vulgarweed:brambleshadow-roleplays:frompawntoqueen:thespeedofpunx:chipsandbeermag:Warning Signs of S

vulgarweed:brambleshadow-roleplays:frompawntoqueen:thespeedofpunx:chipsandbeermag:Warning Signs of Satanic Behavior. Training video for police, 1990signs that your child is COOL as FUCKTraining video for police??So, uhhh…. A bit of history/context, here.(Please bear in mind that I wasn’t even born yet in 1990—I’m a ‘96 baby—but I am Wiccan and really interested in the history of American Wicca/Witchcraft. Also? All those “warning signs” are literally just… things we use in witchcraft. Gotta have the heavy metal posters and dress all in black for the #Aesthetic. /s)Assuming this was meant for American police, in the late 1980s and early 1990s the United States was swept up in the Satanic Ritual Abuse hysteria (it originated in the U.S. in the late ‘80s and spread to other countries by the early ‘90s). “Allegations of SRA involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. In its most extreme form, allegations involve a conspiracy of a worldwide SRA organization that includes the wealthy and powerful of the world elite in which children are abducted or bred for human sacrifices, pornography and prostitution” (Wikipedia).The whole moral panic was more or less instigated by a 1980 book written by  Lawrence Pazder called Michelle Remembers, and sustained throughout the decade by the McMartin preschool trial, a day-care sexual abuse case in California prosecuted by the LA District Attorney. Accusations were made in 1983; the case was dropped of all charges in 1990 with no convictions.Later the whole thing was proven to be absolute hysterical moral panic bullshit, with no Satanic ritual abuse ever occurring.However, Wicca/Witchcraft was also becoming slightly more well-known to the mainstream American public, with more Wiccan witches “coming out of the broom closet”. The Christian majority public (and law enforcement) equated symbols of Wicca/Witchcraft (the pentacle, the sword, athames, the Horned God, etc.) with Satanism, and given the hysteria that was going on at the time… Well.A lot of these videos and pamphlets going around meant to identify Satanists and Satanic behavior in order to stop the ritual abuse (that was thought at the time to be real and happening) ended up targeting teenagers interested in the Craft, those involved in the Goth subculture, and Wiccan covens instead. To add to the confusion, you also had the emergence of the Church of Satan and other  explicitly Satanist groups, which added some small kernel of truth to all the abuse allegations in the first place. (And for the record, said actual Satanist groups were not involved in any ritual abuse. At all.)  Like I said, I wasn’t even born when this all happened, so if anyone who was actually around at the time wants to add on and correct any mistakes I may have made, feel free to do so.I was around then - born 1969, Wiccan-initiated 1990, also a metal fan and everything you’ve said here is pretty accurate, and also we need to talk a little bit about heavy metal aesthetics and a long history of blaming music artists for real-life tragedies they had nothing to do with.Heavy metal has always used Satanic/occult/horror themes in album art and lyrics since Black Sabbath became huge around 1970. This is mostly a countercultural signalling thing, a rebellion against the dominant mainstream culture of Christianity. Also because it’s interesting, it looks cool, and who doesn’t love those Hammer horror films?To complicate things, there actually ARE a very very few metal bands who have committed murder and arson for the aesthetic. (But these are Norwegian black metal outliers who were not well known in the US in the early 90s)When the Religious Right began to gain big political power in the US in the 1980s with the Reagan ascension, some people began to actually publicly blame musicians. Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest were sued by families of fans who had committed or attempted suicide. Or fans! The 1994 West Memphis 3 case involved three teenagers convicted of the murders of three young boys based on very little evidence besides metal fandom and possible mental illness (they were released decades later). In this case, there were indeed three children killed horribly. There’s no real evidence that the WM3 did it, or that rituals of any kind were involved.This all stems from Christian panic - allegedly intelligent people really believed that bands purposefully put intentional backwards messages on records that could be heard when played backwards designed to subliminally seduce kids to Satan, or the Dungeons & Dragons taught players how to case real spells and raise real demons. This was all spread around my school and many others like it during the 80s in “This is TRUE” classic urban legend format.Metal aesthetics lean into this, because pissing off people like that is an important part of the subcultural values. -- source link

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