November 13, 2021

The news of "moral panic."

1. "The conservative moral panic over a new California bill on children's toys" (SF Gate): The purported "moral panic" is criticism of a bill that requires toy stores to have a "gender neutral" section. Who's closer to a condition that can be called "moral panic" — the people who push through legislation like this or the people who don't appreciate the regulation? 

2. "The BBC and The Times are accused of stoking a 'moral panic' against the trans community" (Insider). A trans person asserts "I now feel like I'm a disease, a problem, something that needs to be gotten rid of, because every story that features in the British press about trans people is negative." There was a BBC article recently, "We're being pressured into sex by some trans women" about lesbians objecting to being called transphobic because they only want to have sex with people who are biologically female. (Isn't this Insider article itself raising a moral panic — about attacks on transgender people?)


4. "A Frenzy of Book Banning" by Michelle Goldberg (NYT). "[T]he paranoid belief that liberalism is a front for pedophile cabals is a staple of the QAnon conspiracy theory. This spreading moral panic demonstrates, yet again, why the left needs the First Amendment, even if the veneration of free speech has fallen out fashion among some progressives." (But isn't there also a moral panic about QAnon?)

5. "Election guru Rachel Bitecofer: Democrats face '10-alarm fire' after Virginia debacle Democrats could still win midterms and stop Trump's coup, says election forecaster — if they actually had a plan" (Salon). Republicans are using "the bogeyman of 'critical race theory' to mobilize white voters anxious about demographic change and overly eager to protect their children (or other people's) from the truths of American history" and Democrats lack "anything close to an adequate defense against these racist moral-panic attacks." (Isn't this idea of "Trump's coup" also a moral panic?)

6. "‘Traditional Values’ Unite Both Sides in a New Ideological Cold War/Republicans and global authoritarians around the world from different political, cultural and social contexts use alarmingly similar tactics" (Moscow Times). "Far-right demagogues from Moscow to Texas increasingly incite moral panic to stir up tensions and deflect from domestic troubles.... [Putin] did not address public health measures and instead chose to rail against 'cancel culture' and gender-segregated bathrooms in the West."

7. "How Did Paul Gosar Become Such a Deranged Meme Lord?/'You are a dentist, for God’s sake. You don’t need to be tweeting these "Attack on Titan" memes'" (Daily Beast)."You’re seeing these weird shades of conspiracy theories—there’s a softer, leftier tinge to all of these. I’m seeing people with, like, anime avatars using astrology to argue [Travis Scott's Astroworld concert] was a Satanic ritual... There is sort of a soft spiritualism, I think, among certain Gen Z and millennial cohorts… I think that these audiences are a little bit more receptive to moral panics than older folks might realize."

8."How France's ‘great replacement’ theory conquered the global far right" (France24). 'The people who watch that interview and who may fall for this moral panic, this idea that they’re going to be replaced ethnographically... don’t want to be called racist and will say they’re defending civilisation."

52 comments:

rehajm said...

Most of this is lefties doubling down on hard sixteen...

Leland said...

The woke add a new phrase to their lexicon of double speak. Criticism is now "moral-panic". Want to avoid moral-panic? Don't read the news. Thanks Ann for doing it for us.

Freeman Hunt said...

Heh. The political faction that has been inciting moral panic for two years now wants to classify resistance to their agenda as "moral panic."

Quaestor said...

...the left needs the First Amendment, even if the veneration of free speech has fallen out [of] fashion among some progressives.

That's some exceptionally pungent bullshit Michelle Goldberg is peddling; one must conclude she has grown envious of supreme liars like Walter Duranty and Rachel Maddow and hopes to join them in the Depths. Progressives have never ceased to venerate free speech to the point that they believe it belongs strictly to themselves.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Moral panics tend to (but not always) be in the eye of the beholder.

Joe Smith said...

Number 1: Lawmakers have no reason to regulate business when it comes down to what is essentially a marketing decision. It's lunacy. Have whatever toy sections you want...a pink aisle and a blue aisle if you want, and let parents and kids pick they toys they want to buy...jeesh.

