How Bad Could the Satanic Panic Have Gotten?

[asnys]

Sorry for the semi-necro, but this is actually the thread that inspired me to register here.

Welcome!

I can easily see a scenario following on from Columbine in which the Satanic Panic of the 1990s takes a genuinely apocalyptic turn after the Millennium. All it would require is a few copycat shootings just after Columbine; so much the better if anyone involved were actually Marilyn Manson fans (Harris and Klebold weren't). Karl Rove and the Bush 2000 campaign surely wouldn't be above overtly politicizing such a scare, and they'd do it in explicitly theological terms.

What ends up happening is that Bush essentially runs his 2004 election campaign four years previously (despite the Lewinsky Scandal, Bush didn't hit moral or religious themes nearly as hard as he would; the re-election campaign was essentially won on opposition to gay marriage in Ohio). Whether this would be a winning strategy is a matter for debate - but Al Gore would probably tack right on moral issues to combat it, and he'd have the credibility to do so, given his relationship to the aforementioned PMRC.

A lot of subtle butterflies flying around here.

That's a very interesting PoD. And I can really see it happening in the years before 9/11. What I'm less sure of is how 9/11 would impact it. I'm not sure there's room in the zeitgeist for two Evil Enemies.

Beyond that, something which I don't think we've addressed yet is, if the Satanic Panic does get worse, either the first or the second, what form does it take? If there's all this panic and fear swirling around about Satanists In Our Midst, what do people and politicians do about it, besides send more innocent daycare workers to prison?

Purely hypothetically, could it get bad enough to reach the level of some kind of internment? Actually outlawing heavy metal or whatever is a transparent first amendment violation, and would get nowhere. But if you convince enough psychologists and judges that listening to Marilyn Manson or Ozzy Osbourne is prima facie evidence of mental disturbance, then you don't need to actually outlaw it. You can give it the legal cover of "we're not arresting these people, we're committing them to mental institutions." I have a hard time believing it could get that bad, but I didn't really start paying attention to politics until after 9/11, so I don't know.

 

[Lost Freeway]

Sorry for the semi-necro, but this is actually the thread that inspired me to register here.

It's not necromancy as long as the warning isn't there.

 

[Arkenfolm]

Purely hypothetically, could it get bad enough to reach the level of some kind of internment? Actually outlawing heavy metal or whatever is a transparent first amendment violation, and would get nowhere. But if you convince enough psychologists and judges that listening to Marilyn Manson or Ozzy Osbourne is prima facie evidence of mental disturbance, then you don't need to actually outlaw it. You can give it the legal cover of "we're not arresting these people, we're committing them to mental institutions." I have a hard time believing it could get that bad, but I didn't really start paying attention to politics until after 9/11, so I don't know.

First off, throw Marilyn Manson (the man himself and everyone in the band) in jail for obscenity or some other trumped-up charged. Make sure those sorts of bands and musicians can't get gigs, make sure they aren't sold in mainstream stores. Target violent video games--no more Doom games, Grand Theft Auto 3 isn't getting published. Anything first-person shooter is questionable, so expect butterflies on anything from Halo to Medal of Honor (my mom hated me playing those games as a kid because of the FPS style--that probably means its definitely a valid target). They're murder simulators used to train teenagers (or younger!) to kill their classmates, right? No reissues of classic 70s/80s metal from Black Sabbath to Iron Maiden to Judas Priest, at least not in the US. That'll reduce availability of those releases in the US and possibly have huge repercussions on the 00s and 10s American metal scene. Speaking of metal, expect the zero tolerance policy in schools to be much expanded, so if you're a fan of any act or genre I've named in this post, you're probably in for some punishment up to and including expulsion. Some could actually go to jail/be institutionalised on very flimsy premises of "planning a school shooting".

As I noted, have a few of the shootings from 05-07 occur from 99-01 or so. Make sure the killers are dramatic like Columbine--videos, wearing band shirts while shooting up your school, making levels in Doom or whatever that feature your school, anything like that to shock the media and the ordinary person. Keep the country paranoid. And by giving allure to that sort of music and culture as "dangerous" and "evil", you're attracting people to it, and a small minority of them might one day crack, especially if they're being persecuted for enjoying it. It's a vicious cycle.

