A missing piece of your analysis is the feminized nature of progressivism; its most zealous foot soldiers are often women, and they dominate the institutions that steer the Democratic party’s agenda. Women tend to compete covertly and have evolved to actually lie to ourselves about the fact that we are competing (biological imperatives, referencing Joyce Benenson’s research in Warriors and Worriers). This tendency drives much of cancel culture, and it is women I’ve seen weaponize empathy most ardently. And finally, because moral capital is social capital among women (again, evolutionary tendencies), it prevents us from seeing or admitting we were wrong when we hurt people. I can’t give you a study proving this, but if you delve into evolutionary biology and psychology it’ll start to make sense. I was also once the kind of woman I’m describing, so I can speak with a bit of authority on this. I see it all around me among millennial women.
This is such an important comment. You reminded me of an essay by Louise Perry “Cancel culture is girl culture.” I wasn’t familiar with Beneson, but will read now. Thank you!
This is a fascinating presentation of what the popular culture keeps hot and what is allowed to keep cold. One that comes to mind in regards to the Satan Panic is the earlier youth killings associated with comic books, like the Brooklyn Thrill Killings of 1954 (https://clcjbooks.rutgers.edu/books/the-brooklyn-thrill-kill-gang-and-the-great-comic-book-scare/). These brought the public’s attention to the gruesome nature of comic books depicting kidnapping, murder and possible sexual assault. You can see the covers here which really do seem like they could send a disturbed pre-Internet reader over the edge (https://comicbookinvest.com/2020/02/22/top-30-pre-code-crime-comics/).
The alleged “wrong perpetrator” angle is right. If the situation casts a protected group in the wrong light, then it will quietly be dropped. See for example the Zebra Killings in SF in early 1970s of a black group that killed at least fifteen white people (https://a.co/d/dFizo5O). Most people don’t even know about that incident, though its racial angle would make it sensational for media.
In terms of social workers, I think the last two movies that presented them in a bad light were “Joker” (2019) and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975). Otherwise, they are championed overworked and under appreciated people doing great work. Definitely a protected group.
These red scare investigations were often called “witch hunts”, but if you look at the worldly crimes witches were often accused of, it leaves a funny analogy –
• destroying the morals of society and subverting/tricking hapless outsiders
• bizarre sexual misconduct
• weaving dark conspiracies to gain worldly power
• damaging the food supply (in the case of literal witchcraft accusations, poisoning animals/wells/crops)
• sacrificing humans for their cult’s power
These are all things that communists and their fellow travellers literally did, and not at a small scale!
Calling communist suppression “witch hunts” is basically making witches real and then demanding that they can’t be molested because witches hadn’t be real previously.
The damage that “blacklisting” allegedly did to people (most of whom were active traitors who were only not card-carrying members of the CPUSA because the CPUSA instructed them thus, to infiltrate institutions more effectively) is also vastly overstated.
A) it did not last that long
B) these circles had strong support networks for “victims”
C) media people, if not in front of the camera – i.e. the majority – could generally go right on working under some nom-de-plume, names that everyone from their “cool set” could associate with the actual person, so even reputations carried over back and forth
Retrospective mentions that this-or-that work was actually produced by someone who was “blacklisted”, as can occasionally be seen, lampshades the whole episode as the 50s version of the photos of prominent tables in American bookshops advertising “banned books”.
It was the one time that the stupid “did not actually happen, but should have” meme really applied.
But there was high level spying especially within the State Department, wasn't there. McCarthy exaggerated it but why would US State, haven of Ivies, be different to the treasonous Oxbridge Brits like Burgess, McClean, theodious Phil by, Blunt and others. The liberals saint Alger Hiss, in recent years proven to be a Soviet agent, was a Harvard Ma , dammit.
Related to the Satanic panic in 80s was the child abuse panic also largely relying on the now discredited recovered memory phenomenon. The fabulous documentary Catching the Friedmans is an excellent fly-on-the-wall exposition of how that suburban moral panic utterly destroyed one family and it documents within that family the impacts as almost all of them ended up being jailed for utterly specious and absurd charges. Available online or via torrents.
I think conservatives also played a major role in Satanic Panic. I grew up in Georgia in the 1970s and 80s and evangelicals were obsessed with this stuff. Everything was Satan.
