Moral Panic — from anti-commie to anti-nazi

[kandrathe]

Various hateful groups have hardly fangs, so long as we can trust the law to not be corrupted by them.

Too late. Both this administration and the police pander to them.

I was implying that, possibly, at a federal level. However, I believe at the federal level there is an internal struggle between the new right regime, and the old regime leftist mainstays. Yet, State, and local levels vary wildly in ideology.

I wonder statistically if police violence is actually higher, or if there is more publicity of every incident. Obviously, we need to insist on better data collection to hold our law enforcement accountable, on the factors that are potential for discrimination, and the numbers of incidents by severity. A federal study in 2001 (pretty old now) found that "Expressed as a percentage of total incidents, excessive force was used 0.42% of the time. Again looking at this another way, excessive force was not used in 99.583% of all reported cases." Assuming, nothing is dramatically improved, or worse, it seems excessive force (still reprehensible, and intolerable) is thankfully small.

There is absolutely no comparison, ideologically or morally, between communists and fascists/Nazis.

No need to burn this straw man here. No one is comparing them.

The difference in Moral Panic here is that while for 40 years we could depend solidly on "liberal" minded people to dampen reactionaries, instead there is an opposite amplification. I'm talking about the excessive hyperbole.

It's not like suddenly 50% of the US decided to become pro-Nazi. The majority of the US is as solidly anti-Nazi as it was in 1945, and in fact probably less anti-communist (judging by Bernie's draw) as they were in 1955. Moral panic is when enough people start "seeing" KKK or Nazi's everywhere, or start indiscriminately labeling everyone "not like me" as one.