Rethinking Moral Panic

Now and then in the wake of the Bud Light-Dylan Mulvaney controversy, I've seen the observation that it marks the end of a moral panic. I certainly think this is true, but the odd thing is that the panic is backward. What we see in the conventional definition of moral panics is that, as in the image above, a new, seemingly threatening phenomenon arises that represents a potential undermining of prevailing social values.

Thus past moral panics have involved witches, red scares, reefer madbness, crime waves, mods and rockers, and satanists. According to Wikipedia,

[T]he concept was first developed in the United Kingdom by Stanley Cohen, who introduced the phrase moral panic in a 1967–69 PhD thesis that became the basis for his 1972 book Folk Devils and Moral Panics. . . . According to Cohen, a moral panic occurs when a "condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests." To Cohen, those who start the panic after fearing a threat to prevailing social or cultural values are 'moral entrepreneurs', while those who supposedly threaten social order have been described as 'folk devils'.

I've been saying pretty much throughout the COVID episode that it's been a moral panic, with phases that have also included a "morning after", over the existence of which there appears to be less of a scholarly consensus. Nevertheless, as related to the COVID panic, there was a gradual recognition that lockdowns; social distancing; closing churches, parks, and beaches; and even masks and vaccines were not only ineffective but counterproductive in solving the problem, which had been exaggerated by moral entrepreneurs, who included media and the public health establishment, enabled by a near consensus among political leadership.

The unique feature of the COVID panic was that the traditional -- and indeed, the sociologically necessary-- feature of such panics had been the need to root out some form of deviance, which included witches, communists, gays, minorities, drug users, and the like. The deviance in COVID was much more widespread. My theory all along was that the deviants in COVID were Trump voters, who in elite quarters represented a widespread contagion that could be spread via worship services, NASCAR rallies, football games, and other mass events, which certainly included Trump rallies.

But this meant that the "deviants" in the COVID panic were something close to half the country, if you do nothing more than count the votes for Trump in the 2020 election. They weren't an easily identifiable minority that could be singled out as scapegoats. In fact, if the elites tried to single them out as "folk devils" in traditiooinal fashion, they proved capable of fighting back, as they did on January 6 -- and this episode in particular has also been represented as a genuine threat to the established order by the same elites who enabled the COVID panic, who tie it closely to the Trump phenomenon.

But as the COVID panic subsided, we got a peculiar new inversion of the standard moral panic: transsexuals, a tiny, easily identifiable group that might once have been identified as deviant, suddenly were represented by corporate media and some politicians as normative and part of the social consensus, and those who once objected to, say, drag shows in schools were characterized as "folk devils". Thus we have the demagogic politician Joe Biden issuing this statement on transgenderism:

Transgender Americans deserve to be safe and supported in every community – but today, across our country, MAGA extremists are advancing hundreds of hateful and extreme state laws that target transgender kids and their families. No one should have to be brave just to be themselves.

. . . I want every member of the trans community to know that we see you. You’re each made in the image of God, and deserve love, dignity, and respect. You make America stronger, and we’re with you.

The "image of God" turns natural law on its head: the "hateful and extreme" state laws Biden mentions are meant to prevent mutilation of preteens who are unable to grasp the implication of gender reassignment surgery or, at worst, prevent drag shows to preteen audiences. The "folk devils" who advocate such measures are, once again, close to half the population. This strikes me as something close to "gaslighting", a word that's lately come into common use to convey the idea that people who aren't crazy are bing told they actually are.

If we parse out the implications of existing moral panic scholarship, we might conclude that moral panics in one way or another do derive from human nature, and human nature isn't basically wrong to resist many forms of deviance. In fact, some moral panics contradict natural law -- such as campaigns against witches. Others, not so much -- the jury is still out on whether it was ever a good idea to minimize or eliminate panalties for marijuana.

But what we've seen until just recently were always moral panics directed against small "deviant" groups, or even groups like witches that never actually existed. Trying to stir up a moral panic against roughly half the country -- or even a clear majority, for instance of those who find transsexualism problematic -- is new and uncharted territory. It seems to come with the prevailing current notion that you can re-engineer human nature.

The incomplete information that's come in so far, though, is that it hasn't beena winning strategy.