Actually, we have encountered this before. Just ask comic book writers—the victims of a crusade in the 1940s and 50s that blamed comic books for everything from juvenile delinquency to teen homosexuality. Spurred by Congressional hearings and comic book burnings, the panic upended an industry.
Just ask the operators of the McMartin pre-school in California, who, in the middle 1980s, were accused of performing satanic rituals with their young charges. Or revisit some of the fear mongering journalism about “wolf packs” circa late 1980s New York City. In a crime ridden city, groups of young African-American men were the object of great fear and intense law enforcement scrutiny. Now, you can now add fraternity members to the list. We’ve seen moral panics before. And we are seeing one again.
Moral panics all follow a similar trend: There are controversies that speak to an emerging social tension—in this case, the changing set of expectations around connection and relationships between affluent young men and women. The media operates as an agent of moral indignation. Politicians thunder. Good data about the problem is slippery or non-existent—and never mind that. Our fear becomes the reason why we should be even more afraid. And so we grow more afraid. We blindly demonize a particular group—literature on moral panics refers to them as “folk devils”—whose capacity for harming the innocent seems limitless. Sometimes, laws are enacted. Sometimes, jail sentences are meted out. Most always, in the moment, it feels so right. And then comes the slow reckoning.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member