PAGAN THREAT: THE MUSICAL!!!

Here's an excerpt from my 8-13-23 SALON article entitled "QAnon's Weirdest Obsession: Why Does the Radical Far Right Fear the Masons?" which focuses on the strategic resurrection of the Satanic Panic among far right-wing conservatives (what was considered the far right in 2023, of course, has now become the mainstream Republican Party):

In a recent interview with the Times Union of Albany, New York, historian Mitch Horowitz, author of “Occult America” and “Uncertain Places,” observed that “with the advent of QAnon, we may be a whisker away from a new Satanic Panic”:

That movement swept the United States and Britain in the 1980s and early ’90s on account of a cultural myth and canard that child-sacrificing Satanic cults were at work. In time, and after some really tragic and disruptive criminal trials and false accusations, media coverage exposed the Satanic Panic as a widespread hoax and a kind of cultural spasm. It may have been a reaction against changes in the workforce and the economy, in particular women entering the workforce en masse, and people turning to childcare centers and other alternative forms of daycare.

This theme has reasserted itself through the work of Alex Jones and people adjacent to the QAnon movement, and it’s now commonly encountered online. And despite the news coverage and the widespread debunking of the Satanic Panic, we seem to be going through this cultural amnesia in which we’re revisiting it.

Revisiting it indeed! Charlie Kirk wrote the foreword to Pastor Lucas Miles' new book (please note that the word "foreword" is misspelled on the cover) entitled PAGAN THREAT. Not surprisingly, Trump's ultra-right wing disinformation factory, Newsmax, the modern equivalent of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, is exploiting Kirk's death to help promote this 21st century MALLEUS MALEFICARUM. If it wasn't obvious before, it should now be painfully clear that the Old School Satanic Panic is back in full-force and isn't fading away anytime soon. If you want to induce an instant migraine headache, please click HERE to get a load of the contents of this most learned tome. If you lived through the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, you're about to get hit in the face with the unmistakable sense of déjà vu.

(My personal favorite aspect of this cover, by the way, appears at the very bottom: "AUTHOR OF WOKE JESUS.") 

Rather than wasting your time reading PAGAN THREAT, however, I highly recommend checking out this book instead: SATANIC PANIC: POP-CULTURAL PARANOIA IN THE 1980s (FAB Press, 2016) edited by Kier-La Janisse & Paul Corupe, an indispensable collection of personal essays that reveal the true extent of the psychological and legal terror unleashed on scores of innocent people by fanatical evangelicals during the height of the Reagan/Thatcher era. SATANIC PANIC also serves as a useful guidebook in regard to predicting the theocratic direction in which the United States is now headed.