Anatomy of a Moral Panic: How They Lie

Fear, Lies & The Swindlers Who Exploit Them

There are many different ways to deceive, and there are as many people to lie as there are lies to tell. Employers, advertisers, news anchors, pharmaceutical reps, academics, and governments all find ways to twist words to hide the truth.

“Moral panic” is a term that outlines a common tactic that manipulators use to profit from division and strife. The manipulators, so-called “Moral Entrepreneurs,” are parasites that mislead innocent people by triggering their otherwise morally praiseworthy concerns for moral causes. They do this to exploit the situation, regardless of the costs to the innocent or to society.

These moral panics work by creating a false, morally threatening situation, which frightens us into thinking something terrible is about to happen unless we take action ASAP! That action results in rewards for the manipulator in the form of money, status or power.

Every Good Moral Panic has a Devil, the Virtuous, and a Person to cash-in.

● The Devil is the scapegoat identified by the public, the media, or government agency. The so-called “Devils” are considered immoral and are no longer to be considered acceptable amongst the Virtuous.

● The Virtuous are those who are required to aggressively oppose and punish the so-called menacing behavior/beliefs of the Devils.

● The People Who Cash-in are the so-called moral entrepreneurs who call attention to a “crisis” with hopes of garnering money and/or power.

There are many examples of moral panics of both large scale and small.

For example, politicians in the 1980’s were convinced that certain rock music played backwards had secret messages that would turn kids to Satan. These politicians (the People who Cash-In) demanded that decent citizens (the Virtuous) should boycott rock bands and those who supported their music (the Devils). The politicians sought to gain power by turning one group against the other.

Even if there is some substance to the issue, the threat can be artificially inflated to become a moral panic. Michael Shellenberger’s book, “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All” supports the case that legitimate environmental causes have been severely damaged by moral entrepreneurs.

For instance, serial moral entrepreneur Al Gore, who led a moral panic over rap lyrics in the 1980’s, led another moral panic on climate change. Gore’s passionate and fiery speeches around 2007 claimed that the North Pole would be “ice-free by 2013.” His prediction was very, very wrong (by about 920,000 square miles of ice). But that did not stop Al Gore from raking in a $300,000,000 fortune from Green investments.

In this case, Gore (the Person cashing in) claimed that anyone who supported his environmental projects (the Virtuous) was morally superior and saving the planet while anyone opposed to funding his schemes was an evil person (the Devils) that was so morally inferior they must be shunned, opposed, and defeated.

An example in modern times is how moral entrepreneurs are attempting to cynically cash-in on the Covid crisis. There are endless versions of the moral panic but they all involve a public figure (the Person cashing in) claiming you can be morally superior (the Virtuous) only if you support his/her power grab, perhaps new government powers, or money for masks, vaccines or supplies.

This person claims anyone not immediately compliant with their schemes are immoral, evil filth (the Devils) that may entail the unvaccinated, unmasked, or those who oppose losing freedoms. Like with climate change, such swindlers damage any legitimate discussion of Covid health concerns.

But hope is not lost. Against all such lie merchants, blockchain systems such as Knowledgecoin.io offer an immutable system of public truth-claim validation.

Such a blockchain could uncover and expose moral panics for the manipulations that they are, and moral entrepreneurs for the craven swindlers that they are.

In the wise words of Confucius, there are three things cannot be hidden forever: the sun, the moon, and the truth.