Take Every Opportunity To Unmask Its Pretensions And Euphemisms

January 2013

Obituary: Stan Cohen, 1942-2013 – a social worker turned sociologist who coined the term ‘moral panic’

"You may not have heard of Stan Cohen, who has just died, but you will certainly know something of his ideas, and their continuing relevance. Look at the current hysteria around ‘chavs’, ‘asylum seekers’  and ‘shirkers’ or the way Jimmy Savile has come to represent paedophilia  (even though we know that most child abuse takes place within the family), and we are likely to come up with the term ‘moral panic’."

"One I especially warm to is his encouragement for us ‘to stay in your agency or organization, but don’t let it seduce you. Take every opportunity to unmask its pretensions and euphemisms’"

"And most challenging perhaps, ‘In practice and theory, stay “unfinished”. Don’t be ashamed of working for short-term humanitarian or libertarian goals, but always keep in mind the long-term political prospects. This might mean living with the uncomfortable ambiguity that your most radical work will be outside your day-to-day job’"

Nigel

Designer Anomie

"In a 2004 Criminal Law Bulletin article, William Mitchell College of Law professor Eric Janus argued that “sexual predator laws provide a model for undercutting … constitutional protections.

”The process, Janus said, starts with a universally despised group of people who, like suspected terrorists, attract no public sympathy. He warned that “we are at risk of becoming a ‘preventive state,’ in which the paradigm of governmental social control has shifted from solving and punishing crimes that have been committed to identifying ‘dangerous’ people and depriving them of their liberty before they can do harm.”

To most Americans, I fear, this prospect is not nearly as scary as the possibility that a sex offender lives down the street."

Perverted Justice

"And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there?

Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission.

How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.

I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to ..."

V for Vendetta

Nigel