A gathering of far-right conspiracy theorists took place in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, last weekend for an event called “Patriots Arise.” Organized by QAnon conspiracy theorists Alan and Francine Fosdick, the two-day conference featured appearances by several Republican candidates for office, including Pennsylvania GOP state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who is currently running for governor, Teddy Daniels, who is running for lieutenant governor in Pennsylvania; Rick Bowers, who is running for state Senate in Maryland; and Dan Cox, who is running for governor in Maryland. Kathy Barnette, who is running for the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania, was originally listed as being scheduled to attend but did not appear, though neo-Confederate Michael Peroutka, who is running for attorney general in Maryland, did make a surprise appearance.
Right Wing Watch
Patriots Arise: Multiple GOP Candidates Appeared at a QAnon Conference
By Kyle Mantyla | April 26, 2022 2:33 pm
The collective fears that consumed the US in the 1980s and ’90s are still alive and well — all the way through QAnon and beyond.
Excerpts from:
Why Satanic Panic never really ended:
“The growing fascination with the occult also coincided with a number of extremely well-publicized serial killer cases that took place in the ’70s: the Zodiac killer and the Alphabet Killer, both of whom used ritualistic patterns in their killings, neither of whom were ever caught; Ted Bundy; John Wayne Gacy; the Hillside Stranglers; and David Berkowitz, a.k.a. the Son of Sam, who sparked a mass panic during the summer of 1977 in New York City…”
“Through it all, Christian fundamentalism and a literal belief in angels and devils were on the rise. Fundamentalist preachers like Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority, founded in 1979, gained prominence across the country, passing along a literal fire-and-brimstone style of Christianity…”
“By the mid-’80s, a wave of seminars, tutorials, and educational videos for authorities and evangelicals on the subject of recognizing and fighting satanic cults was sweeping the US. Law enforcement in El Paso, Texas “were promptly dispatched to ‘ritual crime’ seminars,” journalist Debbie Nathan recounted in 2003. These were “classes aimed at law enforcement authorities and taught mostly by other cops, therapists, preachers and by born again Christians claiming to be former high priests or escapees from unspeakably sadistic ritual-torture cults.”
In 1992, the Justice Department thoroughly debunked the myth of the satanic ritual abuse cult. But though accusations of satanically motivated child abuse rituals had pretty much died out by the mid-1990s, law enforcement continued to treat Satan as a potential criminal indicator — as we see in this 1994 police training video, The Law Enforcement Guide to Satanic Cults.
Clip from LAW ENFORCEMENT GUIDE TO SATANIC CULTS. Does your local park have satanists? How to tell if evil-doing no-goodnicks are infesting your park.
"Today, this video seems laughable, but the humor fades when we consider just how many real people were persecuted due to these brazen stereotypes about devil worship. Indeed, the most damaging misconception about the fallout of Satanic Panic is that it ended in the ’90s. In fact, although most satanic ritual abuse cases eventually resulted in overturned convictions, at least three people are still serving prison sentences for crimes that most likely never happened…”
“In 1997, four lesbian women who became known as the San Antonio Four were targeted and wrongfully convicted for child molestation claims. Their trial played out against a resurgence of Satanic Panic tied to homophobia in a conservative state, and their fight for justice lasted nearly two decades. All four women spent 15 years in prison before having their convictions overturned in 2015 and ultimately expunged in 2018.
But by far the most notorious criminal case of the Satanic Panic era was that of the West Memphis Three. In 1993, three teenagers in West Memphis, Arkansas, were accused and later convicted of the horrific sexual assault and murders of three young boys. The teens were accused primarily based on hearsay surrounding their goth lifestyles and rumors that they worshipped Satan, despite a lack of any physical evidence. The famed documentary Paradise Lost publicized the case, and the three men were ultimately freed in 2011, after new DNA evidence showed them to have no connection to the killings. They entered Alford pleas, which commuted their sentences to time served: 18 years in prison, each.”
“The legacy of Satanic Panic is now deeply interwoven with American culture and politics — all the way through QAnon and beyond
"Because of the high profiles of such over-the-top cases as the McMartin trial disaster and the West Memphis Three, the public gradually became skeptical of satanic ritual abuse claims. But despite the debunking of myths, Satanic Panic continued to sweep the globe and impact the lives of innocent individuals…”
Many of those conspiracies and strange murmurs of illicit child sex rings are still with us decades later. The 2016 clown hoax traded on longstanding myths about child predators lurking among us and relying on innocent-looking methods of attack. And many right-wing conspiracy theories that have ballooned into serious threats over the past five years contain overt elements of Satanic Panic. Pizzagate, which led to a believer bringing a gun to a Washington, DC, pizza parlor in 2016, held that Democratic politicians were secretly trafficking children for sex, holding them in the basement of the restaurant. (It doesn’t have a basement.)
Also in 2016, right-wing conspirators interpreted a dinner party held by performance artist Marina Abramović to be a satanic ritual. Details of the dinner party first emerged through the leaked emails of John Podesta, former campaign chair to Hillary Clinton. Although the theory was absurd, Abramović has faced allegations that she is a practicing satanist ever since; in 2020, outraged conspiracy theorists disrupted and shut down a collaboration she worked on with Microsoft.
The Abramović theory was tied to Pizzagate, in that it was also politicized and also involved the idea that Democratic politicians were secretly engaged in evil acts. Given the polarized US political climate, it’s easy to see how two similarly unfounded ideas — Democrats engaged in ritual satanism and Democrats engaged in child sexual abuse — could become linked in the minds of some members of the public. And in 2017, that’s just what happened.
In October 2017, an anonymous 4chan user going by “Q” began claiming insider knowledge about a vast satanic pedophile ring involving democrats, high-powered celebrities, and world leaders. Q’s conspiracy theory held that President Donald Trump was pretending to be incompetent so that he could more effectively apprehend the pedophiles in government around him — pedophiles who, in addition to practicing satanic rites and sexual abuse, were also trafficking children to harvest their hormones and make serums that would provide them eternal youth.
The Q conspiracy quickly became known as QAnon — the name for both the theory itself and Q’s followers. As QAnon spread, it became a textbook example of Satanic Panic in action; its followers weaponized parents’ fears of harm coming to their children to spread the message across social media. The group used hashtags like the superficially unobjectionable #SaveTheChildren, and disguised itself against takedown attempts by Facebook by masquerading as a straightforward anti-trafficking community.
But just as the original spread of Satanic Panic masked prejudice, hostility to change, and fear of the other beneath all its performative concern for the welfare of children, Qanon, too, hid something much darker. In 2019, the FBI identified QAnon as a domestic terrorist threat, citing numerous acts of violence and militant recruitment efforts being done in the name of QAnon. This pattern came to a head in January 2021, when hundreds of QAnon supporters joined the insurrection at the US Capitol.
There are some clear differences between QAnon and the original era of Satanic Panic: QAnon is a political movement with real political power. And while Satanic Panic was fueled by religious zeal, QAnon is almost a religion unto itself. Still, the tools used to spread both ideas — alarmism, fearmongering, hysteria, and reports of wildly gothic scenes of blood-drinking, children harvested for body parts, and witches — are virtually identical."
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VOX Why Satanic Panic never really ended
The collective fears that consumed the US in the 1980s and ’90s are still alive and well — all the way through QAnon and beyond.
Aja Romano Mar 31, 2021, 2:50pm EDT
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