Loading summary
Transcript9 lines
- [00:00]
A
In the 1980s, America became convinced that the devil had moved into the suburbs. Daycares were called covens. Rock bands were labeled demonic recruiters. Dungeons and Dragons was leading to demon possession and violence. And police departments from coast to coast trained officers to look for pentagrams, candles and black T shirts as signs of ritual murder. This was the satanic panic, a nationwide moral hysteria that blurred the line between religion and justice, between fear and fact. People were imprisoned, ostracized, children were manipulated. And nowhere did that hysteria destroy more lives than a small town of West Memphis, Arkansas. In 1993, three 8 year old boys were found murdered in the woods. The community wanted answers and wanted them fast. And within weeks, Police had arrested three local teenagers. Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jesse McKessley Jr. They wore black. They listened to Metallica, they read Stephen King and Aleister Crowley. And that was enough. The state called it ritual sacrifice. The media called it evil incarnate. But what it really was was the final violent echoes of satanic panic. A witch hunt dressed in denim and handcuffs. Nearly 20 later, DNA evidence would expose what fear had blinded people to see. There was no cult, no ritual, no satanic conspiracy. Just a community so terrified of darkness and anyone who was different that it created its own evil. And here's the thing, that fear didn't vanish. It just went online. You can see the shadows of satanic panic In Pizzagate, in QAnon, in every whisper of child trafficking elites and hidden satanic networks. The same language, the same panic, only now it's spiritual. Spreads at the speed of WI fi instead of word of mouth. I'm Monty Mater and this is Flipping Tables, where we dig into the stories that shaped our faith, our fears, and the lies that we still tell ourselves about good and evil. Today we're going to talk about how the devil got framed and how the panic we thought we left behind never really went away. Hello and welcome or welcome back to Flipping Tables. I'm your host, Monty Mader. I am a metal enthusiast, to the surprise of no one, spooky lore lover. I also read Stephen King, I'm a coffee addict. And I am your resistance fairy goth mother. Welcome to Flipping Tables, where we do a little righteous deconstruction on Christian nationalism and cover topics like history, cults, biographies, scandals and war. Because learning the truth and being curious about all we can is our most valuable weapon in our greatest hope for the future, especially in the age of mis and disinformation. Just a couple of announcements before I jump in. First of all, happy Halloween. If My math is right and it should be the episode right before Halloween, which is why we're doing Satanic Panic. I do love October. Wish I got to celebrate a little more. Been working a lot. My first announcement is two days from now. My travel and true crime podcast highway to Hell is back. You can like review subscribe to that on Spotify. There are already 18 episodes there I'm hosting with my very good friend and the guitar player of my band, Andy Jones. And we'll be coming back every Friday. We will cover true crime and paranormal stories, firsthand encounters, and give travel recommendations for you dark tourism fans out there. I know for me I always look for I always look for a haunted or true crime tour when I visit new areas. But I'm also a foodie. I love a good cocktail so I love giving those recommendations at the end of the episode. Second for Patreon members. Again, thank you for your support. Just wanted to say that I was made aware that some of the tier items have not been getting where they need to be, one of them being the adventure cards for our top two tiers. The adventure cards are just my way to help you create moments of reminding yourself to breathe and live and and enjoy your community so that we have the energy to keep fighting and resisting in the climate we live in. We were using a pre selected card that was supposed to be auto shipped starting in August. None of those have been sent. I was made aware of this last week, so my team and I are meeting this week to get that sorted. We will get those cards out and make sure they are getting to you every month and that you're getting them on time. I'm very sorry about that and I'm very thankful to the person who reached out to me to let me know that those had not been sent. Otherwise I would have thought they were shipping as they're supposed to be. Also, the gift boxes are finally heading out this week. We've been dealing with shipping delays because of a manufacturing issue with our first batch of items, but it's fixed. We are off to the races. The second round of gift boxes that I'm already building will be shipped the first and second week of December. So you will we won't hit any Christmas delays. And lastly, as I record this on October 14th, I'm recovering from being so incredibly sick due to mostly overwork and not sleeping. So I've made the decision to slow down just a little bit, be more intentional with my time, a little more cautious with my health. I have a long fight ahead of me and I need to be prepared for that. So I may just reel it in just a little bit so that I'm not working 14 to 18 hours a day every day. I'm also committing to one day a week off of rest, which I've never done in my professional life. I promised my therapist that, so here we are. She's also made me commit to taking two vacations a year, even if it's a staycation. TBD on that. Still here, still fighting, Just prioritizing my health and my book a little bit more. Thinking about the long game and the long longevity of what I want to be able to do to support people in the country. But now let's talk about Satan. In the closing decades of the 20th century, America was swept by this chilling fear that a vast hidden network of Satanists was infiltrating communities, abusing children and performing ritual sacrifices. From small town daycares to Hollywood, from police departments to pulpits, the belief in organized satanic ritual abuse became a national obsession. What began as like scattered little rumors in the 1970s evolved into one of the most damaging moral panics in modern history. This was our, our real modern witch trial. And I don't use that phrase lightly, that's exactly what it was. The seeds of satanic panic were planted in the cultural soil of the 70s. And this was a decade marked by upheaval, mistrust and shifting values. The social revolutions of the 1960s had, had eroded traditional authority. And while crime rates were rising, faith in government was faltering. After Watergate in Vietnam, the rise of the occult in pop culture, the tarot cards, astrology, witchcraft fascinated some and frightened others. And we're going to get into the psychology of that later in the episode. An interesting trend that we're actually seeing now. We're seeing a resurgence in interest in the cult. We're seeing a lack of faith in government and traditional institutions. We're seeing pushback on traditional values. We're seeing an increase of interest in esoteric spirituality and psychedelics, particularly psilocybin. And I do plan on doing an episode around plant medicine and psilocybin. It's so super fascinating. And I'm also one of the people that you can't make an argument to me that alcohol should be legal and weed and mushrooms shouldn't be. That is just not. That's not a intellectually consistent argument to me and I have my own opinions on that. I will do an episode on that. But as someone that the impact of psilocybin and plant medicine has been hugely positive in my life. I'll save it for another time, but we will cover that. But there's a huge rising interest in these, what we call plant medicines in psychedelics, the same way that we saw in the counterculture revolution of the 60s. So it's interesting, interesting to see this major shift happening again in the 70s. Films like the Exorcist came out in 1973. The Omen came out in 1976, turned satanic evil into blockbuster entertainment, feeding fears of demonic presence in everyday life. And if you want to hear about the true story that inspired the Exorcist, I do a true crime and paranormal episode on that in highway to Hell. Evangelical Christianity energized by leaders like Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority. Yes, the same Jerry Falwell who was the segregationist who started LCA Academy in response to integration so rich white kids wouldn't have to go to school with black kids. The same Jerry Falwell who gave his first anti abortion speech five years after row passed, even though it had been supported overwhelmingly by the evangelical community, the Southern Baptist Convention and the Dallas Theological Seminary. Yes, that Jerry Falwell responded to these movies with alarm, preaching against secularism, feminism, because women are always tied to Satan, don't you know, obviously, and rock music as a gateway to the devil. And in fact, I learned this recently that the. The insult of being a cat lady is also loosely related to both the witch trials and this association with women and evil. Because during the witch trials, someone who owned a cat or women who were seen associating with cats, if you will, they considered cats to be their familiars and proof that they were engaged in witchcraft and deals with the devil, which I find hilarious. Meanwhile, a new therapeutic movement was gaining popularity in the 70s as well. Recovered memory therapy. Psychologists believe patients could repress traumatic memories that could later be recovered through hypnosis or guided visualization. This idea, largely untested, would soon merge with religious fears. To create this explosive formula, Psychology gave Satanism as its proof. Now, the spark that really ignited the true satanic panic came in the 1980 with the publication of Michelle Remembers by Dr. Lawrence Pazder, a. A Canadian psychiatrist and his patient, later wife, oh