Updated 1 week ago

Introduction
It didn’t all start with QAnon. The Trans/Woke/LGBTQ Panic of the early 2020s has a long line of forbearers, the most recent being the new Satanic Panic of the 1980s. In this very brief overview thesis we will survey past panics and see how we got here, and try to learn how to prevent them happening again – if that’s even possible.
What is Woke?
I like the “traditional” Merriam-Webster definition:
ADJECTIVE
INFORMAL
1. Aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)
2 (Pejorative) Politically liberal (as in matters of racial and social justice) especially in a way that is considered unreasonable or extreme
Bing is much more expository:
“Woke” was originally a term used largely by Black people in activist circles, particularly after the rise of Black Lives Matter, to signify a consciousness around racial issues in America.
You may be surprised to learn that ‘woke’ dates back to 1962 when the term was listed in a New York Times Magazine glossary of ‘phrases and words you might hear today in Harlem’.
The woke culture claims, that the gender binary, man and woman, is a social construct and that chidren should “choose” their genders.
As we can immediately discern, the meaning is evolving, as languages do. This was also the case with the term “socialism” in the 2010s, which graduated from “public ownership to the means of production” to basically a synonym for democratic socialism/social democrats (which are themselves also often conflated, with a arbitrary, nebulous dotted line between the two), which is, at the ground level, capitalism plus a relatively generous welfare state.
Consequently, the meaning of “Woke” is rapidly evolving. Where once it started with race, it has expanded to social justice in general, especially gender. While the modern culture war is interesting, I am especially interested in how the definition metastasises to every marginal group under the sun.
My Bias
Let me address the elephant in my room and as I wade into this culture war. I am a moderate and while I’m not happy with a lot of choices in modern media properties, I have no problem with radical inclusion, if the property doesn’t suffer. Mere tokenism is toxic, and corporate pandering. Characters need to be part of an organic whole.
Woke done right: HBO Watchmen
Woke done Wrong: Rings of Power
However you feel about this issue, I believe a healthy, balanced, nuanced, reasonable approach is vital… but a tolerance of different views is essential. Ultimately, slacktivist hashtags and catchphrases are way too broad and generalized to accurately capture the human condition.
As it happens, as noted above, “Woke” now covers both race and gender.
On race, I am fully supportive – but some strains of BLM have become a scam.
On gender, although leftists will disagree, I have defended JK Rowling, the queen TERF herself. You may have legitimate disagreements with her, but the condemnation against her has been so strident as to qualify as “backfired.”
Rights for marginalized groups in general are fantastic, until they start stepping on other groups rights. If you mentally identify with a marginalized group, you don’t automatically get the keys to their rights. Rights generally don’t work that way. You are born with rights – such as race, sexual preference, and disability.
Of course, if you get gender reassignment, that is more complicated and nuanced; specifically, my position is that it’s patently unfair for male-to-female trans athletes to compete with non trans athletes if it is proven that they have an advantage. Read that again before you judge me. The devil is in the details of hormones and statistics.
The important thing here is, and why this article was written, is that I also believe, as always happens, the reaction against Woke has gone too far. It has now entered the political sphere, with Ron DeSantis using it as basically his entire platform. This is dangerous, because outside the judicial branch, the executive and legislative branches of government have zero business legislating morality, pro or against Woke.
Timeline
Like all else in the cacophony that is human history, each one of these eras were very rich, and complicated, and are each worthy of their own books and/or documentaries; I will try to briefly summarize them so as to get insight into their common traits. Finally, this is by no means meant to be collectively exhaustive, as there are probably many more instances of panic throughout history that are mostly forgotten to time.
We will start with some major flashpoints way before America was founded, so as to provide some background.
1346-1353 – The Black Death (Jews and Gypsies)
From ancient conflicts in Palestine to the pogroms in Tsarist Russia and the Holcaust, through time immemorial Jews have seemed to be the most convenient stand-in for The Other. They are the iconic, archetypal victim.

