Moral panics intensify social divisions and can lead to political violence

Moral panics intensify social divisions and can lead to political violence

The day before Charlie Kirk was assassinated, I was teaching a college class on science, religion and magic. Our class was comparing the Salem witch trials of the 1690s with the McCarthy hearings of the early 1950s, when U.S. democratic processes were eclipsed by the Red Scare of purported communist infiltration. The aim of the class was to better understand the concept of moral panics, which are societal epidemics of disproportionate fear of re…