Liberal Moral Panic and the ‘Dirtbag Left’
The Daily Beast fans the flames of anti-socialist fear
Geography professor Alexander Reid Ross published a piece in the Daily Beast called “These ‘Dirtbag Left’ Stars Are Flirting with the Far-Right.” I reluctantly read the piece and it read to me like a red scare-era diatribe against the threat of communism, throwing in everything and the kitchen sink to scare good white Christians from the Commies. Even more, it reminded me of the era of moral panic against popular music in the 1980s and 1990s.
Moral panics are a social phenomenon that cloud people’s judgement, creating a fog of war and a false binary between moral or amoral. The moral panickers of the 1980s created that binary between evil rock musicians and moral people, which held weight in the Reagan era. Ross in his piece is creating a binary between the “Left” and his concept of “Dirtbag Left” which he smears as a pipeline to the far-right.
Ross, much like the moral panic profiteers of the past, lumps in podcasters and video broadcasters that have little to no connection with each other. He lists YouTuber Jimmy Dore, Matt Christman from Chapo Trap House, activist Norman Finklestein, and random internet trolls as belonging to a group called the “Dirtbag Left.” Dirtbag Left being the media construct invented after the 2016 primary to describe young leftist podcasters who don’t put on airs to be accepted into the liberal media mainstream.
I’m getting flashbacks to 1990. Ice-T, currently America’s favorite TV police officer, was joined on stage by then wife of then Senator Al Gore Tipper Gore, Fox News’ Juan Williams, Jello Biafra, ex singer from the political punk pioneers the Dead Kennedys, and Rabbi Abraham Cooper for a raucous episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show. This motley crew came together to discuss the lyrics of bands like Guns N’ Roses and N.W.A. Gore headed the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), a pro-music censorship group, at the time.
Cooper, Williams, and Gore formed a popular front united in creating a moral panic over Satanism, racism, misogyny, and masturbation. There was a rot in America that could be traced back to pop, rap, and heavy metal bands that are now enticing good American children into questioning the divine rule of adults and Christian values. The fear? Well, Guns N’ Roses used the n word, and so did N.W.A. Prince is influencing children into masturbating in hotel lobbies. Iron Maiden and Slayer were introducing children to the concept of Satanism, which fed nicely into the existing moral panic about ritual Satanic abuse of children (a panic that yielded zero evidence and yet ruined countless lives).
The PMRC lumped together musicians who had little to nothing in common, but made them an outgroup, much as Ross does in his Daily Beast piece to malign his “Dirtbag Left” with a broad brush. Ross creates a laundry list of grievances he attributes to the group as a whole. Jimmy Dore invites Boogaloos on his show, irony-poisoned host of the Cum Town podcast Nick Mullen makes jokes at the expense of marginalized people, and Ross creates an equivalence. He also includes Finkelstein’s and Christman’s very accurate political assessments as somehow how being fascist. This is a reckless piece that implies that anyone associated with these acts is welcoming the right wing into the Leftist movement.
We should take the moral panic of the 1980s as a case study. Who wins? Who profits when socialism is painted in a bad light? Well, every capitalist.
As it turns out in the 1980s, behind the smoke and mirrors of the moral panic, was good old Washington horse trading. Gore and her crew of bipartisan Washington Stepford Wives worked behind the scenes with their husbands to create a bill that would put a tax on blank cassettes, a measure pushed by the Recording Industry Association of America in exchange for the voluntary labeling of “explicit” albums by the RIAA. This impacted the music industry when retailers like Wal-Mart refused to carry records with the infamous Tipper-sticker. This was a move that was not pushed by any kind of popular movement, but a backroom deal like so many others that allowed non-elected, politically-connected people to push a political agenda without the interference of democracy.
It was neoliberalism cloaked in neo-Puritanism. Ross is cloaking neoliberalism in “rooting out fascism.”
The moral panic around the so-called “Dirtbag Left” can have the same impacts. Anyone who is creating their own media outside of MSNBC, Fox, or CNN, can be maligned as “bringing in the far right” under his Ross’ analysis.