(LifeSiteNews) – At this point, conservatives can’t even worry about White House advisors embracing occult symbolism without the press deriding them as hysterics.
This past week, social media was abuzz with unusual photos of Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who leads the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) HIV prevention division and is advising President Joe Biden on the monkeypox outbreak.
Daskalakis’s Instagram showed many posts with inverted pentagrams, which have been used by The Satanic Temple, and other occult-looking symbols. A reposted photo in which he was tagged seemed to show him and another man participating in some kind of prayer or ceremony with candles surrounding them.
His posts indicated that he attended a cycling studio called Monster Cycling, which similarly featured pentagrams on its Instagram account. The studio also showed an apparent mockery of the Last Supper with Satan in the place of Jesus.
So, to recap: A senior government official advising the most powerful politician in the world promotes satanic iconography and appears to participate in occult rituals.
How did The Advocate respond? With a headline wondering, “Why Are Conservatives Tearing Their Hair Out Over This Gay Doctor?”
Yes, why is it that people are so concerned over the possibility that a CDC official might be doing the Prince of Darkness’s bidding in federal health policy?
Personally, I suspect conservatives’ “melt down” — as Gizmodo derisively put it — stemmed from the wild notion that satanists might not have Americans’ best interests at heart.
But, as usual, media outlets repeated the tired “Republicans pounce” narrative in which they dismiss a legitimate concern by making the story about the criticism rather than the actual issue.
Reading outlets like The Advocate and Metro Weekly, one might get the impression that conservatives were once again overreacting (as they always do)!
“Biden Monkeypox Adviser Accused of Being ‘Satanist’ by Right-Wing Critics,” read a headline by Newsweek. Pink News proclaimed: “Right-wing trolls are mocking a gay monkeypox doctor for being hot and wearing a harness.”
Throughout the media’s coverage was an apparent assumption that inverted pentagrams were just harmless symbols and no particular indication of nefarious intent.
The Advocate said that pentagrams predated Christianity as if to distract from the context indicating Daskalakis’s use was in fact either satanic or occult (which is to say satanic, although perhaps unwittingly so). Nevermind that picture of a satanic “Last Supper,” the studio’s promotion of a “666” challenge, its posting of a shirt that read “we’ll steal your soul,” and the inverted crosses on both Daskalakis’s and the studio’s Instagrams.
Nevertheless, The Advocate assured readers that Daskalakis was not a satanist. Before quoting his denial, the outlet asserted that “[s]ometimes a harness is just a harness, and a tattoo is just a tattoo.” They were referring to what appeared to be a leather, BDSM harness that took the shape of a pentagram.
Quick question: Can we get some polling on how many Americans feel comfortable with an HIV prevention official who flaunts his BDSM accessories on the internet? That includes, by the way, a photo of him in a harness alongside someone wearing a leather dog mask.
Amid the many pentagrams on his social media, Daskalakis also posted a photo of his inverted pentagram tattoo which mysteriously read: “I have found that there is light even in the darkest places.”
Nothing to see here! Just another pentagram-loving, shirtless “daddy,” which is the word Gizmodo, a tech outlet, bizarrely used to describe Daskalakis in its admiring article about him.
Conservatives, meanwhile, alluded to the fact it might be an issue if the head of the executive branch receives advice from a man who potentially worships the enemy of God and all mankind.
It seems they missed the PC re-education in which left-wing outlets learned to avoid unpleasant truths about “gay” men so as not to “stigmatize” them. Instead, legitimate concerns apparently must be avoided in order to maintain a fictional portrayal of “gays” – even those who, well, look like satanists.
Conservatives have justifiably pointed out that a White House advisor is promoting symbolism employed by the Satanic Temple. But it’s also worth asking how media outlets got so comfortable demonizing concerns about occultism and its potential influence on government officials.