> What are examples of moral panics on the "left" (American interpretation) end of the spectrum?
Centrism.
It is the universal moral panic of the far left in any democratic country. There's nothing that upsets the left more (I speak as someone largely on the centre-left; it's a reviled position)
That's is not a moral panic. It is a continual, ongoing policy disagreement. Leftier-than-thou types may yell at you, but they're not taking your children away or trying to throw you in jail.
(Come to think of it, it looks an awful lot like Republicans vs. RINOs, except the numbers are reversed there.)
Same, center left here too. It feels like a cult trying to purify itself. We're impure and must be cast out. I believe, however, that it's a very loud minority that is scaring the rest of us into silence. So it appears larger than it is.
I consider myself center-left. It is hard to encapsulate the left as a monolith because it is a diverse group of people who have different values and goals.
The left could include:
- People who want to reduce the price of medical care so people can have a higher quality of life
- People who are environmentalists who want to regulate pollution
- Vegans who want to end animal abuse
- Transgender people who want their rights and status respected and protected by the law
- People who do not want homeless camps in their city, but also do not want the government to open up open-air prisons for people who are at the lowest point in their lives and may never recover.
- People who want women to have access to abortions.
- Literal delusional communist wonks who have no idea what they are talking about.
So, when you look at the "left" like that, you can see why the two-party system is so important for the United States to keep in place. This superset of "the left" needs to agree on policy and win an election. Good luck.
But to answer your question:
- Races in dungeons and dragons being stand-ins for actual races. This is questionable, but people made some good points and I think at the end of the day WoTC was just like: "Eh, if it makes people more comfortable who cares." NOBODY played the characters that way anyway.
- Genetically modified foods / the organic movement. GMO DOES have its problems in that they dump TONS of pesticides and herbicides on copyrighted plants that are designed to survive them, which then flow into our rivers and kill off biodiversity. However: They are perfectly safe to eat and people misunderstood the concept.
- Anti-vax was originally a hippie-dippie "left mommy" thing before it was adopted by the right.
Free speech. Strangely that has somehow inverted in recent years. It wasn't long ago that censorship was the domain of the right who were in a panic about what's acceptable speech and actively trying to police it.
"master branch" and "grandfathered code" and "sanity check" are just a few of the terms suddenly deemed unacceptable.
Joe Rogan says dangerous things and must be silenced. Who is a Bernie supporter smeared as alt-right for saying unapproved things.
All kinds of campus panics about "unsafe" words and ideas. One example is a professor that said a word that sounds like another word during a lecture. It made some students uncomfortable and the professor was put on immediate leave.
People being cancelled for jokes they made a decade ago.
>All kinds of campus panics about "unsafe" words and ideas. One example is a professor that said a word that sounds like another word during a lecture.
While this is much more common now, it's not new either.
One specific example might be recent panics over "misinformation" (e.g. covid misinformation), what I would call the idea that incorrect, contrarian, or offensive speech online isn't just bad, but fundamentally dangerous. Even if you believe this is true, there is absolutely a powerful moral panic movement that exaggerates the terribleness of misinformation, and generally places itself in opposition to free speech in its solutions that call for more and broader censorship of online platforms.
Of course this perspective relies on a few base assumptions, such as: 1) free speech exists as an ideal aside from legal protections, 2) corporate censorship is a threat to this ideal, and 3) misinformation isn't as bad as the alarmists claim it is. If you don't agree with those points, it might not appear as a moral panic to you, which may explain some of the confusion.
I think you're making a mistake, here, by looking at this through a partisan lens (which, unfortunately, seems to be the default way of seeing the world for a lot of folks these days; one need only look at some of the other low quality replies to your question to see that in action).
The Satanic Panic, for example, was not, as far as I'm aware, a partisan conspiracy theory. Unlike QAnon, which is clearly aligned with the far right, the Satanic Panic was very widely reported in media and believed by the public and law enforcement.
The same is true of many other urban legends that lead to moral panics (e.g. "rainbow parties").
Some believe the US is full of actual Nazis and white supremest groups. I'm not saying white supremest don't exist, but it's way overblown in the moral panic people's minds.
Everything is somehow racist. Again, not saying racism doesn't exist, but the word seems to have been redefined in recent years. Example, the OK hand gesture now means white power and everyone who uses it is a white supremest, syrup is racist, etc.
Some were very anti-vaxx pre-covid, particularly out of California. That took a really weird turn where now the moral panic is anyone who is unvaxxed for any reason doesn't deserve to buy food, work or travel. (The mass firing of ~30K NY hospital workers is an example).
Many (like 41% according to the NYT) believed COVID had a 50% hospitalization rate (probably related to the above)
Censorship and misinformation is a big one.
