Literary Satanism-5
Radical left-wing political ideas had been spread by the American Revolution of 1765–83 and the French Revolution of 1789–99, and the figure of Satan, who was interpreted as having rebelled against the tyranny imposed by God, was an appealing one for many of the radical leftists of the period.[95] For them, Satan was "a symbol for the struggle against tyranny, injustice, and oppression... a mythical figure of rebellion for an age of revolutions, a larger-than-life individual for an age of individualism, a free thinker in an age struggling for free thought".[90] The French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who was a staunch critic of Christianity, embraced Satan as a symbol of liberty in several of his writings.[96] Another prominent 19th century anarchist, the Russian Mikhail Bakunin, similarly described the figure of Satan as "the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds" in his book God and the State.[97] These ideas likely inspired the American feminist activist Moses Harman to name his anarchist periodical Lucifer the Lightbearer.[98] The idea of this "Leftist Satan" declined during the twentieth century,[98] although it was used on occasion by authorities within the Soviet Union, who portrayed Satan as a symbol of freedom and equality.
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