How Bad Could the Satanic Panic Have Gotten?

[asnys]

So, for the younger forum members, the Satanic Panic was a social phenomenon in the US during the 1980s and early '90s. The whole thing was kicked off by the book Michelle Remembers, which is a chronicle of repressed memories recovered by a young woman who had been born into a Satanic cult taken straight from Rosemary's Baby. It was followed by copycat books by other "survivors". Soon thereafter, there was a wave of prosecutions of alleged Satanist child-rapists, mostly working at daycares, mostly on no evidence other then children's testimonies - the infamous Satanic Ritual Abuse, the most famous example being the McMartin Preschool Case. Other stuff mixed in to this witches' brew included subliminal messaging in heavy metal albums, the West Memphis Three, and Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons. There were people - including people with power - who believed that all this was the work of an Illuminati-like Satanic cult that predated the dawn of Christianity and which had infiltrated US government and society at all levels, with the aim of pushing society in a hedonistic, materialistic, anti-Christian direction.

In retrospect, this was all nonsense. Probably some of the accused child rapists really were pedophiles, but we know that a lot of them were not - that the children's testimony was the result of planted memories and coercion. Subliminal messaging a) does not exist and b) does not work if it did. And Satanists are confined to a few fringey groups with no real power, most of whom do not even believe in Satan except as a metaphor. But that didn't stop the panic until a lot of people's lives had been ruined.

My question for you is, how bad could it have gotten? It was already pretty bad - a lot of people's lives were ruined, and there are probably still people in jail for crimes that did not actually occur, but who didn't have the luck to get noticed during the post-panic reevaluation. (The West Memphis Three would probably still be in prison if there hadn't been an HBO documentary crew hanging around the trial.) But how much worse could we make it?

 

[Wendigo]

So, for the younger forum members, the Satanic Panic was a social phenomenon in the US during the 1980s and early '90s. The whole thing was kicked off by the book Michelle Remembers, which is a chronicle of repressed memories recovered by a young woman who had been born into a Satanic cult taken straight from Rosemary's Baby. It was followed by copycat books by other "survivors". Soon thereafter, there was a wave of prosecutions of alleged Satanist child-rapists, mostly working at daycares, mostly on no evidence other then children's testimonies - the infamous Satanic Ritual Abuse, the most famous example being the McMartin Preschool Case. Other stuff mixed in to this witches' brew included subliminal messaging in heavy metal albums, the West Memphis Three, and Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons. There were people - including people with power - who believed that all this was the work of an Illuminati-like Satanic cult that predated the dawn of Christianity and which had infiltrated US government and society at all levels, with the aim of pushing society in a hedonistic, materialistic, anti-Christian direction.

In retrospect, this was all nonsense. Probably some of the accused child rapists really were pedophiles, but we know that a lot of them were not - that the children's testimony was the result of planted memories and coercion. Subliminal messaging a) does not exist and b) does not work if it did. And Satanists are confined to a few fringey groups with no real power, most of whom do not even believe in Satan except as a metaphor. But that didn't stop the panic until a lot of people's lives had been ruined.

My question for you is, how bad could it have gotten? It was already pretty bad - a lot of people's lives were ruined, and there are probably still people in jail for crimes that did not actually occur, but who didn't have the luck to get noticed during the post-panic reevaluation. (The West Memphis Three would probably still be in prison if there hadn't been an HBO documentary crew hanging around the trial.) But how much worse could we make it?

Somehow have President Reagan bring it up in a speech or something like that.

I'm surprised Reagan never brought it up IOTL considering he was quite the fundamentalist and had multiple talks and meetings with other popular Christian Evangelicals at the time like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/18/the...ngerous_love_affair_with_the_christian_right/

 

[Twin City Lines]

Keep Gorbachev out of office in the USSR. Seriously. Fear of nuclear war was a primary source of fuel for Christian fundamentalism. One has to admit, a nuclear holocaust is a fair fit for the prophecies of Revelation. The end of the Cold War dealt a severe blow to the fundamentalist mentality in America.

I was a teenager during the Satanic Panic and remember other kids in my high school being accused of being Satanists because they listened to heavy metal. Dungeons and Dragons was similarly frowned upon. Coin-operated video games in some towns were converted to tokens and you had to be 16+ with ID to buy the tokens. Lots of kids ended up in psych wards and residential treatment facilities over this stuff.

