For some reason the Vice website published the same article by Robert Dayton on the same day under two headings: What We Can Learn from the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and Is Satan Still a Big Deal in 2016?, June 27, 2016 AD.
I find it fascinating that in dealing with the Satanic panic our emotion before thought culture has offered a fallacy that is just as fallacious. Satanic panic refers to a time during the 1980s-early 1990s AD when there were many claims of massive Satanic conspiracies relating to mind control, human/ child sacrifice, influence in the media and entertainment, etc., etc., etc.
The reply to the Satanic panic has been to say “Nothing to see here” and simply brush aside any and all such claims, however sober or well attested they are, and claim that the way to deal with the Satanic panic is become a Satanic denier. That is to say that we are supposed to think that Satanists are the only people on Earth who do not act according to their beliefs and thus never commit crimes in the name of Satan or otherwise motivated by their beliefs.
Yet, a related issue is that we are supposed to believe that which Satanists tell us about their beliefs. In one interview after another Satanists make claims which are utterly and demonstrably false about Satanism and yet, they do unchallenged. This is because they are generally being interviewed by people who are clueless about the subject and so they are not interviews but platforms for Satanism’s PR to have their say.
Thus, the culture at large only knows pop-neo-Satanism which is cool and hip and thinks that anyone contradicting them is engaged in what? Satanic panic.
Robert Dayton interviewed Kier-La Janisse and Paul Corupe, the authors of the book Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s.
Corupe noted:
There are still heated corners of the internet who passionately debate this kind of stuff, and current scandals like the Jimmy Savile allegations seem to dredge up the past again and again. Like, if this stuff really happened, then the McMartin preschool case wasn’t so far fetched, right? Every time some kid up in court blames a heavy metal or rap song for what they did, the shadow of the panic will rise again.
Janisse noted:
…this kind of a panic resurfaced in the UK in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal and in both cases the idea of organized child abuse always somehow gets lumped in with a supernatural conspiracy in a way that undermines the charges.
Interestingly, Paul Corupe noted:
…we tried to keep our focus on the pop culture aspects of the panic. For me, the book is more about the con artists, conspiracy theorists, and mentally unbalanced individuals that had this unprecedented impact on pop culture at the time.
I don’t personally believe that the panic was really waged by the church and hardline religious types, but more by the supposed born-again Satanic priests who built cults of personality around claims that they committed atrocities before turning to God.
He does not specify to whom he is referring but note that whoever they are were embraced by “many influential religious organizations.”
I find it amusing that Robert Dayton asked, “Do films on Satan still hold up due to their primal power or are they just plain silly?” The reply is that even though “Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Omen have not lost their power” it is “partially the primal urge to believe these stories due to centuries of being hammered over the head with them.” It is interesting because, for example, it was the Satanic Temple which turned the movie “The Witch” into a media stunt as I reported in Satanic Temple’s ritual cycles around the movie “The Witch”—a movie of which they approve which is about Christianity’s failure and the glories of Satanic human sacrifice.
Kier-La Janisse notes that “we are in a time of religious extremism” and yet, we are not only told that Satanists can do no wrong but that Muslims who commit terrorist acts in the name of Islam, Muhammad, the Qur’an/Koran and Allah are not Muslims: Islamic panic!
As so what their “favorite, made-up, ludicrous ‘fact’ that was perpetuated in that era?” Paul Corupe mentions, “the Smurfs getting kids acclimatized to death to Satanists consulting on horror movies.” Well, I am no expert on the Smurfs but there are a few relevant facts that are just that; simple facts: Gargamel’s cat’s name is Azrael which as per Jewish, Sikh and Islamic folklore is the name of the Angel of death (for that matter, in Cinderella the cat’s name is Lucifer). Also, Gargamel whose name also contains a reference to “god” as in Azra-el so Gargam-el with the “el” being a reference to elohim (Micha-el, Gabri-el, Ezeki-el, El-ijah, etc.) creates a being via Kabbalah magick by forming mud into a humanoid shape and giving it life. He creates a golem that eventually becomes the only female Smurf: Smurfette.
It may not be true that Satanists consulted on horror movies but directors and Satanists have claimed that Satanists consulted on horror movies so take it up with them.
In part, the answer to Robert Dayton’s question “Why did Satanic Panic end?” is “Nothing concrete ever came of all the accusations. The McMartin trial fizzled out, the West Memphis 3 case began, and rock musicians began to actively rally behind their cause…by the 1990s the case that the devil controlled popular culture started to unravel a bit. Of course, there are still people who believe this, though.”
With regards to the West Memphis Three murder case (WM3) it is a fact that Damien Echols all but wrote a step by step description as to how he became increasingly and purposefully more and more possessed, see Diary of a possessed man? Damien Echols WM3.
Now, we are told that rock musicians, as well as various celebrities, rallied behind the WM3. Of course, some of these personages are the very same ones who are constantly displaying Satanic imagery in their album covers, videos, gestures, lyrics, ritual practices, etc. and it is, in part, due to this that “there are still people who believe” that “the devil controlled popular culture.” For example, Lady Gaga nonchalant stated that when she gets inpatient with her staff she says, “I swear to Lucifer…,” Madonna once displayed her Lucifer ring during an interview with Arsenio Hall and these are merely two of endless examples of how, purposefully or not, they bring suspicion and accusations upon themselves. I say purposefully or not because by now, one can get a lot of attention by doing such things as publicity stunts.
You can find the book at this link: Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s
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