Nazi-Satanism is real and dangerous – and big tech has given it a platform

A Satanic pact signed in blood, lottery tickets, an unspeakable double-murder – all pointing to a man whose riches come from social media

Danyal Hussein, 19, pledged to kill six women every six months to win the Mega Millions Super Jackpot of £321 million. (PA)

In the late 1980s there was a moral panic about Satanists indoctrinating kids through various subversive means – via Judas Priest records, for example, or having them listen to Stairway to Heaven backwards. But that was child’s play compared to what came next. In recent years, a new form of Satanism has become more widely publicised – and more dangerous.

Known as “left-hand path” Satanism, its proponents are theistic Satanists that believe self-described acts of evil can manifest Satan or his minions, like Baal or Azazel. This may sound just as fanciful as the American craze of subliminal Satanism, but it’s not.

I’ve testified in several cases in the last two years alone dealing with neo-Nazi Satanists. One case involved a swastika carved on the buttocks of an underage girl. Another involved bestiality and incest. This is not your parents’ “right-hand path” Ouija boards and harmless spells – and as was made clear in an exposé by the BBC’s Daniel de Simone, in fact, it was instrumental in last year’s truly horrific murder of sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman.

The convicted teenage murderer, Danyal Hussein, signed a contract in his blood with the demon known as Lucifuge Rofocale. In exchange for sacrificing “only women” every six months, Hussein would “receive faithful rewards” that would “consist of wealth and power” – winning the lottery, for instance. Just before lying in wait to stab the sisters to death on 7 June, Hussein bought Mega Millions Super Jackpot tickets. After the savage murders, Hussein spent another £12.50 on EuroMillions tickets.

Where could Hussein have gotten such mad and violent ideas?

The short answer is the internet. Building upon the BBC’s reporting, PA reporter Emily Pennink showed that Hussein “was an active member of online forum Becoming A Living God, set up by black magician E.A. Koetting”. According to his own writings, Koetting is part of an American cell of the British Order of Nine Angles, specifically the oddly spelled Tempel ov Blood (or TOB). TOB is too noxious even for other left-hand path Satanists; it is the same secretive group that took over the leadership of the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division in 2018 following the conviction of then-leader Brandon Russell.

TOB is closer to home as well. The Atomwaffen Division had a UK-based spinoff called the Sonnenkrieg Division, proscribed last year as a neo-Nazi terrorist organisation. Several of its members, including leader now-jailed Andrew Dymock, adhered to TOB doctrines, which as expert Ariel Koch has written range from sadism and sexual violence to the glorification of “mass-murderers and terrorists, and calls for adherents to engage in racially motivated violence depicted as a holy war”. This is done via a TOB-run publishing house, Martinet Press, which pumps out some of the most vile texts ever written. That’s admittedly a very high bar; but if you don’t believe me, try Iron Gates, which opens with rape, child sacrifice and necrophilia and goes downhill from there. Texts like these were required reading for Atomwaffen Division members and other left-hand path neo-Nazis – in part, as one UK teenage convict put it, to “shed empathy”.

Nor were these British teens the only neo-Nazi Satanists to engage in terrorist acts or ritual killings. This time last year, another teenager pled guilty to “14 terror offences and two counts of possessing child sex abuse images”. With good reason, then, Hope not Hate has rightly called for British authorities to proscribe the US-based Tempel ov Blood and its parent group, the UK-based Order of Nine Angles.

All this is horrific enough. But these incitements to murder and terror are scarcely confined to the uglier corners of the internet. To this day, E.A. Koetting happily plies his Satanist grift to more than 87,000 subscribers on YouTube. These cancerous ideas are obviously metastasising. Even a few short years ago these abhorrent acts might have also been dismissed as a “moral panic”. Today they pose a terrorist threat.

And just what is Koetting selling? Everything from webinars to merchandise-like T-shirts at £20 a pop. There’s also a Patreon account (£15.50 monthly for “God” status; or £8 monthly for mere “Demon” membership). But the real money – and murderous incitement – appears to come from ToB-affiliated books.

One of these, Apex of Eternity, written under Koetting’s pseudonym Archaelus Baron, explicitly recommends studying The Terrorist Handbook for tips like “explosive detonators”. Assassinations are recommended – “religious figures over political... the latter is far too obvious and overdone” – as is motiveless killing. Just like the Wembley park murders of Bibba Henry and Nicole Smallman. Nor is Koetting’s affiliation with neo-Nazi activism exactly hidden. The man has a massive Celtic Cross – a well-known white supremacist symbol – tattooed prominently on this right bicep.

Naturally, E.A. Koetting hocked this text on his YouTube channel. For who’s to stop him doing it? YouTube’s parent company, Google; his channel remains active. If even 1 in 1,000 subscribers to Koetting’s take seriously his invitation to ritual murder, terrorism and other “sinister acts”, that’s nearly 100 Danyal Husseins running amok. And that’s before adding in the 129,000 Followers Koetting had on Facebook before he was finally deplatformed this week thanks to the BBC and PA’s efforts.

As the murders and money stack up, the question must be posed: what next? Are we simply to await more death, or is there something proactive that governments, and concerned citizens can do? We need to start urgently asking these questions. And start demanding answers. Otherwise, quite simply, more innocent victims will die at the hands of infatuated teenagers, hopped up on neo-Nazi Satanism. This is no “moral panic”.

It has, instead, become moral to panic about the platform Big Tech has given to these and other extremists. Enough is indeed enough.

Matthew Feldman is Director of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right