Satanic Panic

In the 1980s and 1990s, a moral panic swept across America
and spread through much of the English-speaking world. It would later be dubbed the Satanic Panic. A number of factors contributed to this
phenomenon, including the 1970s anti-cult movement, the popularity of
horror films such as the Exorcist, the advent of the Church of Satan in the 1960s, and above all, deep-seated cultural anxieties prompted by the
decline of the single-income family and the proliferation of working
mothers. Using Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject, this paper will explore the imaginary construct of the sinister Satanist as a repository for the anxieties of the community, serving much the same function as the Biblical “goat for Azazel.” Through this process of abjection, the figure of the Satanist emerges as the shadow of the Christian-acculturated psyche.

Satanismepanikken er ikke navn på ett, enkeltstående fenomen, men en samlebetegnelse som dekker en rekke fenomener som alle henger sammen med ulike samtidsforestillinger om satanisme.

Det var flere ulike former for bakgrunn for panikken. Et oppsving av interesse for okkultisme i populærkultur og religion ble møtt av en voksende kristen anti-okkult kampanje, ofte fra "fundamentalistisk", apokalyptisk orienterte miljøer, både katolske og protestantiske. Antikultbevegelser jaktet på farlige, avvikende religioner, med retoriske verktøy og konsepter som tildels var hentet fra anti-kommunistiske kampanjer. En rekke oppsiktsvekkende kriminelle handlinger, både på 1970- og 1980-tallet vekket den allmenne interesse for satanisme som en mulig faktor i drap, selvmord og narkotikahandel. Fremvekst av barnevernsbevegelser og -institusjoner var viktige. Sammen med nye terapeutiske moter og alvorlig redsel for truede barn åpnet disse for allminneliggjøringen av sekteriske fenomener.

Throughout American history the public has been gripped by fantasies of criminal activity. These crime fantasies manifest in two distinct but related typologies: witch-hunts and crime panics. On the one hand, witch-hunts target individuals based on their beliefs and are exemplified by the two Red Scares of the early and mid-twentieth century and the persecution of the Quakers in seventeenth century Massachusetts Bay. These are fundamentally distinct from crime panics, which target activity that was already classified as criminal but do so in a way that exacerbate deep procedural deficiencies in the criminal justice system. Crime panics are exemplified by the Salem witchcraft trials and the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and 1990s. President Trump’s relentless focus on undocumented immigration can be seen as a partially successful attempt to create a crime panic, while, perhaps surprisingly, the investigation by Robert Mueller is neither a witch-hunt nor a crime panic. By bringing ongoing criminal law issues into conversation with legal history scholarship, this article clarifies our understanding of the relationship between politics and large-scale criminal investigations, and highlights areas for future reform.

DOI: 10.1177/0037768609345972 © The Authors, 2009. Reprints and permissions: http://scp.sagepub.com http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav ... Titus HJELM, Henrik BOGDAN, Asbjørn DYRENDAL and Jesper Aagaard PETERSEN ... Nordic Satanism and ...

The second wave of black metal, with its most notorious moments emanating from the Oslo-centred scene of the early 1990s, was somewhat inevitably a media phenomenon in its native Norway, as the extensive television and newspaper coverage of the time demonstrates. Here the mores and certainties of social democratic Norway were turned upside down in a fashion every bit as inverted as the crosses that loom large in the sub-genre’s iconography. Yet while church arson, murder and a provocative mix of paganism, Satanism and even fascism provided ‘good box office’ in Norway, as some of the more lurid newspaper headlines of the time demonstrate, black metal became and has remained a worldwide movement, helped in no small part by worldwide media coverage. This paper will focus on one particular nation’s coverage, however – that of the United Kingdom, and how it covered and responded to the antics of the Norwegian black metal scene up to and including the trial of ‘Varg’ Vikernes in 1994.

An initial study provides a disparate picture. Be it the deliberately lurid tabloid expose of Kerrang! Magazine or the aloof sneering tone of the Fortean Times, the niche media of the UK could certainly be trusted to provide coverage of this provocative and indeed often dangerous fringe musical movement. How it was also covered by the politically influential UK popular press, however, is another matter; if the discourse of early 90s black metal with its aggressively transgressive and aesthetically rigid approach made good tabloid fodder, the UK popular press with its own traditions, hobbyhorses and distinctive approach to design, content and at times vitriolic right wing politics might at first seem a good combination.

The UK press, after all, is keen to exploit moral panics, has a clear ideological bias, is attracted to lurid and often grim subject matter and also has an approach that is censorious (as its campaigns against ‘Video Nasties’ in the 1980s demonstrate) and yet all in favour of defending its own excesses, as the apologia deployed in the wake of the phone hacking scandal and the Leveson Enquiry demonstrate. Arguably, with its page 3 models, venting of entrenched prejudices and dependence on ‘trolls’ such as Katie Hopkins, Richard Littlejohn and Julie Burchill, the UK press both celebrates an idealised past and tramples over modern left-of-centre mores in a fashion that has curious parallels with the black metal scene that coalesced around Øystein ‘Euronymous’ Aarseth’s Helvete store in Oslo. As The Sun’s discredited front page smearing Liverpool football supporters, The Daily Mail’s mix of xenophobia and hypochondria, and the Daily Star’s embrace of UKIP and the English Defence League show, the outrageous, transgressive, yet far-right/reactionary urge of the UK press and the black metal scene would, presumably have much in common.

What, then, did UK press coverage reveal not just about black metal at this time, but also its own mores and attitudes? Was black metal seized upon by the UK press or ignored, and why? Finally, what does this reveal about UK journalism and black metal itself?

DOI: 10.1177/0037768609345972 © The Authors, 2009. Reprints and permissions: http://scp.sagepub.com http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav ... Titus HJELM, Henrik BOGDAN, Asbjørn DYRENDAL and Jesper Aagaard PETERSEN ... Nordic Satanism and ...