problems. Michelle Smith. The book claimed that through hypnosis, Smith had recovered childhood memories of being abused in elaborate satanic rituals, complete with human sacrifices, bloodletting and demonic ceremonies. Though investigators found zero corroborating evidence, the story captivated the public. Michelle Remembers was serialized in magazines, discussed on talk shows and treated as factual by many clergy. And therapists, Pastor and Smith became media fixtures advising law enforcement and prosecution on how to identify satanic cults. So this reminds me of how back in the witch trials, they would allow spectral evidence, which means if someone had a dream about you being a witch or a spirit or coming to haunt them, they could go to court and say they had this dream about you. And that was enough proof to convict you of being a witch. But the book Michelle remembers did more than tell a story. It created a template. It linked child abuse, repressed memory and satanic conspiracy into one big narrative presenting evil as this organized, omnipresent and hidden within ordinary communities. It offered a moral clarity that resonated with both Christian conservatives and ancient anxious parents. Following Michelle remembers, similar claims begin surfacing around across North America. Police seminars trained officers to spot quote occult crimes, while evangelical leaders toured the country warning of demonic infiltration. Anti cult activists such as Mike Wampke, author of the satanic seller in 1972, and Lauren Stratford, who authored Satan's Underground in 1988, claimed to be former satanists who had found Christ, though both were later exposed as drum roll please. Frauds. The growing influence of talk shows and sensational media amplified the fear. 2020, Geraldo Rivera and the Oprah Winfrey show air episodes featuring alleged survivors of ritual abuse, psychologists, end quote, cult experts. Rivera's 1988 special Devil Worship exposing Satan's underground reached an estimated 20 million viewers, one of the largest audiences in TV history. The broadcast presented rumor as evidence showing graveyards, candles and pentagrams while warning of a satanic army lurking in the shadows. This was the era when symbols became evident. Dungeons and dragons, heavy metal music and even cartoons were accused of corrupting youth with satanic messages. Even when I was growing up in the 90s, they were still rolling with Pokemon being demons and demonic infiltration. Parents were told to look for these pentagrams in their children's notebooks, backward lyrics in their records or their movies, and mysterious bruises, all as signs of ritual abuse. The first and most infamous major case erupted in 1983 in Manhattan Beach, California, when a mother named Judy Johnson accused a teacher at the McMartin Preschool School of molesting her two year old son. As her claims grew, alleging tunnels under the school, animal sacrifices and satanic rituals, police distributed letters to hundreds of parents urging them to question their children. Over months of intense and often leading interviews, many children began describing wild, fantastical abuse, flying witches, secret ceremonies and underground chambers. There was no physical evidence whatsoever to support these claims, yet prosecutors pursued seven teachers and administrators. The trial became the longest and most expensive in US history, spanning seven years and costing $15 million. And in the end, not a single person was convicted of any wrongdoing. The McMartin case revealed how suggestive interviewing techniques, repeating questions, rewarding right answers, using puppets or dolls, especially when interrogating children, could produce false testimony. Because a child's going to give you the answer they think you want to hear because they want to please you. And it also demonstrated how fear could override logic. Ordinary teachers were transformed into satanic masterminds. This reminds me of how there's been all this rhetoric in recent years of, you know, oh, the teachers are indoctrinating our kids. The teacher's trying to get your student to not shove his pencil up his nose. They are not spending all this time being propaganda masterminds. They're also not masterminds of satanic cabals. Once the McMartin case hit national headlines, similar allegations appeared everywhere, as they often do. In Mapleton, Minnesota, in 1984, the Jordan, Minnesota case accused over two dozen adults of belonging to a child abuse ring. Charges were dropped when the children recanted. The little Rascals daycare in North Carolina from 1989 to 1997 followed a similar pattern. Seven people were convicted, including daycare owners, for allegedly engaging in satanic rituals. All of the convictions were later overturned. And in Martinsville, Saskatchewan, in 1992, Canadian daycare workers were accused of being part of a satanic cult. After long trials and ruined reputations, the charge charges absolutely collapsed internationally. Moral panic spread to Britain, Australia, South Africa, where police even established an occult crimes unit. Across these cases, evidence was elusive, but there was a narrative that was consistent with hidden cults, secret tunnels, ritual abuse, and state denial. Because, unfortunately, when the United States catches a cold and we sneeze, the entire world gets sick. And the we, we seem to be able to spread these type of ideals in panic everywhere. We're seeing that now. Just a reminder from the witch trials episode that many of the accus that led to arrests and executions came from children because they're easy to manipulate. The satanic panic thrived in a culture primed for, quote, spiritual warfare during the Reagan era. Conservative Christian experience. Christianity experienced a political renaissance. Figures like Pat Robinson, Bob Larson, and Jack Chick blended theology with conspiracy, warning of Satan's infiltration through secularism and pop culture. Robertson's the 700 Club and Chick's comic tracks claimed that Halloween, yoga, and even the Catholic church were part of Satan's grand design. Yes, for those of You Catholics who are listening understand most evangelicals do not believe that you are Christians. They do. They believe that you are part of a satanic cabal as well. And when I was a kid, I was forced to hand out chick tracts to strangers, leave them in restaurants and in businesses. To help save people from the satanic infiltration, evangelical conferences featured seminars on recognizing demonic activity. And the line between theology and criminal investigation blurred. Police were trained to see pentagrams and candles as signs of ritual crime. There was also a resurgence in both the practice and interest in exorcisms. Meanwhile, occult experts such as Ted Gunderson, a former FBI agent, spread lurid tales of elite satanic networks allegedly involving politicians and celebrities. His lectures and pamphlets foreshadowed modern conspiracy theories like QAnon, showing how religious fear can merge with political paranoia. In the therapeutic community, the panic took a more subtle but equally destructive form. During the 1980s, many therapists began reporting clients who, quote, recovered memories from satanic ritual abuse in childhood. These sessions often involved hypnosis or guided visualization techniques, now known to create false memories. Clinicians such as Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, the authors of the Courage to heal from nineteen 1988, encourage survivors of trauma to trust their memories even if they had no clear recollection. The book's mantra is, if you were abused and your life shows the symptoms you were blurred the lines between evidence and belief. Countless individuals came to believe that they had survived horrific rituals, while some parents were accused and estranged from their families. Lawsuits later revealed that many of these memories had been implanted unintentionally through suggestion. And often. It does seem that some of these therapists were intentionally trying to plant these memories. Psychologists like Elizabeth Loftus began challenging these practices, demonstrating how malleable memory could be. Her research on false memories helped expose how satanic panic distorted both therapy and justice. Also, television played a central role in cementing public hysteria. In this environment, reason skepticism had little chance. We see this now. What? What gets more clicks, more of a response is going to be generated. It's going to be spread. It's going to be believed. Reasonable questioning. Reasonable skepticism is often met with anger. Quite frankly, police were searching for non existent ritual sites. Parents were interrogating children. Churches were holding exorcisms. By the early 1990s, 12,000 unverified cases of ritual abuse had been reported to authorities in the United States alone. The panic fed on its own momentum. Every claim of denial was framed as proof of the conspiracy's reach. By the mid-1990s, cracks in the satanic panic began to show. Investigations found no physical evidence of alleged vast cults, no ritual sites, no bodies, no networks. Scholars such as Jeffrey Victor, who authored satanic panic, the creation of a contemporary legend, in 1993, and Kenneth Lanning, an FBI expert on ritual crime, concluded that while isolated crimes had used occult imagery, there was no organized satanic network. Legal appeals overturned many convictions that were based on faulty testimony or coercive questioning. The media, which had once fueled the hysteria, began publishing me a culpa, saying, oops, sorry we messed up. None of this was true. Frontline in 60 Minutes ran exposes revealing the lack of evidence and the harm done to innocent families. By the late 1990s, the panic had largely subsided, but the legacy remained in broken lives, discredited professionals, and a lasting mistrust of both therapy and the justice system. In some cases, even without evidence, anti satanic laws were passed in places like Idaho, as reviewed here by KTVB, Idaho's local Channel 7 news.