Number 2: Trans are celebrated by 95% of the media and all governments that aren't fundamentalist Muslim. Can't take a little criticism? Get over yourself. I don't care what the hell you do with your body or your dick (it's almost always trans-women bitching), just leave the rest of us out of your Barbie dream world.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

I had barbie and ken dolls growing up. They are gender neutral already. yes- she has bumps for breasts - but no genitals!

What Leland said.. plus -
As the woke left gaslight you, don't panic. Obey. or you will be shamed.


Bilwick said...

As one of those old reactionaries who persist--despite the admonitions of my betters--in believing that my life and property belong to myself and not to society or the State, I guess I experience what could be called moral panic to being pushed around by the Hive.

tim maguire said...

Words and phrases catch on, become popular, and then get watered down as people reach for them too quickly and readily. They start as a cause, become a business, and end as a racket.

robother said...

Among the quoted sources, Pinker is the only one applying the term "moral panic" in a neutral manner. In general media usage it is a Leftist term of opprobrium, implying the cynical use of irrational fear to drive humans like panicked animals.

In contrast, Progressive causes, from the trans rights assertion that the Y chromosome has nothing--nothing!-- to do with male or female identity to Greta Thunberg's apocalyptic warnings of the imminent death of the planet, are always presented as the results of rational scientific thinking and research.

The Crack Emcee said...

Leland said...

"Thanks Ann for doing it for us."

Who's "us" and what did she do for you? Help you with your "woke" confusion? Idiots. Question: how many of you fools participate on a blog or website - or anything - with a majority black population? None, I'd wager. Ann &n Meade included, so fuck off. You're intellectual cowards, huddling together for safety in numbers.

wildswan said...

The supposed underlying realities to which the "great replacement" refers do not exist. And we have had an encounter with this same theory several times before. It recurs like climate change. Armageddon is soon and very soon - meanwhile send money.
The "great replacement" theory is simply the latest version of the eugenic theory which states that, due to the low birth rate among the superior, the inferior outbreed and will in time replace the superior. That is what Madison Grant said in the Passing of the Great Race. 1916. That is what Lothrop Stoddard said in Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy 1921. That is what Hitler said in Mein Kampf. That is what Margaret Sanger said in The Pivot of Civilization. And when these formulations fell out of favor, we then heard from new voices which still said that the inferior are outbreeding the superior but which dropped direct references to "race" or even to "superior" or "inferior". And now we see lefty theorists taking up the theme in a triumphalist way - that BLMRAZAAIMLGBTTTQQIAA are rising tidally against the cisheterowhitenormativepatriachialableists. That, for instance, is a theme of "Yellowstone," a current Amazon series. But all along eugenics, in addition to being morally wrong by the rules of every major religion, has deeply misinterpreted the popular reaction to social problems and difficulties because it's always an elitist interpretation. And the emerging majority triumphalists also misinterpret the social changes going on now. Asians want to rise by studying calculus, not rejecting it. Hispanics want to rise by founding small businesses and owning houses, not by rejecting capitalism. Blacks do not want to be a front for Harvard's 57 shades of Marx. Because of the internet, rural voters know how the NYT is portraying them and what their governors are saying to the big donors. Social reality is different from social theories and the end result will be different than the predictions. Yes, Virginia, there is a Republican governor.

Ceciliahere said...

What percentage of the American population is thought to be transsexual? There is a lot of, news, controversy, and law regarding this issue and I’m wondering how many people “identify” as trans? Could it be that people who claim to be trans, are doing so to get an unfair advantage? How do we know for sure that trans people actually are trans? We have seen people who claim to be African-American and it then turns out that they are white and “culturally appropriating”. Maybe we have people running around “sexually appropriating”? There is outrage (not more panic) in some CT high schools over boys claiming to be trans in order to run track against girls. But, I haven’t heard of any transsexual girls “identifying” as boys and then running track with the boys. It might be convenient to claim to be trans sometimes in order to get an unfair advantage? Seems plausible to me. Moral panic is the new catch phrase for the wokesters to rile up those who are taking a nap. I don’t think it’s moral panic. I think people are just pissed off with all the crap that the woke left is trying to cram down our throats.

