RACKET LISTS: American Hysteria
The nation of witch hunters whose lost "sense of decency" probably never existed
“When things are going bad, and there’s people you need to confront, just be sure it doesn’t turn into a witch pursuit thing.” — Randy Marsh
Americans love a good scandal. Or, more accurately, we love to throw our shit at the shadows of leering boogeymen while the real scandals go mostly unnoticed.
From the Covid vaccine’s Mark of the Beast to the Moloch-worshipping Epstein class, from ritual preschool murders to commies in the state department, the AMERICAN HYSTERIA has always had a special touch of insanity. Descending from those Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Americans inherited a predilection for moral mania and “witch pursuit things” that seem all but baked into the country’s genetic code.
While the manic tendrils of outrage and suspicion creep into every nook of political and social life, a brief history of nine American hysterical episodes, from Epstein to Salem, where we first discovered our love of hunting the satanic cabal.
1. Zombie Plants, “Quiet Piggy,” and the Epstein Class: 2018-Present
THE MENACE: A shadowy global network of political and cultural elites is sexually trafficking children, and the occult blackmail scheme and mythical “client list” of Jeffrey Epstein is being covered up by the U.S. government.
THE CRUSADERS: (1) “Q,” of QAnon, the anonymous cult-leading “insider” who warned for years of an elite sex-trafficking cabal; (2) Alex Jones, who told his followers that “the CIA, with the Mossad and MI6, was running Epstein;” (3) Whitney Webb, whose 2022 book claimed that collaboration between U.S. and Israeli intelligence “enabled the sexual blackmail operation and other crimes of deceased pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein;” (4) countless other binder-toting internet trolls.
LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE? : Most definitely. Epstein fallout has included arrests, resignations, and embarrassing relationships with some of the most powerful people in the world. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in 2025 that she had the client list “sitting on [her] desk.”
PEAK DERANGEMENT: 69% percent of adult Americans in 2025 said they believed the government was hiding information about Epstein, and 47% of Americans believed Epstein was murdered in jail. Congressionally-mandated release of the “Epstein files” in late 2025 and early 2026 stoked public fervor, and House depositions of the Clintons (featuring questions on satanic Pizzagate), Les Wexner, and others provided further spectacle.
Epstein theories include: Epstein orchestrated COVID; Epstein grew mind-control plants in his garden to turn his victims into zombies; the layout of Epstein’s island “suggests it was heavily involved in occult and satanic ritual activity;” Epstein was a “co-opted Mossad agent;” Epstein’s death was staged with a body-double, and he is now in Israel; Epstein plotted to seed the human race with his DNA; you get the gist.
These theories are fed by institutional fuel: In July 2025, the Wall Street Journalreleased what it described as a letter written to Epstein by President Trump, depicting an outline of a woman overlaying bizarre prose. On April 9, First Lady Melania Trump felt compelled to publicly and strangely announce, “The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today … I am not Epstein’s victim, Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump.”
President Trump has batted away questions of the “Epstein Hoax” (“Quiet, Piggy!”) on a near-daily basis. Just this week, suspected gunman Cole Allen attempted to kill the President, after writing that he’s a “pedophile, rapist, and traitor,” to which Trump responded, “I’m not a rapist … I’m not a pedophile … I got associated with stuff that has nothing to do with me.”
REHABILITATION INDEX: 1/10 — Despite the Department of Justice concluding in July 2025 that there was no client list and no evidence of blackmail (though lamenting “unfounded theories”), Epstein mania remains a preeminent political and cultural issue, compelling an attempted presidential assassination. Americans mostly believe to some extent that Jeffrey Epstein was more than a lone depraved actor, and insist that a cabal of an elite Epstein class is operating in secrecy.
2. The Mark of the Beast, Bill Gates, and the COVID Vaccine: 2020-23
THE MENACE: Besides countless other COVID boogeymen — the vaccine caused mass sudden death, was a Bill Gates microchip vehicle, a satanic Mark of the Beast, etc.
