Hail Satan!

How would it make you feel if I was to tell you I am a Satanist? Does it make you more afraid of me? Am I suddenly less trustworthy? Do you think I’m more inclined to commit acts of violence because of my religious beliefs?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, that’s okay. That means that you are in agreement with most of the American public. There’s something wrong with Satanists, because I mean, who in their right mind would worship Satan? If you answered no to those questions, then good for you. You are already on the path toward illumination!

The question of Satanism/Satanists and their potential risks to society were a flaming-hot button issue throughout the mid-twentieth century. This concern, dubbed the Satanic Panic, gripped the United States, and to a lesser extent, the world, for several decades starting around the early 1970s until the late 1990s. In this paper, some examples of this panic will be discussed: allegations of Satanic ritual abuse at the McMartin Preschool, fear surrounding Dungeons & Dragons throughout the 1970s and 80s, stigmas associated with heavy metal, and how Satanic Panic affected the infamous West Memphis Three. In order to fully flesh out these examples, we must first learn about moral panics, scapegoat deviants, labeling theory, and religious deviance.

Before we get too deep into the Satanic Panic, we must first answer a very important question: what is Satanism? There are many sects of Satanism, some of which have existed since the invention of Satan himself. To narrow things down and make these ideas more digestible, we’re going to utilize The Satanic Bible, written by carnie-turned magician Anton LaVey (considered the father of modern Satanism) in the year of our dark lord, 1969. Satanists who follow the ideas written by LaVey can be thought of as atheists with a dark sense of humor and a flair for the flamboyant. The book certainly doesn’t take itself too seriously, as evidenced by the last of the Nine Satanic Statements: “Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years!” (LaVey 25) The Satanic Bible’s core beliefs orbit the fact that all authority should be questioned, and that

No creed must be accepted upon authority of a ‘divine’ nature. Religions must be put to the question. No moral dogma must be taken for granted— no standard of measurement deified. There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy! (LaVey 31)

To the sociologist, these ideas seem pretty reasonable without the pomp and ceremonial robes, candles, and pentagrams. That being said, it is not necessarily uncommon for sensible belief systems to be stigmatized as evil by groups who subscribe to beliefs incompatible with the group in question. That being said, how did the label become so disparaging?

Moral Panics

In order to answer that question, we must first gain a proper understanding of moral panics. A moral panic is described as “over-heated periods of intense concern,” wherein such concern “is disproportionate to the evidence of any objective threat being posed by the transgressors that are the object of concern” (Heiner 114). Three major characters make up any moral panic: folk devils, claims-makers, and moral entrepreneurs. Folk devils are those who are alleged to have done wrong, “the object of the public’s wrath.” In the case of the Satanic Panic, this was anyone who either willingly took on the label of Satanist, or those who were unfairly given the title due to their passing interest in the esoteric. As we will see later, even wearing a Black Sabbath t-shirt would be enough for a person to become a folk devil. Claims-makers are “those who demand something be done about an alleged condition in society.” For our purposes, these are mostly concerned parents who feared what they didn’t understand. Dungeons & Dragons? Witchcraft! Harry Potter? He’s indoctrinating our children into demon worship! Moral entrepreneurs are “those who devote a good deal of time and resources to promoting their moral worldview, who often have a vested interest in doing so” (Heiner 115). These include politicians, religious leaders, and parents who take on leadership roles in organizations like BADD, Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons. Their morals are the correct ones, and anyone whose morals fall outside of their boundaries are flawed, and therefore shall be eradicated.

A moral panic arises when there are unaddressed social anxieties bubbling underneath the surface of a given society. Times in which these anxieties no longer bubble underneath, but flood the streets of society are referred to as boundary crises. During a boundary crisis, “a group’s uncertainty about itself was resolved in ritualistic confrontations between the deviant and the community’s official agents” (Thompson 122). Throughout this paper, we will see how societies resolve their uncertainties and how the media exacerbated claims of Satanic ritual abuse, “the abuse of very young children in rituals performed by robed and hooded satanists” (DeYoung 125) which led to the unjust imprisonment of hundreds of innocent people.

What was the “Satanic Panic”?

