MORAL PANICS AND AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM

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MORAL PANICS AND AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM

• Mike Kilroe
• February 2008

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MORAL PANICS AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM

• THEMES OF SESSION
• Authoritarian Populism
• Authoritarian Statism
• The election of the Thatcher Government in 1979
• The Thatcher Project
• The Politics of Otherness
• The examination the role of the state, the media
  and the police in the social construction of
  crime
• Moral Panics

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AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM

• Hall (1988) following on from Gramsci and
  Poulantzsas
• How Margaret Thatcher was able to capture
  popular imagination and commonsense by
  channelling popular anxiety toward lax moral
  standards and weakening social authority.
  Thatcher successfully induced a moral panic
  that legitimated a dominative and authoritarian
  mode of governance

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MORAL PANICS AND AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM

• Poulantzas (1976) Authoritarian Statism
• State control over every sphere of life
• Radical decline in the institutions of political
  democracy
• Draconian and multi-form containment of civil
  liberties
• Hall (1980) We are now in the middle of a deep
  and decisive moment towards a more disciplinary,
  authoritarian kind of society

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STUART HALL (continued)

• DISCIPLINARY SOCIETY
• He traces shift from 1960s
• Civil Rights movement ,Youth Culture, Womens
  Movement
• Articulated student protest Paris 1968
• Critiques of traditional family
• Decline of economic and political power of
  British State
• Economic rise of Japan and other Asian economies

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STUART HALL (continued)

• Social tensions
• Industrial conflict
• The Winter of Discontent widespread strikes in
  1978/79
• Deepening economic recession
• A Crisis within capitalism
• Accelerated violence in Northern Ireland
• Crisis with legitimacy of the state (Habermas)

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THE ELECTION OF THE THATCHER GOVERNMENT IN 1979

• Sees the imposition of New Right ideology (Neo-
  Liberalism) which is imposed on the states
  subjects
• Influenced by writers such as Friedrich Hayek and
  Milton Friedman
• The encouragement of the private sector
• Contracting out services
• Encouraging the individual to exercise personal
  responsibility

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THE ELECTION OF THE THATCHER GOVERNMENT (cont)

• Scraton (1987) points out that New Rights rise to
  power in the 1970s was built on appeal to the
  logic of social authoritariarism
• The importance of the family
• Community responsibility
• Education/Discipline
• Employment/Discipline
• Law and Order

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THE ELECTION OF THE THATCHER GOVERNMENT (cont)

• New law and strategies for its enforcement
  consolidated at this time
• The Prevention of Terrorism Act (1989)
• Increased powers for police for arrest of
  suspected persons
• Increased resources for investigation/surveillance
  
• Exclusion orders
• Identification of Proscribed Organisations
• Arrest without warrant

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THE ENEMY WITHIN

• PRIME MINISTER MARGARET THATCHER NOV 1984
• At one end of the spectrum are the terrorist
  gangs and the terrorist states which arm them. At
  the other end are the hard left operating inside
  our system, conspiring to use union power to
  break, defy and subvert the laws. Now the mantle
  has fallen us to conserve the very principle of
  parliamentary democracy and the rule of law
  itself

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PHIL SCRATON A CRITICAL VIEW

• The above Law and Order rhetoric appealed to
  common sense but there was no real coherent
  enemy within
• BUT we do see the emergence of a revitalised
  police with new and permissive powers
• In the propaganda war the police have privileged
  access to the media via chief officers (primary
  definers)

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THE THATCHER PROJECT

• According to Scraton , central to what is
  referred to as the Thatcher Project was the
  process of criminalisation of certain groups in
  society and the identification of the other

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THE POLITICS OF OTHERNESS

• Simone de Beauvoir- The Second Sex 1949
• The social, cultural, political and economic
  construction of Other
• No one group conceives itself as the absolute
  without conceiving and defining the Other
• The Other is the stranger, the outsider, the
  alien, the suspect community
• Otherness produces fear, denial and hostility

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THE OTHER AS THE QUINTESSENCE OF EVIL

• Frantz Fanon- The Wretched of the Earth (1967)
• In discussing physical subjugation by military
  and police rule he identified the colonisers
  dehumanisation of oppressed populations

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THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH 1967

• As if to show the totalitarian character of
  colonial exploitation the settler paints the
  native as a sort of quintessence of evil. Native
  society is not simply described as society
  lacking in values, but also the negation of
  values.The enemy of values..the absolute
  evil..corrosive destroying disfiguring.

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MORAL PANICS THE LEGITIMATION OF COERCION TO
CONTROL THE POWERLESS

• Moral Panic
• ..a sensitising and legitimising process for
  solidifying moral boundaries, identifying enemies
  within, strengthening the powers of state control
  and enabling law and order to be promoted
  (Muncie 1997)

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MORAL PANICS- THE PROCESS

• Key writer Stan Cohen Folk Devils and Moral
  Panics (1972)
• The amplification of events via experts such
  as clergy, local councillors and police
• These groups manned the moral barricades
• The media an important player here
• Media cause outrage

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MORAL PANICS - THE PROCESS continued

• This allows legitimacy for state to enact
  draconian legislation that may remove citizens
  rights but is presented to protect citizens from
  lawlessness
• To achieve this the state must demonise certain
  groups in order to maintain its hegemomy
• See Poulantzas, Gramsci etc

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MUGGING, THE STATE AND LAW AND ORDERHall et al
(1978)

• The apparent rise in muggings in the 1970s
• No such crime
• A media term for robbery and other violent theft
• Not new
• But this allows the state to mobilise police to
  discipline young black males to conformity with
  neo-bourgeoisie values

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• The stigmatisation of certain groups
• Preying on the fears of the working and middle
  class
• ..the historical proof that blacks are
  incompatible with the standards of decency and
  civilisation which the nation requires (Gilroy
  1987)

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THE POLICE AND DEVIANCY AMPLIFICATION

• Making use of the media
• The reproduction of common sense racialised
  understanding of crime / criminality
• The link between some groups and crime/terrorism
  etc
• Stop and search
• Cicourel (1976) argued that delinquency was
  actually created by agencies of social control
  such as the police

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A POST-MODERNIST CRITIQUE OF CRITICAL CRIMINOLOGY

• Colin Sumner 1997
• By late 1980s social control is seen by many
  critical writers as standing for an expression of
  authoritarian power that was not healthy or
  natural
• However, control is important to many in society
  in that many fear chaos too much and domination
  too little
• We do not object to the loss of rights as long as
  the state keeps us safe

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THE POLITICS OF OTHERNESS IN THE NEW MILLENIUM

• Burning in the collective US unconscious is a
  puritanical zeal decreeing the sternest possible
  attitude to any one deemed to be an unregenerate
  (depraved) sinner. This clearly guided US policy
  toward the native American Indians, who were
  first demonised, then portrayed as wasteful
  savages, then exterminated, their tiny remnant
  confined to reservations and concentration camps.
  This fuels a judgemental attitude that has no
  place in international politics, but for the US
  is a central tenet.. (Edward Said 2000)