what’s more, no lyrics, no explicit content. Rave culture is unacceptable. The spectacular function of Bob ‘the prodigal son’ Dylan (a converted Jew to boot!) was allowing the beatification of ‘granny’s rock’ and the “demonization” of today’s less controllable phenomena.

To sum up: the “heroisation” of magistrates brought about by the previous emergencies created monsters like Lucia Musti. The emergency of “paedophilia”, thanks to the myth of ‘ritual abuse’, has made possible the present attacks on ‘dangerous cults’. In their turn, such attacks are likely to create a global cultural, indeed “spiritual” emergency.

Jesus is coming. Look busy.

Luther Blissett Project, 20-21 May 1998

THE CHILDREN OF SATAN by Luther Blissett

Research by author