Category talk:Moral panics
Left-wing boogeymen[edit]
We have a pretty sizable category of right-wing boogeymen, but as far as I can tell, we don't have a category for left-wing boogeymen at all. I have no love or respect whatsoever for the Republican Party, nor do I consider their intellectual or moral capacity to be anything other than abysmal, but let's be realistic — one doesn't have to be a depraved brain-dead fascist conservative to make a mountain out of a molehill. While I can't think of any concrete examples of moral panics from the left wing, I'm sure that they must exist — left-wing cranks and conspiracy theorists exist, after all, and there must be examples of left-wing people getting scared silly by some political group, event, or politician that seems dangerous to everything the left stands for. --Luigifan18 (talk) 21:02, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
- "The left" is a pretty vague category. You're gonna have to be more specific. Also be careful not to resort to strawmen. Vee (talk) 21:19, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
- @Vee This isn't really a "strawman" thing, it's more an observation that panicking over perceived ideological assaults is not a phenomenon that's unique to conservatives. Sure, some things that could be called "left-wing boogeymen", like Donald Trump, the Republican Party, fundamentalism, Unite the Right, or facism, legitimately are dangerous and serious threats to public safety and moral integrity (or have or had the potential to become serious threats), and there are certainly more legitimately dangerous and harmful "left-wing boogeymen" than there are "right-wing boogeymen" that are actually harmful to society, but even legitimate threats can be met with disproportionate concern and alarm (something something Hanlon's Razor — just because someone is screwing up the world, that doesn't necessarily mean they're doing so on purpose or that they don't give any damns at all about the consequences of their actions), and there are some things that at least a portion of the left wing tends to have anxiety attacks over (such as genetically modified food) that really aren't a cause for any concern at all (or at least not full-blown panic) from a rational perspective. Yes, conservatives are more likely to go into a panic over benign stuff due to being significantly more out of touch with reality (as we say on one of our introduction pages (I dunno which one exactly), "Reality has a liberal bias"), but we shouldn't pretend that the left wing is entirely composed of rational people. As you said, it's a pretty vague category. --Luigifan18 (talk) 16:57, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
- I'm not sure that the left really cares about GMOs anymore. Granted I mostly talk to younger leftists (like myself), who tend to be more accepting of science. If there are leftists who still give a damn about GMOs, I wouldn't know. It just doesn't seem that relevant anymore. Vee (talk) 17:04, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
- @Vee This isn't really a "strawman" thing, it's more an observation that panicking over perceived ideological assaults is not a phenomenon that's unique to conservatives. Sure, some things that could be called "left-wing boogeymen", like Donald Trump, the Republican Party, fundamentalism, Unite the Right, or facism, legitimately are dangerous and serious threats to public safety and moral integrity (or have or had the potential to become serious threats), and there are certainly more legitimately dangerous and harmful "left-wing boogeymen" than there are "right-wing boogeymen" that are actually harmful to society, but even legitimate threats can be met with disproportionate concern and alarm (something something Hanlon's Razor — just because someone is screwing up the world, that doesn't necessarily mean they're doing so on purpose or that they don't give any damns at all about the consequences of their actions), and there are some things that at least a portion of the left wing tends to have anxiety attacks over (such as genetically modified food) that really aren't a cause for any concern at all (or at least not full-blown panic) from a rational perspective. Yes, conservatives are more likely to go into a panic over benign stuff due to being significantly more out of touch with reality (as we say on one of our introduction pages (I dunno which one exactly), "Reality has a liberal bias"), but we shouldn't pretend that the left wing is entirely composed of rational people. As you said, it's a pretty vague category. --Luigifan18 (talk) 16:57, 29 November 2022 (UTC)