But this scenario seems more along the lines of self-censorship mixed with zealous application of nonsensical policies. Not quite a Satanic Panic, since it isn't really "Satanists" at it, I guess aside from Marilyn Manson and Doom. But a lot of other violent video games aren't really Satanic, even though they'd be targetted regardless. More like a persecution against a certain "dark" segment of youth culture. There's certainly a Satanic element to it, but your average American--non-evangelical/fundamentalist--would find it easier to think Marilyn Manson was Satanic, then, say Korn or another nu metal band. That limits the "Satanic" part of the panic. Same thing with Doom versus Grand Theft Auto. Both are easy to view as corrupting influences, but only Doom is Satanic, Grand Theft Auto is evil for other reasons.

 

[joea64]

heh. I remember the anti-D&D 'Satanic panic' hysteria... a pretty short lived idea... someone finally did the research on it and found that D&D players were in fact less likely to commit suicide (or crimes) than the rest of the population. Unfortunately, there were indeed a couple of kids who did commit suicide partly because of what happened in D&D campaigns, but the research also showed that these kids had some problems long before D&D came along. I discovered D&D about 1980 and got deeply into it, so the whole 'Satanic panic' over it hit close to home...

I never did seriously get into tabletop RPG's in general, though I was mildly interested in non-fantasy RPG's like Top Secret and GDW's Traveller; back during the great D&D craze swords-and-sorcery fiction, except for Lord of the Rings, simply wasn't my cup of tea. I think that's attributable to two factors; the lesser one is that, being hearing-impaired, I would have had a great deal of difficulty keeping up with the oral communication that's so indispensable to tabletop RPG's: and the greater one is that I was seriously into historical board wargaming already. In fact, in the late '70's and early '80's, a lot of hardcore board wargamers, "grognards", tended to have, at best, a somewhat jaundiced view of RPG'ers. It took the advent of personal computers and the Internet to make RPG's a practical proposition for me, to the extent that Guild Wars 2 is now the game I play most regularly.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

Institutionalization would not be practical by the 1990s. The mental hospitalization system was largely replaced with a out patient/ caseworker system. Beds in the for profit & state run hospitals were just adequate for the violently insane. If some is going to try to institutionalize more than a few hundred 'show'cases it's going to take a large investment in restoring hospital capacity.

 

[asnys]

Institutionalization would not be practical by the 1990s. The mental hospitalization system was largely replaced with a out patient/ caseworker system. Beds in the for profit & state run hospitals were just adequate for the violently insane. If some is going to try to institutionalize more than a few hundred 'show'cases it's going to take a large investment in restoring hospital capacity.

I was thinking about the '80s panic for mass institutionalization.

Alternatively, if we want to go really dystopian, put some bunk beds in a warehouse and call it a mental hospital.

 

[Deleted member 96212]

I can easily see a scenario following on from Columbine in which the Satanic Panic of the 1990s takes a genuinely apocalyptic turn after the Millennium. All it would require is a few copycat shootings just after Columbine; so much the better if anyone involved were actually Marilyn Manson fans (Harris and Klebold weren't). Karl Rove and the Bush 2000 campaign surely wouldn't be above overtly politicizing such a scare, and they'd do it in explicitly theological terms.

There were copycat shootings after Columbine, just few in number and scattered about the country. If you want to seriously ramp up Satanic Panic have the Pearl High School Shooting (which came before Columbine) be worse - the perpetrator was in a "Satanic cult" (it was only made up of 7 kids, ut the media won't see things the same way).

 

[Arkenfolm]

There were copycat shootings after Columbine, just few in number and scattered about the country. If you want to seriously ramp up Satanic Panic have the Pearl High School Shooting (which came before Columbine) be worse - the perpetrator was in a "Satanic cult" (it was only made up of 7 kids, ut the media won't see things the same way).

I guess you could turn that into the Columbine which inspires the media coverage and the paranoia, but you need the copycat shootings to occur immediate after in the late 90s (these ATL Columbine killers will love and worship the Pearl High School killer) and the early 00s. Something on the level of the Red Lake or Virginia Tech massacres is needed to make the paranoia, or as I noted earlier, a rapid succesion of school shootings within a few weeks period.