- [18:38]
B
All right, well, Halloween and its connection to the unholy goes back almost as long as the holiday itself. After all, it began Halloween, that is, as a 9th century Gaelic festival, a pagan religious celebration. But it wasn't long before Halloween became inundated with ghosts and ghouls and demons. And pretty soon, pagan became something to do with Satan. Which brings us to this. Idaho has a satanic law in its books. Well, it's more of an anti satanic ritual law. But back in the fall of 1989, there was a baby girl found dead near the town of Rupert. The baby was found burned inside a metal box. Almost immediately, a rumor began to spread. The little girl, unidentified and known as baby X, was killed and mutilated as part of a ritual by a local satanic cult. The rumor said, think black robed figures sacrificing animals and children. It was the 80s, right? And the country was in the middle of the satanic panic. And soon, county prosecutors and local police got involved. So did psychologists and Christian groups claiming demonic worship was all the rage in southern Idaho. The unsolved death of baby x became such a big deal, the Idaho legislature passed a law the following session in 1990. This is what it said. It specifically outlawed the ritualized abuse of child, of any child or any warm blooded animal or human being. It even detailed how you can't force someone to drink or eat blood, bones, body parts, that kind of stuff. Nor can you put a living kid in a coffin or a grave with a dead body. They went to very specific details with this law. It was well documented at the time, this law became a law because of what was believed to have happened to Baby X. Except what happened to Baby X wasn't ritualistic at all. Even at the time she was discovered, there was speculation she died of pneumonia, but nobody wanted to hear that, and the pneumonia was proven with an autopsy.
- [20:30]
A
The human toll of satanic panic was immense. Parents were imprisoned on fabricated charges, children were traumatized by repeated interrogations, therapists lost credibility and communities fractured. Careers and reputations were destroyed by rumor and hysteria and once especially heart One especially heartbreaking example of this is the West Memphis Three, which I'm going to highlight here today. Before I do, I'm going to take my first of two mid show sponsor breaks. If you'd like to hear these episodes a week early and ad free, you can sign up on my patreon@patreon.com Monty Mater there's been a lot of things happening in 2025 that I never thought I would see in the US the Supreme Court ruling people can be detained for looking Latina or speaking Spanish, people being drafted, dragged off by masked officers out of courthouses where they attended their legal immigration hearings, ZIP tied US children during a raid of a residential building inhabited by mostly black US citizens, workers being zip tied and thrown into the back of U Hauls with no charge and over 1,000 immigrants going missing without a trace or accountability. And now Ground News is reporting that due to abuse, denied food and medication, many legal immigrants are dropping their fight to remain in the US even though they are here legally, either as legal immigrants or asylum seekers and refugees, that they are actively going through the immigration system and being sent out to poverty and gang violence in countries many of them have never lived in since they were children simply to escape the mistreatment and unending detention. It's horrific. And the urge to use privilege to look away, to not invest and to not lean in is strong some days. But that's what it is, the privilege that we have as and it's an obligation for us to fight for the human rights of others. When it's uncomfortable, when it's exhausting, when it's overwhelming, we cannot look away. But we also can't let them use the barrage of bad news to paralyze us. The purpose of this is to overwhelm us. This is the reason I use Ground News. They filter and assemble tens of thousands of articles from thousands of sources all together. Where you can find the accuracy of the information, you can see the bias of each source, and you can see who owns each media platform. It allows me to stay informed, stand up against the human rights violations in the US without getting caught up in doom, scroll paralysis, or choosing to take my ball and go home because it's too much. I highly recommend finding a way to be intentional about your information and I think Ground News is a great way to do it. You can get 40% off their vantage plan, which comes to about $5 a month by subscribing to groundnews.com tables that's ground news.com tables On May of 1993, three 8 year old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Stevie Branch failed to return home after school. The next day their bodies were discovered in a drainage ditch in a forested area known as Robin Hood Hills, not far from the town. The children were naked, hog tied and had been brutally beaten and mutilated. Christopher Byers genitals had been cut and showed signs of assault in the shock, the small, conservative, deeply religious community was tremendous. Of course it would be with no clear suspects. Rumors quickly circulated that the murders were part of a satanic ritual killing. Local police, apparently seizing on the occult rumors, assigned the case number number 666. A symbolic choice obviously, and impressed statements indicated they were investigating cult activity from very early on in the case. In the weeks that followed, a neighbor named Vicki Hutchison told police she suspected a cult involvement. She claimed that her then 17 year old neighbor Jesse Misskelley Jr. Sometimes babysat her children and offered that he had told her about Damien Echols, a teenager with an interest in heavy metal battle, the occult and non conformist cultural markers. Oh the horror. And by the way, this information coming from Ms. Kelly Jr. Was known. He was known to have an intellectual disability and a lower than average iq. Hutchison said she would play detective and arranged a meeting through Ms. Kelly again, this intellectually challenged 17 year old with Damien Echols. She later claimed to have attended a supposed s bat or witches gathering in the woods where people were painted and naked, chanting and engaging in sexual behavior. More on that later. These allegations, sensational, vague, inconsistent, were eagerly taken up by local law enforcement who treated them as leads rather than red flags. Witness accounts changed repeatedly. Hutchison's story in particular would later be recanted. In 2003, she would admit she lied to the police. Under pressure from the beginning, the investigation was shaped by confirmation bias, occult framing and narrative pressure to produce a culprit. Officials in West Memphis and neighboring jurisdictions were under pressure to solve a gruesome crime in a community demanding vengeance. Vengeance and the satanic panic climate gave them a ready template. Occult murder by outsiders or outsiders like which means strange kids, the weirdos or people having weird interests. As the investigation proceeded, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jesse Misskelley Jr. Became suspects. Their friendship iconoclastic appearance which just means defying traditional norms. Interest in heavy metal music and Echo's reported statements about darkness made them targets in a community primed to see evil in the unconventional Ms. Kelly, perhaps the weakest in terms of mental resilience. Again, this is a almost special needs known to have a learning disability. 17 year old kid was questioned heavily after prolonged interrogations, much of it unrecorded. He signed a confession in which he described a scenario in which he, Echols and Baldwin participated in the murders including sexual acts, mutilation and tying up the boy choice. His initial statements were riddled with contradictions. He claimed the events happened in daylight but the murders happened at night. He described rope binding while the victims were tied by the shoelaces. Etc all the details were wrong and he later recanted claiming his confession was coerced which I believe after these long unrecorded interrogations with a minor and that police had coached him. Still, the confession became central in the prosecution of all three boys. No physical evidence directly linked any of the defendants to the murders. DNA testing of the crime scene failed to match any of the three boys. During the trial, the prosecution leaned heavily on circumstantial evidence, symbolic association and community prejudice. The fact that Damien Echols, the primary target, wore black red occult literature and had been described in social worker notes as saying he might have be he might become another Charles Manson helped build the narrative of dangerous darkness. Weakness, an infamous line from the prosecutor's closing argument reveals the mindset he told jurors. While most people may not believe this satanic stuff, what matters most is what these defendants believe. Religion gives people who want to do evil a reason to do what they are doing. Fascinating coming from a Christian community who's persecuting people that are different with no evidence whatsoever. This frame belief and appearance using appearance as motive, not evidence. Evidence convicted all three. Damien Echols at the age of 19 was sentenced to death. Jason Baldwin, who was 16 at the time, and Jesse Misskelley Jr. 17 received life in prison or comparable sentences. Judge David Burnett presided and later decisions and appeals would criticize his handling of the trials and his refusal to grant a new trial when new evidence emerged. It was Burnett who denied retrial requests in 2008, calling