It’s “we gotta protect the white women from black men” and “gay men are pedophiles” all over again. Moral panics cherry-pick relatively rare events to generate a climate of fear and paranoia that’s then used to scapegoat a group based on prejudices such as race, gender, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gamers, ect…
Moral panics are pure unalloyed bigotry which use the pretext of concern for innocent people as an excuse to foment hate. Then you wind up with people committing mass shootings in a pizza parlor because they were radicalized by the social media hate groups.
It serves as a gateway for people who don’t consciously think of themselves as prejudiced to nonetheless become afraid of people based on fear of the other.
