Who’s up for some child torture? No, seriously. Wouldn’t strapping a boy into a chair and frightening him with satanic rituals, then electrocuting him, then doing something worse be loads of fun?

It’s what happens in the new video LA Devotee by a band called Panic! At the Disco, perhaps the most unapologetically evil entry of pop culture today.

The video opens with a girl being abducted by what appears to be a witch. The view switches to a boy being strapped to a chair by more witches. The chair is in a dungeon filled with gruesome images, like a bloody skull, Baphomet-like masks, and so forth. A video camera is shown to be filming the affair. Who is watching? Witches terrorize the boy, and at one point display a large knife before they disappear behind the boy, emerging later with a fresh heart.

The girl who was earlier kidnapped feeds the boy a drink; after drinking the boy goes in and out of a trance. Later, witches strap electrodes to the boy and then — what else? — electrocute him. The boy is shown in great pain.

Now throughout all this are interspersed images of Panic’s singer, who appears on a screen in the dungeon, sometimes with a maniacal look, sometimes with Satanic imagery overlaid on his face. The video closes with the singer, demonically grinning, emerging from the screen while snapping on rubber gloves. The last scene shows the singer lurching towards the boy, clenching his gloved fists.

Except perhaps for the lyric hinting of “the black magic on Mulholland Drive,” the music is utterly incongruous with the video. There is nothing redeeming in it. Nothing. It is pitiless, brutal, boastful. It is immoral.

It is evil.

Mainstreaming Satanic Music

Panic! is not a fringe group: they are as mainstream as they come. The group, which has other Satanic-themed videos has won many awards. Billboard is running a poll for who will sing at next year’s Super Bowl. At this writing, there is a near tie between Panic! at the Disco and another group. The NFL has already teamed with the band to produce a commercial.

Panic! is not overtly Satanic, but there are plenty of bands which are. Such as Golgoroth, with lead noise maker Gaahl, a man accused, convicted and imprisoned for torture and drinking the blood of his victim, and Watain, which features music which sounds like a dump truck run in reverse, vomiting its contents on the street. But these and those like them, given their explicit praise of Satan, are on the edges of society and sought after by only a few.

It is the mainstreaming, the normalizing of Satanic imagery which is of interest. This is occurring not only in music, but in all areas of entertainment (as we have seen before), and even in fashion. This includes perfume.

Doesn’t Smell So Good

A well known fragrance company created an advertisement for its new Kenzo World line. The commercial was so appealing that it was written about (among other places) on Britain’s The Guardian.

The video opens with a pretty girl bored by some hotel banquet. She slips out of a ballroom and, suddenly, set to horrid music, an unwanted change comes upon her. Is she being possessed? Is she suffering the after effects of a mind control program? Whichever: she is overcome. She dances spasmodically, she is overtly sexual, she causally and even proudly snaps the neck of an innocent man chatting on his cell phone.

At one point she tries to recover her true self, but whatever is inside wins the battle. And at the end, she flies into a giant all-seeing eye which has appeared from nowhere. The perfume bottle is the last thing we see, which also takes the form of the all-seeing eye.

Conspiracies and Theories

The all-seeing eye, in occult lore, is said to be Masonic and Illuminati imagery; indeed, that which is taken to be of the Illuminati is rife in the entertainment world. Put away the tinfoil hats, dear reader. I said “that which is taken to be,” and I did not say “that which is.” There is a world of difference here.

What is plain is that occult symbols, whether based in reality or only imagined, are showing with greater frequency. These are a mixture of the Satanic, of tokens from secret societies like the Illuminati, and of mind-control programs, all of which are mixed together in some black soup, and which are most popular in the music industry.

Mind control? Certainly. There was, dear reader, a genuine conspiracy, and not a theory, centered around our beneficent government’s MKUltra program, which ran experiments on unwitting Americans testing various mind-control techniques, mostly using drugs and forms of torture.

In 1979, ABC News’s Closeup devoted a program to exposing the CIA’s involvement. In 1973, then CIA Director Richard Helms, fearing discovery, ordered MKUltra files destroyed. For that and for other cover ups, Helms was convicted for misleading Congress.

The CIA said it abandoned MKUltra after claiming that the techniques it discovered were unreliable. Not that they didn’t work, but that they were unreliable, another notable difference. Given the history and natural distrust of our government, it is thus no wonder that many believe the program, or ones like it, are still in existence. Many are convinced — again, it doesn’t matter whether this is real or not — that something called Monarch programming exists. It is always accompanied by butterfly imagery and is said to be MKUltra perfected. See also the recent movie American Ultra.

The Plan Comes Together

If one wanted to characterize the dark framework around which Hollywood and the rest of the ephemeral industry is coalescing, not necessarily by design, but by merely copying what is popular, it is this. The Illuminati, a secret Satanic organization, uses mind control techniques on the innocent, especially children, because of the pain it causes them, and women, for sexual purposes. The aftereffects of mind control is the theme behind Katy Perry’s Wide Awake (notice the butterflies and her imaginary young, innocent self).

If one wants to become a success, one must be initiated into the occult world. This video by The Weeknd, the first of a trilogy (part two, three), tells us the (necessary) deal made with the Devil is irrevocable.

I emphasize that this is the story they are telling, and am making no claims whatsoever about its veracity.

But with that story in mind, the Kenzo World video suddenly starts to make sense. At its start, the woman is sitting next to our doomed heroine. Look at her necklace. When the girl in green licks the statue, notice her bracelet. These symbols are not there by accident.

Now re-watch LA Devotee, if you can. The boy, who is, as some might have recognized, the same boy who is kidnapped by underworldly forces in Netflix’s Stranger Things, is being tortured for the viewing pleasure of others. And just like in Stranger Things, mind control is intimated.

Conclusion?

The examples given in this article can be multiplied with ease. If anything, the pace of using dark imagery by the ephemeral industry is accelerating. Doubtless like all fads, it will fade in time.

We haven’t reached the peak yet. So far, nobody is complaining; instead, there is every indication people are enjoying what they’re seeing.

But you have to wonder what the public reaction would be to a Satanic ritual, or an episode of torture, performed at the 2017 Super Bowl were Panic! at the Disco elected to host the half time show. A few years ago, such a suggestion would have seemed crazy. But given current trends, it’s not out of the question.