Craig Howard said...

Being of the right and often using the term “moral panic” to describe the left, it’s quite interesting to see that turned around.

I generally use the term to describe reactions I find based on half-truths and outright errors. But I suppose that if you truly believe that CRT, for example, is both benign and benevolent, then describing the right’s reaction to it as a moral panic would be fitting.

Hm. Something new to fight about. Though I do find the left’s panics more, um, panicky.

Hanoi Paris Hilton said...

Intriguing the way that in recent weeks the SHTF all over the Woke media (is there any other kind?) of out-front Jew Eric Zemmour's sudden prominence in the national discourse in France, with Marine LePen hardly getting any mention in the media now.

Mike Sylwester said...

[T]he paranoid belief that liberalism is a front for pedophile cabals is a staple of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

I spent considerable time reading QAnon stuff.

It is absurd to say that there is anything there along the lines that "liberalism is a front for pedophile cabals."

What QAnon stuff did say was along the lines that the Trump administration was investigating pedophile rings that included some prominent people.

It's obvious to me that Michelle Goldberg does not really know anything significant about QAnon.

Koot Katmandu said...

All on script - new talking points out. Focus group tested for sure.

Mike Sylwester said...

Were there any articles that say Democrats are in a moral panic about White supremacists?

Mike Sylwester said...

[Putin] did not address public health measures and instead chose to rail against 'cancel culture' and gender-segregated bathrooms in the West

I'll bet that Putin addresses public health measures quite frequently.

Putin addresses many issues all the time. After all, he is the President of the largest country in the world.

cfkane1701 said...

The interview with Rachel Bitcofer in Salon (item #2) is mind-bending. It proves that the right and the left are living in two separate but linked worlds.

Bitcofer actually believes Republicans have succeeded in a kind of Gramscian march through the culture and politics and now hold all the cards to consolidate power so they can destroy or bypass the rule of law and take full control, which is how we on the right see the Democrats' actions over the past decade. Further, she believes the Republicans have a strategic plan and are working it while the Democrats are divided and disorganized, which is what we on the right believe except the parties are switched.

She also thinks Republicans are using Critical Race Theory to "scare" their constituencies into voting for them, just exactly what conservatives think the Democrats are doing. Rachel Bitcofer describes a Bizarro world where everything is reversed.

Including the racism, of course. Republicans are racists and white supremacists, and they're assuring middle-class white voters that their kids won't have to feel bad about being white, somehow managing to dupe centrists and liberals along the way.

It reminds me of that episode of Star Trek with Frank Gorshin. "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield." Late 3rd season. It's the one where the two fighting aliens' main bone of contention is that one is white on the right side, while the other is white on the left.

Spock summed up the episode, and our society today, with: "Fascinating. Two utterly parochial attitudes."

Jaq said...

Isn't the book "The Emerging Democratic Majority" a plan for ethnographic replacement and a celebration of it?

Oh, and I love how it will be a "coup" if Republicans win the mid terms. And if they do, CRT will only be a small part of it. It's true that Virginia had gone all out on CRT in their schools, and that was a special case that turned a now pretty blue state momentarily red, but if Democrats cling to the comforting, but bigoted thought that CRT is their only problem...

Oh, and why does Biden make it so easy for "QAnon" to paint Democratic leadership as coddling of pedophiles, dammit!

Narr said...

I'll defend civilization, thank you.

Call me what you want.

Earnest Prole said...

