This general phenomenon is not just a moral panic, and is not caused by social media, though it may have a role in its spread. It is caused by a number of deep-rooted factors compounding on one another. One of them is the increasingly bloated managerial class in Western societies that are trying to hold on to their power. This is done by sowing division in the society, dismantling its former institutions (religion, civil society), and instilling a new set of values which they can enforce. Another one of them is the legacy of the two World Wars of the previous century, in which the West lost belief in the values it once believed in, and postmodernist values took their place. One of the most prominent values among these is a view of any sort of heterogeneity as oppression, and that there is a moral imperative to "correct" it by any means possible. The elites, fearing that they might lose power if people became more class-conscious, channeled this sentiment to certain issues that would not harm them too much, such as gender and race politics.