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False Accusations, Moral Panics, and the Manufacture of Victimhood

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The Rise of Victimhood Culture

Abstract

Campbell and Manning examine false claims of victimhood, as when people pretend to be victims of serious crimes. They consider the logic of such claims and the social conditions that give rise to them. False accusations are a way of manipulating third parties and arise under conditions that increase reliance on third parties while reducing due process. Victimhood culture encourages false accusations in the form of hate crime hoaxes, in which people claim to have been victimized by members of a more privileged social group. College campuses are especially prone to hate crime hoaxes, as well as moral panics that make it difficult and dangerous for anyone to express skepticism of victimhood claims. Campbell and Manning describe the dynamics of moral panic and consider the extent to which moral panic shapes contemporary concerns about campus rape culture.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Donald Black (2011:16) proposes that false accusations of all kinds—unintentional or intentional—result from social changes that are not themselves defined as wrong. For example, getting sick is not considered a crime or a sin, but it does alter status relationships, robbing people of their most fundamental resource: their health. And it is a social change that leads people to blame their illness on witchcraft. The false accusations we deal with in this chapter are similar, though in this case what is important is that the social change which sparks the conflict is something third parties do not see as deviant, or at least not as serious deviance.

  2. 2.

    The findings are inconsistent, but most studies have found that false accusations are especially likely to arise in these situations (Benedek and Schetky 1985; Faller 1991; Faller and DeVoe 1995; Green 1986; Haskett et al. 1995; Trocmé and Bala 2005).

  3. 3.

    For example, during World War II German propagandists saw their primary task as “spreading good news…and setting an example of indomitable confidence in final victory” (Bytwerk 2010:100). Thus “public media were understandably cautious in printing information on damage done by Allied bombing,” and propagandists rushed to combat exaggerated (or sometimes accurate) accounts of casualties (Bytwerk 2010:108–109). Imperial Japan likewise maintained a policy that “the public was not to be informed of defeats or damage on the Japanese side. Only victories and damage imposed on the Allies were to be announced” (Sasaki 1999:178).

  4. 4.

    More recently, Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, nicknamed “Baghdad Bob” in the United States and “Comical Ali” in Britain, became famous for his many claims during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq that the Iraqi Army was prevailing and driving out the Americans.

  5. 5.

    Sociologist Stanley Cohen, one of the first to use the term moral panic, gave this description of the phenomenon: “A condition, episode, person or group emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible” (1972:9).

  6. 6.

    Note that whether or not they are moral panics depends on one’s definition, and the existing literature often fails to define the concept clearly.

  7. 7.

    “While the moral panic is raging,” writes Megan McArdle, “ludicrous and improbable stories suddenly become convincing, and it’s dangerous to question them, because why are you defending witches, are YOU a witch?” (2015).

  8. 8.

    Accusations of evil rituals are a reoccurring pattern in social life and act to paint all members of a social group as equally complicit in wrongdoing. A common accusation against the Jews is that they consume the blood or flesh of murdered Gentiles—especially children—in their Passover rituals. This myth, known as blood libel, emerged in Europe in the Middle Ages and remains common in parts of the Muslim world today. Early Roman Christians were the target of a similar accusation, with pagan Romans believing that new Christian converts murdered a baby as part of their initiation into the church. Once Christianity became the official religion of the Empire, Christians likewise accused pagan cults of using child murder as part of their initiations (Dundes 1991; Perry and Schweitzer 2001).

  9. 9.

    Commenting on the UVA rape hoax, activist Zerlina Maxwell says we should still “believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says” (2014). Maxwell, like many others, sees credulity as a virtue, at least when it comes to rape accusations. The falsely accused are of less concern to her: though a falsely accused man “would have a rough period … the cost of disbelieving women … is far steeper. It signals that women don’t matter and that they are disposable” (Maxwell 2014).

  10. 10.

    For example, The New York Times series “This Week in Hate,” created to document hate crimes since Trump’s election, included a report of an anti-Muslim attack: “A man is accused of attacking a Muslim woman at a Manhattan Dunkin’ Donuts on Sunday, throwing coffee in her face and putting her in a headlock…. He told the woman he ‘hated Muslims’ and was going to kill her” (New York Times Editorial Board 2016). Journalist Eric Felten (2017) notes that what the Times account leaves out is the fact that the attacker was a homeless man, likely someone struggling with a mental illness.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. California State University, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Bradley Campbell

  2. Sociology and Anthropology, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA

    Jason Manning

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  1. Bradley Campbell
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  2. Jason Manning
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Campbell, B., Manning, J. (2018). False Accusations, Moral Panics, and the Manufacture of Victimhood. In: The Rise of Victimhood Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70329-9_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70329-9_4

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-70328-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-70329-9

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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