These were the people in your neighbourhood: David Farrant's 1971 photograph of French occultist, Martine de Sacy, supposedly engaged in a Wiccan cleansing ritual performed at the scene of Necromantic rites in the Cory-Wright vault at Highgate Cemetery, UK. De Sacy's later comments on Farrant conflicted with Farrant's version of events. Image Source © David Farrant/Hampstead Christ Church.
One of the most disturbing political and social rumours to emerge in the past two years is the Pedogate story of worldwide child slavery, black magic, and ritual sacrifice. It was widely dismissed in the mainstream media as vicious disinformation, spread to bolster populism, nationalism, neo-fascism, and anti-Semitism. Indeed, it does revive the ugliest medieval anti-Semitic hoax, the blood ritual myth.
My interpretation does not consider Pedogate's counter-factual aspects to be true. That is, I do not believe in the anti-Semitic hoax. Rather, I consider more carefully how disinformation can be exploited and I have written here on the kernels of fact upon which the myths are based. I have argued that the Pedogate rumour has real underpinnings in the Internet's exacerbation of child porn and child sexual exploitation. And the rumour has had further practical applications in the new development of Internet politics. These stories are not without substance, as successive scandals demonstrate.
One aspect of this disinformation is a rage against, and dehumanization of, the upper tier of society in the post-2008 recession era. Today's example considers an incredibly damaging and frightening set of accusations leveled at the well-to-do inhabitants of Hampstead, London, from 2014 to 2017. The Hampstead case is part of the Pedogate moral panic, and concerns terrifying accounts of child abuse and Satanic practices. The locals in Hampstead have denied the whole story; all accusations remain unproven.
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