the new DNA DNA evidence that ruled them out that did not match. Inconclusive. The initial verdict stood for many years despite persistent doubts, documentarians, activists and new forensic tests. The West Memphis three case is often held up as one of the clearest examples of how satanic panic became interwoven with law enforcement overreach and local pressure as well as honestly, let's be real religious persecution. Most Satanists are atheists who believe in free will and Satan is. Is more of a mascot, a representation of that free will and choosing to take responsibility of your own universe. It's religious persecution from a lot of Christians in many ways. In many ways, the local sheriff and police acted more as crusaders than neutral investigators. For example, occult narratives were the default lens from early on. Authorities treated unusual clues. Again, black clothing, reading occult books, statements about darkness. Not as red flags for BIA or Wow, this story sounds crazy coming from this woman who claims she was out at a naked witch gathering. But is proof of ritual motivation. They embrace the narrative of cult crime rather than using alternative theories or just any objective evidence. Number two, the selective use of witnesses and rumors. Hutchison again, the woman who attended the naked witch gathering. Her occult stories, the changing statements of her son. Unverified claims were elevated in importance while anything refuting these claims was not used because it did not fuel the narrative. Number three, interrogation, pressure and false confessions. Again, Ms. Kelly's confession shows classic signs of coercion. Long interrogation. He was a minor promise of reward or relief if he would sign the confession. Incremental compliance and his mental vulnerability being exploited. False confession became the lynchpin of the prosecution. And before really diving into true crime, I really thought I was like false confessions can't really be that common. Common. It is shocking how common this is. How often people under pressure of long interrogations are not being given food or being in a brightly lit room for hours on end. Will agree to false confessions in an effort to get out of the room. Or they're told they'll be released. Or they're told we won't press charges if you sign this. I have been shocked in my just my research and my learning of true crime incidences, how common this actually is. Fourth, they had tunnel vision and confirmation bias. Once echols, Baldwin and Ms. Kelly became suspects, investigators ignored exculpatory leads or alternative suspects. For instance, ignoring the possibility that John Mark Byers, the stepfather of one of the victims, might bear scrutiny. I'll talk about that in a minute. Number five, they failed to preserve, record or transparently examine evidence. Key interviews were not recorded. Physical evidence was mishandled. Or lost. For example, blood samples from a Bojangles restaurant that were connected to suspects just turned up missing. The police did not tape any of the interrogations. And lastly, community pressure and local justice imperatives in West Memphis, public anger demanded swift justice. And I don't blame local people for this. If three small children are brutally murdered, of course you want answers, but it's the job of local law enforcement to remain objective. And local law enforcement instead, in this case, felt compelled to produce a conviction rather than to endure any outrage or pushback from the community if it took them longer to solve the occult. Framing was a cop out, and it gave emotional justification to a forceful prosecution. So, in sum, the case was not investigated in a neutral courtroom of evidence. It was prosecuted as a moral crusade and a convenient way to demonize the weird kids. And I live in Tennessee, so Memphis is right across the river from West Memphis. Memphis and the Bible Belt is really common for this. And if you look at the comments on my Instagram, based on how I dress and I wear dark makeup a lot, I have a nose ring, you see this prejudice still exist. Someone's jewelry or hair color or dark makeup should not create this visceral response in people, but it does. And as the years passed for the West Memphis Three, the convictions drew increasing scrutiny. In 1996, the Arkansas Supreme Court unanimously upheld the initial verdict verdicts, rejecting their appeals. But at the same time, also in 1996, HBO released a documentary called Paradise Lost, the Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. The film portrayed West Memphis as consumed by occult panic and the convictions as tainted. It launched a grassroots movement that led to free The West Memphis Three. In 2002, a journalist, Mara Leverett, published Devil's Knot, the True Story of the West Memphis Three, detailing investigative flaws, laws, prosecutorial omissions, and possible alternative suspects. By 2003, Hutchison, like the the person who spearheaded identifying these three boys as the murderers, recanted her occult story under media pressure, admitting outright she had lied to police. In 2007, DNA testing of the crime scene hair fibers failed to match the three convicted men. So this, this was the appeal that that judge refused to acknowledge. DNA excluded them. But one hair matched Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of one of the victims, and his associate, David Jacoby, although the evidence was not conclusive. But neither Terry Hobbs or David Jacoby was ever followed up on. It still has not been. Still has not been followed up on, even though the hair matched him, a hair that Terry Hobbs had no reason to interact with. These three young boys never has been followed up them. In 2010, the Arkansas Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion, ordered that new testing be allowed. Finally, rather than retry the prosecutors, they negotiated a controversial Alford plea. In August of 2011, echoes Baldwin and Ms. Kelly pleaded guilty for time served, which was 18 years and 78 days. Legally, they would remain convicted. So it stays on the conviction record for West Memphis and for Arkansas. But they are also under an Alford plea, simultaneously allowed to maintain their innocence. It's a very weird situation. My opinion on it is that what it does is it allows for the state to not acknowledge culpability, to not acknowledge they were wrong, to not lose the convictions on their record, and it protects them from lawsuits. The judge accepted the plea, released them and imposed a 10 year suspended sentence. Because of the plea, the legal record was not overturned, but the men were freed. I want to be so clear that there was no, no evidence that actually linked them to the crime. DNA evidence ruled them out and they still are not fully exonerated. Many supporters, as they should be, continue to push for full exoneration. The West Memphis Three is now a paradigm example of how moral panic, religious fear and flawed investigative zeal can combine to produce a profound miscarriage of justice. 20 years in prison. Prison for something you had literally nothing to do with because of your taste in music and clothes. Now, some of the lessons from the West Memphis Three include the like. It gives us an example of the Satanic Panic's continued power. This case showed how the belief in the occult evil can overshadow empirical inquiry. The local sheriff and police use a cult framing as a persuasive tool while overshadowing the lack of physical evidence. It was a copy of out to not do Their Damn Job. And there's the danger of symbolic evidence in this case. What the defendants wore, what they listened to reading Alistair Crowley and Stephen King and the rumors about their personalities were used as evidence rather than corroborated fact. Again, spectral evidence from the witch trials. Then there's the vulnerability of mentally marginal suspects. Ms. Kelly's confession was extracted from someone intellectually vulnerable with little capacity to resist interrogation pressure, who was also a minor. It's so. That's so wrong. It's so. There's no excuse for that. Then there's the role of media and cultural pressure. Documentaries, celebrity support and public advocacy were what led to pushing this case into re examination. Without Paradise Lost, that 1996 documentary, and the fundraising and investigative pressure from journalists, journalists, this case might have stayed closed. Remember that Damien Echols was on death row for something that he never he didn't have anything to do with. And then there's the Alfred please versus full exoneration. Their release was a legal compromise. They remain convicted in the eyes of the law, which again, some see as a barrier to full disclosure. And I have to agree, this is, this is a way for the state to save face, to not admit that they were wrong, to not hold hold both judges and law enforcement culpable. And also, why is Hutchison not being prosecuted for a false report? You put three men in jail because. Because you lied. Because it why you. There was no pressure, no risk to you, to not say, I don't know anything about this crime, but she chose to do it anyway. And before we move into how the Satanic panic mindset has translated into the modern era era, why do certain people show interest in the cult? Dark imagery, literature and others have this visceral, often violent reaction to these same people? Well, there's a reason for that. From the psychological perspective, fascination with darkness and the occult is rare, rarely about evil. It's about meaning. And as someone who Even though I grew up in Christian fundamentalism and very strict religious programming, I've always had a fascination with darkness, with the occult, just curiosity about it. And across