THE CRUSADERS: (1) Tucker Carlson, telling his FOX news audience that the vaccine was killing more people than all other vaccines combined; (2) RFK Jr., who claimed the COVID vaccine was the deadliest in history; (3) Sherri Tenpenny, a licensed physician and prolific online poster who testified that the vaccine was magnetizing people; (4) As with Epstein, a horde of internet detectives and armchair epidemiologists.
LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE? : Likely no Mark of the Beast, though skeptics were frustrated by quickly shifting goalposts of vaccine efficacy and constitutionally-blocked vaccine mandates.
PEAK DERANGEMENT: Nurse Tiffany Dover fainted on live TV after receiving one of the first jabs in the country, and the internet became convinced that she had died and that her death was being covered up. Websites (WhereIsTiffanyDover.com), songs, and Facebook groups () went on the warpath to find the nurse. The hospital released a video with Dover, but conspiracists said she was a body double.
The hysteria was crippling: Theories of magnetic vaccine crystals (WE’RE CHIPPED AND WE’RE ALL FUCKED); young crusaders martyred-in-mime for refusing Satan’s Mark of the Beast; documentaries purporting to show mass sudden death from the “bioweapon” vaccine (“We have to defeat it. Because if we don’t, these monsters will destroy humanity”). The list of conspiracies is fantastic.
REHABILITATION INDEX: 3/10 — Supreme Court strikes down OSHA vaccine mandate in January 2022; Biden ends national emergency April 2023; American public slowly emerges from total hysteria, though vaccines remain a paramount political issue. RFK Jr. now heads the department of Health and Human services, and the anti-vaccine legacy of COVID is materializing in new schedules and fewer immunizations.
3. California Witches, Devil Worship, and the Satanic Panic: 1978-95
THE MENACE — A network of satanic cultists had infiltrated American society, and subliminal messages in music, media, games, and corporations were expressions of the devil.
THE CRUSADER(S): Accompanying widespread public panic — (1) Social worker Kee MacFarlane, lead interviewer for children at the satanically-plagued McMartin preschool; (2) Geraldo Rivera, host of the sensational 1988 NBC special “Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground;” (3) Patricia Pulling, founder of the group “Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons;” (4) The “Washington Wives,” including Tipper Gore, wife of then-Senator Al Gore, who founded the Parents Music Resource Center to crack down on immoral and occult music.
LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE? : Killers like Charles Manson and Son-of-Sam David Berkowitz grounded satanic mania in reality, and rock bands like Black Sabbath and AC/DC leaned into the demonic imagery, but satanic cults did not penetrate American society.
PEAK DERANGEMENT: At the McMartin preschool in California, accusations of satanic abuse emerged after interviewers employed leading questions to children at the school, alleging some 320 cases of abuse and urging the public to “Believe the children.” Descriptions of tunnels under the school, infant sacrifice, and teachers flying in the air dressed as witches culminated in charges against seven defendants in 1984, none of which ended in convictions, though the trial would last six years and become the longest and most expensive criminal trial in history. The original parent whistleblower was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and died from alcohol abuse before the trial concluded.
Journalist Geraldo Rivera’s 1988 NBC special, “Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground,” aired in 19.8 million homes, telling families that “estimates are that there are over 1 million Satanists in this country … the majority of them are linked in a highly organized, very secretive network. From small towns to large cities, they have attracted police and FBI attention to their satanic ritual child abuse, child pornography and grisly satanic murders. The odds are that this is happening in your town.”
D&D crusader Patricia Pulling claimed eight percent of the population of Richmond, Virginia, were satanists; the 1982 Mazes and Monsters movie (an early Tom Hanks starring role) followed a group of college kids descending into D&D mania.
REHABILITATION INDEX: 6/10 — Rivera apologized for his sensational coverage in 1995, saying that he was “now convinced that [he] was terribly wrong … and many innocent people were convicted and went to prison as a result;” A 1995 HBO movie on the McMartin trial showed one alleged abuser as the victim of overzealous prosecution, and the public became disillusioned with satanic charges.
