I’ve seen the term witch hunt being used at SD a lot lately. I have my own idea of what it means. If I’m right, then it is being frequently misused. Would someone clarify this term and fight our ignorance please?
Yes, I could look it up and post a definition, but I’d rather hear Doper input.
It refers to a state of suspicion in which a group of people begin turning on each other and assuming/imagining/accusing each other of being the enemy/evil.
After, of course, the era of colonial times when everyone thought their neighbor was a witch and many innocents were executed over it. Or the McCarthey era, where suddenly everyone thought everyone else was a communist.
I’m going to disagree with Freejooky, somewhat.
A witch hunt is a process where bad things are blamed upon some unknown person or persons, and then all efforts are turned to find that person who’s to blame. Whether there’s any rational reason to blame the actions of a person, or not. Eventually a victim, or scapegoat, or ‘witch’ is found, and punished, and that supposedly solves the problem. Often the reason for the witch hunt has to do with distracting attention from other problems, or to remove a nuisance for the Powers That Be. (Or would-be PTB.)
And if Freejooky thinks that Colonial witch hunts were bad, don’t look at the witch hunting crazes in Europe from about 1500 to 1800. None of the witches in Salem were killed after confessing - in fact, all the people who confessed were eventually released by the governor. Whereas, in the European witch hunts - confession was followed by burning at the stake. And still people confessed, knowing their fate, because the tortures used to get that confession were so terrible.
I would define a witch hunt as a phase during which the standards to convict (legally or otherwise) a person of a serious wrong-doing are continously lowering and, as a result, accusations are steadily rising, and th process ends at a point where anyone is suceptable to the accusation. I would go on to say that “witch hunt” also connotes, to a lesser degree, that the serious wrong-doing itself is a bugbear–it doesn’t really exist.
You take someone out to the woods, give them a magic stick and…
Oh, I’m sorry, that’s a snark hunt. Don’t do it. It’s liable to get that person eaten by a grue, for they will most likely seek shelter in a cave.
I haven’t seen McCarthy mentioned here, thus I “boldly” steal something from a dead women’s web page:
A witch hunt usually consists of the following properties, if one is to make it consistent with the actual european with hunts:
It’s a hunt for a threat that either does not exist or is absurdly exaggerated,
In which people are hysterically accused based on irrelevant or nonexistent evidence,
Usually predominantly taken from a particular group of people,
Focused on people who do not conform with society as a whole,
In a way whereby it is made logically impossible to deny guilt, and
Maybe most importantly, where anyone who CRITICIZES the witch hunt is suspected as being guilty for having criticized it.
During the actual witch hunts in Europe (the American versions weren’t one ten thousandth as bad) every town would routinely torture and execute dozens of people a year, usually women and girls. If a woman was accused of being a witch, and had any children, the children would be tortured and burned with her. It was quite common for children as young as seven, eight or nine years old to be broken on the wheel (having your limbs broken in multiple places and then intertwined in a wagon wheel) or simply burned at the stake. The prettiest girl in town was usually burned, since being attractive meant Satan was using you to pervert men. The number of women who were tortured and burned is staggering, possibly as many as a hundred thousand. (Some people toss around millions, which is absurd.)
Furthermore, anyone who suggested that witches and demons don’t exist or that things were getting out of hand was a suspect and was usually tortured and executed.
ding We have a winner! Thank you for playing, RickJay
(and thanks for being more complete than I managed to be.)
Although nowadays, it often means “criticizing me for doing something”.
Yeeees…Methinks perhaps a bit TOO complete :dubious:
Nitpick:
“Every town” should be nuanced with the declaration “every town in those areas where witch hunting was a frequent occurrence.” There were many regions of Europe that were never overtaken by the witch hunt craze. It actually followed a band extending outward, East and West, from the Rhine valley up to Switzerland and over just a bit into Northern Italy, with portions of far Eastern France affected. There were also pockets of witch hunting in England and Scotland and a few other scattered locations throughout Europe, but it was never a European pandemic. Even in these areas, witch hunting was not a consistent practice throughout the period, with various frenzies waxing and waning. Sometimes it lasted for a decade or more; sometimes it was s single months-long event that was not repeated in a particular location.