"There is something basically healthy about being confronted with an unflattering version of yourself and your worldview from time to time".
Very true....my thoughts on this: When I was growing up in the 50s there were still “remnants of a Christian moral sense that everyone (including oneself) is an imperfect being. In the following decades, that moral/philosophical centre ‘progressively’ unravelled. Key to this was the entry into the Western collective psyche of a supposed deficit of self-love … one that needed correcting via maximal self-esteem. In the post-60s decades, self-esteem’s supposed importance to healthy personal development became axiomatic right across the spectrum from Left to Right. But it had a downside. Once you are encouraged to view yourself as axiomatically personally blameless, the next step is to look for someone (or something) else to blame for your discontents." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/everyone-has-lost-control-of-the
I think the difference has to do more with the nature of the victims than the perpetrators. McCarthyism prototypically targeted intellectuals. The Satanic panic affected a mostly random mixture of non-elites. You could spin the Satanic Panic to match progressive bromides close enough - surely the accusers were more likely to be Christian - but that doesn’t change who the targets were.
To take an example with left-wing perpetrators, the USSR’s Great Purge had about 1/5 the casualties of the Holodomr, but it decimated the elite of the country (especially “Old Bolsheviks”) instead of Ukrainian peasants, and hence got far more press.
Excuse me but My GoodGod I Am sent His Only Begotten Son, to die for the original sin committed by Ancestors Adam and Eve.
The life we have is borrowed, bought with a price. So to honor that debt we are all given freewill to make a conscious decision to pursue the truth ourselves, from the only one who can give it God.
I have, and as scary as He is, I won't denounce Him. Neither will I let my fellow brothers and sisters go this year through willful ignorance and cowardnace.
So humanity wake up now before it is too late 💝🕎🔯🕉️💝
A missing piece of your analysis is the feminized nature of progressivism; its most zealous foot soldiers are often women, and they dominate the institutions that steer the Democratic party’s agenda. Women tend to compete covertly and have evolved to actually lie to ourselves about the fact that we are competing (biological imperatives, referencing Joyce Benenson’s research in Warriors and Worriers). This tendency drives much of cancel culture, and it is women I’ve seen weaponize empathy most ardently. And finally, because moral capital is social capital among women (again, evolutionary tendencies), it prevents us from seeing or admitting we were wrong when we hurt people. I can’t give you a study proving this, but if you delve into evolutionary biology and psychology it’ll start to make sense. I was also once the kind of woman I’m describing, so I can speak with a bit of authority on this. I see it all around me among millennial women.
This is such an important comment. You reminded me of an essay by Louise Perry “Cancel culture is girl culture.” I wasn’t familiar with Beneson, but will read now. Thank you!
Once I read that book all the missing pieces fell into place. Cannot recommend enough.
This is a fascinating presentation of what the popular culture keeps hot and what is allowed to keep cold. One that comes to mind in regards to the Satan Panic is the earlier youth killings associated with comic books, like the Brooklyn Thrill Killings of 1954 (https://clcjbooks.rutgers.edu/books/the-brooklyn-thrill-kill-gang-and-the-great-comic-book-scare/). These brought the public’s attention to the gruesome nature of comic books depicting kidnapping, murder and possible sexual assault. You can see the covers here which really do seem like they could send a disturbed pre-Internet reader over the edge (https://comicbookinvest.com/2020/02/22/top-30-pre-code-crime-comics/).
The alleged “wrong perpetrator” angle is right. If the situation casts a protected group in the wrong light, then it will quietly be dropped. See for example the Zebra Killings in SF in early 1970s of a black group that killed at least fifteen white people (https://a.co/d/dFizo5O). Most people don’t even know about that incident, though its racial angle would make it sensational for media.
In terms of social workers, I think the last two movies that presented them in a bad light were “Joker” (2019) and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975). Otherwise, they are championed overworked and under appreciated people doing great work. Definitely a protected group.
These red scare investigations were often called “witch hunts”, but if you look at the worldly crimes witches were often accused of, it leaves a funny analogy –
• destroying the morals of society and subverting/tricking hapless outsiders
• bizarre sexual misconduct
• weaving dark conspiracies to gain worldly power
• damaging the food supply (in the case of literal witchcraft accusations, poisoning animals/wells/crops)
• sacrificing humans for their cult’s power
These are all things that communists and their fellow travellers literally did, and not at a small scale!