Me? I was just a Communist. In America. In 1983. I was locked up with lots of so-called "Satanists" and allegedly my FBI file still says I am one (not so much because I'm a Communist but because some of my other beliefs were too hard to classify - Satanism was allegedly the closest category they could come up with without making up a new one just for me).

 

[Puget Sound]

Me? I was just a Communist. In America. In 1983. I was locked up with lots of so-called "Satanists" and allegedly my FBI file still says I am one (not so much because I'm a Communist but because some of my other beliefs were too hard to classify - Satanism was allegedly the closest category they could come up with without making up a new one just for me).

Couldn't you get a copy via FOIA?

 

[Simon]

So, for the younger forum members, the Satanic Panic was a social phenomenon in the US during the 1980s and early '90s.

Not just the US, the insanity spread across the Atlantic with instances in the UK and I believe Europe as well. David Aaronovitch did a very good two-part documentary on the panic for BBC Radio 4 last year which can be found here.

 

[asnys]

Somehow have President Reagan bring it up in a speech or something like that.

Keep Gorbachev out of office in the USSR. Seriously. Fear of nuclear war was a primary source of fuel for Christian fundamentalism. One has to admit, a nuclear holocaust is a fair fit for the prophecies of Revelation. The end of the Cold War dealt a severe blow to the fundamentalist mentality in America.

Both of those would certainly help, yeah.

Part of what I'm wondering about here is, if the panic did get worse, how would it manifest? It seems like there are a number of ways to stoke public panic even further - besides the two above, I'd also mention the possibility of real "Satanic" crimes to stoke the flames, ala Richard Ramirez. But, aside from just more prosecutions of daycare workers, how would it manifest?

Me? I was just a Communist. In America. In 1983. I was locked up with lots of so-called "Satanists" and allegedly my FBI file still says I am one (not so much because I'm a Communist but because some of my other beliefs were too hard to classify - Satanism was allegedly the closest category they could come up with without making up a new one just for me).

Damn. I don't know what else to say except that you have my sympathies.

Not just the US, the insanity spread across the Atlantic with instances in the UK and I believe Europe as well. David Aaronovitch did a very good two-part documentary on the panic for BBC Radio 4 last year which can be found here.

Thank you for the link, I'd somehow missed that one!

 

[Art]

There was the story of that kid dying because he played D&D, and stories about Satanic influence all over. . . All bull, but no one knew it at the time.

 

[Simon]

Thank you for the link, I'd somehow missed that one!

Several of the supporters of the ritual abuse theory apparently made complaints, both public and official, about the programme. Aaronovitch posted a response, which crushed the so-called 'complaints', that can be read here. It really does not put them in a good light, as the saying goes some people should have the good sense to know when to quit.

 

[asnys]

Several of the supporters of the ritual abuse theory apparently made complaints, both public and official, about the programme. Aaronovitch posted a response, which crushed the so-called 'complaints', that can be read here. It really does not put them in a good light, as the saying goes some people should have the good sense to know when to quit.

This is hardly an original insight, but the moral panic seems to be a primary failure mode of the modern human... I first got interested in this subject via the alien abduction phenomena, which never reached the level of a moral panic - probably because it lacked human villains to be condemned and punished - but which has a number of similarities, particularly the reliance on recovered memories. In particular, I see a lot of similarities between the thinking of the diehard believers in the Satanic Panic and the believers in alien abduction.

 

[Swiffness]

I'm surprised Reagan never brought it up IOTL considering he was quite the fundamentalist and had multiple talks and meetings with other popular Christian Evangelicals at the time like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

Reagan cynically used them for political power. Sympathetic sure, but hardly a fanatical true believer. The man attended church only once during his eight years of presidency, after all.

If you really wanna knock it up a notch like OP says, what you need is to butterfly away Ronnie and (somehow) elect a true diehard fundamentalist asshole with a penchant for paranoia & conspiracy theories instead. If the tenure of J. Edgar Hoover is any indication, said POTUS could "federalize" things and escalate what Twin City Lines discussed into a full blown national witchhunt. Possibly deny Habeas Corpus to Satanists, I mean, they're evil right? Combine this was a 3rd Red Scare in a No-Gorby Timeline and you have a nice little purge going...........what's more Satanic than LIBERALISM after all?