Music, TV, and movies today show some gnarly shit compared to the scandals of the 80s; D&D is now quirky and beloved, and Ozzy Osbourne deceased and mourned. However, the satanic cabal conspiracies are alive and well, just not in preschools.
4. McCarthyism, A Sense of Decency, and the Red Scare: 1950-54
THE MENACE: Communist agents, at the direction of the Soviet Union, had infiltrated the United States government, military, Hollywood, academia, and labor unions, and were systematically working to destroy American democracy from within.
THE CRUSADER(S): (1) Senator Joseph McCarthy, who in 1950 announced that he had a list of 205 known Communists in the State Department; (2) the House Un-American Activities Committee; (3) Roy Cohn, McCarthy’s chief counsel (later Donald Trump’s lawyer and mentor).
LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE? : Definitely. Soviet espionage in the U.S. was real and dangerous. An American couple, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were executed in 1953 for stealing nuclear and other secrets; a former State Department official, Alger Hiss, was convicted in 1950 for perjury relating to espionage charges (read about Hiss in the all-time great “Witness” by communist defector Whittaker Chambers).
PEAK DERANGEMENT: McCarthy held 36 days of televised hearings in 1954, widely consumed by the American public. After outing a young lawyer’s Communist affiliation that Cohn and Army lawyer Joseph Welch had agreed to keep quiet, Welch famously said, “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” The seemingly spontaneous moment, though, was choreographed by Welch; after leaving the chamber, Welch winked at his colleague, and asked, “How did I do?”
McCarthy’s investigations would in total result in the imprisonment of hundreds and the firing of many thousands.
REHABILITATION INDEX: 7/10 — The McCarthy-Welch standoff hurt McCarthy in public sentiment, and the Supreme Court stepped in to reverse Communist convictions and reduce contempt of Congress rulings. In 1954, President Eisenhower refused further calls for testimony for executive branch employees, and the Senate voted to censure McCarthy; McCarthy died of liver failure related to alcoholism three years later.
McCarthy is seen by history as a demagogic commie-hunter, and all branches of government condemned his actions. A McCarthy-esque witch pursuit thing, though, is still ripe for American appetite.
5. Looking Like the Enemy, and Japanese Internment: 1942-46
THE MENACE — Japanese-Americans were spies and saboteurs loyal to Imperial Japan during World War II.
THE CRUSADER(S): (1) President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who signed the executive order approving the relocation of Japanese-Americans into internment camps. (2) Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, head of the army’s Western Defense Command, who led in 1942 the forced evacuation and detention of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast. (3) Journalists like Walter Lippmann, who wrote that the fact that there had been no sabotage by Japanese Americans was only because “the blow is well organized and it is held back until it can be struck with maximum effect.”
LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE?: Little to none. No person of Japanese ancestryliving in the U.S. was ever convicted of any serious act of espionage or sabotage, and government lawyers suppressed reports that showed that the most dangerous Japanese-Americans were already known or in custody.
PEAK DERANGEMENT: Four months after Pearl Harbor, 93% of Americanssupported moving Japanese-Americans from the Pacific coast. By fall 1942, all Japanese-Americans in California were evicted and moved to “relocation centers,” where families lived in close proximity under often harsh conditions.
REHABILITATION INDEX: 5/10 — First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited one campand in a speech called the removal a “mistake” caused by “unreasoning racial feeling.” By 1944, one general wrote that there was “no longer a military necessity for the mass exclusion of the Japanese from the West Coast.” President Harry Truman signed an Executive Order in 1946 ordering the liquidation of the War Relocation Authority, allowing Japanese-Americans to return home.
Japanese-Americans returned home to stolen property and goods; President Ronald Reagan awarded $20,000 in reparations to remaining survivors in 1988. Japanese-Americans are now a valued social group, and Japanese relations are strong. However, the scars remain, and the ghost of Japanese internment underscores modern xenophobia.
