techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Mona Pereth wrote:
One of my biggest fears is of the possibility of police departments taking QAnon and related conspiracy theories seriously, thereby reviving the Satanic Ritual Abuse witch hunts of the 1980's. (See the WP thread
QAnon, Blood Libel, and the Satanic Panic.)
This could happen regardless of who wins the election (because too many cops have extreme right wing leanings), but could be especially dangerous and difficult to stop if Trump wins.
Organizational memory will hold that back quite a bit, especially for as much of an embarrassment as the Satanic panic ended up being for police and profilers.
I hope you're right about this. However, as the 1980's fade further and further into the past, I fear that the "organizational memory" may fade also -- or be overruled by a new, more conspiracy-theory-infected breed of top brass.
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
The west coast case was even more interesting to the degree that Nick and Zena Schreck (Zena formerly LaVey) had a lot to do with talking people back to reality on what it actually was and wasn't (even though Zena, for quite sensible reasons, couldn't get far enough from her dad - out of respect for her she was not defending CoS and it's other problems). That was a great example of the witch-hunter detectives actually being open-minded enough to listen to practicing satanists to figure out what they were dealing with and it saved a lot of grief.
And today we have the Satanic Temple, yes.
But the Satanic panic of the 1980's did do quite a lot of damage while it lasted. Lots and lots of probably-innocent child care center workers were sent to prison. And lots of families were torn apart by probably-false "recovered memories" implanted by bad therapists.
A future revived Satanic panic would probably manifest in a different way. For example, it probably wouldn't infect the psychotherapy world the way it did in the 1980's.
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12 Oct 2024, 3:12 pm