The anxieties which fostered the environment for a moral panic are different for each moral panic. For the Satanic Panic, concern over the safety of children against the Devil are rooted in the growing religious-political group dubbed by historians as the New Right (or New Christian Right). The New Right were a group of conservative evangelical Christian Americans which “expanded in the 1980s against a backdrop of growing economic instability” (Hughes 693). Their growing popularity was a result of the prioritization of the so-called ‘traditional American family’ (doublespeak for nuclear family) as a political issue worthy of the same attention garnered by foreign affairs, civil rights, unemployment, and specifically in the 1980s, the looming threat of communism. The New Right’s dedication to maintaining the traditional family against not just natural social change, but also from anything specific which they deemed an immediate threat to that family dynamic. The New Right “felt that the American family as an institution was under attack and they attempted to reassert traditional family values,” and thus their “perception of a family crisis fed into the need to protect children” (Wilson 2-3).

The McMartin Preschool

In the case of the Satanic Panic, children had to be protected against Satanic ritual abuse, which daycares around the United States were said to be rife with throughout the 1980s-90s. Daycare providers were accused of “sexual abuse during satanic ceremionies that included such ghastly practices as blood-drinking, cannibalism, and human sacrifices” (DeYoung 125). Like all moral panics, these accusations against daycare workers were untrue. The issue began when a schizophrenic woman placed her son into the McMartin Preschool, and one day found blood in his diaper after he came home from the daycare. Without any evidence to support the claim, she believed that her son was a victim of molestation at the hands of daycare providers at the McMartin Preschool. A flimsy diagnosis of sexual abuse by a doctor inexperienced in performing sexual exams gave her claims credence, and the rest is history. Rumors spread around town like wildfire, and hundreds of children and their parents came forward with unproven claims of Satanic ritual abuse at the hands of the daycare providers.

This moral panic was a result of anxieties surrounding early distrust of daycare centers. Dual-income households where both parents worked full-time meant that there was no one at home to watch their children, so they had to be sent to daycares, which were popping up around the country to solve this postmodern parenting problem. Suddenly, what has traditionally been the job of the family to take care of their children has now been commodified and assigned to strangers whom parents are expected to trust. Daycare providers were folk devils, parents were claimsmakers, and prosecutors became moral entrepreneurs.

Dungeons & Dragons

The rise of Dungeons & Dragons, a board game where players could role play as wizards, ogres, elves, and other characters found in fantasy settings is the next example of the Satanic Panic. In 1982 Irving Lee Pulling, a high school student fond of D&D, killed himself. Despite claims that he had trouble fitting in and that he “had a lot of problems anyway that weren’t associated with [D&D],” his distraught mother, Patricia Pulling, searched for the reason for his suicide and quickly decided upon D&D as the culprit (BBC). Immediately, D&D became the scapegoat for all kinds of teenage corruption, from suicide to a decline in religion among young Americans. Confused parents like Patricia had a hard time understanding why their children would hurt themselves or turn away from the morals instilled in them by their parents, and D&D was just scary enough to serve as a useful scapegoat.

Scapegoating arises when aggression and anxiety builds up within individuals to a point where tension must be released “in angry attacks upon other people whom they blame for their feelings” (Victor 64). This is called displaced aggression and it is an efficient tool to reduce tension within groups. D&D and the people who play it are the problem, not the confused and frustrated emotions of parents who struggle to understand their children. With scapegoating comes the implicit message that those scapegoated individuals (folk devils) are in need of correction, not the society which created them. Although talking about deviance through the lens of crime, Jeffery Reiman’s words ring true for people demonized for playing D&D just as much as they do for criminals:

... by focusing on individual responsibility for crimes, the criminal justice system broadcasts the message that the social order itself is reasonable and not intolerably unjust. … This not only serves to carry the message that our social institutions are not in need of fundamental questioning, but further suggests that the justice of our institutions is obvious, not to be doubted (Reiman 75)

Blaming a board game for the corruption of the youth distracts from the greater issue of teen suicide and its consistent increase over the past century. I don’t know for sure why kids and teenagers have been self-harming and committing suicide more as time goes on, but D&D certainly isn’t the reason why. However, its spooky imagery made it a prime candidate to be scapegoated so that parents could feel secure in the fact that they had an answer to the seemingly unanswerable question as to why their children would hurt themselves.

