Father of Lies: The con at the heart of the Satanic Panic
We really should be able to laugh at the Satanic Panic by now.
After all, there’s a lot to laugh at. Middle America completely lost its mind at the idea that evil Satanists had infiltrated the very heart of American life. If you asked these people, who were otherwise (fairly) right-thinking and sensible to a fault, these maniacs were everywhere.
They were teaching in schools, they were babysitters, they were in the government, and most of all, they were in the entertainment industry. Doing their best to shape the minds of young people into worshipping the devil via Dungeons and Dragons. Not kidding about that either.
For a period of time, literally everything that nerds thought was cool, from tabletop role-playing games to heavy metal, from comic books to movies, was all the work of devil worshippers trying to brainwash the youth of America. To do what? Didn’t matter. How? Besides the point. For what end? Look, there’s no time to think, just ban this sick filth immediately!
As you can imagine, when the Satanic Panic truly set in, among the first things people infected by it went after was Halloween. Both the movie series but, quite incredibly enough, the holiday as well.
Like everything else about this nationwide lapse of rational thought, it sounds mental. As wholesome an American pastime as Halloween suddenly gets caught up in this firestorm of shrieking accusations. All stoked by so-called faith leaders and Conservative Christian activists, who laughed all the way to the bank as a direct result of causing so much hysteria and trauma.
An article published by the Roanoke Times in 1994, over a decade after the fire truly started, shows just how far this panic reached.
Why did Christian Conservatives propagate the Satanic Panic?
The article is actually pretty incisive, showing the precise reason why all these so-called activists were stoking the Satanic Panic without making any real accusations. It begins by showcasing these con artists’ lies. Letting them ramble about how unfair it is that the church and state are separate when Halloween, “obviously tied to the religion of witchcraft” according to conservative organization Citizens for Excellence in Educations, is forced on kids in schools.
Now, these charlatans know that witchcraft isn’t a religion. They also know that all these schools let kids opt out if they want. Rather than call them out for their lies and risk an expensive lawsuit, the article just mentions the fact that all these accusations are being spearheaded by a Christian film company called Jeremiah Films, who’ve just released a documentary “exposing” the truly sinister side of Halloween. The article just casually drops the fact that this video has sold 30,000 copies. At 20 dollars a pop.
The article also casually lets the reader know that this is the same company that sold 100,000 copies of a tape peddling scary-sounding hoaxes about then-President Bill Clinton. Y’know, just in case you were still wondering what these “moral activists” are really getting out of all this bollocks. Which is where the really depressing side comes in.
In the 1980s, millions of dollars were made out of peddling misinformation to people. Forty years later, that’s gone from a con targeting middle America to one targeting everyone on the planet.
The thing to be afraid of isn’t Satan or Satan worshippers, it’s the fact that the con at the heart of the Satanic Panic is still working, and it will continue to work for as long as it makes horrible people billions of dollars. So strap in, folks, we’re in for the long haul.