Cancel culture. This certainly exists in both political extremes too.
Ecoterrorism and meat is murder.
Koch brothers were running the country (the right's version of this boogeyman is Soros).
There's many more, these are just recent ones I could think of.
It seems extreme politics of the left has replaced the hole that religion would have taken and therefore has the same moral panic traits that extreme religious people also show.
Well that's what was asked, the moral panics of the left, of course they are fringe. Almost all moral panics are fringe, thank goodness. Equating D&D with satan was also fringe. I had exactly 1 friend who's parents wouldn't let him play D&D because his mom thought it was satanist, or close to it. They weren't an overly religious family either, she just got sucked into the fear mongering propaganda.
I'd like to know which examples you don't believe exist.
Do you believe the moral panics I listed don't exist? It might be because of your biases. If you support left culture, you might be blind to them. I've switched sides so many times, I'm more aware of all the BS of both tribes.
This is so far down my comment chain I might not see your reply. Here's a link to the NYT article where 48% of Democrats believed if you catch COVID, you have a 50%+ hospitalization rate (actual is 1-5%). 28% of Republicans and 35% of independents believe the same thing. If that many people believed this was true, the result would be exactly what we saw, ostracization of not only people who don't want to get vaccinated but people who dared want to talk about the costs and benefits of vaccination. If that's not a moral panic, I don't know what is. You can google the others at your leisure, or not.
Paywalled, so I can't actually see that, but if anything the fact that I know my personal bubble leans very left and yet I have never met a single person whose beliefs are that extreme that makes me doubt those numbers.
Even the most Covid overreacting people I know aren't anywhere near believing it's a 50% hospitalization rate: they get tested constantly and are aware of multiple cases of Covid among their circle with no hospitalizations. Paranoia about after-effects comes up much more.
Is it just a moral panic? Because these kids, who are bright enough to build their games and virtual worlds in Roblox's arcane tools, are spending hundreds of hours to create content for a multi-billion company and seeing nothing for their efforts. (In fact, many spend money to promote their worlds, so they are paying to work.)
I think one is that a lot of left-wingers imagine that the majority of police are also members of explicitly fascist/racist organizations. A significant minority are, but lefties imagine that they basically all are. For most cops, the police unions are enough, and minority cops are usually even at odds with those.
I was never allowed to play D&D back in the 80's. My mom believed witchcraft existed and I was never able to convince her otherwise after a lifetime of arguing and so many psychological strategies. She recently died, taking her ignorance with her to the grave.
You can't convince these people. The "marketplace of ideas" is a failure. It doesn't work. Some wounds never heal. Once someone gets some stupid and wrong idea in their brain they will never be free of it. Like lead poisoning, it will never go away.
I've never understood why people believe the marketplace of ideas is the only marketplace that shouldn't be regulated.
We don't allow companies to sell poison and call it medicine under the belief that rational, self-interested consumers will always choose medicine even if the poison is sweeter. Yet we have to allow disinformation and lies to spread like an untreated cancer and just hope that somehow the truth will prevail.
Whether something is poison is relatively objective. Whether something is disinformation or lies is often a matter of perspective or too difficult to determine. Furthermore, the control of information is about power and manipulation just as disinfo is, which is a can of worms I'm not prepared to write an essay on right now, and does not exist in your poison analogy.
How about we amend the analogy. You're not allowed to sell unpasteurized milk. Many say unpasteurized milk is better, and healthier. Others say it's dangerous. We (FDA) have collectively decided that despite its health benefits we don't like the risks and have therefore banned it. The can of worms is open. Squiggly worms are all over the place.
> Whether something is disinformation or lies is often a matter of perspective or too difficult to determine.
On the other hand, it often isn't too difficult to determine, as with the various videos floating around that allegedly show the Russia-Ukraine war but are readily identifiable as predating it, showing an entirely different location, and/or having audio dubbed over from another source.
I mean that's the whole point of witch hunts, to fabricate a casus belli to abuse people in ways that would otherwise be illegal or at least frowned on by the community at large.
...which is where I fail to understand why people compare the moral panics of the "left" to these quasi-conspiracy events among right-leaning and evangelical types. the difference is huge when you compare the actions taken in the interest of their fabricated causes.
It's not that hard to see where they are coming from. If someone calls you a racist for the very reasonable opinion that all black people should go back where they came from then it feels like they're just making up a reason to hate you.
I mean people keep calling you a racist it must be their problem. Introspection is not allowed, being right always is divine, anything else is weakness.
QAnon is a conspiracy theory singularity, and the very same ideas that were running rampant in the 80s--particularly satantic ritual abuse--are represented in the QAnon movement today.
in many cases, it’s the same people.