history, humans have turned to the supernatural to make sense of suffering, mortality, and the unknown. Where traditional religion offers light, the occult instead turns and peers into the shadow, confronting issues like death, things that are taboo, mystery head on. It's a lot of questions about the unknown, a lot of questions about why. Modern psychology describes this attraction to the to the occult, to the dark, to the esoteric, to the unknown, as part of what Carl Jung called shadow integration, the process of facing one's darker emotions and impulses instead of repressing them. People drawn to the occult or the gothic or the dark often describe it not as worship of darkness, but the acknowledgment of it, a way to balance light and shadow within self. Because you can pretend that darkness isn't there, but it is. It's confronting a topics that a lot of people have a lot of discomfort with and so choose to ignore entirely. Those who explore dark aesthetics through art, music, spirituality frequently share a high degree of openness to experience, which is a big five personality trait linked to creativity, curiosity, and emotional intensity. People high in openness tend to seek out new ideas and experiences and aesthetics. They like to try new things, ask questions. They want to know how something works. They have vivid imaginations and fascinations with art, music, and philosophy. They value inner experience and authenticity over convention and tradition. This is how they get put into the category of other. They don't feel the need to adhere to tradition for tradition's sake. They tend to think abstractly and enjoy exploring the symbolic, the spiritual, or the surreal. Psychologists often split this trait of openness into two dimensions. There's openness in the aesthetic and imaginative sense, which is a preference for novelty fantasy art, which is why there's. There seem there's a big overlap in. In people who are interested in, say, Tarot or ancient religion and people who will read fantasy books. And the second category is intellect, which is the cognitive analytical openness. This is curiosity about ideas, patterns and systems. And. And again, taking from my own experience, I have always experienced both of these. I've always had a preference for, like, Lord of the Rings, my favorite book. Tolkien's, my favorite author in the fiction realm my entire life. And I've always had an interest in fantasy and novelty and weird art and darkness and understanding how things work. On the flip side, I've always wanted to know how things work. Why do they work that way? Why do we believe this? Why is this the tradition? I am one of those annoying why askers, and I have been my entire life, which is. Curiosity is so important to me. Me, because I've learned in my life, and some of this due to having a very dark childhood, I have learned that you can pretend that everything is great on the surface and everything is perfect and wonderful, but if you don't choose to face pain or grief or the darkness, at some point it turns and it faces you. You can't lie and pretend it's not there. Now, the other four of the big five personality traits are conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. High openness. Individuals are often drawn to these dark or unconventional art, literature, spirituality, not because they seek chaos, but because they're comfortable with ambiguity, with a lack of certainty, and they want to understand the full emotional spectrum of life. This is something I think is so beautiful, and I see this a lot in the metal community. Being a part of the metal community is that they are okay with not having all the answers. They do not have a sense of fear around uncertainty, and vice versa. Being growing up in very strict religious communities, there is this demand and this need to have absolute certainty. This is 100% right 100% of the time. And if you defy me, you're defying God. You can't ask any questions. That, to me, is much more dangerous than people in these artistic Communities saying, I don't understand everything and I'm okay with the unknown known. Research on metal music fans, for example, shows that they often use the genre not to indulge aggression, but to process anger, anxiety and trauma safely. In a 2015 University of Queensland study found that listening to metal music regulated emotion and decreased hostility rather than increasing it. It's a way to process it healthfully. And as someone who has attended hundreds of concerts, concerts in every genre, I can tell you, even including, you know, mosh pits and, and death walls and all of the things that happen in metal music, I have seen very few fights break out at a metal show. People, for the most part, very conscious, even in a mosh pit where things can get rough and you enter the mosh pit knowing that. But if someone falls, people stop, they pick them up, they make sure they're okay. They go back to business as usual. And if someone is getting rowdy, typically an old head metal listener will come over, over and correct them, and then everybody goes back to business as usual. The concerts that I have seen, the most egregious behavior and the most violence and the most fighting are country music concerts by far. People urinating on each other, fighting, knocking each other's teeth out. Almost every country concert I've ever been to has been a fight. And it's funny because the perception is that it would be the opposite. I've not found that to be the case. That doesn't mean that those are 100% true, 100% of the time. Time. But there's a pattern, and it's linked to research that metal music actually helps people process anger, angst and anxiety safely so that they're not taking that hostility out on others. Also, a lot of people within the metal music community know what it's like to be other. They know what it's like to be on the outlier. They know what it's like to be ridiculed or to not feel a sense of belonging. So they value their community that much more. More because it's a place that's home for them. Similarly, the allure of, like, gothic literature, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Edgar Allan Poe's the Raven, Stephen King lies in its confrontation with the parts of life we'd rather avoid. Mortality, loss, darkness, moral ambiguity, and reading or creating within these worlds offers catharsis and control over themes that otherwise feel really chaotic or unknown. Own. And I learned this the hard way when my dad passed away in 2016. I didn't. I had never known or acknowledged how uncomfortable people Are, especially in religious communities with talking about death and grief, they will very quickly pivot to everything happens for a reason. It's all for God's good. They will not sit with you in the depths and the pain of that conversation because it is too uncomfortable for. For them. And it is one of the reasons, I think they. Other people who are interested in. In darker topics, because they don't want to face it, they don't want to talk about it. And America, especially as a culture, do not handle grief well. We have this idea of it's uncomfortable, we don't want to sit in it. You should move on. What do you mean? It's been a couple months. Why are you still crying? And it's very hard for people going through grief in America to have a sense of community because other Americans don't want to talk about it. We don't have a rich kind of honoring history around death the way we see in, say, Eastern cultures that, that are just really supportive and have really amazing ancient practices around death. We don't have any of that. And so there's this fear of anything related to darkness. Oh, skulls are bad. And it's. It's this. It's this desire to create a world that is all light and fruits and bubbles and everything is in its box and everything is understood and everything is absolute, resolute because it creates a sense of control. In the occult, in modern practice, often represents an act of personal empowerment, especially for people marginalized by conventional religion or culture, people who have deconstructed from fundamentalist religions as well. In rejecting rigid dogma practice, practitioners of witchcraft, tarot, ceremonial magic, plant medicine reclaim agency over their own spirituality. It's a way for them to take ownership over their own faith. It's not about summoning demons. It's more about summoning autonomy, the right to define your own meaning in a world that often denies you that power. Put simply, fascination with the dark is not inherently destructive. In fact, there's a lot of research that shows that it's an extremely healthy coping mechanism, particularly for people who have been ostracized, bullies, traumatized or experiencing grief. It's often the mind's way of wrestling with complexity, of finding beauty in what others fear, turning pain into something creative. Some of the best art that has ever been created in the history of humanity comes from pain. It comes from taking this pain, turning it into art. And it also takes pain and trauma and darkness, the unknown and grief, turning it into something that you can sit with and become sacred. Now the flip side While some are drawn to darkness. Again, I, I have, as someone who was a white middle of nowhere in Wyoming, Christian fundamentalist, always attracted to this. It always made sense to me. And I do think that's in part of growing up in a very painful childhood situation with lots of childhood abuse while my family put on this front of being the perfect Christian family and everything is great and wonderful and we have all the answers to every question. My home life was hell. I knew the truth. I knew that there was darkness. I knew that things didn't make sense. Even if I couldn't articulate it.
