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The right: Hey uhhhhh raping children is bad

Pizzagate and pedophile-smearing also have something in common with the day care­– and satanic-abuse hysterias of the ’80s and ’90s. “Moral panics function somewhat like parables: They validate a group’s anxieties in a dramatic way, they exonerate the anxious from culpability, and they assign blame,” wrote Richard Beck, author of We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980s, of the relationship between Pizzagate and those earlier conspiracies. Alt-right and men’s rights activists are nothing if not anxious—anxious about falling white birth rates, the increasing prominence of communities of color, the entrance of feminist rhetoric into mainstream discourse, growing visibility and rights for LGBTQ people, the election of a black president and the near-election of a female one, and mounting pushback against people who say racist and sexist things in public. By accusing progressives of pedophilia, men scared of losing power can convince themselves and their like-minded peers that they have legitimate reasons to orchestrate their opponents’ downfall.       

area 51 on september 20th 2019