6. Liberty Cabbage, The Lynching of Robert Prager, and Anti-German Hysteria: 1917-20
THE MENACE: German Americans, the largest non-English speaking minority group during World War One, were Anti-American spies collaborating with Imperial Germany.
THE CRUSADER(S): (1) An enraged public; (2) President Woodrow Wilson, who said of German-Americans, “Any man who carries a hyphen about with him, carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic when he gets ready;” (3) Raymond Moley, leader of the Americanization Committee in Ohio (a heavily German state), who worked to censor “pro-German” reading material alongside Ohio Governor James A. Cox, a vehement anti-German.
LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE? : Slightly; in 1916, German agents destroyed millions of pounds of war materials in the Black Tom railroad yard, and the German ambassador to the U.S. was ordered to act as the “espionage and sabotage chief.” However, most German-Americans supported the Americans in the war, purchasing bonds and rationing resources.
PEAK DERANGEMENT: Widespread xenophobia: Germans nicknamed “Huns;” schools stopped teaching German language and literature; teachers had to take loyalty oaths; prominent German-Americans persecuted; hamburgers called “liberty sandwiches” and sauerkraut “liberty cabbage;” streets renamed; dachshund dogs highly undesirable.
Robert Prager, a German immigrant living near St. Louis, was lynched by a drunken mob who accused him of spying for Germany. The mob “stripped him totally naked, and they put a rope around his neck, and they paraded him down Main Street, making him sing patriotic songs.” They hanged Prager, shouting, “‘once for the red,’ and they lowered him again, ‘once for the white’ and ‘once for the blue.’”
REHABILITATION INDEX: 7/10 — The end of World War One started the process of reconciliation; even after the war, in 1919, a state law banned teaching of German. Germans are accepted in America, but the predilection to see enemies within during war is alive and well.
7. Demon Rum, Hatchetations, and Prohibition: 1830-1933
THE MENACE: Excessive drinking habits and “demon rum” were the root of crime, domestic violence, disease, and death.
THE CRUSADER(S): (1) Carry Nation, founder of a Woman’s Christian Temperance Union chapter and widowed by her husband’s drinking in 1867, began to have “visions as a call from God to fight drunkenness,” entering saloons with a hatchet and destroying whatever she could, creating a “hatchetation” spectacle for the prohibition movement. (2) Anti-Saloon League, funded in part by John D. Rockefeller and led by Wayne B. Wheeler, who became the “most masterful and powerful single individual in the United States,” controlling Congress and directing legislation around the country.
LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE?: Certainly! Alcohol kills some 178,000 Americans every year, and was even more pervasive in the early 20th century.
PEAK DERANGEMENT: The Anti-Saloon League’s “Booze or Coal” campaign insisted that Americans give up drinking to conserve grain for food. Anti-Germanic sentiment toward brewers also stoked prohibition sentiment, with the group describing alcohol in 1917 as an “un-American, pro-German, crime-producing, food-wasting, youth-corrupting, home-wrecking, treasonable liquor traffic.” President Woodrow Wilson was granted wartime powers to regulate food supply and banned grain for distilling in 1917 before enacting the Volstead Act, enforcing Prohibition in 1920.
MANIA DISSIPATES: The city dwelling working class began to think of prohibition as pushed upon them by a controlling middle class, “to take a glass of beer away from the workingman while allowing the rich to have their cellars filled with wine.” Anti-immigrant sentiment tied with Prohibition also stoked resentment.
REHABILITATION INDEX: 7/10 — Though thoroughly socially accepted, drinking is at a 90-year low in 2026, and young Americans are increasingly likely to abstain.
8. The Death of William Morgan, Crocodile Worship, and the Anti-Masonic Party: 1826-36
THE MENACE: The Freemasons were a cult of elites wielding undue influence on American democracy.
