Scribal Terror

Where Do Moral Panics Come From?

 

Where do moral panics come from? Some are bottom-up, but here is an example of a top-down origin, as described in "Moral Panics: Culture, Politics, and Social Construction" by Goode and Ben-Yehuda:

 

Howard Becker (1963: 135-46) argued that the passage of the marijuana laws, and the attendant media and public attention, was a product of the efforts of key moral entrepreneurs, specifically officials in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), who "perceived an area of wrongdoing that properly belonged in their jurisdiction and moved to put it there" (Becker 1963:138). The Bureau's thrust was made up of two prongs. First, FBN officials worked with state legislatures-including drafting model legislation-to facilitate the passage of the state anti-marijuana laws. And second, they provided "facts and figures" to the media which formed the basis for articles in national magazines. Thus, "through the press and other communications media," the Bureau sought to generate "a favorable public attitude toward the proposed" law (Becker 1963: 139). The "national menace" or threat posed by marijuana use did not have an objective reality. The FBN created a crisis where no basis for it existed,and the campaign created a "new class of outsiders-marihuana users."

How a Moral Panic Ends

 

Ann Putnam was one of the witnesses who accused people of witchcraft during the Salem incident in 1692-3. She got people hanged, and she thought she was doing the right thing. Here is the public apology she delivered in 1706, once the moral panic had fizzled out, and the participants were left with nothing but their grief and their guilt:

 

"I desire to be humbled before God for that sad and humbling providence that befell my father's family in the year about '92; that I, then being in my childhood, should, by such a providence of God, be made an instrument for the accusing of several persons of a grievous crime, whereby their lives were taken away from them, whom now I have just grounds and good reason to believe they were innocent persons; and that it was a great delusion of Satan that deceived me in that sad time, whereby I justly fear I have been instrumental, with others, though ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon myself and this land the guilt of innocent blood; though what was said or done by me against any person I can truly and uprightly say, before God and man, I did it not out of any anger, malice, or ill-will to any person, for I had no such thing against one of them; but what I did was ignorantly, being deluded by Satan. And particularly, as I was a chief instrument of accusing of Goodwife Nurse and her two sisters, I desire to lie in the dust, and to be humbled for it, in that I was a cause, with others, of so sad a calamity to them and their families; for which cause I desire to lie in the dust, and earnestly beg forgiveness of God, and from all those unto whom I have given just cause of sorrow and offence, whose relations were taken away or accused."

The European Witchcraft Panic

One example of moral panic was the witchcraft craze in Europe:

 

"On the continent of Europe, roughly between 1 400 and 1650, hundreds of thousands of people-perhaps as many as half a million, up to 85% of whom were women-were judged to have "consorted with the devil" and were put to death. Much of Europe, especially France, Switzerland, and Germany, was in turmoil with suspicion, accusations, trials, and the punishment of supposed evildoers. A kind of fever-a craze or panic---concerning witchcraft and accusations of witchcraft swept over the land. Once an accusation was made, there was little the accused could do to protect herself. Children, women, and "entire families were sent to the stake .... Entire villages were exterminated ....Germany was covered with stakes, where witches were burning alive." Said one inquisitor, "I wish [the witches] had but one body, so that we could bum them all at once, in one fire!" (Ben-Yehuda 1985)

 

I want to come back to a Colonial American version of this, the Salem episode, which I think is even more typical of the idea of moral panic than the European manifestation.

Moral Panics

I've been thinking about this phenomenon a lot, for reasons that I would hope are obvious. But maybe they're only obvious to me. I'll keep coming back to this as the day goes by. See what you think.

At times, substantial numbers of the members of societies are subject to intense feelings of concern about a given threat which a sober assessment of the evidence suggests is either nonexistent or considerably less than would be expected from the concrete harm posed by the threat. Such over-heated periods of intense concern are typically short-lived. In such periods, which sociologists refer to as "moral panics," the agents responsible for the threat-"folk devils"-are stereotyped and classified as deviants.

Goode and Ben-Yehuda, "Moral Panics: Culture, Politics, and Social Construction"

Having Dostoyevskian Thoughts

“Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature...in order to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me. Tell the truth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Lost My Damn Owl. Had to Make Do

Old terriers will understand.