Five moral panics which don't really exist - from ‘snowflake’ students to music causing violent crime

There’s no question that we’re living in turbulent times, with technology upending the old certainties in politics – and Brexit among many ‘upsets’ facing people around the world.

But is the world really tearing itself to pieces around us?

Are ‘snowflake’ students really creating a Stalinist state in our universities, while sinister pro-Muslim forces turn Easter into a non-religious egg festival?

Here’s some of the biggest ‘moral panics’ of 2018 – and what is really happening.

‘Snowflake’ students shutting down free speech

Overly sensitive students barring free speech and requesting ‘safe spaces’ on campus has become a favourite bugbear of right-wingers – so much so that the government has taken action.

But how big a problem is it, really?

There’s been huge media uproar about ‘no platforming’ of speakers such as gay rights activist Peter Tatchell and Germaine Greer.

But while there was outrage at the fact that they’d been denied an opportunity to address universities, both actually gave their speeches in the end.

Sussex University Vice Chancellor Prof Adam Tickell said earlier this year, ‘We hear all sorts of claims of the inhibition and chilling of free speech in British universities but the evidence base for it is anaemically small.’

A report by the MPS and peers for the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) found that while ‘safe space’ policies do exist (and pose a threat to freedom of speech), they are not widespread.

Overall, the report found that free speech was ‘not overly inhibited’ and that it was ‘valued by students.’

The assault on Easter

The official UKIP account Tweeted this year, ‘It’s amazing in such a politically correct society that we can’t call Easter eggs Easter eggs any more.’

It’s become a recurring theme on social media and in newspapers – the idea that the word ‘Easter’ has been banned (in order to appease Muslims, many believe).

But despite a Daily Star story claiming in 2016 that Cadbury had ‘banned’ the word, the company still uses it in packaging on a significant percentage of its eggs, and uses it regularly on social media.

All of Britain’s supermarkets also use the word in marketing materials.

Screenshots of products from previous decades show that not every Easter egg contained the word ‘Easter’ back then, either.

Music ‘causing’ violent crime

This moral panic is decades old, but it’s resurfaced in Britain in recent months, with politicians such as Amber Rudd blaming ‘drill’ rap with violent lyrics for violence between youngsters.

It echoes previous controversies over ‘gangsta’ rap, which was linked to violent crime in the UK and abroad.

Heavy metal music, meanwhile, has been blamed for suicides and school shootings.

But the link between music and crime is extremely difficult to prove – with most ‘drill’ artists saying they just reflect the world around them, rather than encouraging violence.

In a 2014 feature, The Atlantic graphed the popularity of rap music (gauged by singles sales) against FBI reports of violent crime.

The statistics show that as rap music became more popular, violent crime actually dropped in America.

The sharpest drop came around the turn of the 90s – at the peak of the moral panic about violence in rap lyrics.

‘Bath salts’ which turn people into cannibals

Rudy Eugene only tested positive for marijuana, the local medical examiner said (Getty)

Drugs which send users insane have long been a staple of tabloid journalism – with The Sun memorably warning 90s ravers that Ecstasy would make them see enormous spiders everywhere.

But two chilling reports from America suggested that ‘bath salts’ were the real deal – driving two young men to cannibalise victims, eating their faces off while high on the drugs.

‘Bath salts’ is an American term for ‘new psychoactive substances’, sold in the guise of innocuous household chemicals – much as ‘plant food’ was used in the UK.

There’s no question that some downright dangerous chemicals have been sold as ‘bath salts’ in the U.S., in particular Alpha-PVP, or ‘flakka’, a dangerous stimulant which can cause hallucinations and bizarre, unpredictable behaviour.

But do bath salts cause cannibalism? Not so much.

Two gruesome cases saw young men (Rudy Eugene and Austin Harouff), attack victims, biting their faces, and leaving them disfigured or (in the case of Harouff’s alleged victims) dead.

But while the media blamed ‘bath salts’ in both attacks, drug tests came back negative for synthetic cathinones (believed to be the drugs behind both cases).

Artificial intelligence killing us all

Tesla and Space X boss Elon Musk is normally a fan of high technology – but he’s positively apocalyptic when it comes to artificial intelligence.

Musk has likened artificial intelligence to ‘summoning the devil’, and said that AI could become an ‘immortal dictator from which we could never escape.’

His chilling warnings have been echoed by other scientists such as the late Stephen Hawking.

But while people are only too ready to believe in Terminator-like AIs which will bring doom and misery to mankind, the reality is somewhat different.

While machine learning is great at solving certain problems (or, say, predicting things about you, based on your Facebook likes), it’s not actually intelligent.

A ‘general’ artificial intelligence, which can solve any problem and ‘think’ for itself – or pretend to do so – is decades away.

A ‘superintelligence’, ie something smarter than human beings, is even further off, if it’s possible at all.

A House of Lords report this week concluded, ‘The representation of artificial intelligence in popular culture is light-years away from the often more complex and mundane reality.

Media reports mean that people ‘were concentrating attention on threats which are still remote, such as the possibility of “superintelligent” artificial general intelligence’, the report warned.