With the inconsistent nature of the practice, it often took different forms in different locations. In some places, it was the rich burgers who were targeted. In others it concentrated on men, rather than women. (Women were definitely targeted more often than men, but in a ratio of 5:1 or 3:1, not 100:1.)
(RickJay’s general overview of what the word has come to mean and its general etymology is spot on.)
:eek: You’re right!!
He’s a WITCH!! GET HIM!!
Actually, yeah, I think a bit too specific. I believe the idea that females were especially singled out in the European crazes is vastly overstated and that studies have shown a more even gender split. And if you think of the hidden reason many people suggest for the accusations after they had been going – the ability to legally seize the property of the accused – that part at least would have to be more male-targeted.
And, as pointed out above, it wasn’t nearly asa omnipresent as described there. It came in patches and flare ups, not some regular continuous thing.
I’ll turn you into a newt.
I did mean to add a comment that witch hunting was popular in some places and not in others but somehow I just forgot to add it in there. I know, for instance, that it never really caught on in Ireland, but was way popular in many places in what is now Germany.
I also made it sound like all witches were burned, which is not the case; many were hanged. NO witches in Salem were burned.
A pattern of behavior that doesn’t exactly fit the above definitions of “witch hunt” can still be despicable.
Rick’s covered everything I could think of, too. Great definition!
And I agree with Zoe that it’s being misused a lot as of late. Everyone knows that witch hunts are bad, so if you accuse someone of engaging in a witch hunt, surely everyone will agree with you that they’re doing something terrible, right?
Hey, wait a second. That’s ironic!
Daniel
Oh. So they were just hanged?
I guess it’s ok then.
Scott, honey, what were the three words in rick’s post immediately prior to the ones you quoted?
Daniel
I need to start adding more smilies. :smack:
Actually, I suspect that no witches were hanged in Salem either – only unfortunate victims of false accusations. Wasn’t there one person who was crushed with stones?
Thanks for your responses, especially Rick Jay’s. And I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one to agree that it is being misused.
I am terribly uneducated about European history and the information about the witch hunts there is very interesting to me. Thanks for taking the time to discuss it.
At Salem, Zoe, the witch craze there was very atypical, compared to the European witch hunts. IIRC there was none of the shennengins with property rights that followed a witch’s condemnation in Europe. Certainly all the persons who confessed to witchcraft were pardoned by the governor after he reviewed some of the transcripts - they’d only been imprisoned, after all. The 19 persons hanged were hanged after convictions in court of witchcraft, but still proclaiming innocence. The other man who died was killed in the process of ‘testing.’ (Now isn’t there a nice, bloodless word for it.) His ‘test’ consisted of placing him under a large board, and gradually adding large stones to the board until he confessed to being a witch. He lasted two days before dying. I haven’t found the cause of death for the other four persons killed in the craze. (And don’t feel motivated for an indepth search, sorry.) I suspect they died in prison, but not as an action of the court.
Compare this to the European trials where property owned by convicted witches was confiscated by the Church or the local politicians, depending upon what authority the trial was convened under. In addition to the financial benefits to the accusers, the social benefits can’t be underestimated: Have a troublesome poor quarter? Try a few witches, and the peons will knuckle under again, aware that sticking out to the powers that be can bring you to the rack for the most spurious of reasons.
During the Thirty Years War, while the Protestant and Catholic forces ravaged Germany, the chaos of all the persons uprooted by the see-sawing religious leadership changes (At the time, the Holy Roman Empire was following the principal of cuius regio, eius religio, where the faith of the prince of each principality would be the faith of the people, unless they chose to leave.) created a huge underclass of persons who had, for one reason or another, become stateless persons. In some areas this underclass would grow to a signfigant fraction of the total population. With the murder, rapine, enforced conscription, and lawlessness the armies of the time left behind, these displaced persons were mostly women, children or elderly. All of whom were easily controlled if they became too vocal a problem, by burning a few malcontents. After all, it’s not like they were real people. Or even locals.
The Thirty Years War is one of those incidents that leaves any faithful person wondering just how a loving god could have allowed it to happen. sigh