I think we can all agree their side is prone to moral panics and our side is not.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

1. Who's closer to a condition that can be called "moral panic" — the people who push through legislation like this or the people who don't appreciate the regulation? You are correct, it's the ones pushing the legislation

2. (Isn't this Insider article itself raising a moral panic — about attacks on transgender people?) You are again correct. To call people "transphobic" is to engage in a moral panic

4. "A Frenzy of Book Banning" by Michelle Goldberg (NYT). "This spreading moral panic demonstrates, yet again, why the left needs the First Amendment, even if the veneration of free speech has fallen out fashion among some progressives." You can't complain about "book burins" when "the veneration of free speech has fallen out fashion among" your side. All the Left wing pseudo "anti-racism", and all their justifications for their assaults on freedom of speech, are based on moral panics

5. Republicans are using "the bogeyman of 'critical race theory' to mobilize white voters anxious about demographic change and overly eager to protect their children (or other people's) from the truths of American history" and Democrats lack "anything close to an adequate defense against these racist moral-panic attacks." . Here's the thing: if republicans weren't telling the truth, and Democrats blatantly lying, then the Democrats would have "an adequate defense against" these Republican attacks.

If CRT wasn't being used by the Left in grammar school and high school, then no one would object to banning it. If this were about making sure American history is taught in a more honest fashion, then teh Democrats would be introducing laws that ban CRT, but require teaching about slavery, the US Civil War, etc.

That they can't do that shows their lying about the entire situation

6. "‘Traditional Values’ Unite Both Sides in a New Ideological Cold War/Republicans and global authoritarians
"Global authoritarians"? You mean like the Chinese Communist Party? No, these peopel are very happy to take money form, and support, the CCP.

You mean like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, who are constantly banning speech that doesn't accord with "their values"? No, the Left encourages that. In fact, they gin up moral panics over "QAnon", "racism", "transphobia", and "misinformation" to justify their censorship

7. "How Did Paul Gosar Become Such a Deranged Meme Lord?" If worrying about "Meme Lords" isn't a moral panic, the term has no meaning

8." How France's ‘great replacement’ theory conquered the global far right"
The UK Labor Party deliberately encouraged migration into the UK for the explicit purpose of changing the electorates nd the country as a whole.
And as tim in vermont pointed out, the book "The Emerging Democratic Majority" was an explicit and public celebration of the "replacement" theory.
So the main "problem" here, as in so many of these, is the Left is upset that they're being called on their bullshit

Greg The Class Traitor said...

[T]he paranoid belief that liberalism is a front for pedophile cabals is a staple of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Because Jeffery Epstein didn't own "Pedo Island", he didn't fly people out to it on a place called (nicknamed?) the "Lolita Express", and it wasn't the case that the vast majority of the people who flew to Pedo Island on the Lolita Express were people who were movers and shakers on the Left.

You know, like Bill Clinton or Bill Gates.

Oh, wait, all of the above are true? And when Epstein was arrested, there were an amazing number of "odd coincidences" and "unexplainable mistakes" that made it so he "committed suicide" at a rare time when there was no observation of his cell?

Gosh, I can't imagine why people would think the Left is full of pedophiles, and the ones who aren't pedoophiles are pretty much all pedophile protecters

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Craig Howard said...
But I suppose that if you truly believe that CRT, for example, is both benign and benevolent

If they truly thought that, they'd stop lying about it not being in public schools, and instead defend what it's doing.

It's their desperate desire to beat up straw men that tells us that even they know they're in the wrong.

Leora said...

I would say it was more irritation with being constantly preached to and lied to than a panic on the right. I don't know what's wrong with the lefties who think a harmless little fuzzball like me wants to harm black people or transexuals when we just want to be left alone.

hombre said...

Aside from all the others, Michelle Goldberg is nutbagging again, “[T]he paranoid belief that liberalism is a front for pedophile cabals is a staple of the QAnon conspiracy theory.”

First, she is highjacking “liberalism.” Except for their inexplicable electoral support of lefties, classic liberals do not generally support moonbat extremism. Second, Goldberg would be hard pressed to prove that morally relativistic left wing extremists do not tolerate pedophile cabals as political allies. Finally, QAnon is about as significant as the McGillicuddy Serious Party of New Zealand fame - except as a red herring or a bogeyman for left leaning journalists.

wendybar said...

