;

moral panics



  • The Other Mothers Fighting the School Wars

    Although Moms For Liberty was the early entrant into the current battles over curriculum, race and LGBTQ policies in schools, other groups have mobilized their identities as mothers to fight the right's efforts. Historians Adam Laats and Stacie Taranto note that school politics have often hinged on who could leverage motherhood as a political force. 



  • On "Cancel Culture"

    by Thomas Zimmer

    The alleged "cancellation" of Scott Adams shows that many pundits decrying "cancel culture" from the center are actually more interested in holding the power to declare ideas out of bounds than in letting the marketplace of ideas sort them out. 



  • Is Moms For Liberty Out to Protect Kids or Scare Parents?

    Williamson County in suburban Nashville shows how the astroturf Mom's group erupted on the scene to challenge a popular and well-regarded social studies curriculum for elementary schools on the grounds that its civil rights lessons were "divisive." 



  • Book Bans Today Recall 1950s Panic over Comic Books

    by Jeremy C. Young and Jonathan Friedman

    Child psychologist Fredric Wortham had fough Jim Crow by theorizing the damage caused to Black children by segregation. He had a less likely role in supporting the idea that lurid plots in comic books would create a generation of emotionally damaged adults. 



  • "Rainbow Fentanyl" Just the Latest Halloween Moral Panic

    by Joel Best

    From razor blades to opioids, the author has researched every Halloween panic since the 1950s and found no evidence of any child being harmed by any of them. Today, politicians are feeding equally ludicrous narratives to keep people scared. 



  • Lessons From the Struggle Against the Old McCarthyism

    by Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin

    For a Texas professor, the Lieutenant Governor's push to abolish tenure and punish faculty for teaching certain ideas calls to mind the experiences of his grandparents in the heyday of McCarthy and HUAC. 



  • QAnon and the Satanic Panics of Yesteryear

    by Daniel N. Gullotta

    "The perception of a Christian nation in religious freefall fits almost seamlessly with QAnon’s conviction that the United States is under spiritual assault."



  • Qanon Misdirects Our Attention Away From The Real Threats To Children

    by Paul M. Renfro

    "Moral panics like QAnon work to distract from less outrageous, far more insidious sources of harm. Even worse, they contribute to punitive policies that separate and hurt families, perpetuate mass incarceration and keep people in a state of fear."