Heavy Metal

Smack dab in the middle of the Satanic Panic, heavy metal exploded in popularity to the further fear and confusion of parents around the country. Parents feared that their children were receiving messages from metal groups to worship Satan and commit acts of violence in his name. If there’s a recurring theme here, it is that moral panics are rarely based in fact. But for moral panics, facts take a backseat to the fears and concerns of individuals who are genuinely concerned for the safety of a certain group.

Before we go on, let’s check in with Uncle Anton to learn about how Satanists feel about violence and sacrifice in the name of Satan:

“Under NO circumstances would a Satanist sacrifice any animal or baby!” (LaVey 89)

Thanks Uncle Anton, that about sums it up. Now let us proceed.

Out of all the moral panics discussed in this paper, the New Right are most prominent in the discussion of heavy metal. Names like Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath freaked out evangelical Christian conservatives into labeling the entire genre as Satanic. The labeling of anything as Satanic is due to “people’s socially constructed predisposition to find Satanism in many unrelated incidents and activities” (Victor 64). The labels “Satanic” and “Satanism” are, like all labels, socially constructed reactions to certain behaviors. Labels of any kind carry lots of weight, despite the fact that “whether a given act is deviant or not depends in part on the nature of the act (that is, whether or not it violates some rule) and in part on what other people do about it” (Becker 43). The point here is that there is nothing inherent in any action that qualifies it as deviant or wrong. Something being called and treated as deviant (or morally wrong) is purely a result of the reactions that others have to the act that was committed and the individual who committed it. This is crucial to the understanding of labeling theory. Labels are dependent on the reactions of the audience of a given act. Let us use an example.

Imagine someone burns the United States flag in some public setting. This action is just that: an action. It is neither good nor bad. The reaction of the crowd watching the flag get burnt is what decides whether or not this act is deviant. If the reaction is positive and the act thought to be justified, the action is not considered deviant. If the reaction is negative and the audience views the burning of the US flag to be traitorous, it is then considered deviant. The same action can be interpreted in different ways, and it is within that interpretation that deviance can arise.

In regard to heavy metal music, the initial reaction outside the metalhead fanbase was mostly negative. Accusations of Satan worship and Devil’s music were hurled toward metal groups and their fans. With any label comes implications. A master trait is “one key trait which serves to distinguish those who belong from those who do not” (Becker 44). This trait establishes the clear divide between who belongs to socially-accepted (in other words, accepted by the New Right) mainstream groups and those who do not. With any master trait comes auxiliary traits, which are implied traits based upon the master trait and the connotations and messages a society has cultivated around that master trait.

While it is established that “both [Ozzy] Osbourne and [Tony] Iommi explicitly dismiss the notion that their work should be construed as occultist or Satanist,” that doesn’t stop claims-makers and moral entrepreneurs from labeling Black Sabbath as Devil’s music (Watts & Fisher 33). The problem with labeling is that those who were once regarded as metalheads, whose auxiliary traits may have included mostly innocent ones such as “loud,” “beer-drinking,” and “head-banging,” were now considered Satanists, whose auxiliary traits were far worse than that of metalheads. Society has assigned the auxiliary traits of “violent,” “corrupt,” and “evil” to the master trait of Satanist despite little evidence to support such claims.

The West Memphis Three

In 1993, three children were bound, raped, murdered, and left in a creek in West Memphis, Tennessee. The only lead the police had was that there was this one kid in town, Damien Echols, who wore black and was into wicca, a brand of right-hand path “white magic.” They interrogated him, but to no avail. Echols, a naive kid, toyed with police because he knew he was innocent. His trust in the American criminal justice system led to that very system wrongfully imprisoning him for decades. What finally got him in jail was the forced confession of Jessie Misskelley, a mentally handicapped schoolmate of Echols (they barely knew each other) who implicated himself, Echols, and Echols’ best friend, Jason Baldwin in the heinous crime in which none of them committed. We don’t know who tortured and killed the children, although numerous unproven theories have been floating around since the discovery of the boys. The scapegoating of Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley led to the real child rapist-murderer getting away with the crime. They eventually got out of jail decades after their arrest due to a strange plea deal where they plead guilty while maintaining their innocence. It is all but confirmed that the boys are innocent, as it has been found that they “are not linked to any of the newly tested DNA found at the West Memphis crime scene” (Warren 1).

