Thatcher’s authoritarian populism emerged from anxieties condensed onto the black mugger figure

Evidence

Thus a toxic mixture of social, cultural, and political anxieties came to be condensed around the figure of the (implicitly black) mugger. It was in this situation that, under Thatcher’s tutelage, what we now recognize (with all the advantages of hindsight) as her specific form of authoritarian populism then emerged as the hegemonic force that was to define political life in the UK over the next three decades. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 970

Categorization

• XREF: This is a concrete causal chain from moral panic to political regime - resonates with the earlier ‘moral panics’ framing used by criminologists Stan Cohen and Jock Young.