THE CRUSADER(S): The first third-party in U.S. politics — the Anti-Masonic Party, culminating in a failed 1832 presidential run by candidate William Wirt, gaining eight percent of the popular vote.
LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE? : Somewhat! The drama was sparked by the (likely) Masonic murder of William Morgan, briefly a member of the society, who planned to publish an expose of some of the group’s secret traditions. The Masons who allegedly led the murder plot were “men of standing and character ... judges and justices, sheriffs and constables,” stoking resentment of the society. Further, efforts to investigate Morgan’s disappearance were “embarrassed, by Freemasons, in every way that ingenuity could devise,” including by stuffing juries with Masons, further painting the group as a controlling secretive elite class.
PEAK DERANGEMENT: Dramatic accounts of Freemason rituals, including descriptions of the members as men whose “hands reek with the blood of human victims offered in sacrifice to devils, or who worships a Crocodile, a Cat or an Ox.” Also a “Declaration of Independence From the Masonic Institution,” published by the citizens of Le Roy, New York, on July 4, 1828. When President John Quincy Adams was running for reelection in 1828, he went as far as to declare that he was not, “never was, and never shall be a Freemason.”
REHABILITATION INDEX: 6/10 — Mason lodges dissolved and members left en masse through the early 1830’s, with enrollment cut nearly in half and few lodges opened for a decade; by 1838, the party had been mostly supplanted by the emerging Whig party. Membership rebounded in the 20th century, reaching a peak U.S. count of more than 4 million in 1957, but has declined ever since.
Though not preeminent, Freemasonry still evokes an image of a secretive cabal, and many Americans think a shadowy group of elites (Epstein class) controls the country and world.
9. Spectral Evidence, Peine et Fort, and the Salem Witch Pursuit Thing: 1692-93
THE MENACE: A cabal of witches in Salem, Massachusetts, were wreaking havoc on the village congregation.
THE CRUSADER(S): (1) Betty Parris, daughter of minister Samuel Parris, and her gang of young female accusers; (2) William Stoughton, Chief Justice on the court overseeing the trials and a “gung-ho witch hunter;” (3) the impoverished villagers of northern Salem, standing to gain property from those accused.
LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE?: Witches…? No.
PEAK DERANGEMENT: A court was established to hear accusations, sentencing nineteen men and women to death and overseeing the jailing of hundreds of others, largely under “spectral evidence” (testimony by afflicted persons), and the “touching test” (an accused witch would touch afflicted persons to see if their touch would stop contortions).
Accused octogenarian Giles Corey was executed by peine et fort, pressing under heavy stones, a sentence never before and never again used in the Massachusetts colony. Corey was “stripped naked, a board placed upon his chest, and then--while his neighbors watched—heavy stones and rocks were piled on the board.” Corey’s tongue squeezed out of his mouth, so the sheriff, “with his cane, forced it in again, when he was dying.” Three days later, Corey’s wife and seven other convicted witches were hanged, the last victims of the witch pursuit thing.
REHABILITATION INDEX: 7/10 — After months of accusations and executions, doubt began to grow, and the educated elite of the colony worked to end the string of accusations. A local reverend said, “It cannot be imagined that in a place of so much knowledge, so many in so small compass of land should abominably leap into the Devil’s lap at once.” A local minister lobbied the court to disavow spectral evidence, arguing that “it were better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person should be condemned.”
Some involved, including accusers and judges, publicly confessed error and guilt. Massachusetts’ General Court declared the trials unlawful in 1702, and granted restitution to some family heirs in 1711. Criminal standards of evidence luckily no longer include “spectral evidence,” and the last convicted Salem witch was officially exonerated in 2022.
However, as seen in our quick history of American hysteria, the proclivity to descend into Salem witch pursuit mania, the predilection to see satanic cabals and subversive enemies in our neighbors, is pretty damn hard to shake. It’s all too human, and all too American.
Thanks for reading. It’s always Satan! Let me know your thoughts in the comments, or hit me up at caden.olson@racket.news
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