The anxieties surrounding this moral panic are far more clear than the others mentioned: three children have been murdered and there are no leads. The town is anxious, the police are anxious, and outsider Damien Echols made a perfect scapegoat for the cold-blooded crimes. Echols practiced wicca, a right-hand path form of “white magic,” which interestingly enough, is the antagonist to left-hand path magic and Satanism! Straight from the goat’s mouth,

For centuries, propagandists of the right-hand path have been prattling over the supposed sacrifices of small children and voluptuous maidens at the hands of diabolists. … as with all ‘holy’ lies which are accepted without reservation, this assumed modus operandi of the Satanists persist to this day! (LaVey 89)

If Echols’ accusers would have done any research at all, they would have quickly found that the type of magic he was practicing was the very opposite of Satanism.

The media, of course, did what the media does and sensationalized the situation. Although describing vocabulary used in the McMartin Preschool coverage, the same choice of diction was used in headlines about the West Memphis Three: “‘grotesque,’ ‘bizarre,’ ‘chilling,’ ‘horrific,’ and ‘nightmarish,’ the early local news stories set the hysterical tone that would be mimicked by the national media” (DeYoung 130). The Satanic label was used immediately and universally. Echols once “referred to West Memphis as a ‘second Salem,’ where ‘every crime is blamed on Satanism’” (Stidham, Fitzgerald, Baldwin 1086). The labeling of the crime as Satanic served to bring those violent and evil auxiliary traits upon the boys. The striking diction used by the media only cemented public opinion that these boys were agents of Satan.

Regardless of the truth, the evangelical New Right stirred up a great fuss about Satanism in West Memphis. “The deeply-held Christian belief system of the community played a large role in the spread of rumors and the illustrative gossip conveyed to the media … After the arrests, a West Memphis Baptist minister told a reporter that Echols stated he ‘had made a pact with the devil and [was] going to hell’” (Stidham, Fitzgerald, Baldwin 1085). Echols’ religious deviance was enough for him to be associated with Satanism (a religion he didn’t practice) and the murders of the boys (a crime he didn’t commit). But when religion is used when identifying an individual or group as an enemy,

it can intensify the conflict. If people believe that they are carrying out a divine mandate, they may be less willing to negotiate … Evil is no longer an individual trait but rather a characteristic of an entire group that is considered incapable of change. ‘A satanic enemy cannot be transformed,’ Juegensmeyer states, ‘it can only be destroyed’ (Nepstad 335)

Any religious person goes through three distinct identities before their religious identity is solidified. The first is the ascribed identity: the one(s) you are assigned at birth. Children usually follow the same religion as their parents, some for the rest of their life. The next identity is the chosen identity: the identity chosen for oneself usually in adolescence to set themselves apart from others. Adolescence is the time in which a person is able to learn about who they really are and how they’re different from their parents and the people around them. Finally is the declarative identity, where the individual plants their flag and makes a statement about their identity and how within it there is some good to be offered to those who identify as such. Echols had his chosen identity, but since that identity was broadcast to and judged by the entire world, he was forced to either make the declaration that he was not wrong for his beliefs and that those who had a problem with his identity were simply misunderstanding him, or that his detractors were right. Put succinctly by Echols himself, “‘What people don’t understand they try to destroy or ridicule’ in order to ‘make it look like it is bad or wrong’” (Stidham, Fitzgerald, Baldwin 1086).

By no means would this be the first time Satanism would be used as justification for punitive measures. During “the Great Swedish Witch Panic of 1668-67, … several thousands of children accused several hundreds of adults (mostly women) of being witches and of taking them to the witches' Sabbath at a place called Blåkulla. As a result of these allegations almost 200 persons were beheaded and burned at the stake” (Sjöberg 219). Even the accusations were the same, including claims that witches were engaging in “infant sacrifice, cannibalism, sadistic and bizarre sexual and physical child abuse” (Sjöberg 220).

