Hello and a welcome to PRISM of the past, a weekly series about historical events, people, and situations, from the fascinating to the forgotten.

I'm the aluminati, and today we're going to be talking about the

satanic panic or that time throughout the 80s and early 90s in the US were

allegations of SRA or satanic ritual abuse were spreading.

There were mass media scares, a ton of false accusations,

and the whole thing still remains a pretty controversial topic to this day.

Also, as a content warning here, that a pretty controversial topic to this day.

Also, as a content warning here, that we will be going through mentions of child abuse,

even though, well, most of the cases mentioned didn't exactly happen.

Even so, if that topic bothers you, I'd recommend clicking away.

Perhaps this is not your episode today. With that being said, let's jump right into it, and

we'll start with the history and causes of this satanic panic. Now let's get this cleared out immediately like there's been multiple moments and

instances throughout history of satanic panic like events events occurring throughout history, the Salem

witch trials being one of them. But we're not going back that far into the

panic around the devil, witchcraft, and supposedly evil acts today. Instead,

our journey starts in the 70s with fundamentalist Christianity.

Fundamentalist Christianity, to put it simply, is a very strict literal interpretation of the Bible. The term fundamentalism was adopted

more widely in the 70s when it became a powerful political and economic force.

According to the book, the Satanism scarce, the new fundamentalism was led by

symbolically and to a degree literally by the Reverend Jerry Falwell.

Falwell was a televangelist who also established the moral majority, a political

organization in 1979. Although it disbanded 10 years later, the moral majority

...