Satanic worship, sodomy, suicide and murder

The false link in the show between Dungeons and Dragons and an occult conspiracy is based on real history. In the 1980s, TV pundits, politicians, and religious leaders really thought the game was an entry point to satanic worship and an imagined vast conspiracy of satanic cults that supposedly permeated the United States and the entire world.

In the first episode, Eddie, the leader of the Hellfire Club and its Dungeons and Dragons game, derisively recites absurd accusations made at the time. These panicked allegations suggested Dungeons and Dragons promoted “satanic worship, sodomy, suicide, and even … murder!” During the season, Eddie himself becomes the victim of similar accusations.

Occult rituals, orgies and human sacrifices

The campaign against Dungeons and Dragons was part of a larger hysteria about a supposed enormous conspiracy, frequently called today the Satanic Panic.

The proliferation of belief in this conspiracy is tied to anxieties from accelerating social changes.

Central to it was the idea that networks of cults were conducting occult rituals, orgies, and human sacrifices, involving the abuse and murder of children. This ritual abuse was similar to the claims made in an influential but discredited book, Michelle Remembers (1980).

Stories like Michelle Remembers popularized the idea of large, inter-generational satanic networks that were taking down American society from inside. Specialists tie the proliferation of belief in this conspiracy to anxieties resulting from accelerating social changes.

These included women surging into the workforce, increasingly sensationalized crime reporting, the “decay” of traditional values, and the rise of the religious right in America.

An atmosphere of panic

Belief in satanic conspiracy during the 1980s and 1990s destroyed many lives. Especially in North America, there were hundreds of accusations that resulted in numerous trials. Recent books and podcasts explore specific cases such as Martensville, Saskatchewan or the McMartin Preschool near Los Angeles.

At McMartin, it was alleged that hundreds of children had been sexually abused at underground orgies. Even in an atmosphere of panic, the evidence was insufficient to secure any convictions.

Accusations elsewhere frequently tried credulity, suggesting the murder of preposterous numbers of children and infants. These claims were false. For example, a 1994 study examined 12,000 accusations of organised satanic ritual abuse. It concluded there was no evidence for organised satanic cults that sexually abuse children.

Studies of specific accusations, such as at McMartin, often emphasise how adult investigators created accounts of abuse that fit their preconceptions of satanism. They did it, often unknowingly, by getting suggestible children to say what they expected to hear.

The models of ritual abuse investigators reproduced have a history. Early modern witch hunts are one frequently cited analogue, but the similarities run much deeper and further back in time. The secret meetings, orgies, and ritual abuse attributed to modern cults correspond to what Norman Cohn called the nocturnal ritual fantasy. Similar, accusations were made against witches, Christian heretics, Jews, and early Christians.

Satanic panic today

As author David Frankfurter suggests, the many different versions of supposed demonic conspiracies display patterns. One of the most worrisome and ironic is that historically verifiable atrocities take place not at the hands of non-existent cults – but rather during mistaken attempts to destroy them.

It has taken on new forms, as part of Pizzagate or QAnon.

One atrocity is the minimisation of the real abuse of children. By tying it to imagined conspiracies, delusions like the Satanic Panic avoid grappling with the actual social structures that facilitate abuse.

The Satanic Panic, or demonic occult conspiracy theory, is still with us. Actually, it has taken on new forms, as part of Pizzagate or QAnon. Believers of both conspiracies frequently allege that their social and political enemies ritually abuse children following ancient tropes of cult evil.

As in the past, such accusations can justify violence ironically performed in the name of eradicating evil. Belief in discredited, but familiar, demonic conspiracies makes it likely this familiar mistake will happen again.