Modern Scotland is no exception when it comes to the moral panic phenomenon

Fuelled by exaggeration and dis/misinformation, moral panic begins with concern and soon escalates into fear, terror, hostility and outrage at the perceived danger. Occurring at a collective level, they often come from deep discomfort of social/moral changes occurring in society, experienced as deeply ­unsettling emotional triggers. The sense of threat looms large on the collective psyche – threats to our families, our Christian way of life, threats to our women and children! Folk devils are those fears made flesh, and become the focus of collective outrage.

Moral panics are nothing new. Single middle-aged women were hounded as witches in early modern ­Europe. In the 1950s in the United States people were terrified of them reds hiding under our beds. The aids pandemic initiated huge moral panic against our ­LGBTQ+ community; with disturbing language such as “gay plague”. More recently, refugees and asylum seekers are presented as violent terrorists flooding in and hiding amongst us.

Moral panics are everywhere, and modern Scotland is no exception. Small scale and broadly existing on the fringes, they are here, nevertheless. These ­panics have appeared for similar reasons.

One of the significant shifts within our Scottish parliament is the innovation in equality and human rights, that has formed a core part of a modernising Scotland. From Nicola Sturgeon’s innovative gender balanced cabinet, to a world first LGBTQ+ ­embedded school education, world leading human rights ­legislation and children’s rights, to the GRA, Scotland has pushed the parameters of what an ­egalitarian and rights-based society can be. But for some, these shifts have raised some moral spectres.

From around the time of the attempted Named Persons legislation, we have seen a spate of small micro-moral panics that often reflect similar tropes. The panic centres on encroaching state interference that threatens to break ­traditional ­understandings of family. Within that, rigid definitions of masculine/feminine ­identities, or the parent/child ­relationship, and, of course, sexuality, are seen to be threatened. The state, as a tool of terror, snoops on, creeps into, and threatens these identities ­endangering people as a result. Underlying this ­narrative is a right-wing discourse of a state threatening our freedoms.

Recent moral panics have reflected these narratives, centring, rather disturbingly, on perceived sexual threats to our children. This is reflected in the recent Twitter panic against Karen Adam MSP. Referring to the Ghislaine Maxwell verdict, Karen tweeted that stopping abusers hiding in plain sight needs us to recognise them as people we know and love and not as the mythical “bogey men” under the bed.

Encouraged by the Alba General ­Secretary Christopher McEleny who put out a press statement, a pile-on ­ensued, describing Adam as vile, depraved, ­revolting and disgusting. There were even ­accusations that she herself was an abuser.

As an SNP MSP, the party became ­accused as being “captured by ideological zealots”, fanatically promoting child abusers. One tweet asked, “when will people wake up and stop voting for this vile disgusting party”.

It is important to note that Adam’s opinion wasn’t controversial, ­reflecting the guidance of most children’s and abuse charities. But the Twitter moral panic aggressively split the moral ground between those who saw paedophiles as “monsters” and the “depraved” SNP who dared to challenged that. The SNP, in the moral panic, became a party of abusers.

This connection between the SNP and abuse is not new and has been part of a recent ongoing narrative. Last year, the ­Scottish Government was ­accused of funding a “paedophile charter” ­lowering the age of consent to 10 years old. More ­recently, they have been ­accused of ­enforcing a sexualisation of children through the “health and wellbeing” ­survey. Last week the right-wing media were appalled that over 16s could be asked their sexual orientation on the bus card application; in an almost ­“fetish-like” fashion, it seems.

These micro-panics are born from ­either completely false information or ­extremely exaggerated moral responses.

The charter panic was a toxic ­misreading of a UN-connected feminist charter, for instance. The teenage sexual health charity, Fumble, couldn’t quite ­comprehend the reaction to the wellbeing ­survey because they applauded the ­Scottish Government for their healthy ­attempt to engage. All these ­micro-panics, however, are highly outraged responses using very similar tropes; a deviant ­government creeping into our lives and encouraging the abuse of our children. That a sex survey protest was also a ­public complaint to the police station on this issue reinforces this very clearly.

