One of the things that convinces me that Progress is ultimately a convenient fiction is the constant reinvention of the Satanic Panic. It was only back in 2015 that here in the UK we already saw the revival of the Satanic Panic in the Hampstead scare, in which several people were accused of abducting, trafficking, raping, and killing children, all in a school in Hampstead, and even though those charges were soon dismissed and proven false, the basic idea continued to live in for a pack of conspiracy theorists who continued to pursue the phantom of Satanic conspiracy. Then of course there was PizzaGate, the belief that Democratic Party elites were abducting and molesting children at the basements of Comet Pizza, which eventually gave way to QAnon, a much larger conspiracy theory in which “satanic” pedophiles were abusing and sacrificing children but also were in the process of being secretly arrested by Donald Trump, a belief that persists in the American far-right to this day. Then of course there was the Satanic Panic being concocted against Lil Nas X for his Satan shoes and the Montero music video they accompanied. And now, there’s a new Satanic Panic centered around Travis Scott, the rapper whose recent Astroworld concert ended in a riot in which 8 people died.
Let’s get into the background of what happened before we go any further. On November 5th, the rapper Travis Scott performed at the Astroworld Festival in Houston, Texas. Apparently his appearance was met with a surge of fans rushing to the stage, which the escalated into widespread panic and violence. As the crush was happening, multiple fans were pleading with the festival personnel and shouting out to Travis Scott to stop the festival and to alert them to people dying, but these pleas were ignored. As a result, eight people are known to have died and the cause of the crush is still under investigation. But that hasn’t stopped certain reactionary conspiracists from getting the wrong idea.
Christian TikTok users have claimed that the stage at Astroworld resembles an inverted cross leading to a portal to Hell, suggesting that Astroworld was actually a Satanic ritual, which Travis Scott supposedly set up to deliberately kill people. Another supposed piece of evidence consists of a shirt he wore of humans walking through a door and emerging with horns, apparently proving Scott’s “Satanic” inclinations. Some users on Twitter compared the Astroworld Festival to some Hieronymus Bosch paintings depicting Hell, even though they’re probably meant to just be based on the cover of his album, Astroworld. Some people took the presence of an apparently winged creature above the stage as proof that his destival is all about Hell. One person claimed that Astroworld was “666 months + 6 days after the founding of the Church of Satan”. Others have tied the Satanic conspiracy angle to anti-vaccine conspiracies, alleging that Covid-19 vaccines made people susceptible to demonic trances that Scott’s music supposedly caused.
All of this is obviously complete nonsense. Travis Scott is not a Satanist, neither is Drake for that matter, and even if they were, odds are they would not have planned mass sacrifice. If anything, if that was the idea, you’d think that the event would be more clandestine and the death toll would be much higher than eight people. Vaccines most definitely do not cause any trances, let alone of the kind that have been called “demonic possession”, and even if they did it seems nonsensical to think that the effect would require you to go to a music festival to manifest. People can get into vaguely ecstatic states all the time in music festivals without the help of vaccines, demons, or even drugs. We don’t really know what happened as far as causes are concerned, but the fact that people have constantly complained before the concert about a lack of security and exits allows us to suggest that the people organising the Astroworld Festival were cutting corners; not spending enough money or effort on the safety of the festival attendees. As for Scott himself, I honestly don’t know why he just straight up ignored pleas to stop the show, but it seems to me that you don’t need demons in your head to be an asshole. Humans have managed to be sufficiently horrible either without demonic influences or, if anything, with the full support of their “better angels”.
I will say, incidentally, that the whole concept of demonic trances being involved is kind of fascinating to me mostly because of my research into pre-Christian beliefs. Possession by spirits was not an uncommon concept in the Greek and Vedic cultures, and it wasn’t always seen as a bad thing. In fact, states of nympholepsy in Greece or being “mounted by the gods” in African indigenous traditions were holy experiences that transgressed the boundary between self a d the uncanny other and, in a way, united participants with the gods. More importantly, divine possession was a key part of the mysteries of Dionysus, which were often targeted by authorities of the state cults of Rome for their apparently subversive nature, with Dionysus sharing important traits with our modern Devil. These are important considerations for anyone seeking to embody the Left Hand Path in a Pagan context.
But, at any rate, none of the facts about Astroworld, Travis Scott, or supposed Satanic rites are going to stop people from continuing to believe in Satanic Panics. It doesn’t even have to involve real conspiracies, such as the kind that the Order of Nine Angles and Tempel ov Blood are at this point known for (and kind of open about if anything), because the Panic depends almost entirely on fictitious events and false narratives of conspiracy, as these are what manufacture legitimacy for reactionary outrages against the marginalized. I’d also argue that the prevalence of Satanic Panic is to a point where, even though The Satanic Temple is an exception in that they’re covered all too favorably by mainstream media, one of the only times the media can actually criticizes The Satanic Temple is if they can throw in a something about orgies being involved. The funniest part about all of this is that Travis Scott and lots of pop musicians can be accused of being part of an elite Satanic cult bent on human sacrifice, but with black metal or death metal bands, plenty of whom are explicitly dedicated to Satanism, aren’t really subject to the same conspiracy theory treatment, even when some black metal musicians actually do commit crimes. I wonder why that is, and to be honest it makes me think that this sort of shit never is actually about Satanism per se.
And if you think about it, subtle forms of this exist even outside Satanism. We were all mad about Cuties, but as bad as it might have been, I’ve seen anime on Netflix with some at least moderately fucked up stuff in it involving childlike characters, but you wouldn’t hear anything about that except for occasional defence because it was made by Japanese guys instead of a woman from Somalia. As much as I denounced Michel Foucault last year, I have to point out that more recent accusations of him having raped children in Tunisia were immediately debunked and then walked back in the absence of evidence, and yet nonetheless were and are still taken as unquestionable truth to this day, which I’m retrospect had me wondering just how much else levelled against him isn’t as it seems, even if still arguably questionable at the end of it. And we all like to talk about harm and abuse, but we’re never consistent about it because it’s never about that. Take the Foucault accusations again. At worst, he dated 17-year olds, which is still bad, don’t get me wrong, but remember when rock and early heavy metal musicians would date teenagers and for some reason nobody complained even though you could legitimately say that was suspect? Keep in mind, this was all around the same time Foucault was still alive (he died in 1984). In fact I’m willing to bet the same baby boomers who join the TERF bandwagon about queers and trans people being pedophiles didn’t used to have a problem with cis straight rockers fucking young groupies back when they were young.
We’re almost all victims of the fact that the lie travels half way around the world before the truth gets a word in, and the lie has a habit of appealling to a complex of instincts that even people who think of themselves as transgressive or skeptical still have a hard time overcoming. And maybe that’s because truth such as it can be called isn’t a revelation but a continuous learning curb. But of course, the broad contours of that are things I should like to explore another day.
Aleph's Heretical Domain 