The Satanic Panic Is Back, and It's Bipartisan

A new poll looking at Americans' belief in conspiracy theories finds high levels of support for loony-tunes ideas about sex, Satan, and U.S. institutions. In addition, more than half of those surveyed believed child sex-trafficking myths.

The situation echoes fears prevalent during the 1980s and '90s, a mass hysteria that has in retrospect been dubbed the Satanic Panic. This vintage worry about ritual murders, sexual abuse inspired by devil worship, and Satanists in child care centers, the entertainment industry, and elsewhere was unfounded—but still ruined lives. (You can read much more about the Satanic Panic in Reason Books Editor Jesse Walker's The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory.)

For a few decades, the moral panic around these topics seemed to subside—which is not to say people didn't displace these fears into other overblown villains, such as sex trafficking cabals. Now it seems to be in full swing again, blended with ongoing panic about sex trafficking and retro myths about queer people being pedophiles and perverts.