The History of Irrational Fear & Panic In America

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Vox Quick Hits: Why Satanic Panic never really ended

Perhaps the most common misunderstanding about “Satanic Panic” — the societal fear of the occult that troubled the US and other parts of the world throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s — is that it ever ended.

One of the most famous, prolonged mass media scares in history, Satanic Panic was characterized at its peak by fearful media depictions of godless teenagers and the deviant music and media they consumed. This, in turn, led to a number of high-profile criminal cases that were heavily influenced by all the social hysteria. Most people associate the Satanic Panic with so-called “satanic ritual abuse,” a rash of false allegations made against day care centers in the ’80s, and with the case of the West Memphis Three in the ’90s, in which three teenagers whose wrongful conviction on homicide charges was based on little more than suspicion over their goth lifestyles.

At their core, satanic ritual abuse claims relied on overzealous law enforcement, unsubstantiated statements from children, and, above all, coercive and suggestive interrogation by therapists and prosecutors. Some of the defendants are still serving life sentences for crimes they probably didn’t commit — and which likely didn’t happen in the first place. As for the West Memphis Three, they were eventually released in 2011 after spending 18 years in prison, and their case stands as one of the worst examples of what happens when police rush to judgment without evidence in a case.

But even if the police are less likely to rush to judgment these days over rumors of satanic worship and occult influences, many members of the public have no such qualms. Witness the recent controversy around Lil Nas X and his latest music video “Montero (Call Me by Your Name)” — in which he cavorts erotically with various iterations of Satan — and the way he was able to scandalize countless Christians by releasing limited-edition blood-infused Nikes dubbed “Satan shoes.”

Was the subsequent outrage from those who accused Lil Nas X of being a corrupting influence just a case of a failure to read art metaphorically? Perhaps. But a look at this bizarre period in US history offers another possible explanation: Satanic Panic never truly went away. It’s alive and well today, and its legacy threads through American culture and politics, in everything from social media moralizing to QAnon.

-Read more: https://www.vox.com/culture/2235815...l-abuse-history-conspiracy-theories-explained

 

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The New Republic: Rainbow Fentanyl for Halloween?

Are evil-minded strangers trying to hook your kids on candy-colored fentanyl? As Halloween approaches, a dire story is making the rounds about the threat to children of so-called rainbow fentanyl. Is there anything to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s warnings? When it comes to synthetic opioids, where do the real dangers lie? On episode 55 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene discuss how the rainbow fentanyl panic fits into a longer history of Halloween fears. Guests include Zachary Siegel, who writes about drug policy and the criminal justice system; the sociologist Joel Best, who has studied urban legends about poisoned Halloween candy; and regular TNR contributor Natalie Shure.

 

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Citations Needed: Fentanyl In Our Halloween Candy and Liberal Messaging Failures of the Overdose Crisis

Basically this moral panic, this mass hysteria, which is now spreading through the media and being boosted obviously by all manner of our elected officials, is something that we wanted to address today. It is the kind of next iteration, although it also harkens back to Halloween candy scares of yesteryear, but kind of the next iteration of this, you know, cops looked at maybe where fentanyl once was and passed out, those kinds of stories, and so who better to have on our show to discuss this hysteria, Adam, then friend of the show Zach Siegel, journalist and researcher and at this point Citations Needed’s own senior drug correspondent. Zach is also the co-writer of Substance, a newsletter about drugs and crime, which is written with journalist Tana Ganeva, also who has been a guest of the show, and you can find Substance at Substack and the URL is tanag.substack.com. Zach, senior drug correspondent to Citations Needed. Welcome back to the show...

 

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ABC Australia: Satanic Panic — Dungeons & Dragons and Harry Potter

Religion and popular culture: Sometimes it’s a match made in heaven, but when a pop icon becomes a cult success, it might just become fuel for the next moral panic.

The Satanic Panic was a time of incredible anxiety in the United States – and Australia. This special feature examines how games like Dungeons and Dragons and books like Harry Potter became unlikely villains in a war over religion, politics and imagination.

Dr Joseph Laycock is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Texas State University. He has a particular academic interest in Satanism and New Religious Movements and is the author of the book Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic Over Role Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds.

Dr David Waldron is a historian and folklorist and Senior Lecturer in History at Federation University in Ballarat, Victoria. He is the author of the paper, Roleplaying games and the Christian right: Community formation in response to a moral panic, published in the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture.

Alissa Wilkinson is Senior Culture Writer for Vox and Associate Professor of English and Humanities at The King’s College in New York City. She wrote the article, ‘I didn’t read Harry Potter when I was growing up. And I wasn’t alone’ for Vox.

Satanic Panic: D&D and Harry Potter - ABC Radio National

The Satanic Panic was a time of incredible anxiety in the United States – and Australia. This special feature examines how games like Dungeons and Dragons and books like Harry Potter became unlikely villains in a war over religion, politics and imagination.

www.abc.net.au

 

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Michigan high school student defends her mural which parents called satanic and anti-Christian because it contained a Genshin Impact character and a person wearing a transgender flag t-shirt. The Majority Report crew discusses outraged comments made by parents, like “fix their brains” and how such attitudes by the Right were once parodied years ago.