Mike Sylwester said...
Were there any articles that say Democrats are in a moral panic about White supremacists?

11/13/21, 10:54 AM

DING, DING DIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNGGGGGG!!!!!

hombre said...

Memo to Michelle Goldberg: https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=18437 “Old Dominion University criminal justice professor defends pedophilia.”

RigelDog said...

"Question: how many of you fools participate on a blog or website - or anything - with a majority black population? "

I began to read Althouse because of its frequent discussions of law. I'd definitely check out any similar sites that have a majority black base if there are any you can recommend. Or any blogs that have a rational approach to examining the current issues of the day and that don't cancel opinions or people coming from my perspective, which is overall a center-right position with a liberal basis and love of Enlightenment principles and Judeo-Christian influenced morality.

Fernandinande said...

What percentage of the American population is thought to be transsexual?

The trans-activist org "Williams Institute" claims there are 1.4 million trannies in the US (and also claim .6% elsewhere, which comes to a similar 1.92 million).

The trans-activist org "Human Rights Campaign" which is often in a moral panic about the high rates of violence and murder directed toward their preferred people, and came up with 44 murders of trannies (and "gender non-confirming") in 2020, which comes out to a murder rate of 31 per million trannies per year (using 1.4 million); the rate for the general population is almost twice as high, about 58 per million.

Which is surprising since most of the murdered trannies are young black men (dressed as women), whose non-tranny murder rate is about 810 per million, 26 times as high as the tranny rate.

Leland said...

Choosing blogs based on skin color evidently increases one’s hate of others. I’ll continue choosing content.

Clyde said...

Only the amoral fear a moral panic.

Sebastian said...

"(Isn't this Insider article itself raising a moral panic — about attacks on transgender people?) . . . (But isn't there also a moral panic about QAnon?). . . (Isn't this idea of "Trump's coup" also a moral panic?)"

IOW, the moral panic meme is progressive projection.

But occasional lefty hysteria notwithstanding, even their panic is strategic: not an OMG reaction but calculated rhetoric to advance their narrative and increase their power. As the post shows.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

You want a moral panic? How about all of the stories of child abuse by clowns in secret basements while riding in hot air balloons during then late '80s? Or the tales of secret rape parties hosted by Bret Kavanaugh? The McMartins went to jail or were bankrupted by over zealous prosecutors and "child advocates" during the former panics.

hombre said...

Memo to Michelle Goldberg: https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=18437 “Old Dominion University criminal justice professor defends pedophilia.”

Wince said...

Althouse said...
(Isn't this idea of "Trump's coup" also a moral panic?)

Bill Maher once again was all in on this theory last night with his guest, Adam Schiff. Never occurring to Maher to analyze the likelihood that Biden's poor performance could actually result in Trump legitimately winning an election against Biden - or Kamala. Thus, Trump becomes the reason and excuse not to talk about Biden.

You know Schiff would not have come on Maher's show if there was any possibility of being 'The Viewed' by another guest.

A truly nauseating three-way circle jerk with Tavis Smiley.

Skippy Tisdale said...

Great band name.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRge1oKEi-M

William said...

Any chance that the riots subsequent to the George Floyd killing were a form of moral panic? They certainly caused far more damage and fatalities than the 1/6 riot.......I don't think people like Michelle Goldberg are as eloquent in defense of, say, Kipling as they are in defense of Toni Morrison.....Kipling was a first rate poet and a stone imperialist. I don't know his position on anal sex, but he didn't take a strong position against the flogging and flaying of indigenous populations. Michelle Goldberg would ban his poems in a second. Anal sex is liberating, but Kipling's poetry needs trigger warnings.

Skippy Tisdale said...

"yes- she has bumps for breasts - but no genitals!"

So is barbie pre-op or post-op?

SGT Ted said...

