Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1992, Page 87
rhetorical subterfuges, the reader is left with the impression that the entire matter is not
worthy of intelligent consideration.
Ironically, the approach here is not much different from the tack taken by the National
Inquirer, albeit with a reverse spin. We would not be far from the mark if we were to call it
tabloid sociology. It is characteristic of tabloid sociology to constantly trundle out rampant
popular superstitions, intemperate rumors, and alleged media “atrocities,” as if this prurient
spectacle were somehow the sum and substance of the “evidence.” Indeed, tabloid sociology
consistently spews out its own myths and folk legends, which are nothing more than grievous
overdeterminations of incidental, or even dubious, “facts.”
For example, Hicks says that “cult seminars assert [which, by the way, is like saying
“ministers preach” or “all doctors say”] that satanic crime is increasing ...With no dependable
statistics, cult seminars include estimates of up to 50,000 human sacrifices per year” (p.
183). Such a canard has been used routinely by tabloid sociologists and their less
academically distinguished hangers-on, who often claim to be “experts in the occult.” It is not
clear who, if anyone, ever made such an estimate. But this “example” is ceremonially unfurled
to point up the foolishness and gullibility of all who might take the occult problem seriously.
The absurdity of this approach can be found in Thomas A. Green’s article, “Accusations of
Satanism and Racial Tensions in the Matamoros Cult Murders.” The Matamoros Cult murders,
discovered in the spring of 1989 at an isolated ranch in Mexico just across the Rio Grande
River from Brownsville, Texas, turned out for many occult investigators to be a dramatic
smoking gun. This case confirmed not only that cult-related homicides take place but also that
they are of a singularly gruesome quality. In this instance, a Houston-area college student,
Mark Kilroy, was kidnapped late at night during a spring break blow-out he was transported
to the ranch where previously there had taken place numerous grisly sacrifices of victims by
satanic cultists, who were also drug traffickers. Kilroy was murdered and dismembered with
the whacks of a machete. Bodies of the cult’s victims were unearthed by a team of North
American federal agents and Mexican national police, and the perpetrators confessed their
crimes in front of international media.
Despite the graphic evidence, Green attempts, with chutzpa and pseudo-logic, to explain the
Matamoros horrors as a cryptoracist plot on the part of the press, the police, the government,
the academic establishment, and virtually the entire American populace who viewed the
cultists’ cauldron of human blood and body parts on prime-time television. Green writes:
By focusing such social anxiety on a particular set of religions practiced by the
allegedly threatening group, popular authors and the regional media gave form to
the fears of the area, and provided a means for rationalizing these fears ...Behavior
seen as aberrant by the dominant system is interpreted within preexisting
frameworks, rather than leading to a reorganization of the dominant group’s
worldview. (p. 245)
In other words, the death of Kilroy and numerous nameless Hispanic victims, some of whom
were tortured in the most brutal and inhumane manner, is alchemized through the syntax of
a relatively sophisticated sociobabble into some kind of collective dementia on the part of the
public at large. Other essays throughout the book take much the same tack: the public is
either malicious or crazy the experts are all enmeshed in their own conspiracy to whip up
hysteria aimed at socially marginal groups the cults are innocent despite whatever evidence
can be mustered “we” the experts (that is, the authors) know that to be the case.
The curious thing about all these putatively authoritative analyses is that they present no
evidence to support their own tacit claim that the public reaction to the problem of Satanism
is out of line. What they offer instead are currently discredited, pop-political, 1960s-style New
Left “grand theories,” arguing that (1) satanic cult participants are de facto stigmatized and
rhetorical subterfuges, the reader is left with the impression that the entire matter is not
worthy of intelligent consideration.
Ironically, the approach here is not much different from the tack taken by the National
Inquirer, albeit with a reverse spin. We would not be far from the mark if we were to call it
tabloid sociology. It is characteristic of tabloid sociology to constantly trundle out rampant
popular superstitions, intemperate rumors, and alleged media “atrocities,” as if this prurient
spectacle were somehow the sum and substance of the “evidence.” Indeed, tabloid sociology
consistently spews out its own myths and folk legends, which are nothing more than grievous
overdeterminations of incidental, or even dubious, “facts.”
For example, Hicks says that “cult seminars assert [which, by the way, is like saying
“ministers preach” or “all doctors say”] that satanic crime is increasing ...With no dependable
statistics, cult seminars include estimates of up to 50,000 human sacrifices per year” (p.
183). Such a canard has been used routinely by tabloid sociologists and their less
academically distinguished hangers-on, who often claim to be “experts in the occult.” It is not
clear who, if anyone, ever made such an estimate. But this “example” is ceremonially unfurled
to point up the foolishness and gullibility of all who might take the occult problem seriously.
The absurdity of this approach can be found in Thomas A. Green’s article, “Accusations of
Satanism and Racial Tensions in the Matamoros Cult Murders.” The Matamoros Cult murders,
discovered in the spring of 1989 at an isolated ranch in Mexico just across the Rio Grande
River from Brownsville, Texas, turned out for many occult investigators to be a dramatic
smoking gun. This case confirmed not only that cult-related homicides take place but also that
they are of a singularly gruesome quality. In this instance, a Houston-area college student,
Mark Kilroy, was kidnapped late at night during a spring break blow-out he was transported
to the ranch where previously there had taken place numerous grisly sacrifices of victims by
satanic cultists, who were also drug traffickers. Kilroy was murdered and dismembered with
the whacks of a machete. Bodies of the cult’s victims were unearthed by a team of North
American federal agents and Mexican national police, and the perpetrators confessed their
crimes in front of international media.
Despite the graphic evidence, Green attempts, with chutzpa and pseudo-logic, to explain the
Matamoros horrors as a cryptoracist plot on the part of the press, the police, the government,
the academic establishment, and virtually the entire American populace who viewed the
cultists’ cauldron of human blood and body parts on prime-time television. Green writes:
By focusing such social anxiety on a particular set of religions practiced by the
allegedly threatening group, popular authors and the regional media gave form to
the fears of the area, and provided a means for rationalizing these fears ...Behavior
seen as aberrant by the dominant system is interpreted within preexisting
frameworks, rather than leading to a reorganization of the dominant group’s
worldview. (p. 245)
In other words, the death of Kilroy and numerous nameless Hispanic victims, some of whom
were tortured in the most brutal and inhumane manner, is alchemized through the syntax of
a relatively sophisticated sociobabble into some kind of collective dementia on the part of the
public at large. Other essays throughout the book take much the same tack: the public is
either malicious or crazy the experts are all enmeshed in their own conspiracy to whip up
hysteria aimed at socially marginal groups the cults are innocent despite whatever evidence
can be mustered “we” the experts (that is, the authors) know that to be the case.
The curious thing about all these putatively authoritative analyses is that they present no
evidence to support their own tacit claim that the public reaction to the problem of Satanism
is out of line. What they offer instead are currently discredited, pop-political, 1960s-style New
Left “grand theories,” arguing that (1) satanic cult participants are de facto stigmatized and