But look at the pop culture of the 1990s--it won't be nearly as "Satanic" as it will "dark" and "grim". As I noted, you'll target perceived Satanists like Marilyn Manson alongside popular nu metal bands (none of whom besides Slipknot was ever considered "Satanic" even by the fundamentalist Christians I grew up alongside, they were just "evil" for other reasons). You'll target Satanic first-person shooter "murder simulators" like Doom alongside non-Satanic examples of such. Maybe they'll even target Pokemon--after all, lots of fundamentalist Christians hated it (and still do) because it involves things like "evolution", "psychic powers", "ghosts", etc. No Satanism in Pokemon, but surely an even more paranoid Jack Thompson could find something ("Pokemon's Darwinian themes encouraged the lack of respect for humanity that made this kid kill their classmates"). But not Satanic. This wouldn't be a "Satanic" panic unless you're a fundamentalist Christian who wouldn't be alone in fighting this.

 

[CJvR]

There is no limit when irrationality and insanity takes over the instruments of the state.
The Witch trial and massacre of Torsåker is a terrifying example of what happens when the people and the government both go nuts...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torsåker_witch_trials

71 people executed, about 10% of the population, and since most (65) were women almost 20% of the female population of the congregation.

 

[Dave Howery]

I never did seriously get into tabletop RPG's in general, though I was mildly interested in non-fantasy RPG's like Top Secret and GDW's Traveller; back during the great D&D craze swords-and-sorcery fiction, except for Lord of the Rings, simply wasn't my cup of tea. I think that's attributable to two factors; the lesser one is that, being hearing-impaired, I would have had a great deal of difficulty keeping up with the oral communication that's so indispensable to tabletop RPG's: and the greater one is that I was seriously into historical board wargaming already. In fact, in the late '70's and early '80's, a lot of hardcore board wargamers, "grognards", tended to have, at best, a somewhat jaundiced view of RPG'ers. It took the advent of personal computers and the Internet to make RPG's a practical proposition for me, to the extent that Guild Wars 2 is now the game I play most regularly.

I was into both of them for a while, but while I had little trouble finding more D&D players, it was a lot harder finding people who knew anything about historical board gaming (keep in mind that I lived in the wilds of MT at the time), so I fell out of the latter after a while....

 

[Alexander the Average]

But look at the pop culture of the 1990s--it won't be nearly as "Satanic" as it will "dark" and "grim". As I noted, you'll target perceived Satanists like Marilyn Manson alongside popular nu metal bands (none of whom besides Slipknot was ever considered "Satanic" even by the fundamentalist Christians I grew up alongside, they were just "evil" for other reasons). You'll target Satanic first-person shooter "murder simulators" like Doom alongside non-Satanic examples of such. Maybe they'll even target Pokemon--after all, lots of fundamentalist Christians hated it (and still do) because it involves things like "evolution", "psychic powers", "ghosts", etc. No Satanism in Pokemon, but surely an even more paranoid Jack Thompson could find something ("Pokemon's Darwinian themes encouraged the lack of respect for humanity that made this kid kill their classmates"). But not Satanic. This wouldn't be a "Satanic" panic unless you're a fundamentalist Christian who wouldn't be alone in fighting this.

Could Jack Thompson get appointed to the Supreme Court?

 

[Arkenfolm]

Could Jack Thompson get appointed to the Supreme Court?

Only in a "loldystopia" scenario. He's too corrosive of an individual--that's part of the reason why he was disbarred. Sure, he can achieve a higher place than he did, even more prominence than he did, but it seems ASB he'd ever get that high. He'd piss off too many important people.

 

[overoceans]

FWIW, I don't consider the reaction to Marilyn Manson to be part of any Satanic Panic. I'm sure the funadmentalists who didn't like him framed it in those terms, but the general thrust of the criticism, as I recall, was that he glorified violence and other anti-social behaviour.

The owners of one of Manson's scheduled venues in Calgary tried to cancel his show, allegedly having been misled about the nature of his act when they booked him. As I recall, not much of the public dicussion centred around Satanism.

