I would like to start by apologizing to my readers. For the last month or so, my posting has been erratic. The last couple of months have been hard, sometimes a bit harder than normal. The first part of the year carries a lot of emotional baggage for me, then there have been some deep thoughts about where I am with my illness, and then just the chaotic state of the country and world. This isn’t an excuse, but a simple statement of fact. We all get sidetracked in life, that is kind of how life is, constant and multifaceted.
But, we are seeing a world where logical thought and creativity are not being held up, any longer. We watch the news unfold daily showing United States citizens being harassed and arrested by a short sighted group of people who have been placed in control. This whole second administration makes me remember that first time you were left alone as a child. You thought you were big enough to handle it all but instead, things go a bit crazy because you don’t understand how much responsibility comes with extra power. The most asinine part of this is that the very things that are happening today aren’t new, they have repeated throughout our history.
I thought today would be a great day to talk about how some of the more recent historical atrocities are similar to what we are seeing today. Join me as I spiral down the rabbit hole in an article titled… Echoes of Fear: How the Red Scare, Lavender Scare, and Satanic Panic Mirror Today’s Moral Crusades.
Disclaimer
A quick disclaimer here. History is full of atrocities that we have inflicted on our fellow humans, simply put there are too many to name and many are too gruesome to get into, for this article. Those instances in humanity show how extreme these clouded views can become. Yet, here we are, standing on the stoop of history and just waiting to open that door and invite the past back to the present. Learning is hard.
With that being said, I am going to deal more with, what I call, recent history. In so much that I am only going back to the 1950. I chose this time due to how much science and technology started to shape our world in ways we had not envisioned. There were hopes, still, of the World of Tomorrow and how it was going to elevate humanity to its highest ambitions. But, it is also a time in history where technology and advancement quickly was shifted to benefit certain groups, genders, orientations, and beliefs over others.
The Red Scare
As I type this sentence, the weight of it hits me and brings my age fully into clear vision. If you have not heard of The Red Scare, then many of you may want to ask your grandparents. There were two Red Scares in the World’s history. The first was around 1917 and a bit further back than the overall tone with which I want to express. So, let’s focus on the second one from the 1950s. The Second Red Scare was driveb by the rise of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. A Wisconsin Senator named Joseph McCarthy made accusations that the communist party was infiltrating the American government and various other institutions in the United States. As tensions rose and fear spread, suspicion was everywhere. It led to bogus investigation, black listing and the removal of basic civil liberties. All on the grounds of an accusation.
As the 1950s progressed, the American public was bombarded with messages that they should be in fear of the subversive Communist that is coming to take away their freedoms. These usurpers could be anywhere; school teachers, college professors, artists, journalists, and minorities. Does this sound even vaguely familiar? It should. Free thinkers and intellectuals were branded because they were seen to have the ability to sway the minds of the masses in allowing them to think for themselves or show sides of truths that were counter to what the government wanted you to see. George Orwell predicted this kind of society in his famous book 1984, written in 1949. What is chilling about the world created in this epic look at humanity is how on the nose it would be for the era to come and so many after it.
From 1950 to 1954, McCarthy waged a war of dissension and fear with a multitude of probes into supposed Communist expansion into the US State Department, White House, Treasury, and even into the Army, (again, funny how this seem so very familiar). The distrust was so high that no one dared speak out against the state of affairs for fear of being labeled disloyal and targeted. The controls that were in place simply did not work, out of fear of retaliation. It was so bad that even President Esienhower did not know how to effectively confront McCarthy. McCarthy wanted every resource we had available to be used to root out this Red Threat.
We saw the government implement surveillance programs, loyalty oaths and public campaigns of suspicion and accusation to ramp up fears of the populace.This included putting phone taps on suspected individuals, encouraging people to turn in their neighbors on suspected behaviors or disloyalty. If you were found to be subversive, you were immediately black listed, you were denied employment, housing and suffered reputation damage, all on suspicions that rarely paid off.
This wasn’t the first and it would not be the last.
