Is there a new "Satanic panic" in the U.S.?

Crap! Does that mean that I have to stop listening to rock music and go underground with my D&D obsession?

@RedDeerGuy1 Forgot about D&D. There are indeed renewed accusations that it’s Satanic. History really does go in cycles. The cycles are just shorter than some of us thought.

I waited to long to edit this question, but what I was going to add to it was: it seems sometimes that there are a number of Americans who have this very narrow idea of what acceptable culture is and anything outside it (other religions, spiritual practices, cultural practices and artwork, music, sexual orientations other than straight) is somehow inherently evil.

The ultimate underlying cause of all the bigotry and hate you mentioned in your last paragraph is fear. Some people have unresolved fears from problematic childhoods that get warped into fear of the Other.

Different groups have filled the Other at different times for different people. Right now the pinnacle of Other are trans individuals.

The Other is an academic and psychological term to denote people or phenomenon that one’s tribe excludes. Basically, whoever the tribe decides must be excluded becomes the object of hate and bigotry, and some people expand the exclusion to also include eradication by violent means.

@Demosthenes My dad and my Lutheran university minister warned me not to become “lost”. From playing D&D? What did they mean? Around That time I started to believe that I was traveling through time.

@Hawaii_Jake I think “fear of the other” increases with economic and social instability, which the current era certainly has plenty of. We have already seen violence in the name of “culture war”. We will see more.

@RedDeerGuy1 I can’t answer that, but that does seem to be related to my idea of there being a very narrow path for many people.

@Demosthenes Those “satanic” people are entrenched in culture, and some are rich enough to fight back.

The thread is that fear sells. I think the satanic panic never really ended. Watch some old videos from that time – they use basically all the same rhetorical techniques these days. Sure it became something else, but the culture of fear has only grown as successive generations are raised on fear’s newest formulations.

Fear sells, but the shit we end up buying gets old fast. It’s too stressful to live in fear, so we buy things and ideas until we feel better. Queue the next cycle.

The other thing that spiked in the 1980’s was the diagnosis of MPD, Multiple Personality Disorder. (The term has been changed to Dissociative Identity Disorder.) I was hospitalized several times in the 80’s and the people being diagnosed with it were younger ages, like up to 21 years old. They often had false memories of ritualistic events which they witnessed or participated in – like infant sacrifices; also claims that their families had ties to satanism for hundreds of years back in history. Psychiatry definitely saw a large upswing in that diagnosis, but most of the time it was wrong and has been acknowledged as incorrect. You’re right, there was an obsession about satanic cults. I can’t answer your question, but wanted to throw that info in here.

@smudges – I don’t think there was an obsession with cults to begin with. I think people then were closer to their religion, and cults and satanism were just one of those things you believed in, even though you’d never seen it. Rosemary’s baby was long before the satanic panic. It was a cultural idea with roots. It wasn’t until it was exploited by media culture that is became a full fledged feedback loop of biases, misinformation and assumptions. People believed this stuff, on some level, was always real, and now, for some reason, it seemed to be everywhere. It took the satanic panic to root out that fearful nonsense from mainstream culture. On to the next thing!

@Smashley I’m sorry, but I don’t entirely understand what you’ve written. The 80’s increase in that diagnosis was real and that’s what my post was about. I incidentally agreed with @Demosthenes. It seems to me that it was an obsession but we don’t have to call it that. Btw, it is real. How big of a scale, I have no idea. But there are people who practice satanism.

@smudges – sure satanism is real, but there is no actual satan so we don’t need to actually worry about it unless they are causing actual harm. I was suggesting that the aftermath of the satanic panic was the collective purging of that silly collective notion of satan as a real entity, doing evil on the world.

The psychiatrists were probably the ones doing the most actual harm, even as they sought to help.

@smudges Yes, the podcast You’re Wrong About goes into discussion of a lot of these topics: the rise in MPD diagnoses, the rise of “repressed memories” and the problems associated with them (repressed memories are certainly real, but false memories induced by the power of suggestion are real as well), the Satanic panic and other forms of mass hysteria…there’s a connection between all these things. The psychological element is one of the key aspects of it that I’m interested in (although it is not my area of expertise).

@Demosthenes Dissociative Identity Disorder, (MPD ), would explain my time travel. I have duplicate memories of stuff ever since 1999.

People are slowly getting less religious. Usually when you see news of “outrage”, it’s just one or two people making a fuss that dies down in a day or two.
The parents that were outraged were probably strange and from the 70s and weren’t very cool people to begin with.

I think there is an expansion of Satanism in today’s society (at least in the USA). And with all things there are going to be people that don’t agree with it. But this question is interesting because I have to look at things (as usual) from a different angle. There are people that disagree with something and we call it panic or fright. Are the terms panic or fright just another way to suppress conversation? I look at some of the examples offered in the original question and I see things like this. Pedophile/groomer panic, hostility towards public schools and teachers, and Satanic panic are perfect examples of this. In each of these it is quite possible that what you are seeing is parents speaking out against things in an effort to protect their children from what they see as harmful things. I guess I could ask why there is such a fear of parents and family.