Mainstream media were traditionally seen to create and drive moral panic ­acting as “moral entrepreneurs” using the ­panics to push political ­agendas. These more modern ones are more ­complex, however. Still driven by some mainstream media, the drivers have also been right-wing Christian ­organisations such as the Christian Institute and the Scottish ­Family Party, as well as ­pro-independence social media ­influencers including the now defunct Wings over Scotland.

Connected by the preoccupation with the encroaching state promoting ­deviance, these organisations form a fringe ­discourse that spans the political divides. I make no comment on what political agendas might connect them.

But moral panic needs people ­subsumed with terror, who often echo – almost mirror like – the rhetoric and language of media (and social media influencers). Continual negative associations are absorbed, so asylum seeker becomes connected with “terrorist” and homosexuality with “abuse”. These ­connections become so strong and powerful that ­communities become utterly subsumed into a hyper-real vortex of terror and paranoia of folk devils hiding in every shadow. So real does that terror feel, that a gunman can enter the pizza-gate restaurant to free the non-existent child victims of the Clinton cabal. Moral panics are that powerful.

I can sympathise with this, because ­being engulfed in that cannot be ­pleasant. But moral panic drives an extreme “us” versus “them” battleline within ­society; with “them” demonised as deviants, ­criminals, depraved immoral monsters intent on destroying all that is good.

For moral panic also needs a folk devil to terrorise. And these folk ­devils are almost always our marginalised groups. They are our BAME ­communities, our poor communities, our ­LGBTQ+ and trans communities and our women. ­Moral ­panic, then, is almost always ­acted out against our most ­marginalised ­communities. And it is done in increasingly violent ways.

Harry Huang and Sebastian Kane advise that moral panic increases violence because it expands “socially acceptable forms of aggression”. Through pitching good versus evil, it reframes our behaviour to increase the moral justification of aggression. I mean, these folk devils are evil right?

That MSP Karen Adam (above) received death threats as a result of the Twitter moral panic is not surprising in this context, then. Increased aggression and violence against “folk devils” become part of ­moral panic. After the twin tower attacks, for instance, hate crime against Muslims spiked; jumping from 28 incidents in 2000 to 481 in 2001. Moral panic and ­violence against our marginalised ­communities come hand in hand.

More broadly, these panics often ­undermine the very people they ­profess to protect. The response to Adam, for ­instance, attempted to ­aggressively ­silence essential child protection ­education ­discourse. To monster the ­assertion that abusers are often not strangers, for ­instance, directly undermines core child protection work. Q-Anon’s #savethechildren echoed the same strategy and ­impact, incidentally. Equally, the ­furore around the school wellbeing survey ­created a mistrust around healthy ­communication with teenagers with one-third of councils now withdrawing from it. These panics never offer solutions, however; never ­getting beyond outrage and, in the process, undermine important third sector and educational work on health and wellbeing.

More positively, however, recent events hopefully suggest the loudest screams of these moral panics have already passed, and are beginning to backfire. I think this happened with the panic around Adam, who has noted she was ­inundated with messages from survivors saying her words empowered them. This is the ­opposite of the “deep state” creeping ­sexual ­deviance into society that the ­moral panics were pushing. The moral panic not only failed to subsume, it ­actually encouraged ­connections between the SNP/government and societal empowerment and ­support.

So, we do need to talk about moral panics, then. We need to recognise them for their political strategies as well as their moral outrages, and understand the power dynamics that drive them. And we must act accordingly. Moral panics will always disrupt, always aggressively, often violently. Only very recently, Boris Johnson used the very same moral panic trope of protecting abusers to undermine the Labour opposition. This trope now sits at the heart of Westminster, with an angry mob seeking out Keir Starmer as a result.

But they don’t always subsume all of ­society, and, here in Scotland, they sit firmly on the fringes. We can contain them by ensuring we don’t become ­subsumed into them ourselves. That means we keep focusing on building the modern independent Scotland we set out to do. With democracy as core, and ­egalitarianism and human rights at its heart. When dealing with moral panics then, individually and collectively, deep breaths and more equality, more social democracy; not less.