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It'd be easier to take moral panics even a little bit seriously if one actually turned out to be true. Has there ever been a moral panic that turned out to be
by zehaeva 3y ago
It'd be easier to take moral panics even a little bit seriously if one actually turned out to be true.
Has there ever been a moral panic that turned out to be true? The closest I can think of is maybe the teetotaler/prohibition movement. Alcohol truly does cause a great deal of harm to society.
Not having been alive in the late 1800s and early 1900s I can't speak to if it was really viewed as a moral panic similar to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s that I got to experience.
- kelipso 3y agoPeople don't call them moral panics if they turn out to be true...it's almost by definition. E.g. say the catholic priests turned out to not have been molesting children, it would have been called a moral panic, but it's true, so it wasn't a moral panic.
- bhouston 3y agoI do not think that the sexual assault by Catholic Priests ever was a moral panic in the spirit of the other ones I mentioned. It was long-term persistent and it never played a role in elections. It was a long simmering issue that was very hard to elevate such that action was taken. I would argue it was very much akin to the multi-decade struggle for LGB rights. Long slog with slow progress, but eventually reaching success.
- kelipso 3y agoWell whatever example, opium or crack epidemic, hiv, etc, point being it's always retrospectively that moral panics are defined, after it turned out that people were concerned over nothing. As in, if you had found out the satanists were real, well it wouldn't have been a moral panic anymore.