The incident cited in the original question involved a student that painted a mural on a school wall that had Satanic related symbolism in it. If the mural had crosses on it, would there have been an outrage because it was religious on a school wall? Would that then be called Christian panic? What if it had swastikas on it, would that be Nazi panic? Would there be cries that it was inappropriate to be on the wall?

If you say or do or present something that I don’t like, I reserve the right to speak out against it. I might think it is unhealthy, I might think it is wrong, I might just think it is Tuesday and I want to argue about something. But the point is, I have the right to speak out against it. If my worries/complaints are treated with disdain or dismissed as just being “panic” then the people dismissing it are part of the problem. The worries need to be addressed, not swept under the rug. Sweeping under the rug is how division occurs and how societies are broken.

And just a reminder…not everything new is great.

I don’t know all of these news stories you speak of, but I’ll state some of my thoughts, I’m not sure if they are relevant.

I’m against depictions of satan on public-school property. That is not the same as some parents calling whatever they don’t like as satanic. A student can draw whatever they want in their notebook, but not on a school wall, and not even to be hung up on a school wall.

It doesn’t surprise me at all that there might be an uptick in fears about satan considering the surge in white supremacy, QANON, and all those other alt-right groups. They use Christianity and fear to suck in and control their followers, and satan is an obvious useful addition to that method.

Accusations of satan and LGBT isn’t new. When HIV hit in the 1980’s parts of the religious right said it was God’s punishment for gay behaviors, and to me that’s one millimeter away from calling the LGBT community satanic. I take great issue with anyone calling any group or person satanic or being controlled by satan.

As a side note, When children are drawing actual satanic depictions I do think it’s cause for concern. It might be nothing, but it might not be nothing.

I grew up during the ‘Satanic Panic’, and it was always just parents overreaching in a well-intentioned attempt to protect their kids. I don’t really see much sign that the former is happening again, but I think the latter, parents being overprotective, has always been a thing and is worse now than it was when I was growing up.

The phenomenon of ‘helicopter parenting’ is, i think another expression of this. Every parent thinks they need to have their kid in sight 24/7. It’s preposterous.

I was a metalhead teenager in a small town in the 80’s at the height of the Satanic Panic. The fervor surrounding it was very real and it was to the to the point where people were physically afraid of you if you wore a Slayer T-shirt or something. People actually made up stories and gossip. It was eye opening to discover that about people at a young age. Honestly, metalheads are some of the last people they needed to be concerned with.

Moral panic is all over the place right now. Video games are one thing that’s a focus of attention that should not be. Moral panics are not hard to spot once you have seen one or more from the other side.

The last season of Stranger Things gave a pretty spot on depiction of what the Satanic Panic was really like at the time.

The “Satanism in the schools” is as false as the “poison/razor blade Halloween candy”. Urban legends that get picked up by news media on a slow day, and then gullible people freak out.

And it doesn’t help when right wing religious bigots see “Harry Potter” as seducing kids with satanic magic.

And, much of the panic arose from the McMartin Preschool case, with supposed satanic sexual abuse of children, all of which resulted in no convictions. And now people believe QAnon generated fictions of pedophiles in the Democratic party, when most of the political pedophiles are actually Republican “Christians”.

Let’s do a hypothetical:

There is a middle school called Abraham Lincoln Middle School. A group of students and parents want the name of the school changed because Lincoln was a racist. The school administration dismisses these complaints on the grounds that Lincoln is remembered for more than his personal racist beliefs and that the name has been around since the school’s founding. But it gets worse: a student paints a mural depicting early American history, including portraits of Lincoln and the founding fathers, as well as a scene from the Boston Tea Party. The parents/students group calls this “racist, white colonizer imagery” and is concerned that there are racists and racist-sympathizers working at the school and demands that the mural be painted over and staff be fired. How should these complaints be dealt with? After all, you don’t want to be dismissive and call this “PC gone mad” or “woke bullshit” or “leftist busybodies”. These people believe racism is getting worse and more prevalent in America. They see a resurgence of white supremacy and white nationalism all around them. How will you address their concerns?

Politics. Unscrupulous rightist politicians trying I keep their moronic superstitious base dumbed down, while they continue to worship Mammon, $ in
other words, their only true god. If Satan is real then summon him and make me filthy rich. Otherwise they can take thier hocus pocus shenanigans and go suck an egg.

Man. I was running a daycare in the 80s. Fun times.

To answer the question, it’s easy to rile the superstitious up. Look at the Salem Witch Hunts.

@Dutchess_III Well that’s an interesting point, because the Salem witch hunts happened among a people living in an unfamiliar land when life was extremely difficult, and many people were uneducated and illiterate (not saying that excuses what happened and it’s not as if everyone at the time bought into it, but you can see how that kind of thing might spring from a society like that). As they said on Chapo: why do some Americans have the mindset of medieval peasants without the socio-economic justification for it?

Why? Superstition. That’s why.

It’s not just religious or superstitious people. It’s susceptible people in general who can be swept up in a moral panic. Look at all the people making a stink about violent video games. They’re shouting from both sides of the isle on that issue.

