Satanic Panic Books

“The connection between the changing role of the police in American society and efforts to control culturally subversive groups is illustrated in the backgrounds of some of the most well-known of the “occult cops.” Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedecker’s examination of these usually low-ranking detectives found that many of them “had spied on groups opposing racism or the Vietnam War in the late 1960s.” Before morphing into “occult experts” they traveled the “small town lecture circuit” warning mainly white, middle-class audiences about the danger of “Moonies” and other alternative religious movements. The role of the police in the satanic panic of the 1980s appears to be symptomatic of a much larger problem. Rather than asking its police to prevent and prosecute crimes against person and property, white America asked it to crusade against evil, to slay monsters and demons. In an urban America prostrated by the growing economic inequality of the 1980s and the consequent deadly mix of entrepreneurialism and despair that constituted the crack epidemic, politicians gravitated to the “tough on crime” rhetoric that became such an important part of the successful campaigns of Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. Meanwhile, the leadership of the evangelical and Charismatic worlds adopted a very similar rhetoric in which their followers were asked to engage in an unrelenting war on the forces of darkness threatening their homes, children, churches, and communities.”
― W. Scott Poole, Satan in America: The Devil We Know