Calling communist suppression “witch hunts” is basically making witches real and then demanding that they can’t be molested because witches hadn’t be real previously.
The damage that “blacklisting” allegedly did to people (most of whom were active traitors who were only not card-carrying members of the CPUSA because the CPUSA instructed them thus, to infiltrate institutions more effectively) is also vastly overstated.
A) it did not last that long
B) these circles had strong support networks for “victims”
C) media people, if not in front of the camera – i.e. the majority – could generally go right on working under some nom-de-plume, names that everyone from their “cool set” could associate with the actual person, so even reputations carried over back and forth
Retrospective mentions that this-or-that work was actually produced by someone who was “blacklisted”, as can occasionally be seen, lampshades the whole episode as the 50s version of the photos of prominent tables in American bookshops advertising “banned books”.
It was the one time that the stupid “did not actually happen, but should have” meme really applied.
But there was high level spying especially within the State Department, wasn't there. McCarthy exaggerated it but why would US State, haven of Ivies, be different to the treasonous Oxbridge Brits like Burgess, McClean, theodious Phil by, Blunt and others. The liberals saint Alger Hiss, in recent years proven to be a Soviet agent, was a Harvard Ma , dammit.
Yes I mention that (hiss specifically)
Related to the Satanic panic in 80s was the child abuse panic also largely relying on the now discredited recovered memory phenomenon. The fabulous documentary Catching the Friedmans is an excellent fly-on-the-wall exposition of how that suburban moral panic utterly destroyed one family and it documents within that family the impacts as almost all of them ended up being jailed for utterly specious and absurd charges. Available online or via torrents.
I am going to beg you and anyone reading this to read Ross Cheit's _The Witch-Hunt Narrative_ before invoking the "Satanic Panic" so glibly.
https://www.amazon.ca/Witch-Hunt-Narrative-Politics-Psychology-Children/dp/0190465573
If this is a topic that interests you seriously, you really must read this book.
McCarthy didn’t “use the House Un-American Activities Committee” as a platform for anything.
How could he? McCarthy was in the Senate, not the House.
This is a pretty basic factual error.
It is thanks. I’ll fix.
Thank you, Conor.
I think conservatives also played a major role in Satanic Panic. I grew up in Georgia in the 1970s and 80s and evangelicals were obsessed with this stuff. Everything was Satan.
"There is something basically healthy about being confronted with an unflattering version of yourself and your worldview from time to time".
Very true....my thoughts on this: When I was growing up in the 50s there were still “remnants of a Christian moral sense that everyone (including oneself) is an imperfect being. In the following decades, that moral/philosophical centre ‘progressively’ unravelled. Key to this was the entry into the Western collective psyche of a supposed deficit of self-love … one that needed correcting via maximal self-esteem. In the post-60s decades, self-esteem’s supposed importance to healthy personal development became axiomatic right across the spectrum from Left to Right. But it had a downside. Once you are encouraged to view yourself as axiomatically personally blameless, the next step is to look for someone (or something) else to blame for your discontents." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/everyone-has-lost-control-of-the
I think the difference has to do more with the nature of the victims than the perpetrators. McCarthyism prototypically targeted intellectuals. The Satanic panic affected a mostly random mixture of non-elites. You could spin the Satanic Panic to match progressive bromides close enough - surely the accusers were more likely to be Christian - but that doesn’t change who the targets were.
To take an example with left-wing perpetrators, the USSR’s Great Purge had about 1/5 the casualties of the Holodomr, but it decimated the elite of the country (especially “Old Bolsheviks”) instead of Ukrainian peasants, and hence got far more press.
Excuse me but My GoodGod I Am sent His Only Begotten Son, to die for the original sin committed by Ancestors Adam and Eve.
The life we have is borrowed, bought with a price. So to honor that debt we are all given freewill to make a conscious decision to pursue the truth ourselves, from the only one who can give it God.
I have, and as scary as He is, I won't denounce Him. Neither will I let my fellow brothers and sisters go this year through willful ignorance and cowardnace.
So humanity wake up now before it is too late 💝🕎🔯🕉️💝