#1525 Don't Panic: Irrational Fear and Panic in the US
Best of the Left - Leftist Perspectives on Progressive Politics, News, Culture, Economics and Democracy
Jay Tomlinson
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 November 2022
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Air Date 11/12/2022
Today, we take a look at a few types of panic that regularly strike within communities or across the nation including various satanic panics, Halloween candy panics, and panic over kids being too inclusive and welcoming of all types of people.
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SHOW NOTES
Ch. 1: Why Satanic Panic never really ended | What's the Story? - Vox Quick Hits - Air Date 4-7-21
One of the most famous moral panics in history, the Satanic Panic, may have been at its peak in the 80s, but did it ever really go away? Vox culture writer Aja Romano walks up through the history of this fear of the occult
Ch. 2: Rainbow Fentanyl for Halloween? - The Politics of Everything - Air Date 10-19-22
Are evil-minded strangers trying to hook your kids on candy-colored fentanyl? As Halloween approaches, a dire story is making the rounds about the threat to children of so-called rainbow fentanyl.
Ch. 3: Satanic Panic: Part One - American Hysteria - Air Date 12-10-18
This episode is part one of our two-part series on perhaps the most mystifying moral panic in US history, the 1980s and early 90s 'Satanic Panic.' For this episode, Chelsey covers the rise of organized Satanism beginning in the late 60s
In this Halloween-themed News Brief, we debunk the idea drug dealers are handing out fentanyl candy to our children. But we also examine why these copaganda panics are able to take hold: namely the failure of liberals to provide an alternative
Ch. 5: Satanic Panic — Dungeons & Dragons and Harry Potter - Soul Search - Air Date 9-22-22
The Satanic Panic was a time of incredible anxiety in the United States and Australia. This feature examines how games like Dungeons and Dragons and books like Harry Potter became unlikely villains in a war over religion, politics and imagination.
Michigan high school student defends her mural which parents called satanic and anti-Christian because it contained a Genshin Impact character and a person wearing a transgender flag t-shirt. The Majority Report crew discusses parents.
MEMBERS-ONLY BONUS CLIP(S)
Ch. 7: Our annual Halloween hysteria - Today, Explained - Air Date 10-28-22
This year’s fear of rainbow fentanyl in kids’ trick-or-treat bags is just the latest unfounded Halloween candy freakout. But the yearly panic has its roots in a very real crisis: the 1982 Tylenol murders.
Ch. 8: Satanic Panic: Part Two - American Hysteria - Air Date 1-7-19
Two characters, Stranger Danger’s murderous pedophile and the Satanist, blurred into a new villain and psychological archetype
FINAL COMMENTS
Ch. 9: Final comments on policing gender norms through the ages
References:
A Brief History of Men Today Are Too Feminine and Women Too Masculine
A Brief History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore
MUSIC (Blue Dot Sessions):
- Opening Theme: Loving Acoustic Instrumental by John Douglas Orr
- Voicemail Music: Low Key Lost Feeling Electro by Alex Stinnent
- Activism Music: This Fickle World by Theo Bard (https://theobard.bandcamp.com/track/this-fickle-world)
- Closing Music: Upbeat Laid Back Indie Rock by Alex Stinnent
Produced by Jay! Tomlinson
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of Left podcast in which we shall take |
| 0:07.2 | a look at a few types of panic that regularly strike within communities or across the nation, |
| 0:13.3 | including various satanic panics, Halloween candy panics, and panic over kids being too |
| 0:19.4 | inclusive and welcoming of all types of people. |
| 0:22.8 | Clips today are from Vox Quick Hits, The Politics of Everything, American Historia, |
| 0:28.6 | citations needed, soul search, and the majority report with additional members' only clips |
| 0:34.4 | from today explained and American Historia. |
| 0:37.9 | And stay tuned to the end where I'll describe even more irrational panic through the ages |
| 0:42.8 | over the eternal struggle to police gender norms and the Protestant work ethic. |
| 0:54.2 | So before we dive into the history of the satanic panic, can you explain why satan |
| 0:57.8 | poorship seems to be on people's minds right now? |
| 1:00.1 | Oh, I think there are a lot of reasons. |
| 1:02.3 | Obviously, we're seeing a lot of evangelical zeal in the US lately, |
| 1:07.1 | and a lot of ideological polarization, which also tends to breed lots of hysteria and social |
| 1:14.6 | panic and moral panic. So we've got a lot of that going around. But most recently, last week, |
| 1:19.8 | Little Naseks, who you probably know from his hit Old Town Road, turned a lot of heads with his |
| 1:29.2 | latest music video, Montero, which is subtitled, Call Me By Your Name. |
| 1:34.9 | In it, he basically performs his identity as a gay man. He's having fun in the garden of Eden |
| 1:42.2 | with Satan in snake form. And later, he goes to hell and gives Satan a lap dance before |
| 1:59.4 | killing that version of Satan and taking the throne of himself. So obviously, that's a very, |
| 2:05.1 | very controversial video for a lot of reasons. The way it's filmed is very homerotic. It's a |
| 2:11.2 | celebration of queer identity in a lot of ways. But it's also, it has a lot of references to |
... |
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