Moral panics Flashcards
Moral Panics
Cohen 2018, where a event is perceived as a threat to societal values and interests.
Stuart Hall on the back of research on how muggings became a moral panic in the UK, The reaction of the people or groups of people is out of proportion to the actual threat offered.
He continues, ‘silent majority’ is one over to the support of the coercive measures taken by the state. Basically pick a oppressed community and use your power to say how they are a threat to divert attention from what you are responsible for.
Reactionary Politics
The opposite of revolution, an attempt to return to the old power/regime.
Not about protecting the status quo, but about radical change, Robin 2018.
Reactionary ideologies can be radical in the sense of political extremism in service to re-establishing past conditions.
Othering
The perpetrators are seen as the enemy of society, deserving targets of anger and hostility, as said by Goode and Ben Yehuda 1994.
Othering, Simone De Beauvoir, man is the subject and women is the other. Trans peoples voices forced out of public discourse.
Flawed arguments about free speech by the reactionary right
Free speech is not totally free in the west, for good or bad, so why is it that reactionary free speech warriors are only concerned about the right to be racist, sexist, transphobic etc when there are other cases of free speech suppression.
For example new law giving the police more power to crack down on protestors, Police Crime and sentencing act 2022.
Cancel culture
So is it Cancel culture or are people just concerned they cannot say terrible things without being criticised.
Campus free speech
Is it a myth that students and staff regularly sensor themselves, Kinds college London study, 80% of students feel that they are free to express their views.
Only two universities had removed books from reading lists, with the texts still available in the university library.
2017 28 faculty were fired for speech related issues, 2019 it was just 4, the most of which between 2015 and 2018 were speech deemed politically liberal in the US.
Immigration Moral panic
10 year average 2009-2019 immigration was seen as the most important issue facing the UK at nearly 30%.
We continue to be informed by the media and politicians that migrants erode national identity, commit crime, and take housing, jobs and other social goods away from the ‘indigenous’ population.
Consider, for example, the recent coverage and commentary on those trying to make the extremely precarious journey across the English Channel in small boats in search of a better life. Rather than challenging this dehumanising narrative and providing safe routes that enable some of the most vulnerable people to build a new life in the UK, the government has discussed the possibility of sending them to a remote volcanic island more than 4,000 miles away from the UK known as Ascension Island.
Benefits of A8 workers
Scapegoat for huge recession and the Uks excess death level the worst in Europe.
Proporty crime has fallen since 2002 in england and wales, the foreign born population has continued to rise since.
Trans Rights
Donald Trump claimed that Republican voters cared more about trans issues than they did cutting taxes.
Woke meaning
The term means ‘alert to racial prejudice’, pretty inoffensive and not radical yet It has taken a reactionary meaning of its own.
