I mean, moral panics are thing across the whole political continuum.
Conspiracy theories aren't always based in moral panic, and moral panics aren't always about a conspiracy.
Conspiracy theories aren't always based in moral panic, and moral panics aren't always about a conspiracy.
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)
(Come to think of it, it looks an awful lot like Republicans vs. RINOs, except the numbers are reversed there.)
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.
I'm sure there are plenty more
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.
It just goes on and on.
While this is much more common now, it's not new either.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word...
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.
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).
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.
You'll have to elaborate, I'm not really understanding what you are saying.
I'd like to know which examples you don't believe exist.
> Cancel culture. This certainly exists in both political extremes too.
These are the only two that don't read like a blown-out strawman version of the topic, mostly by just being broad.
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/briefing/atlanta-shooting...
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.
Children exploited for child labour by Roblox?