- [47:34]
C
It.
- [47:34]
A
I think that that, like, for me, created a lot of the interest. But while some like me are drawn to darkness and these questions and we want to engage with it, there are others, many of whom I know and are friends I grew up with, recoil from that interest sometimes out of superstition, but not just out of superstition. The fear and prejudice against people who wear black or look alternative. You know, you can hear someone screaming, blue haired liberal in the distance, or they lash out at people who explore or occult ideas stems from deep psychological and cultural roots. Social psychology identifies in group and out group bias as one of the most powerful human instincts. This is an evolutionary thing. This is, this is lizard brain. We are wired to trust what looks familiar and to distrust what looks different. Because historically survival depended on recognizing one's own tribe. It's, it's been part of boundaries, cultural differences war. When someone dresses in a way that rejects social norms or lives in a way that rejects social norms, whether through gothic fashion, piercing or black clothing, it triggers a very primal discomfort that most people have not faced or dealt with. They're not like us, therefore that means they are bad or dangerous. It is a very primal, very low level way of thinking. Thinking. It's, it's also irrational. It is a primal instinct that does not match reality. This reaction intensifies in times of social stress. During moral panic, such as the satanic panic, unconventional youth subcultures became scapegoats for broader fears about declining morality, raising crime, changing family structures. Do you hear like the, the common thread here in what we're experiencing now? There's a lot of things, things that are really out of control. So over the past few years, what have we heard? Oh, America's going to hell in a handbasket. Oh, all these things are happening because we accepted gay rights. It's trans people's fault. And there's still the demonization around people who listen to metal or wear black or again, even the phrase, oh, it's some blue haired liberal. Why do all liberals have nose rings? It is the exact same mentality that has an evolutionary and a science, psycho psychological base. Psychologists call this scapegoating theory, blaming an identifiable other. Again, they are different than me, therefore they're bad or dangerous for collective anxiety. It is this fear that is the basis of white supremacy. White supremacy is based in fear and insecurity because nothing shows that you are more convinced of your own mediocrity than you have to opinion oppress everyone else because them having equal footing with you feels like oppression. White supremacy is based on scapegoating. You are other, therefore you are bad. And since I have all the answers from God, this is where the Christian nationalism comes in. If you defy me, you're defying God, therefore I am justified in enacting violence against you. In conservative religious settings, this instinct is merged with theology. Anything outside the familiar symbols of light and purity or the names of God you use becomes equated with evil. Color psychology plays a role across cultures. Black has long been associated with mourning, mystery, power, also with death and rebellion. When worn as a fashion statement, it communicates independence and self control to those invested in social conformity. Where their value is in fitting into a social norm, whether that's religious or otherwise, is very threatening. When people who, who are, have an allegiance to social conformity encounter someone who is very social express, socially expressive, whether that's their appearance, it's how they talk, it's how they choose to live their life, it is very threatening to them. It will trigger them in a big way. One of the ways you can see this dialogue in social media today is this, this, this huge reaction to women who don't want to get married or have children. They're not doing anything wrong. Wrong, they're not harming anyone. Often these women are also very expressive or they're very career oriented. They're not doing anything wrong. They're defying a social norm. And it triggers violently both men and women. These women are seen as a threat. This trend is seen as a threat. We're seeing the abortion bans, trying to make abortion punishable by the death penalty in South Carolina, trying to make abortion across the board illegal by challenging the safety of MIF oppressed stone, which is a very, very safe FDA approved drug. Like very minor side effects, very rare side effects, all of which are easily treatable. It is this reaction to how dare you not follow the social norm? How dare you? It's the same way they demonized hippies and people that engaged in the countercultural revolution. How dare you break from tradition. The fear isn't of the color black itself. It's this fear of not having the social conformity. It's this fear of other. All of this is based in fear. Fear. It's what black represents. Non conformity, introspection, and the refusal to perform cheerfulness. How often do we see this too? Oh, you look so sad. You should smile more. You must perform the social role I have created for you. Otherwise you are a threat to me. We see this in colonialization as well. As Europe began to colonize the rest of the world, Jesus became. Became white. I mean, this was extremely exaggerated. When the Nazis rose to power, white became associated with purity and righteousness. Black and brown became associated with what was called hereditary heathenism, meaning that you inherited heathenism based on the color of your skin. Therefore, white people not only had the right but the moral duty to conquer these, quote, savages, take them over to convert them to Christianity, which was just an excuse. Again, this is like white supremacy. Colonialization is based in fear and insecurity. It's a fear of other. Again, this very primal evolutionary instinct that people haven't worked through, that you are other, therefore you are bad or dangerous to me. And religious frameworks amplify these fears. In many Western traditions, dualist morality, the division of good versus evil, has shaped centuries of thinking. Anything that falls outside of the light of orthodoxy is coded as suspect. The word occult literally means hidden. But in Christian influence societies, hidden knowledge became conflated with forbidden knowledge. Forbidden knowledge became sin. And we saw throughout the Inquisition what happened to people who engaged in anything outside of the church to show this demonization and the degradation of others. Here's a clip of Joel Webbin, a modern alive right now preacher with a podcast. Another man who should not have a mic talking about how joining ICE can make you God's chosen avengers to get rid dangers of immigration. And his co host adds another bonus.
- [54:41]
C
You can listen for pack foreigners into the back of a van to be kicked out of the country. That is a godly glorious endeavor. You'll get to go to Portland or Chicago and also get to throw libs to the ground too. I've seen some of those videos.
- [54:57]
A
Purple hair. That is also a God glorifying endeavor.
- [55:00]
C
Either you send them out, sending them to jail, people who hate you, they hate the country they're trying to destroy. Destroy it. These are. These are criminals. They are, they are. It's treason. These are traitors.
