Satan Goes to Idaho

I decided to take a short break from Satanic panic research (Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun is my current read), and finish a book about Ruby Ridge. But surprise surprise, the Weaver family were victims of Satanic panic, big-time. They listened to the audiotapes of John Todd, this total hoser who claimed he was an ex-member of the Illuminati and a reformed Satanist. He traveled the U.S. throughout the late '70s and early '80s, giving lectures on Satanism and the New World Order, collecting donations of firearms for some survivalist compound that never materialized. He also took donations for a centre for recovered witches and warlocks that he was going to establish (never happened). He made a ton of outrageous claims. He said he was descended from a family of witches, the Collins family, who practiced witchcraft secretly in colonial America and inspired the supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows. The Salem witch trials were staged by witches pretending to be Christians, for the purpose of purging the area of Bible-believing Christians. The casts of the Young and the Restless and Star Wars consisted of homosexual occultists. (He really had it in for soaps.)

The Weavers believed that computers and credit cards would help ZOG ("Zionist Occupation Government") enforce the Mark of the Beast. They sold their home and belongings to live in a hastily thrown-together shack in northern Idaho because Vicki Weaver believed the Bible had instructed God's faithful to hole up in the mountains until the endtimes. Here they would defend themselves against their enemies: Government agents, people of color, and Jews.