A sociologist explains how moral panics serve the right-wing agenda
Category: Op/Ed
Via: john-russell • 3 years ago • 30 commentsBy: Rod Graham (Raw Story - Celebrating Years of Independent Journalism)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
.....Moral panics are the taking of anecdotal instances and making them seem more prevalent than they actually are (the panic), then demonizing groups associated with these instances (the morality).
The moral panics engineered by a philosophically bereft and culturally out-of-step Republican Party allow pockets of America to continue patterns of behavior that most of society would deem problematic.
Let me explain.
Moral panics and immoral action
Social scientists and faculty administrators have been aware for some time that women endure all forms of sexual aggression on college campuses, from unwanted sexual advances to inappropriate touching to rape. It is a long-standing problem. It is well understood in progressive and academic spaces. A common statistic shared in these spaces is one in five women are sexually assaulted on campus.
The Harvey Weinstein case of 2017 and the subsequent #MeToo Movement was a watershed moment, inaugurating a wave of women coming forward about their experiences with sexual aggression. For many, it was simply making public what was already known.
But conservatives turned the #MeToo Movement into a moral panic, suggesting that hapless innocent men were in danger of being persecuted by liberal feminists. News organizations frequently ran stories saying the movement had "morphed into a career-destroying mob," "gone ridiculously too far" and that it was a "scary time for men."
Liberty University could then position itself as being against these feminists and what they support, and double down on practices we know are harmful. Administrators at Liberty University can operate under the assumption that they are a place free of progressive, pink-haired "feminazis." At the same time, they routinely dismiss legitimate claims of sexual assault from their students.
This is how moral panics sustain immoral practices.
The panics keep coming
...Consider "cancel culture." The idea is that a hypersensitive irrational "woke mob" will call for the firing or the deplatforming of someone based solely on their ideas. A few cases where people have lost economic opportunities (rarely is someone actually canceled) are used to suggest a pervasive phenomenon. We now live in an oppressive society, they say, where people cannot speak their minds.
This narrative allows people to continue to disseminate damaging ideas without considering their impacts on vulnerable populations. They can say they are against "the wokies" and will not be silenced. So instead of operating in a moral space where people are mindful that speech is an action with consequences, people propagating racist, sexist and transphobic ideas can do so with no qualification or filter.
The panic around critical race theory (CRT) is even clearer, with candidates making the banning of it a significant part of their platform. Liberal, unionized public school teachers are the demonized group in this panic. Because scholars and K-12 teachers themselves have pointed out the ridiculousness of K-12 teachers discussing an esoteric set of ideas oriented towards law school students, anti-CRT advocates have stretched the idea of what CRT is. It now includes anything deviating from Martin Luther King Jr.'s phrase of judging one another based on the content of our character and not the color of our skin.
In response, citizens uncomfortable with talking about racial inequality can hide behind the anti-CRT banner, and legislators are now emboldened to narrow what children learn. In effect, they are upholding a white supremacist version of our history and reducing the ability of our young people to think with any depth about racism.
Let's do one more example, shall we?
Society continues to move forward on recognizing trans rights. It is inevitable that conservatives will generate moral panics giving people the cover needed to continue practicing their transphobia.
But this particular moral panic comes from an unusual space. Within the conservative media sphere, stories about trans women prisoners raping female inmates are becoming more numerous. While this does happen, and we need to find ways of preventing this, these instances are exaggerated (the panic) and they demonize trans persons (the morality). In an odd twist, conservatives have finally developed some sympathy for our incarcerated population only because it allows them to push back against what they see as "trans ideology."
The politics of panics
Moral panics have utility for people who want to resist change and continue operating in ways becoming increasingly inappropriate. People attracted to Liberty University do not want to accept a world in which women are not at the sexual disposal of men. Many white Americans are uncomfortable with a school system that critiques their ancestors and our nation's history. People are uncomfortable with the visibility of trans people and chafe at requests to treat them as equals.
Panics are tools for these people.
But they also serve a broader purpose.
The Republican Party of the 21st century is struggling with rapid change. It has always been the smaller party in terms of registered voters. Recent polling suggests it is getting smaller. Few policies Republicans can offer appeal to voters who are young, educated, less economically secure or of color. One of the ways they can maintain competitiveness is to make sure their voters are energized and vote.
My concern is that progressives legitimate these moral panics by participating in the discourse. By generating an argument against them, we operate on the battlefield conservatives chose. If these panics are at best distortions, at worst lies, maybe the most effective strategy is to double down on our own, more truthful narratives.
I have invested too much time discussing why CRT is not in our schools. Why did I do that? The anti-CRT folks and the political party supporting them were not invested in the truth. My engagement as a progressive academic only helped validate an anti-CRT opposition.
I will be doing that much less now.
Rod Graham is a professor at Virginia's Old Dominion University, he researches and teaches courses in the areas of cyber-crime and racial inequality
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Sometimes it seems like conservatism is nothing but one big moral panic.