The scapegoating of the boys is similar to that of D&D, as it is an internal enemy which is the folk devil, not some external threat (which might include immigrants, communists, terrorists, etc.). Don’t be misled, as “a search for internal enemies can serve the same function as providing a target for displaced aggression and a unifying force for conflicting enemies in a society” (Victor 65). The rage, confusion, fear, and sadness brought on by the truly gruesome torture and murder of three children was directed at the West Memphis Three, because where else could it go? The police did not want to appear incompetent by having no suspects, so they scapegoated a dirt-poor kid who wore Metallica t-shirts and his friends because they were different.

If there’s anything we learned from the Satanic Panic, it’s that labels are extremely important tools in the swaying of public opinion. We’ve also learned that while scapegoating may be a great way to assuage the fears of a community, it is damaging to those folk devils who, most of the time, are innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of social anxieties far larger than themselves. Although moral panics predate the 24-hour news cycle, as long as the constant chugging out of news continues, claims-makers will continue to denounce groups which are different from them as evil and worthy of destruction. It’s a sobering lesson, but what can you do? It might not do much to solve any real problems, but there’s one thing I do to try to stave off the encroaching sense that I am not in control of the world around me:

Hail Satan!

Works Cited

Becker, Howard S. “Relativism: Labeling Theory.” Constructions of Deviance, 7th ed., Cengage Learning, 2006, pp. 41–45.

deYoung, Mary. “The Devil Goes to Day Care: McMartin and the Making of a Moral Panic.” Deviance Across Cultures, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 125–133.

Heiner, Robert. “Introduction to Moral Panics.” Deviance Across Cultures, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 114–116.

Hughes, Sarah. "American Monsters: Tabloid Media and the Satanic Panic, 1970-2000." Journal of American Studies, vol. 51, no. 3, 2017, pp. 691-719. ProQuest, http://ezproxy2.library.drexel.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy2.library.drexel.edu/scholarly-journals/american-monsters-tabloid-media-satanic-panic/docview/1917985346/se-2?accountid=10559, doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy2.library.drexel.edu/10.1017/S0021875816001298.

LaVey, Anton Szandor. The Satanic Bible. Avon Books, 1969.

Nepstad, Sharon Erickson. “Religion, Violence, and Peacemaking.” Deviance Across Cultures, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 333–339.

Reiman, Jeffery. “The Implicit Ideology of Criminal Justice.” Deviance Across Cultures, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 73–80.

Sjöberg, ,R.L. "False Allegations of Satanic Abuse: Case Studies from the Witch Panic in Rättvik 1670-71." European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, vol. 6, no. 4, 1997, pp. 219-226. ProQuest, http://ezproxy2.library.drexel.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy2.library.drexel.edu/scholarly-journals/false-allegations-satanic-abuse-case-studies/docview/79529299/se-2?accountid=10559.

Stidham, Dan, et al. "Satanic Panic and Defending the West Memphis Three: How Cultural Differences Can Play a Major Role in Criminal Cases." University of Memphis Law Review, vol. 42, no. 4, Summer 2012, p. 1061-1104. HeinOnline, https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/umem42&i=1073.

“The Great 1980s Dungeons & Dragons Panic.” BBC, British Broadcasting Company, 11 Apr. 2014, www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26328105.

Thompson, Kenneth. “The Classic Moral Panic: Mods and Rockers.” Deviance Across Cultures, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 117–123.

Victor, Jeffery S. “The Search For Scapegoat Deviants.” Deviance Across Cultures, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 63–66.

Warren, Beth. "New DNA found at Murder Scene Doesn't Match West Memphis Three." McClatchy - Tribune Business News, Jul 27, 2011. ProQuest, http://ezproxy2.library.drexel.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy2.library.drexel.edu/wire-feeds/new-dna-found-at-murder-scene-doesnt-match-west/docview/879088737/se-2?accountid=10559.

Watts, Peter, and Andrew Fisher. “The Metal Scene and The Bible: Meaning, Accuracy, and Silence.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, vol. 29, no. 1, University of Toronto Press, 2017, pp. 30–43, doi:10.3138/jrpc.29.1.3810.

Wilson, Austin. “Demons & Devils: The Moral Panic Surrounding Dungeons & Dragons 1979-1991.” University of Kansas, 2019.