• This summer,

    20 Minutes

    returns to the "moral panics" of past decades.

  • We tell you all about the concept of “moral panic”.

What is “moral panic”?

We know the word panic… But “moral panic”?

It's when there is great concern that spreads in the media, on social networks, in short, in the public, without there being any relationship between the facts and reality.

The threat is exaggerated, and one group is usually singled out.

The concept of moral panic was coined by Stanley Cohen, a sociologist who speaks of a phenomenon of “deviance amplification”.

Basically, when a group is outside the norm, and this deviation from the norm is exaggerated, or presented as a threat.

From serial killers to feminists

There are several known examples of moral panic.

In the United States, serial killers were the subject of many fantasies and fears in the 1980s. As were Satanists in the 1990s. But it's not just pedophiles, the Covid- 19 or things that are very scary that can cause moral panics.

Feminists have often been caricatured and presented as a threat.

Do you perhaps remember the front page of the journal Valeurs Actuelles, which pointed to feminist “terror”? 

There is “moral panic” when the threat is exaggerated

Recently, it is the "woke", who are people committed against discrimination, who are accused of all the words.

Because of the "woke", exhibitions or plays would be deprogrammed, films boycotted, books censored.

Which is partly true.

But there is moral panic when the threat is exaggerated.

The former Minister of National Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, for example accused wokism of “undermining democracy and the Republic” and leading to “totalitarianism”.

Another exaggeration or lie, the "woke" are accused of preventing any criticism, while on the contrary there were a whole bunch of articles criticizing "wokism".

There, you know a little more about “moral panics”, and we hope that you will now be able to recognize them better too. 

Culture

How the word "woke" became a weapon to torpedo anti-discrimination activists

Culture

What if we stopped using the word "beurette"?

  • Words

  • Philosophy

  • Discrimination

  • Feminism

  • Culture

  • 20 minute video

  • Video