It’s interesting because there has long been a tradition of seeing Satanic imagery and messaging everywhere and seeking it out in the most arcane of places among some American evangelicals; it goes back decades (I’ve read about many people who were raised this way, to be constantly looking for it, and assume popular music and television was full of it). But moral panics in general can come from any angle. What they all seem to have in common is a general sense of malaise/fear/uncertainty about the future, which, while that can happen at any time, does seem to go in waves. Right now polls indicate most people have a bleak view of the future. So it’s not surprising to see an increase in this kind of thing right now. And this current one I think is especially interesting because it is connected to all kinds of other cultural anxieties.

So let’s say someone does believe that. Well, as I illustrated in my hypothetical, some people believe there is a rise in white supremacy and racism, something that that “Satanism is everywhere” crowd has dismissed and ridiculed. So this “all complaints are legitimate” argument is pure bunk.

I know. I can’t go more than two blocks around here without seeing a Satanic church.

Other than Anton LaVey’s house in San Francisco, I don’t think I have ever seen a “satanic church”. Despite what Liberty University says. Mormons and Jews do not worship Satan.

All hail Stan…
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Lee.

@Smashley Ok, I understand now.

…there is no actual satan so we don’t need to actually worry about it unless they are causing actual harm.

Agree that there is no actual satan, but there is harm being done in its name. The local humane society, which is the fifth oldest and one of the largest, stops adopting out black cats 2–3 weeks before halloween. Unfortunately, everyone knows it so if someone wanted to adopt a black cat for nefarious purposes they would simply get it sooner. :(

In either case, belief in Satan is not really the issue at hand. One can believe Satan is real without falsely accusing a teenager of painting Satanic imagery and bringing her to tears at a school board meeting. One of the attendees of the meeting (who identified as right-wing and Trump supporting) said she was appalled by what she observed, including people talking about “praying the gay away”. Which leads me to believe that though the uproar was over supposed Satanism, what these parents really took issue with was the LGBT imagery in the mural and the suggestion that homosexuals and trans people might be welcome at that school (which they see as part of a larger anti-Christian current).

@Demosthenes You are proving my point for me. The Hamsa Hand might not be a Satanic symbol and might be perfectly harmless. But someone viewed it as such. Your original question was not specifically about Satanism as you have confirmed in later comments. It is about why some people “panic” over things. My comment was that when someone speaks out against something it might be that they see it as being wrong. That is the start of dialogue…an opinion is put forth. But when the dialogue is “your just scared” or “why do you panic” you are shutting down dialogue.

Your response to my answer took what you have said wasn’t the focus of the original question, made it the focus of the original question, and then tried to pooh-pooh away my answer, throwing in a personal attack to further try to squelch dialogue. In my original answer I pointed out that if something is not liked, there is always going to be outrage against it. Let’s say the mural didn’t have crosses on it. But let’s say the football coach said a prayer by himself on the sideline after winning a game. Think that would bring out a scream? It did. It brought out a “panic” of epic proportions that took it all the way up to the SCOTUS. Why? Why is there such Christian Panic?

When I ask questions phrased like that, it automatically puts anyone that doesn’t like the act of the coach onto the defensive, makes it sound like they are somehow unhinged. Now what if I asked the question as “What is wrong with a private prayer on the sidelines after a game?” I’m inviting conversation and dialogue without putting someone on the defensive.

@smudges – I have heard of other fear based policies like the cat one you mentioned. These are policies based not on actual crime statistics, but urban legends. Apparently not only does fear sell like hotcakes, it persists like PCBs. There probably some unnecessary day care rules we still live with too.

and a little further research suggests that even the idea that shelters prevent black cat adoption around Halloween is something of an urban legend itself. I’m not saying there are none at all, but most shelters I can find are offering special October promotions to house black cats.

@seawulf575 Nope, sorry, that doesn’t hold up either. You are trying to turn this argument around by bringing up examples you see as direct parallels that are not parallels. I already illustrated why your previous examples didn’t hold up, and this one of the football coach praying doesn’t hold up either. There is no such thing as “Christian panic”. This would only be a parallel if say, someone painted a mural that included imagery of fish and a group of parents complained that those fish were obviously Jesus fish and that the mural was trying to shove Christianity down the throats of students (and that this kind of panic is tied to other panics that have precedent in recent American history). That would be a parallel example.

If you want to ask your question about what is wrong with private prayer on the sidelines after a game, then go ahead and ask it. It has nothing to do with my question about Satanic panic, however. I’m talking about a specific type of moral panic that links LGBT with Satanism and pedophilia, etc. There are people who are very intolerant of Christianity in public schools, yes. This is not an example of a widespread mass hysteria and delusion, however.

If you mix up someone who professes to believe in Satan AND who has a psychotic tendencies you could have a problem.

If you mix up someone who professes to believe in Christ AND who has a psychotic tendencies you could have a problem !

The only problem I have with Christianity is when it inserts itself into places it doesn’t belong.

@Dutchess_III That’s everywhere outside four walls and a steeple.