Americans recurrently embrace religiously framed conspiracy panics about children and the Devil

Evidence

Pizzagate represents a type of story to which Americans are particularly susceptible, a religiously based hysteria and conspiracism featuring the Devil and children and sexual horror. Different versions of the same scenario have dogged us from the Salem witch trials through the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and ’90s. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 236

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ADDENDUM article on moral panics and the standing thesis about small acts of decorum toward corpses — panic narratives as worldviews. Also resonates with White Noise’s critique of media-driven fear. — connects to: Conspiracy theories inherit the mythic good-versus-evil frame of American religious zealotry. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 55; People embrace even the frightening parts of religion during existential threats — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 619; American society explains rare Muslim terror through religion itself (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• A quarter of mid-century Americans believed Catholics plotted to take over America #exemplifies (0.85) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 309
• People embrace even the frightening parts of religion during existential threats #expands (0.80) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 619
• Even Benjamin Franklin equated apostasy to Islam with following the Devil #exemplifies (0.75) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 165
• Even the sober Benjamin Franklin made this association among the maxims penned for Poor Richard’s Almanack in 1741 Turn Turk Tim, and renounce thy Faith in Words as well as Actions Is it worse to… #exemplifies (0.75)
• Conspiracy theories convert vague existential dread into manageable concrete fear #expands (0.72) — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 702
• Medieval writers read Islam as the Devil’s renewal of older Christian heresies. #expands (0.72) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1024
• American society explains rare Muslim terror through religion itself #exemplifies (0.70)