 

[CountPeter]

I wasn't around during the satanic panic and have always lived in the UK, but I find it crazy how we still have remnants of it to this day. I didn't play D&D untill I was in my 20s because at a young age I was told that it made players go for murder suicide by my mother and it stuck. Now you will find me playing tabletop games at every opportunity, but the concern was always there.

As for the thread, what if there is something to be terrified about? Some terrorist/madman/w.e. Who publicly identifies as a satanist, does a lot of excessive acts and is never caught? Myth making would naturally follow and could be taken advantage of by the right groups.

 

[CECBC]

The easiest answer it to make it real; Suppose the panic actually ends up uncovering a real child porn ring with a connection to "Satanism" or just heavy metal music.

 

[kung Zog]

Not just the US, the insanity spread across the Atlantic with instances in the UK and I believe Europe as well. David Aaronovitch did a very good two-part documentary on the panic for BBC Radio 4 last year which can be found here.

Sweden too, especially against roleplaying games. "The state finances roleplaying about drugs and satanism" was one of the headlines. A prelude in Sweden was Åke Ohlmark's (who translated Lord of the rings to Swedish) confused rant in his 1982 book "Tolkien and the black magic" in which he painted Tolkien-societies as a world encompassing Illuminati-like order active in orgies, satanism, ritual murder, drug trafficking etc.

 

[yourworstnightmare]

I just remember the wiccan craze stage of the whole thing. It probably made wicca semi-relevant for about a year or so.

 

[Kyro92]

If you had some mishap leading to a nuclear war during the Satanic Panic's peak(and if you buy the theory that nuclear war wouldn't have led to a complete extinction of humanity, just it's diminishment) then there's a very decent chance that Satanic Panic could take a ride on the back of a general rise in fundamentalism. Helped along by the fact that the parts of America that would best endure(small towns and farms in the South and West) happen to be the most fundamentalist parts of the country.

 

[RossN]

Roleplaying games might have taken a terminal hit, which in turn would massively impact computer games - I certainly can't imagine World of WarCraft ever appearing if Dungeon & Dragons was banned in the mid 1980s. Quite probably no Harry Potter either and no major film adaptations of Tolkein's work.

 

[rfmcdonald]

A lot of Satanic panic was also a moral panic, connected to concern over changing mores. It's not a coincidence that daycares, where working mothers put their children, were a prime target. That famous quote about feminists being lesbians who practice witchcraft and murder their children did not come from nowhere.

Conceivably, if we get enough panic, we might see a backlash against liberalization generally.

 

[Konrad Sartorius]

A lot of Satanic panic was also a moral panic, connected to concern over changing mores. It's not a coincidence that daycares, where working mothers put their children, were a prime target. That famous quote about feminists being lesbians who practice witchcraft and murder their children did not come from nowhere.

Conceivably, if we get enough panic, we might see a backlash against liberalization generally.

Also a lot of women felt guilt/discomfort leaving their children in the hands of strangers. Such a situation where distrust and anxiety exists also fuels fantasies and fear.

 

[Arkenfolm]

The easiest answer it to make it real; Suppose the panic actually ends up uncovering a real child porn ring with a connection to "Satanism" or just heavy metal music.

Get the first wave of black metal to actually live out their lyrics and ideology like the early Norwegian black metal scene did? And have it happen in the US? The trick is getting them to come up with the idea themselves, plus having the "US black metal" scene spawn earlier than the late 80s/early 90s. Maybe a guy as psychologically messed up as Euronymous gets huge into metal (probably Venom and Mercyful Fate), discovers Hellhammer, Bathory, etc. somehow (gotta be a way), shows his friends all this stuff, and starts a scene and some other morally questionable people get involved, and then next thing you know, you have church burnings, a few murders, suicides, etc. And have it happen in a conservative part of the US for ultimate impact.

 

[Konrad Sartorius]

Alternatively if you want to expand/reinvigorate the panic then you could have one of the mass shootings that has plagued our country for the last ~20 years by committed by an avowed Satanist. This will lead to even greater hysteria. Afterall people are willing to blame everything/everyone for the shooting except for the person who actually committed the shooting.

People, already blame "big pharma's" mental health medications, violent video games, "assault weapons." Why not add another bogey man to the mix.