As I see it, the Satanic Panic was rooted in the anti-occult movement among fundamentalist Christians in the 1970s(eg. Mike Warnke and John Todd), which combined with credulous feminist psychotherary(possibly via the anti-porn movement) some time in the 80s. I think you can date its ofiicial onset with the McMartin Trial. I'm not sure when you would date the end of it, probably some time around 1991. A few years before any widespread panic about Marilyn Manson.

 

[Deleted member 96212]

I guess you could turn that into the Columbine which inspires the media coverage and the paranoia,

I suppose it's possible, but in order to do that the shooter (Luke Woodham) would need to kill a double-digit number of people, and that seems somewhat unlikely considering that after killing two people, he apologized to one of his wounded victims and tried to flee the scene. You'd need his fellow cult members to join him (and keep in mind Luke himself wasn't the leader of the group).

but you need the copycat shootings to occur immediate after in the late 90s (these ATL Columbine killers will love and worship the Pearl High School killer) and the early 00s.

The Columbine shooters would never idolize another killer (besides Timothy McVeigh). They boasted in the 'Basement Tapes' how they "thought of the idea before the first one ever did" and mentioned several time how they weren't like other school shooters. While them becoming Satanists is incredibly unlikely, them being accusd of Satanic beliefs wouldn't be out of the picture.

 

[eltf177]

First off, throw Marilyn Manson (the man himself and everyone in the band) in jail for obscenity or some other trumped-up charged. Make sure those sorts of bands and musicians can't get gigs, make sure they aren't sold in mainstream stores. Target violent video games--no more Doom games, Grand Theft Auto 3 isn't getting published. Anything first-person shooter is questionable, so expect butterflies on anything from Halo to Medal of Honor (my mom hated me playing those games as a kid because of the FPS style--that probably means its definitely a valid target). They're murder simulators used to train teenagers (or younger!) to kill their classmates, right? No reissues of classic 70s/80s metal from Black Sabbath to Iron Maiden to Judas Priest, at least not in the US. That'll reduce availability of those releases in the US and possibly have huge repercussions on the 00s and 10s American metal scene. Speaking of metal, expect the zero tolerance policy in schools to be much expanded, so if you're a fan of any act or genre I've named in this post, you're probably in for some punishment up to and including expulsion. Some could actually go to jail/be institutionalised on very flimsy premises of "planning a school shooting".

On top of this make sure D&D and similar games get as much bad publicity as possible and are banned in schools...

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

I was thinking about the '80s panic for mass institutionalization.

There were more beds in the 1980s, but the 'close down' movement had been underway for two decades & had a lot of inertia. It was not just from reformers. Fiscal conservatives were convinced the state run hospitals were grossly inefficient & costly. Fiscally conservative politicians at the state & local level wanted to take the government out of the mental health care business entirely

Alternatively, if we want to go really dystopian, put some bunk beds in a warehouse and call it a mental hospital.

One of the arguments for closing the mental hospitals is many of them were exactly that. Cheap sheds to shut up anyone difficult to cope with. Rather than go through yet another 'Reform the Hospitals' movement, for the third or fourth time, the idea of out patient/case management caught on & the "snake pits" were shut down. By the latter 1970s the movement was well developed.

In your scenario the bunk beds in a warehouse would be converted prisons. or hastily built new jail houses. It would have been yet another opportunity for the construction industry to milk the State & Federal budgets. Creates jobs you know. This would have piggybacked on the trend of mandatory prison time for drug convictions that has been turning the US into one of the largest prison camps on the planet.

 

[Arkenfolm]

FWIW, I don't consider the reaction to Marilyn Manson to be part of any Satanic Panic. I'm sure the funadmentalists who didn't like him framed it in those terms, but the general thrust of the criticism, as I recall, was that he glorified violence and other anti-social behaviour.

The owners of one of Manson's scheduled venues in Calgary tried to cancel his show, allegedly having been misled about the nature of his act when they booked him. As I recall, not much of the public dicussion centred around Satanism.

