Moral panic management: On the neoliberal use of "culture wars"

Abstract

What is usually referred to as "culture wars" increasingly determines online and offline ambient, especially after the onset of COVID-19 pandemic, followed by waves of internet-enhanced moral panic. In this paper, we aim to understand the intensification of moral panic not simply as a phenomenon that depends on the inflammatory online fears, the way digital natives or baby boomers use the Internet, or the rise of so-called "populism", but as a dynamic arising from the neoliberal politics itself. Instead of taking for granted that current flammable ambience is the result of a "crisis of neoliberal consensus", this article, through example of the United States, shows that culture wars are not only "cultural", but are a vehicle for neoliberal goals, in this case, the privatization of elementary education.