I went to Salem this week, and it got me thinking: I can’t think of a single novel set now that has similar themes to what happened in Salem, with Americans being accused of being witches. There was a on-off episode of Charmed late in the series, but other than that…
Oh, sure, there were “witch hunts” last century if you include McCarthyism, but that’s not what I mean. Those folks were accused of treason and communism, not of literally being witches.
It seems incredible that anyone might have believe that their neighbor truly had magical powers (and I’m sure some of the accusers didn’t, though others did) but it happened. We like to think we’re above that now except in a few backwards places in distant corners of the globe where children are accused of witchcraft still, but are we really so sophisticated it could never happen again here?
Or could the madness in Salem come back under the right circumstances? If so, I’d like to read about authors’ takes on what those circumstances could be.
I’m not sure if you’re looking for examples in fiction or in real life. In real life, witch-hunts are far from over, and in fact there are more people murdered, tortured and/or left abandoned and homeless for suspicion of being witches today than there ever were in Salem or during the Inquisitions. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NEWSEVENTS/Pages/Witches21stCentury.aspx
Far from being confined to “a few backwards places in distant corners of the globe,” this is happening on most continents, including Europe andthe UK. Saudi Arabia is hardly a backwater. Witch hunts in India today appear to have similar motivations as Salem’s witch hunts - land grabs.
We do seem to have mostly gotten over the public witchhunts here, and our incidents are isolated and not the efforts of communities, but individuals. But that’s what makes the news. What doesn’t make the news is Catholic and Pentacostal groups who still practice exorcism rituals, which to my mind are torture under another name. The Catholics are pretty polite, but the Pentacostals sometimes include forcing people to drink noxious poisonous drinks (mixtures of rubbing alcohol, hot pepper sauce and vinegar) that make people vomit, as well as “laying of hands” which is just restraint and force by another name.
All of those are actions against the kind of witches the public doesn’t much believe in here, your prototypical agents of Satan or victims of demonic possession. We don’t have a widespread problem with legally sanctioned witchhunts of the Salem style. What we do have is our legal system taking children away from self-proclaimed witches (neopagans or Wiccans), denying them their objects of religious expression and worship and allow workplace discrimination to run unchecked. Not quite as bad as hangings and pressings, but still evidence that we’re not as enlightened about these things as we like to imagine.
As for fiction, the one example that springs to mind is MOO (Mothers Opposed to the Occult) in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That’s pretty old at this point.
There’s also Witch Hunt, by Devin O’Branagan and a whole series by Debbie Viguie. Witches and persecution of witches (mostly the hereditary type) is a common element of urban fantasy; there’s a lot of sympathy for the witches.
I don’t know if anyone’s writing stuff that’s unambiguously anti-witch. I suspect you’d find something in the Christian Fiction genre, though.