- [55:11]
A
See what they did there immigrants, other liberals. The co host says, oh, you have the benefit of knocking some blue haired liberals to the ground. Blue hair doesn't hurt anybody. It doesn't, it's not unsafe, it doesn't cause damage. It's someone wanting to have it's, it's, it's a freaking hair color. They're not like me, therefore they're bad. Add religion on top of it, add gender roles, traditional societal structure, patriarchal structure doesn't benefit, is not good. It historically has never worked in the long term, but we keep repeating it because people are so afraid of changing that structure and what a different structure would look like when in reality an equitable society would benefit both men and women. Women. But again, religion says since God is on my side, if you oppose me, you oppose God and therefore I am justified in using violence against you. Joel, by the way, also believes that women shouldn't be in public life. They shouldn't be able to speak in public, they shouldn't receive higher education, they shouldn't hold public office or be in leadership roles over a man whatsoever. All while he demonizes Islam and the Taliban, even though so what he preaches about women is exactly what the Taliban does anyways. There's also a sociological layer to this other ring. So this, this idea of certain people being drawn to darkness and self expression and, and quote weird and people being repulsed by it. People who express darkness artistically expose a truth that others repress. And it's the truth that pain and grief and doubt are universal. Universal. For those who avoid this confrontation, they want security and stability and all the answers. That visibility, that acknowledgement that pain and grief and doubt are universal and it will face all of us, that all of us face death someday feels very threatening to them. It challenges the illusion of moral or emotional control because this fear of other is all about control. And the idea of control is many people's comfort blanket. In short, society's fear of dark aesthetics and the occult is less about Satan. Satan has nothing to do with this and more about psychological projection. What we fear in others is often mirrored in what we repress in ourselves. That's why people that are so expressive really make people who do not express themselves or who have an allegiance to social conformity really uncomfortable. Carl Jung wrote, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it faith. Fate, the alternative kid in black eyeliner, the metal fan screaming catharsis into a microphone, and the person reading tarot cards in candlelight, each in their own way is doing What a lot of us are afraid to do. Looking at the shadow and the unknown and darkness in the eye and trying to learn from it, daring to speak to you. So in summary, interest in the occult and the dark arts stems from curiosity, creativity and a desire for control or healing through exploring the taboo and the shadow aspects of the psyche. Fear of those same interests arises from evolutionary tribalism, religious moral dualism and social anxieties projected onto non conformity. One group seeks understanding through darkness. The other fears that by doing so the darkness might spread or that they may lose control of their light filled room. But both are responding to the same truth, that the unknown inside us is far scarier, freer than anything dressed in black. Satanic panic was an exaggerated collective reaction from the latter. Sociologists later described it as collective delusion, a social contagion born from fear, authority and faith colliding in a moment of cultural anxiety. Yet the panic's DNA survives its structures. You know, we, we see hidden evil elites, child trafficking rings, denial by authorities has reemerged and modern conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and Cuban qanon. As historian Stuart Vees noted, the Satanic panic never really ended. It just went online. And before we move on to that, let's take our second of two mid show sponsor breaks. The Satanic panic reveals how quickly societies can confuse belief with truth. And the Satanic panic of the 1980s and early 90s faded from the front pages. But it didn't die, it just evolved. It had a rebrand if you will. The names change, the technology advanced, but the architecture of paranoia, secret cabals, hidden evil, endangered children, a pedophilia ring being ran out of pizza shop while we hide the Epstein list remained intact. What began in therapy rooms and church basements would find new life in message boards and social media. Reborn for the digital age in the 1990s, as the panic lost momentum in the courtrooms, it migrated into culture. The mid-90s saw a public reckoning. Frontline's 1995 documentary the Search for Satan dismantled many of the rituals abuse claims, while the FBI's Kenneth Lanning P published his landmark report concluding that there was no evidence at all of organized satanic networks. But by then the the myth has splintered into folklore. Evangelical ministries, ever the victim, continued to warn of Satanic's infiltration in schools, rock music, Hollywood meanwhile, talk radio, especially programs like Art Bell's coast to coast am gave oxygen to stories of cults, government, mind control and secret ritual rituals. At the same time, the early Internet became a new frontier for Rumor and community bulletin boards like Usenet and AOL forums hosted survivor groups and conspiracy enthusiasts who could now connect directly without gatekeepers. The boundaries between credible information and speculation collapsed. The Satanic panic central narrative Innocent children endangered by hidden elites proved remarkably portable. We see that right now. In the early 2000s the fear took shape in therapy. Sessions migrated to documentaries, blogs, meshes boards and the satanic elite narrative fused with anti globalist and political conspiracies. Films like Zeitgeist that came out in 2007. Books by figures such as David Ike wove new myths. Satanic cults morphed into reptilian overlords or globalists manipulating finance. In the media, the core remained the same. It's the battle between good and evil hidden beneath the surface of modern life. At the same time, moral panics adapted to new cultural anxieties. Instead of daycares, attention shifted to Hollywood Pop stars, the music industry. Artists from Madonna to Lady Gaga were accused of hiding sing satanic symbols in their performance. They're part of the Illuminati conservative media. Talk shows and YouTube channels revive the panic's visual vocabulary. Pentagrams, one eye symbols, hidden messaging reinforcing the idea that the entertainment world was a satanic front. After 911 this moral panic fused with fear of government deceit. Now there's some credence here, right? We still don't know what happened with Trade Center 7 if you haven't looked into that. But we know that the government in the past and governments have all always engaged in deception in false flag operations. So there's some truth here. I mean Watergate, even what's happened recently here in the past five years, there is some truth and credibility to being skeptical of government, especially right now when it feels like things are being played in our face. And I, I use the Epstein files as a perfect example because so many of these rumors and conspiracy theories revolve around, around harm children. We have a known human trafficker who trafficked over a thousand children. We have the information, we know they have the files and they continue to vote to suppress it. It's, that's pretty clear what's going on there. There's no so I don't want to. When I talk about how the Satanic panic converted online, we're going to address some very clear conspiracy theories that had no factual basis. I'm not saying that we should never engage in questioning especially around government action that seems shady. I think now more than ever we understand that administrations can and are often engaging in corruption and deception. But after 9 11, it was this idea that powerful people could stage vast conspiracies no longer seemed absurd. I mean, jfk, if the government could cover up weapons of mass destructions, maybe some thought it could also conceal ritual abuse. Because how many years did they lie about WMDs before we found out what was really going on on? Thus satanic panic, religious fervor merged into this new secular conspiracy. Conspiracy ism, distrust of elites, skepticism of official narratives and belief in a hidden evil. And what's interesting about that is there's also this common thread of the distrust of elites, which again warranted. We're typically worried about the wrong percent of people. Trans people have been attacked and disenfranchised and marginalized. Wrong 1%. It is a top and bottom issue, not a left and right issue. We should be worried about the 1% that controls the majority of wealth in the country and continues to hoard it while people are disenfranchised and starving. That is the elite that we should be worried about, not an unknown, undiscovered Illuminati satanic cabal. Makes sense. The modern resurrection came in 2016 when an anonymous post on 4chan, this is the chaotic online messaging board that is the Nick Fuentes with Peru claimed that a leaked email from John Podesta, campaign chairman for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, contained coded references to a child trafficking ring operating out of a Washington D.C. d.C. Pizzeria called Comet Pingpong. The conspiracy, dubbed Pizza Gate, recycled the same motifs as satanic panic, powerful elites, child abuse, hidden