Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) couldn’t sleep on Sunday night. Louisiana State University had just lost a nail-biter college football game, but Johnson was more troubled by something he saw in between plays: an ad for a new FX cartoon show starring actor Danny DeVito as Satan.
When the commercial for FX’s Little Demon came on during the football broadcast, Johnson recounted later in a Facebook post, he scrambled to stop his 11-year-old child from seeing it.
“I’m just so disturbed by it,” Johnson said later on a talk radio show, recounting his encounter with an ad he worried had helped to put the fate of millions of souls at stake. “I’m wondering: how many kids are exposed to that?“
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If not for the ad, Johnson might have never learned about Little Demon, a cartoon aimed at adults that also features actress Aubrey Plaza as the devil’s one-time lover and DeVito’s daughter Lucy DeVito as their child. After seeing it, though, Johnson warned his supporters to avoid the show and FX’s parent company, Disney.
“Disney and FX have decided to embrace and market what is clearly evil,” Johnson warned his supporters in a Facebook post. “STAY FAR FROM IT.”
Johnson closed the post with a Bible verse that warns that the devil is constantly on the hunt, “seeking whom he may devour.”
Thanks to Johnson’s Facebook post, which has been shared on the site more than 155,000 times, Little Demon has become a new flashpoint in the right’s ongoing hunt for Satanic influence.
“This is not frivolous, light-hearted entertainment,” Johnson said in a talk radio appearance this week. “This is serious, eternal business and we need to regard it as such”
Johnson didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The congressman isn’t the only one fearful that Little Demon could bring viewers to the gates of hell. Popular right-wing blog The Gateway Pundit claimed the show was the latest step from Disney on “their march into darkness.” The author of a conservative movie guide warned the Christian Broadcasting Network that Little Demon was proof of a “Satanic revolution.”
Little Demon follows its characters as Satan’s daughter learns that she’s destined to be the antichrist. As proof of the show’s demonic intent, its detractors have focused on an interview Plaza gave where the former Parks & Recreation star said Little Demon would “normalize paganism.”
One Million Moms, a frequently outraged conservative Christian front group for the American Family Association, issued an “urgent warning for parents” about Little Demon and garnered what they claim are more than 29,000 signatures calling for FX to cancel the show. The group compared Little Demon to the Disney-produced Angelina Jolie movie Maleficent, saying both were “set in a spiritually demonic realm.”
The Little Demon backlash comes at a high time for interest on the right in the idea of rooting out Satanic influence. Conspiracy theories like QAnon and Pizzagate have helped popularize the fiction that global elites are sexually abusing children in Satanic rituals. In California, a Republican secretary of state candidate this year claimed she had personally been targeted by Satanists through a ritual sacrifice.
Satanism allegations can even be turned against fellow Republicans. When former Trump national security adviser and QAnon star Michael Flynn used a prayer from an alleged cult in a church service, some of his one-time supporters turned on him, accusing him of tricking them into worshiping the devil.
The attacks on Little Demon mark the right’s latest attempt to paint Disney as in league with sinister forces. Earlier this year, conservatives baselessly accused the company of being pro-pedophile “groomers” after the company pulled its support from Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
In a local talk radio appearance about the Little Demon controversy, Johnson said he feared DeVito’s show would make people more tolerant of Satanism through its jokes about “the demonic realm.”
“Millions of people are going to lose the ability to recognize and reject what is clearly evil,” Johnson said.