The people who were screaming for 4 years about Trump being Hitler and colluding with Russia! to subvert "Our Democracy" are now concerned about moral panics.

Right.

Skippy Tisdale said...

"Question: how many of you fools participate on a blog or website - or anything - with a majority black population? None, I'd wager."

I spent years working with homeless teens in Minneapolis, 87% of whom are black. Prior to that, I spent two years working with parenting and pregnant teen moms only one -- one!-- of whom was white.

I live in north Minneapolis, my City's black and gang-ridden neighborhood. Have for decades. I have picked bullets out of my house and washed blood off of my sidewalk, so the neighborhood kids wouldn't have to walk in it on the way to the bus top. I have seen neighbors robbed at gunpoint. And YOU are what's known around here as a cornball (brother?). And after reading what you've been posting here these many long years, I am fairly certain you are not even black. What you write sounds far too "academically" Pablumeque. In a word, poser.

So tell me what I've won, Chad.

Skippy Tisdale said...

"We have seen people who claim to be African-American and it then turns out that they are white and “culturally appropriating”."

I see you've met Crack, the full spelling of which is Cracker (not to be confused with the Atlanta Black Crackers).

robother said...

Crack Emcee: "how many of you fools participate on a blog or website - or anything - with a majority black population?"

As the New Yorker cartoon has it, on the internet, no one knows.... Even on a site where everyone communicated in the parlance of black rappers, I wouldn't necessarily assume that blacks were a majority of commenters.

On the other hand, I would bet that in commenting on a majority black blog, I would be admonished to stay in my lane. So, damned if I do, damned if I don't. So fuck off, Crack.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

There are always people on any side of an issue who are in a permanent state of moral panic. But only when silent-majority, middle American, "didn't this used to be summarily rejected" types temporarily rouse from apathy in the center does it become an opportunity for pearl-clutching about Danger from The Right.

Liberals can be shamed by the merest whisper that their opinions are (not cool) uh, unapproved by the best people, so they assume that centrists and even conservatives will respond similarly. When we don't they double down, sure that this time they will get it! "No, no, no! The entire staff of the literary magazine of the senior class knows this is stupid! You must just not be listening!"

Young journalists come from a score of undergraduate colleges and only 3-4 J-schools. And they think that is the real world. Frightening.

Lurker21 said...

I guess "moral panic" is the buzzword of the moment, replacing "moral hazard" of a few years back.

It seems a little like a throwback to the liberal establishment of the fifties and sixties that was so confident of its own righteousness that they assumed that anyone who disagreed with them had to be pathological.

Anyway, Steven Pinker looks sharp in his new sweater. He really should send a nice thank you card to his aunt or whoever bought it for him.

Narayanan said...

robother said...
Crack Emcee: "how many of you fools participate on a blog or website - or anything - with a majority black population?"

As the New Yorker cartoon has it, on the internet, no one knows.... Even on a site where everyone communicated in the parlance of black rappers, I wouldn't necessarily assume that blacks were a majority of commenters.
------------
for that matter - why should anybody assume Crack-M-C is black?

pacwest said...

Now please everyone, lock your wigs, let the air out of your shoes, and prepare yourself for a period of simulated exhilaration. Everybody ready?

Drago said...

Crack Emcee: "Question: how many of you fools participate on a blog or website - or anything - with a majority black population?"

Trick question!!!

First you have to tell us which majority black blogs or websites qualify as "authentically" black and are not just The White Mans Thoughts Being Channeled Thru A Black Face.

Second, list 3 to 5 majority black blogs or websites you would revommend.

Its time to get specific....unless specificity, like everything else, is also now "White Supremacy".

Narr said...

I participate in life in a B/black majority city, if not a B/black majority neighborhood, though I've lived in those too.

effinayright said...

Crack, the wife and I had dinner the other night with a retired black judge and his missus.

Friends of ours.

I have three tenants, all single: two are black, and one is Hispanic. Nice kids (but terrible housekeepers).

Just what the fuck do I or anyone else OWE you?

Pathetic.