One could argue that this made them very strong, over millennia.
1692 – Salem Witch Trials (Difficult women)
Target: People who others didn’t like, “witches, ” including my ancestor, Susannah Martin
Villains: The Puritans
1917 & 1947 – Red Scares 1 and 2 (Communism)
Villains: Joseph McCarthy, closeted gay lawyer Roy Cohn, SAG President Ronald Reagan, possible cross-dresser J. Edgar Hoover
From ChatGPT:
“The Red Scare, which occurred in the early 20th century, was a period of political repression and paranoia that was fueled by fears of communist infiltration in the United States. It began after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, and intensified in the aftermath of a series of bombings and mailings of explosive devices in 1919. The government responded with a series of raids and arrests of suspected radicals, many of whom were deported without trial. The Red Scare was fueled by media hysteria and political opportunism, and it had a lasting impact on American society, contributing to the growth of the FBI and the suppression of leftist political movements.”
It ended not with a bang, but a whimper:
It’s debatable how deserving these panics were – many decent Americans were wrongly harassed, or got blackballed – but there is no denying the threat of Communism was very real. Naive love of Stalin among brain-dead decadent Western lefists had persisted for decades, starting perhaps around when The Grapes of Wrath had been published. As usual, the pendulum swung, and what was right and just became an irrational hobgoblin of consistency. The second Red Scare kicked off in ’47 when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg gave the secret of nukes to the Soviets. Later on, this panic persisted in the John Birch Society, the lifeblood of Barry Goldwater, and Paleoconservatism, wherein, somewhere along the way, conservatives went from fearing the Soviets to loving the Russians. Of you squint, you could even extend its tendrils to Newt Gingrich, the appropriately named Dick Armey, the Contract on America, the Tea Party, and today’s MAGAs.
1936 – Reefer Madness (Marijuana users, Mexicans, black Jazz musicians)
This would get revived 35 years later by Nixon.
1941-1945 – The Holocaust (Jews, Gypsies, Gays, Mentally Disabled, Dissidents)
Won’t delve too much here. But although this was Germany and not America, Nazi Germany had plenty of sympathizers, such as Henry Ford (the Elon Musk of his day) and Charles Lindbergh – and similar sympathizers persist today, although this time around in America at least, the Evangelicals lionize them. For the moment.
1954 – The Seduction of the Innocent (Comic Books)
This was when the Comics Code Authority was established by the industry. The dominant force that was unfairly targeted, Harvey Kurtzman, went on to revenge with Mad Magazine.
1971 – 1980s The War on Drugs (Drug users, but mostly minorities)
Villains: Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan
In 2016, it was revealed that John Ehrlichman, the Watergate co-conspirator, made this statement in 1994:
“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” – Harper’s, 2016
Disclaimer: this quote is controversial; see the Wikipedia link for full discussion.
Ironically, many Republicans, especially those of lower social status, would end up getting hooked on oxycontin and then Fentanyl.
1984 – The Satanic Panic (Everything)
This was the singularity. Nothing was safe, everything was suspect – heavy metal, Toys, Hollywood, basically everything and everyone
Villains: Tipper Gore (proof the GOP doesn’t have a monopoly on busybodies)
From ChatGPT:
“The Satanic Panic, which occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s, was a moral panic fueled by fears of satanic ritual abuse and child abuse. It was characterized by widespread allegations of satanic cults engaged in human sacrifice, child abuse, and other heinous crimes. These allegations were often based on dubious or unfounded evidence, including false memories, coerced confessions, and exaggerated claims. The Satanic Panic was fueled by media sensationalism, evangelical Christian activism, and the psychology of false memory, and it had a lasting impact on American society, contributing to the growth of the therapeutic and legal industries.”
Tipper Gore and the PMRC were thinking heavy metal records, if you played them backwards, encouraged suicide and demon thinking. Of course D&D was (literally) demonized:
Stars Wars’ “The Force” was Satan, the Smurfs were undead, E.T. was occultic. It eventually flamed out because people got bored of looking for demons behind every bush.
Schools and day care centers across the country were targeted. It is hard to overstate the severity for someone who wasn’t alive then. Innocent people went to jail and had their lives ruined:
Notice, “child molesters” was a theme that would reincarnet in QAnon.
Ironically, at the same time of all this fuss, gays and cross-dressers were everywhere in culture, and implicitly accepted on MTV, clubs, concerts, and to some extent, high schools and colleges. This kind of acceptance would later come back to haunt many GOP politicians who got photographed in drag as young people.












And today D&D (and its descendants, the whole fantasy film and game genre such as World of Warcraft) and heavy metal are as about as mainstream as they could get. Video games are now bigger than Hollywood!
Late 2010s – Cancel Culture
From ChatGPT:
“Cancel culture” is a term that emerged only in the past few years but has become a ubiquitous phrase among English speakers. It refers to the idea that people too often pile onto others for bad behavior. President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump have both criticized a culture of relentlessly calling people out for alleged wrongdoing. According to a survey conducted by Pew Research Center, “cancel culture” is a movement to remove celebrity status or esteem from a person, place, or thing based on offensive behavior or transgression
As of March 2021, cancel culture is viewed as a threat to freedom by a majority of Americans, according to a new poll. The poll, which was conducted by Harvard CAPS-Harris and shared exclusively with The Hill, found 64 percent of Americans saying that cancel culture is a threat, while 36 percent disagreed.
This healthy wariness of aggressive cancellation created a pushback, which, as always happens especially in today’s hyperspeed game of idea Pong, soon spiralled out of control.