The Lavender Scare
It would actually seem odd that I started with the Second Red Scare when the foundations for it were laid with the beginnings of investigations, regulations, and tactics were already being put into place for rooting out the dreaded homosexual influence and agenda. Before the full onset of either hatred fueled panics were breathed into creation, the American government, led by people who had a singular vision of what it means to be American, were already rooting out who they deemed as unfit. Unfit was the broadest of terms they could use to incorporate groups they deemed as criminally insane, morally depraved. So, branching this, further, to increase focus on the homosexual invasion was easier. The roots of homophobia and moral sex panic date back to the Depression. This, coincidentally, was a time in which there was a shift in the presentation of American ideals. Religion is often brought back into fights, such as these, as an emotional crutch to garner sympathy from the masses. The best way to show someone as an enemy is to make sure that you have the weight of the great and powerful Sky Daddy on your side.
The Lavender Scare was built in tandem and on the same framework as the Red Scare. It is easy for people to believe that persons known for habitual drunkenness, sexual perversions, financial irresponsibilities, or criminal records as those who would seek to undermine the establishment. After all, there are laws for those sorts of things. But these actions were so easy to pass by scrutiny due to the vagueness in their descriptions and language. Terms like “moral weaklings,” “sexual misfits,”and “undesirables” are terms that strike chords of fear in people. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart coined the phrase “I know it when I see it” in an test of obscenity in the case of Jacobellis v. Ohio, in explaining my certain material may or may not be seen as obscene. When you use a term like “sexual misfit” your mind starts to conjure images, based on your perceptions, of what that could be like. Then it becomes so much easier to label people when there is a group mentality of what is or is not acceptable.
Again, we watched in silent horror as the Government urged citizens to watch and turn in people that fit these categories. People were removed from their jobs because they were seen as a threat to the children or could possibly sway others into their deviant behavior. They needed to be rooted out and removed for the moral straight line of a God Fearing nation. Across the nation we watched as educators, politicians, and average citizens were ostracized and, in some cases, met the wrath of hate fueled mobs looking for morally corrupt individuals that were sent here by the Devil to raze this God fearing country to the ground and hand it over to the communists and morally corrupt individuals of the world.
It is funny how religion is often weaponized to push an agenda. That would become even more evident in the Era of Excess.
Satanic Panic
November 1st, 1980, a book was released that would set the stage for more peope as targets of eradication. It would become the litmus test for all things that the country would deem as anti-religion and anti-morality.
In 1973, a patient sought help from a therapist for depression related to a miscarriage. During their sessions, Michelle Smith would constantly tell the doctor that there was something important affecting her that she needed to talk about but she couldn’t quite remember what it was. The doctor, Lawrence Pazder was a proponent of hypnotism and used that in his sessions with Smith. During one of those sessions, he reported that Smith screamed non-stop for 25 minutes and when she calmed down, her voice had regressed to that of her five-year-old self. After this session, Pazder would go on for another 14 months and 600 hours of hypnosis to uncover that Smith was repressing memories of her mother handing her over to a Satanic Cult.
With the publication of the book, both Pazder and Smith started a whirlwind tour to promote the book and bring to the world’s attention the threat of Satanic Cults. The book used Smith’s memories of her events to show that there was a growing expanse of Satanic cults across the world and that they were trying to infiltrate various places in government to take over the world. Smith alluded to thousands of babies being abducted every year for ritual sacrifice and that she witnessed many of them. This book tour whipped up the fears in America so much that Satanic cults were practicing everywhere. The media took the book as literal truth and started running exposes on the possible Satanic Cults that were operating. Talk shows became inundated with people claiming to be part of these cults or escaped their clutches. Victims lined up to share the horror stories of all they were made to endure at the hands of these cultists. This gave talk show hosts exactly what they needed to become household names. Geraldo RIvera, Sally Jessy Raphael, Phil Donahue, and more ran show after show about these groups and always turned record viewership numbers.
