Moral decay panic is really a struggle between two competing conformisms

Evidence

Conformism has always existed: what is involved today is a struggle between ‘two conformisms’, i.e. a struggle for hegemony, a crisis of civil society. The old intellectual and moral leaders of society feel the ground slipping from under their feet; they perceive that their ‘sermons’ have become precisely mere ‘sermons’, i.e. external to reality, pure form without any content, shades without a spirit. This is the reason for their reactionary and conservative tendencies; for the particular form of civilisation, culture and morality which they represented is decomposing, and they loudly proclaim the death of all civilisation, all culture, all morality; they call for repressive measures by the State, and constitute resistance groups cut off from the real historical process, thus prolonging the crisis, since the eclipse of a way of living and thinking cannot take place without a crisis. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2313

Categorization

• XREF: This ‘two conformisms’ framing of moral panic as hegemonic struggle maps directly onto the later Islamophobia readings — panic over ‘immodest dress’ or ‘foreign values’ becomes the decomposing old bloc’s reaction. Also connects to Cohen’s moral panic concept in the reader’s library. — connects to: the MOC “The Viral Refinery: How Preexisting Fringe Fears Get Smelted Into Mainstream Reality”
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’: Gramsci explains the mechanism behind ancient-to-modern sumptuary moral panics — they are hegemonic struggles, not genuine moral declines.