As I see it, the Satanic Panic was rooted in the anti-occult movement among fundamentalist Christians in the 1970s(eg. Mike Warnke and John Todd), which combined with credulous feminist psychotherary(possibly via the anti-porn movement) some time in the 80s. I think you can date its ofiicial onset with the McMartin Trial. I'm not sure when you would date the end of it, probably some time around 1991. A few years before any widespread panic about Marilyn Manson.

But Manson was Satanic in popular opinion. I don't know if the story about him being a reverend in the Church of Satan was true, but the fact the story was so widespread hints that he cultivated that sort of image. More people would've called him Satanic than just the sort of people who considered all rock/metal Satanic to begin with anyway.

On top of this make sure D&D and similar games get as much bad publicity as possible and are banned in schools...

How many people even really played D&D back in the early 00s. Yeah, it was around, yeah, we knew it was there, but it wasn't a huge pop culture thing. There was a Saturday morning cartoon which I bet wouldn't be there based on association. But any "Second Satanic Panic" won't be so much Satanic as focused on "dark" sorts of stuff in general. D&D would be periphal to this incidence of Satanic panic, and much like freaking out over fantasy-themed power metal where you'd make the connection "metal = evil = school shooting = dead children".

There were more beds in the 1980s, but the 'close down' movement had been underway for two decades & had a lot of inertia. It was not just from reformers. Fiscal conservatives were convinced the state run hospitals were grossly inefficient & costly. Fiscally conservative politicians at the state & local level wanted to take the government out of the mental health care business entirely

One of the arguments for closing the mental hospitals is many of them were exactly that. Cheap sheds to shut up anyone difficult to cope with. Rather than go through yet another 'Reform the Hospitals' movement, for the third or fourth time, the idea of out patient/case management caught on & the "snake pits" were shut down. By the latter 1970s the movement was well developed.

In your scenario the bunk beds in a warehouse would be converted prisons. or hastily built new jail houses. It would have been yet another opportunity for the construction industry to milk the State & Federal budgets. Creates jobs you know. This would have piggybacked on the trend of mandatory prison time for drug convictions that has been turning the US into one of the largest prison camps on the planet.

Utterly horrible if you're sent there, but you'd see less school shootings if it were so easy to commit someone who anyone had reasonably suspicion they were about to try and kill their classmates. And if we have "more school shootings = Satanic Panic", well...

 

[Merried Seinor Comic]

But Manson was Satanic in popular opinion. I don't know if the story about him being a reverend in the Church of Satan was true, but the fact the story was so widespread hints that he cultivated that sort of image. More people would've called him Satanic than just the sort of people who considered all rock/metal Satanic to begin with anyway.



How many people even really played D&D back in the early 00s. Yeah, it was around, yeah, we knew it was there, but it wasn't a huge pop culture thing. There was a Saturday morning cartoon which I bet wouldn't be there based on association. But any "Second Satanic Panic" won't be so much Satanic as focused on "dark" sorts of stuff in general. D&D would be periphal to this incidence of Satanic panic, and much like freaking out over fantasy-themed power metal where you'd make the connection "metal = evil = school shooting = dead children".



Utterly horrible if you're sent there, but you'd see less school shootings if it were so easy to commit someone who anyone had reasonably suspicion they were about to try and kill their classmates. And if we have "more school shootings = Satanic Panic", well...

So, the country basically becomes Rumsfeldia for kids that are seen as odd?

 

[IanBertram]

This is all like the moral panic that led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority in 1954.

 

[eltf177]

How many people even really played D&D back in the early [8]0s. Yeah, it was around, yeah, we knew it was there, but it wasn't a huge pop culture thing. There was a Saturday morning cartoon which I bet wouldn't be there based on association. But any "Second Satanic Panic" won't be so much Satanic as focused on "dark" sorts of stuff in general. D&D would be periphal to this incidence of Satanic panic, and much like freaking out over fantasy-themed power metal where you'd make the connection "metal = evil = school shooting = dead children".

I played in High School in the late 70's and in college in the 80's - the game was really gathering steam and the spin-off's (TRAVELLER, GAMMA WORLD, etc.) were coming around at that time. So I do see a backlash against any and all RPG's...