Moral panics link disparate fears into one ‘hydra-headed other’

Evidence

And remember that in this period they began to be afraid about all sorts of other things—afraid about young people, about hedonism, about the explosion of sexuality on the streets, about drugs and “turn on, tune in, and drop out,” about student riots, about the anti–Vietnam war protests, you know—the hydra-headed other was stalking the fields of Britain. … We think it’s just one thing, but it’s not. Everything is sort of out of control, and you can move from one thing to another. It’s a kind of symptomatic reading of the crisis, because the race problem is only symptomatic of the violence problem, which is only symptomatic of the drug problem … You know, everything is symptomatic of something else. That is why in Policing the Crisis we felt justified in calling it a crisis because it was experienced as a crisis, that’s a breakdown of the whole society and you don’t really … you don’t understand Powell’s speech until you understand that it comes out of that vision. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1116

Categorization

• XREF: This is the moral-panic-as-symptomatic-reading mechanism central to framing theory, carrying directly into how Islamophobia discourse links unrelated anxieties. — connects to: Moral panics about women online repeat Victorian fears of women in stores — Brooke Erin Duffy, (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love:…, 53
• DEFINE: A ‘crisis’ in the Policing the Crisis sense is a symptomatic chain where every problem points to another, forming one overarching breakdown.