"You think it's crazy and can't grasp how our society had a Satanic Panic in the 80s? Well, look at some of the crazy stuff people believe right now that I would never think possible..."
Yeah, it didn't start with D&D and it's never really gone away, it just changes its target every couple of years.
Anton Lavey begat modern Satanism whose rise tangentially begat The Exorcist. Throughout the same period several cults and death cults and suicide cults flourished and ended tragically. The term Serial Killer became a household word and every day fear. That undercurrent of "this is real life" fear, instilled by both Hollywood and actual real life events, travelled to Ouija boards and Tarot cards and anything too New Age and trippy that dabbled in the occult.
Evangelists picked up the thread and started spinning tales of escaping Satanic Sex Cults and reforming themselves. Completely unconfirmable, but enthusiastically reformed high priests and arch dukes and head muckety mucks appeared almost overnight to explain how God saved them and told them to spread the word and collect donations.
The Satanic Panic started to settle its sights on daycare and assisted living facilities. Anything different or scary or that shared even a brief glance towards the occult took a turn at the wheel: D&D, heavy metal, martial arts, homsexuality, new and different cultures, video games, CLOWNS.
The year that I was born, one person poisoned their own son with cyanide dosed Halloween candy to collect on an insurance policy. His attempted excuse was that Satanists did it and now, 46 years later, after absolutely no known cases anywhere have ever surfaced, we STILL get yearly warnings to look out because some mysterious faceless killer is going to murder your kids with a razor blade hidden in a candy bar. Zero people have ever passed out tampered Halloween candy. Hundreds if not thousands have tampered with their own or their children's Halloween candy in an attempt to cash in on the limelight.
"Real" exorcisms were broadcast on TV, talk show hosts had blockbuster specials where they talked about Satanism and interviewed people who had sex with demons. Books were being sold, movies were being made, hypnotists were discovering that absolutely anyone who walked through the door could be regressed and convinced to remember lurid details of ritualized sexual abuse from a nationwide, underground network of pedophile, demon summoning, devil worshippers.
This was an undercurrent that DOMINATED the 80s in both the US and England. It was a full on witch trial, and dozens of people went to jail and spent decades behind bars till the truth came out.
AND it made it that much harder to deal with actual sexual abuse cases in its aftermath.
It waxes and wanes, but it was here during the Red Scare, it was here during the Salem Witch Trials, and it's here today.