rituals, media complicity. Online communities began decoding symbols in art, art menus, Instagram posts, and were convinced that they were uncovering a satanic pedophile cult. When a man named Edgar Madison Welch drove from North Carolina to the restaurant in December of 2016 and opened fire with an AR15 inside, believing he was rescuing children from captivity, it proved how easily digital delusion could become physical danger. The pizza place didn't even have a basement where all this was supposed to be held. And the original blueprints showed it had never been built with a basement. A basement has never existed in that space. No basement, no trafficking, no satanic cult was ever found. But the story refused to die. We still hear about this Pizza Gate structure was nearly identical to the McMartin case three decades earlier. Accusations based on symbolism rather than evidence. Moral outrage amplified by the media and community. Panic and the framing of skeptics as being part of the COVID up. Again, when it's. When it's this emotional frenzy that leads you down this path, anybody who's skeptical is, is part of the COVID up. Soon after, in 2017, an anonymous poster calling himself Q began dropping cryptic drops online, claiming insider knowledge of a coming storm that would expose expose a global network of satanic pedophiles led by liberal elites. This became QAnon, a movement that fused evangelical prophecy with digital conspiracy. Reimagining Donald Trump as the divinely chosen savior, battling the forces of Satan, such an interesting choice as the new Jesus Christ. Within two years, QAnon had millions of adherents, inspired rallies, and even influenced political candidates. Its theology was apocalyptic and moralistic. Evil elites versus the righteous believers. Again, the persecution complex Christian nationalists like to use, echoing the same spiritual warfare that animated the 1980s satanic panic. You're not like me. You don't look like me. You don't believe like me. Therefore you are bad and dangerous. Dangerous. Sprinkle on some religion. God is on my side. And since you're not on my side, I have the right to exercise violence against you. Researchers like Dr. Sarah diamond and Mia Bloom have described QAnon as a digitized religious movement, one that blends nationalism, eschatology and moral panic in real time. The cultish fervor once confirmed in church basements now played out across Facebook, YouTube, Telegram and other apps. The irony of this again is that we have a list of known child offenders from a known child trafficker. And the same people who peddled these conspiracy theories online, or at least capitalize them on them, are actively hiding this list. I'm looking directly at Mike Johnson right now. Then the danger of the algorithm shows up. Unlike the analog hysteric hysteria of the 1980s, the 2010s panic had algorithms as its own. Evangelists, YouTube's recommendation systems, Facebook group suggestions, and Twitter's trending algorithm algorithms all rewarded engagement. And nothing engages like fear does. Is the danger of social media. I'm thankful for social media in the sense that it allows for us to get information out quickly. It allows for independent journalism in a time where we really need it. But nothing engages like clickbait and fear. And the algorithm fuels it, which makes misinformation and disinformation so hard to squash. In this ecosystem, conspiracy became both entertainment and identity. Users were not merely consuming stories, but participating in the hunt for hidden evil. Memes replaced pamphlets, hashtags replaced sermons. The phrase save the children, once an anti trafficking slogan was co opted by QAnon activists, merging genuine humanitarian concern with apocalyptic paranoia. And just as the parents of the 1980s interrogated their children about witches in tunnels, 21st century parents began warning each other about child eating elites on Instagram. The medium changed, but the emotional circuitry remained the same. The Satanic Panic's revival owes much to the persistence of this spiritual warfare theology, the idea that moral and political conflicts are literally battles between God and Satan. Look anywhere in mainstream evangelicalism and you will see so much of this in evangelical circles. This worldview never faded. Books like Frank Peretti's this present darkness, 1986, had taught believers to see demons behind social, social change. QAnon simply digitized the vision. The QAnon slogan, Where we go one we go all became an article of faith. And its community rituals, prayer chains, prophecy interpretations, collective decoding became spiritual practices. Anthropologist Mark Andre Argentino describes QAnon as a hyper real religion merging online myth making with spiritual urgency. The same instinct that once produced exorcism now fuels livestream decoding sessions. Enter 2020. During the COVID 19 pandemic. Isolation and this increasing distrust magnified these conspiracies. Online traffic surged. Algorithms flooded users with anti vaccine, anti government and Satanic symbolism content. QAnon absorbed new myths, from 5G towers to microchips while keeping its core narrative intention attacked evil elites, endangered children, the righteous few fighting to expose them. The Satanic panic had officially gone global again. In the Philippines, Brazil, parts of Europe, QAnon adjacent groups began framing the local political opponents as demonic or satanic threats again. When the US sneezes, the world catches its cold. What had once been an American moral panic has now become a transnational digital mythology. The emotional architecture of the Satanic Panic continues to shape modern politics and public discourse. It legitimized suspicion towards expertise like doctors, lawyers, professors, educators. It blurred the line between religious conviction and political identity and sanctified conspiracy as moral duty. The results have been deadly serious. In the 1980s, innocent daycare workers, teachers, parents were jailed. In 2016, a man brought an assault rifle into a restaurant and opened fire. And in 2021, believers in QAnon stormed the US CAP Capitol, convinced they were fighting a war between God and Satan. In next week's episode, we are interviewing the lead investigator of both Charlottesville and January 6th. The moral panic that once claimed to protect children is now endangering democracy itself. And I think we see that in our culture right now. Satanic panic never ended. It metastasized. If anything, it's worse. In the 1980s, it wore the face of frightened parents and sensational TV TV hosts. Today, it lives in hashtags, encrypted chat rooms, but both eras are the same. Heartbeat fear dressed as righteousness and belief weaponized against truth, especially the fear of other. You do not look like me, therefore you are bad or dangerous. Each generation finds its own devil to exercise. In the 1980s, it was daycare workers. In the 2010s it was politicians and celebrities. And tomorrow it'll be some someone new. We've already seen the scapegoating change to educators and trans people. What never changes is the human hunger for meaning and chaos and the danger of mistaking that hunger for revelation. The historian Debbie Nathan wrote, the Satanic panic was never about Satan, it was about us. It was about what we fear, what we repress, how we easily trade truth for certainty when the lights go out. Which I think is so telling into what we're experiencing today. And, and, and just a showcase of how much humans really haven't evolved in a lot of our ways. We're still dictated by these primal, tribal, evolutionary things that kept us alive at one point. But we have refused to move past and is, is endangering not just our, our freedom, but our ability to live safely. And I think in the US we see that, I think clearly demonstrated in, you know, the Supreme Court ruling that you can, can you can detain someone simply because of how they look or what language they speak. The Supreme Court also agreeing to hear a case that would essentially overrule the Civil Rights act, that no minority groups no longer need to have districts drawn for their own representation. Very dangerous. And that's it. As a reminder, please send content, ideas and questions to infoontimator.com you can find the address for fan mail on my website. Before my Patreon shout outs, I want to to thank Sega, Rawls and Phoenix Studios for producing the show. Lara McCuskey and Emily Battles for keeping me on track with all their help behind the scenes and Patrick Kelly for all the work you do. Now for my Patreon shout outs I only do 15 to 20 an episode, so if you haven't heard your name yet, don't worry, I am getting there. Special thanks to Kim Kimberly Burke, Denny Di Dori Otavanio, Ryan o', Laughlin, Diane Drunk, Deanne Hill, Deanna Sarah Amanda Filman Another Deanna Deb Brown, Deb Clayton Baker, Deb Keller, Polair eileman, Leela Davis another Deborah Delia, David Carrasquilo, Demetria Logan C, April DeMoss, Denise's Craft Corner, Deanna Olson, Denny Derek M. Taylor Devon and Deb Kevin Pollock. I will see you next week on Flipping Tables we are interviewing Timothy Hafey, the the creator of the HAFI Report from Charlottesville and the lead investigator in the investigation of January 6th. Until I see you again, please stay curious. Question everything. When something ignites a response in you, triggers you, makes you want to push it away, ask why. Ask why. Don't demonize other simply because they're other, because often what causes a reaction in us is simply work that we have to do in ourselves. And I will see you next week on Flipping Tables.