When The Satanic Temple was formed in 2013 they immediately sparked a debate in American media through their political activism. With a Satanic discourse they both confused and angered many people, especially persons from the Christian Right-Wing and other Conservatives. With themselves in focus, they also initiated a debate of what a religion is or should be, after starting to demand religious rights through their activism. The idea of using a Satanic discourse in order to emphasize Left-Wing politics is not a new idea though. Already the Romantic Satanists used a similiar strategy some 200 years ago, and The Satanic Temple is quite vocal about the fact that they see them as forerunners. But traces could also be found in the Anarchistic Satanists of the middle 1800’s and the Feminist Satanists around 1900. This essay shows the inheritence of the political Satanism of the 18- and 1900’s through a discourse analysis of these movements compared with The Satanic Temple. The essay also discusses what defines a religion, viewed through The Satanic Temple’s fight for the status of one and compared to academic research on the subject, mainly the idea of viewing religion as a discourse
