One of the most interesting — and tragic — conspiracy theories of recent times has been the Satanic Panic of the 80′s and 90′s. During this time faulty research, hearsay and the fears projected by Christian conservatives resulted in a very real panic that saw a number of innocent people’s lives ruined over what amounted to an urban legend. Here’s a long quote from Wiki as the panic was a very complex and nuanced phenomenon and their summing-up is too thorough not to include here…

Satanic ritual abuse (SRA, sometimes known as ritual abuse, ritualistic abuse, organised abuse, sadistic ritual abuse and other variants) was a moral panic that originated in the United States in the 1980s, spreading throughout the country and eventually to many parts of the world, before mostly diminishing in the late 1990s. Allegations of SRA involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. In its most extreme form, SRA involved a supposed worldwide conspiracy involving the wealthy and powerful of the world elite in which children were abducted or bred for sacrifices, pornography and prostitution.

Nearly every aspect of SRA was controversial, including its definition, the source of the allegations and proof thereof, testimonials of alleged victims, and court cases involving the allegations and criminal investigations. The panic affected lawyers’, therapists’, and social workers’ handling of allegations of child sexual abuse. Allegations initially brought together widely dissimilar groups, including religious fundamentalists, police investigators, child advocates, therapists and clients in psychotherapy. The movement gradually secularized, dropping or deprecating the “satanic” aspects of the allegations in favor of names that were less overtly religious such as “sadistic” or simply “ritual abuse” and becoming more associated with dissociative identity disorder and government conspiracy theories.

The panic was influenced to a large extent by testimony of children and adults that were obtained using therapeutic and interrogation techniques now considered discredited. Initial publicity generated was by the now-discredited autobiography Michelle Remembers (1980), and sustained and popularized throughout the decade by the McMartin preschool trial. Testimonials, symptom lists, rumors and techniques to investigate or uncover memories of SRA were disseminated through professional, popular and religious conferences, as well as through the attention of talk shows, sustaining and spreading the moral panic further throughout the United States and beyond. In some cases allegations resulted in criminal trials with varying results; after seven years in court, the McMartin trial resulted in no convictions for any of the accused, while other cases resulted in lengthy sentences, some of which were later reversed. Scholarly interest in the topic slowly built, eventually resulting in the conclusion that the phenomenon was a moral panic, with little or no validity beyond paranoia.

Official investigations produced no evidence of widespread conspiracies or of the slaughter of thousands; only a small number of verified crimes have even remote similarities to tales of SRA. In the latter half of the 1990s interest in SRA declined and skepticism became the default position, with very few researchers giving any credence to the existence of SRA.

Here’s a Satanic Panic propaganda classic preserved on shiny black VHS tape. Here’s Escaping Satan’s Web…

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This crazy video features an insane look back on the toys and cartoons of the 1980′s by a couple of confused evangelical Christians who see the Devil in every detail. Author Phil Phillips and Pastor Gary Greenwald would be just a couple of bumbling buffoons if their brand of humorless hysteria hadn’t been part of a bigger trend that lead to the “Satanic Panic” of that era — a time when hundreds of unsubstantiated cases of so-called Satanic ritual abuse were reported around the United States.

The good people at i09 published a short version of this video. Here are some of their favorite bits:

• Dungeons & Dragons “game pieces” scream when you set them on fire!

• “There’s a form of witchcraft [in Star Wars] called ‘Obi witchcraft.’” Obi obi obi!

It’s all in good fun kids until you draw a direct line from a pastor obsessed with zombie Smurfs to the convictions of the West Memphis 3. Be careful when you see the Devil that you do not see him in a mirror.

There is a sevenish minute version of this floating around on the net. Here is the the full 90 minutes plus:

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Ritual de lo habitual

In 1980′s America, a new conservatism swept the land: Ronald Reagan became president; the AIDS crisis undermined the sexual revolution; even saddle shoes and penny loafers made a comeback.

While the revelation of a new religious right as a political power didn’t dawn until the election of George H.W. Bush in 1988, the entire decade of the 80′s represents a nearly-across-the-board backlash against the counter-culture, and a re-emergence of traditional, Christian, bourgeois values. It should come as no surprise that a reign of terror followed with it.

Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) became a new term in newspapers across the country as paranoid suburbanites, fleeing city centers for the saccharine surroundings of white, affluent neighborhoods soon began to see the devil everywhere. Rumors of bands of wild teenagers engaging in ritual sacrifice murders abounded, spurred on by the occult imagery associated with heavy metal music and the very real drug culture that emerged among disaffected kids growing up in the banal backwaters of mall-sprawl culture. However, despite nearly a decade of panic, no one ever found the devil.

According to Wikipedia:

SRA is considered a moral panic and compared to the blood libel and witch-hunts of historical Europe, and McCarthyism in the United States during the 20th century. Stanley Cohen, who originated the term “moral panic,” called the episode “one of the purest cases of moral panic.” The initial investigations of SRA were performed by anthropologists and sociologists, who failed to find evidence of SRA actually occurring; instead they concluded that SRA was a result of rumors and folk legends that were spread by “media hype, Christian fundamentalism, mental health and law enforcement professionals and child abuse advocates.” Sociologists and journalists noted the vigorous nature with which some evangelical activists and groups were using claims of SRA to further their religious and political goals.

Jeffery Victor says that in the United States the groups most likely to believe rumours of SRA are rural, poorly educated religiously conservative Protestant blue-collar families with an unquestioning belief in American values who feel significant anxieties over job loss, economic decline and family disintegration. Victor considers rumours of SRA a symptom of a moral crisis and form of scapegoating for economic and social ills.

While SRA has been widely discredited, a number of real life horrors helped to spur it on. This film documents the infamous exploits of the notorious teen murderer, Ricky Kasso.

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