As a kid, I remember these stories vividly. It allowed people to lump rock and roll, games like Dungeons and Dragons, horror movie/book love, and anything else that was considered dark and deviant into a category that parents could relate to and fight to protect the safety of their children. There were stories on nightly news that talked about the thousands of babies and children that were abducted yearly to be used in ritualistic sacrifices. The sheer number of people claimed to be abducted and killed should have left mass graves to be found, cults that should have been investigated, and diabolical plans for world domination. The reality is that there never was a piece of substantive evidence to any of these allegations. Where were all of the bodies of those victims? At the very least, some evidence should have been found to be solid proof, but none was ever presented. Instead, information was put together on how to know if you know one of these “Satanists.” If your kid was under the influence, then they would be listening to heavy metal groups like Black Sabbath, Motley Crue, Iron Maiden and more. Or they had an obsession with a tabletop fantasy game that allowed kids to pretend to be “witches” and look for demons and monsters. And, the sure fire way to know if they were a Satanist is if they had candles, pentagrams, knives, and such.
Thankfully, it has been proven that Michelle Smith and Lawerence Pazder created this scandal to sell books and make money. It is also a proven fact that those two entered into an affair with each other. It is believed that this was also used to help cover up their affair. In the end, the book was proven fake, Smith and Pazder ruined their individual marriages, and religion was, once again, a means of targeting those that others do not agree with. The wrongdoers were Smith and Pazder, they were cheating on their respective spouses, lying to the masses about events that never happened, and stole money from countless people, in the guise of book sells, just to lift up what they wanted to do as righteous.
Motivation through common emotions
Throughout history, we see examples of people trying to control others. Humanity has gotten good at this game, we have learned that the best way to control people is through fear and intimidation. If a morally corrupt person tried to seize power, directly, most of us would see through that and realize its danger. But, take those same corrupt people who want to control but instead, they choose to use our beliefs against us to gain that power, that is something different. If a candidate stands up and says “There is a plague in this country,” most of us would agree that there is something wrong. If they go further to say that this plague is perpetuated by morally corrupt individuals who want to take your liberties away, suddenly, you want to hold your beliefs and things that are important to you closer because you dont want some unfit person trying to take them. Fear drives humans to act in weird ways, we want those who can exude control and leadership to show us how to fight the perceived threat and to show us where it is so we can see it. We want it so much that we start seeing the very thing they tell us is out there around us all the time. We become the engine to create the world those corrupt people want to bring about.
I have to say that the current feeling in our country has me worried, as a gay man who is not Christian. I worry because of my current health conditions and my age. I worry about my life with my boyfriend and how that can change and the freedoms we have, like the ability to travel as we see fit. The world seems poised to return to a time of small minded thoughts and hatred of those that are different that we are. We are seeing attacks on institutions that promote free speech and intellectualism. All of this being said, I stand resolute in my beliefs, who I am, what I stand for, and what is most important to me. I wont change what I post or who I allow to post on my blog as I feel that, as humans are diverse and complex, there are too many views to stifle and we should be knowledgeable of all of them. This is how we challenge our personal views and beliefs, it is how we grow and evolve, and how we grow and interact with others.
Here we are, reliving history once again. We are watching as everyone of those previous eras are being revisited to us again, only a hundred times worse. It is worse because we still believe these misplaced allegations just as easily as we did then. W,. as humans, are seeming to devolve more than we evolve. We allow emotion and hatred to rule us more succinctly than reason and intellect. We have history on our side, we have morality as our very core. As humanity, we should know the things we are watching unfold around us are wrong. We should be smart enough to realize that we have a small group of people leading the populations by the nose down, yet another, dark path. Will we wake up, this time, before its too late? Will the next generation of activists come before the damage is too far gone and we become the very thing we are supposed to be fighting against? Let me know in the comments below. All viewpoints are welcome and will not be silenced, I only ask that you post with reason behind your words and not just post something angry or regurgitated from someone else. Each of you have the power to shape our country and world. Power lies in the masses, not just the elected officials. Your words are the magical incantations that can change what is to come, will you accept that power or let others take it from you. Thank you for being a part of GayintheCLE.
Gay in the CLE 