Fear is all they have
Plus projection, deflection, denial and outright lies!
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It is how they keep power.
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Pay no attention John to certain folks whose opinions, etc., etc., ain't worth a penny!
Quite a card to play only a year after the Floyd riots and the ongoing mania over white supremacy and systematic racism, isn't it?
Did the author take a break from destroying statues to write this?
See 1.2
So exposing a university covering up sexual assault is part of some kind of "panic agenda"?
Maybe you should re-read this with a more critical eye
Maybe you should answer my question.
Not until you read the excerpt I posted from the article.
Here I'll help you. The author is poking at LU because they ignored the rape allegations and swept them under the rug
Happens on a lot of college campuses. Especially those that are allowed to investigate these crimes internally. My daughter had a friend that was raped on campus. She went to the police, was told it was a campus investigation. The campus investigation was a farce. The woman left the college because she had to see the guy in all her classes and she wanted to put it behind her. My daughter is still in contact with her and the woman is now an advocate for women's rights when it comes to sexual assault.
Well, geez if these women would stay out of college (or at colleges that train them to be good wives - all women colleges of course) they would have no fear of being "ruined". They should just stay home clutching their pearls like SOME on here would like.
Kinda amazing that after centuries of treating women like pawns to be impregnated that many men whine about a few decades of long overdue comeuppance.
It is amazing the whining that goes into this - like that asshole that shot women because he couldn't get a date. Why is that women's fault? It is appalling to me that in this century it is women's fault that they are raped, it is their fault they get killed.... it is as if they are at fault because of vagina.
We had a fellow up here in Montreal named Marc Lepine who decided that 'feminists' were the root of all evils that befell him, he managed to kill 14 and wound 10 others, all female engineering students, in 1989 at Polytechnic Montreal.
His suicide note:
Forgive the mistakes, I had 15 minutes to write this.
Please note that if I commit suicide today 89-12-06 it is not for economic reasons (for I have waited until I exhausted all my financial means, even refusing jobs) but for political reasons. Because I have decided to send the feminists, who have always ruined my life, to their Maker. For seven years life has brought me no joy and being totally blasé , I have decided to put an end to those viragos .
I tried in my youth to enter the Forces as an officer cadet , which would have allowed me possibly to get into the arsenal and precede Lortie in a raid. They refused me because asocial [ sic ]. I therefore had to wait until this day to execute my plans. In between, I continued my studies in a haphazard way for they never really interested me, knowing in advance my fate. Which did not prevent me from obtaining very good marks despite my theory of not handing in work and the lack of studying before exams.
Even if the Mad Killer epithet will be attributed to me by the media, I consider myself a rational erudite that only the arrival of the Grim Reaper has forced to take extreme acts. For why persevere to exist if it is only to please the government. Being rather backward-looking by nature (except for science), the feminists have always enraged me. They want to keep the advantages of women (e.g. cheaper insurance, extended maternity leave preceded by a preventative leave, etc.) while seizing for themselves those of men.
Thus it is an obvious truth that if the Olympic Games removed the Men-Women distinction, there would be women only in the graceful events. So the feminists are not fighting to remove that barrier. They are so opportunistic they [do not] [note 2] neglect to profit from the knowledge accumulated by men through the ages. They always try to misrepresent them every time they can. Thus, the other day, I heard they were honoring the Canadian men and women who fought at the frontline during the world wars. How can you explain [that since] [note 3] women were not authorized to go to the frontline??? Will we hear of Caesar's female legions and female galley slaves who of course took up 50% of the ranks of history, though they never existed. A real Casus Belli .
Sorry for this too brief letter.
Marc Lépine
The letter is followed by the list of nineteen names, with a note at the bottom:
Wow. How long was his killing spree?
An hour or less. He used a Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle. He also stabbed one victim three times with a hunting knife. Two students commited suicide after the event.
At the time I was renting some space in an architect's office when the news came across the radio. Most of the technicians were women and all screamed and wailed.
More on the asshole:
Holy shit. That is crazy. Thanks for the link.
In 2006 another shooting occurred at Dawson College and my daughter was in attendance on that day, scariest day of my life.
I can understand that.
There is a name for men like that. It eludes me at the moment.
Start with Adam and work your way through the alphabet.
Just thought of it when I came to I.
Incels...
The funny (not ha ha) thing about that statement is that is ALWAYS a scary time for women. Don't go out alone, don't dress like that, do not go to bars, do not drink, do not stand in your house in your robe.... the list is endless.
Perhaps it wasn't such a great idea to allow colleges to investigate rapes?
Perhaps that should be left to law enforcement professionals?
When i was in college the campus cops pushed a vote so they could carry guns.
It got voted down like 91% to 9.
Largest majority vote i've ever seen and it was funny as hell. Those people were just a bunch of Barney Fifes.