I wrote a paper on this stuff a while ago for the journal of Religion and Popular culture. I lived through it, with my father being a minister and so getting a lot of flack for my hobby at the time at school, and thought it would be an interesting side project. It was a systemic project to attack D&D but it was a sideshow, I think, to a general malaise of Satanic Ritual Abuse panics used by hard line right wing Christian organizations anxious about secularism and the like. Incidently where I live in Ballarat Australia has had a rash of dead stock and Kangaroos of the kind which were attributed to Satanists and ritual sacrifice in the 1980s. ie broken neck testicles removed, body clit open and heart, liver and kidneys gone. This time the interpretation is Big Cats or secretly having Thylacines in the mainland wilderness. I was researching the myths of Big Cats and Thylacines and a local Aboriginal elder reckons that it when you get a stray pig dog kill an animal and then foxes come in to eat the most nutrient rich bits followed by bugs. Then people try to explain what is several animals working on a carcass together as one bizarre incident. Another one was animals with bored out rectums which they claimed was Satanists doing sex rituals. They have found now that ants are coming in and going for the softest bits and so bore out the nether regions creating the appearance of a gaping anus etc on a roo or sheep. Still the rumours fly about and the anti-D&D thing is part of a broader pattern of Christo-centric panic. Hicks’ book “In pursuit of Satan: American Police and the Occult” is a great read on the SRA panic of the 80s and makes some discussion of the D&D business. There was also a chapter on it in the Skeptics society publication “Why People Believe Weird Things”.
My paper is here
http://www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/art9-roleplaying.html
Best
David
From: car-pga@googlegroups.com [mailto:car-pga@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Paul Cardwell
Sent: Saturday, 7 August 2010 7:53 AM
To: car-pga@googlegroups.com
Subject: [car-pga] Chick, M&M, etc.
With all this sudden interest in the bad old days, when I was spending an inordinate amount of time fighting off these loonies, now I am beginning to get flashbacks.
We still have Rona Jaffe's response to Radecki claiming M&M was a documentary. Would it help to start circulating it again? When a professional writer uses "!!!", you know there is some agitation involved.
However, the review video was hilarious, it is a pity I don't have a way to copy it for the archives.
Paul Cardwell
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