Great question. The first thing we should consider is that moral panics, witch hunts, and mass hysteria are actually very common, possibly universal phenomena.

In his essay “The Demonology of Satanism: An Anthropological View” in the 1991 book “The Satanism Scare,” cultural anthropologist Phillips Stevens Jr. describes what he calls “demonology,” the compulsion to blame problems on sinister hidden groups. “Demonology usually labels its referrents as horribly, unspeakably evil. When it refers to a specific group of people it often dehumanizes them,” he writes.

A demonology “explicitly states that [evildoers’] rights as human beings, even their lives, must be forfeit to the necessity of expunging the evil from society. Demonology both sanctions and gives impetus to the persecutory social-cleansing movement” that follows.

In a 2020 Patheos interview, Stevens added: “All people have beliefs that somewhere out there are dangerous Others” plotting against society. Sometimes, such stories are simply “a boogeyman,” but he warns that “in times of stress” this belief takes on greater significance. In the 1991 D Magazine article “The Seduction of Gloria Grady,” anthropologist Sherrill Mulhern called this “the myth of the blood-cult conspiracy.”

The second thing we should address is that “Michelle Remembers” did not emerge in a vacuum: There had already been years or in some cases decades of simmering unrest about “devil worship” in English-speaking countries.

Particularly pronounced was the renewed popularity of so-called “Charismatic” churches, whose congregations imagined that god gifted them with miraculous powers of healing and “speaking in tongues” to combat the rising tide of modern evil. “Since enthusiasts saw themselves as extraordinary people, they must have an extraordinary mission, which means that god was using them,” folklorist Bill Ellis writes in his book “Raising the Devil”--like say, fighting back against the devil worshipers they were sure were lurking out there.

In the old days, god employed prophets to spread his apocalyptic word, but in the 20th century it fell to Christian publishing ventures. German theologian Kurt Koch’s sensational account “Between Christ & Satan” was translated into English in 1962, with its anecdotes of demonic possession and black magic curses passed down generationally. Koch, a German missionary, promised “deliverance from occultism”--not just for his readers, but by extension to the world.

Come 1970, many of those same readers thrilled to Charismatic writer Michael Harper’s “Spiritual Warfare,” a book urging them to reclaim the holy powers of Biblical miracleworkers and turn it against the evils of the modern age. A year later came Bible scholar Merrill Unger’s “Demons In the World Today” and preacher Gary Wilburn’s “The Fortune Sellers,” warning breathless readers of the unholy dangers of new religions like witchcraft and Satanism.

In his 1972 best-seller “Satan Is Alive and Well On Planet Earth,” evangelist Hal Lindsey assured readers that “the United States probably harbors the fastest-growing and most highly organized body of Satanists in the world.” UK readers received a similar broadside in the form of “From Witchcraft To Christ,” a tell-all from a woman who claimed to have been “Queen of the Black Witches” in England and who spun stories about a conspiracy network of Satanists and witch covens across the United Kingdom, under the direction of Satan himself.

That very same year, Mike Warnke, a 26-year-old Navy vet, preacher, and “Christian comedian” shocked and titiliated the public with the publication of his alleged autobiography “The Satan Seller.” According to this best-selling confessional, Warnke, an orphaned foster child originally hailing from Indiana, fell in with a network of devil worshipers while attending college in Southern California in the mid-1960s, and within months he was one of the most powerful Satanists in the world. Writing in 1992, the Christian magazine Cornerstone said of Warnke’s works:

A generation of Christians learned its basic concepts of Satanism and the occult from Mike Warnke’s testimony in “The Satan Seller.” Based on his alleged Satanic experiences, Warnke came to be recognized as a prominent authority on the occult, even advising law enforcement officers investigating occult crime. We believe “The Satan Seller” has been responsible, more than any other single volume in the Christian market, for promoting the current nationwide Satanism scare.

Imitator books with titles like “The Devil & Mr Smith” and “The Illuminati & Witchcraft” followed. All of this, mind you, was years before “Michelle Remembers,” which certainly did not introduce the idea of Satanic cults or mind control, but rather exploded the Satanic panic from a fringe religious phenomena into a global, often largely secular hysteria.

Since I seem to have run to the limits of this comment, we'll delve into the factors of the post-1980 SRA scare in a reply below.

More detail can be given but 2nd Time Asking: Was there an actual increase of Satanism/Cultic practice in the 80s or was the whole thing a figment of the public imagination? written by u/AncientHistory talks a bit about the background that would lead to the Satanic Panic

It doesn't talk much about the context that lead to it, but Any good research on the Satanic Abuse Panic of the 90s? written by u/mikedash recommends a few sources