2018: We begin to see the stirrings of a new panic:
https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/386178-outraged-woke-americans-a-new-national-embarrassment/
Excessive (in my opinion) inclusion of race and gender into comic books, games, and film at the expense of quality was the bellwether, and it soon leaped into national consciousness.
By luck of the draw (or possibly aided by him) this was right at the time when Trump, with his myriad grievances, came to power, and he became the lightning rod in creating an anti Woke singularity, lubricated by social media penetration.
2023 – The latest purity spiral. QAnon, and the ensuing Republican LGBTQ+ and Wokeness Panic (Bossy minorities, gays, trans, drag queens, and white people who aren’t sufficiently afraid of them) And book banning.
Villains: Donald Trump
Here we go again.
Like so much else in modern culture, what started in the excesses of the fringe that threaten to shift the Overton Window, a tiny leftist slackvist hashtag briefly met the old gray battleship of the American establishment, and fell hard against it. But, smelling weakness, the right then weaponized it, and surprise, went overboard, because most of the people using the word now are right-wing ignorant idiots.
The Woke LGBTQ Panic will subside as well, but hopefully, less innocent people will go to prison. In the meantime, expect to see Ron DeSantis single handedly ride that pony right into the ground. This is the problem. People get sick of hearing the same word again and again, especially a short one. See also, CRT.

So there is now in March 2023 a backlash to the backlash: “A majority of Americans in a new poll have a positive association with the term “woke,” understanding it to mean “to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices…. The USA Today-Ipsos poll released on Wednesday found that 56 percent agreed with the more positive definition, while 39 percent had a negative association with the word and understood it to mean “to be overly politically correct and police others’ words.”
This truth coexists with the fact that most Americans disagree with cancel culture. “Woke good, cancel culture bad.“
And the funniest part of all this is, many detractors can’t even define what “Woke” actually is:

Conclusion
Every single time, panics are in response to a perceived societal fear, and a marginal group is demonized and targeted. A “round them up and burn them” dynamic sets in. And in most cases, all the collected grievances of social conservatism reach boiling point.
One sign of progress is a gradual tolerance of opposition. Increasingly, over time outbreaks had their Joan of Arcs – that lone contrarian who stood against the tide. Although these rebels don’t perfectly coincide with actual panics listed here, their contributions are notable:
Joseph Welch – Have you no decency, sir? to Joseph McCarthy
Johnny Lyddon outing Jimmy Savile on BBC
Sinead O’Connor tearing up the pope’s portrait on SNL,
The Dixie Chicks and the Iraq War
In a sign that one could say society does progress on some level, one could argue that someone like Alan Moore, who pretty much indulged in and celebrated every vice feared by all the panics, perfectly encapsulates this archetype, and he is revered by the smarter, more knowledgeable vanguard of mainstream culture.
From ChatGPT:
“Panics in America are often viewed as instances of social construction, in which fears and anxieties are created and amplified by social, cultural, and political factors. Scholars have also identified the role of media in fueling these panics, as well as the psychological and cognitive factors that contribute to the creation and spread of moral panics. In addition, scholars have emphasized the importance of historical context and cultural factors in shaping the emergence and impact of these panics, and the role of power and politics in exploiting and perpetuating them.”
One has to wonder, why? Each of these bugbears bears no relation to the other, other than being The Other. Something foreign and/or strange.
It doesn’t have to make sense. This is an atavism – it’s all about primordial emotion. We evolved to be a little racist and a little fearful and distrusting of strangers. People outside your clan. It is a survival mechanism that aids transfer of genes to the next generation. Those that didn’t, would often die of disease or violence.
As a descendant of two people hanged in Salem, I’m starting to think this won’t ever really go away. It’s part of the human condition, and it always seems to be about “protecting the children.” Ignorance and superstition will always come back.
What is tragic, is that in each of these panics, no matter what was the bête noire du jour, we as a nation lost something. A loss of freedom. A diminished exceptionalism. Shitty comics. Cannabis being banned for decades (ouch). Lives lost and careers ruined. In some cases, trillions of dollars. But mostly, a colossal waste of time.
I wonder what the next panic will be, a few decades from now. Hopefully, it will be that long. At least we’ve moved on from hanging.
