Moral Panic

Moral panic has long been the weapon of choice in the limited arsenal of right-wing politics. If nothing else, right-wing politicians have mastered the use of our primal fears against us. And when capitalism fails, as it's doing right now, their reliance on moral panics increases to the point where extreme conservatism ends and fascism begins.

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Moral panics are based in a widespread fear that society is under threat from a group of people that are considered less civilized than the instigators of the panic and their followers. The normative concept of civilization is the process whereby one group of people come to see themselves as more 'civilized' than another group of people, thereby enabling these self-identified 'civilized' people to commit acts that at other times would be seen as 'uncivilized'. Barbarians, primitives, degenerates, sub-humans, animals, monkeys, are all labels used to dehumanize groups that are the targets of moral panics. The current moral panic against transgenders and other LGBTQ+ people labels them as 'groomers', thereby declaring them as pedophiles and an imminent threat to society's integrity.

Convincing yourself and your followers that you are more civilized than your enemies provides an extremely effective excuse to do some pretty fucked-up things. Most of the time this fucked-up behavior towards the ones targeted in the moral panic is limited to harassment; transgenders, colored people and gay people suffer from this on a daily basis. But sometimes, if the moral panic campaign is sustained long enough, the result is violence, deadly violence even. The "othering" language that's used in this purposeful process of demonization is actually the language of fascism, where the satanic enemy is both weak and dangerously strong; Antifa is a bunch of pathetic soy-boys, but dangerously violent at the same time. These moral panics are never brought to public attention to be solved, the goal is simply to demonize groups of people and to reap political advantage from the resulting unrest, even if it crosses the line towards stochastic terrorism.

Right-wing politics is fear-based politics, which can be easily explained by following their threads to the root, which is the white man's fear of losing his spot at the top of the power hierarchy. Victim mentality is a white male invention. The original identity politics in America was done by white slaveholders, otherizing and dehumanizing African Americans to excuse their horrible treatment, not giving women the right to vote, or even allow them to open up their own bank accounts. White men were, and still are, the original victims in their political rhetoric, fearful as they were of African Americans when slavery ended, and fearful as they are now of being replaced as the predominant race. Their modern fears are translated into moral panics around "open borders", "immigrant caravans", "Critical Race Theory", "sexualization of children" and LGBTQ+ "child-groomers".

There is no ideological base under right-wing politics other than safeguarding the current power hierarchy. They'll be fiscally prudent in their rhetoric, but run up the deficit and national debt by cutting taxes for the rich. They'll preach traditional family values, Bible in hand and all, while supporting the most adulterous president in American history. And they'll keep on inventing new moral panics to cover up the fact that they're ideological empty vessels with no vision for a better future, just a wish for things to stay the same. They're a bunch of dangerously fearful people fighting tooth and nail against a changing world. This is why reactionary conservatism is, and always has been the gateway to fascism. Watch the below linked video, another brilliant expose by Cody Johnston's Some More News. He dives deep into the architecture of the moral panics I've briefly touched upon here.

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