Use of the term "Witch Hunt"

In My Humble Opinion
1

Source

Former US president Donald Trump says the Senate impeachment trial has been another phase of the “greatest witch-hunt in the history of our country”.

Is this appropriate use of the term? I always thought that a witch hunt involved a theory of a giant conspiracy, and large number of people being accused, such as McCarthyism. Can you have a witch hunt directed at one person?

Part of the term “witch hunt” is the word “hunt” which I think is the important part. McCarthyism was a search for unknown persons. It was the suspicion that there were many unknown persons in a great conspiracy. People were questioned to find out if they were part of it. Always the suspicion that there were more people, still unidentified, who must be found. It was a search. It was a hunt.

Can a witch hunt be directed against a single known person whose activities are mostly already know? Is that even a hunt at all?

( Let’s keep this in GQ, please. I don’t want any political commentary. This is not a debate about whether the charges in a particular case were merited or not. It is only about the use of the term.)

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While some definitions say a witch hunt is directed against groups of people, others such as this one also include single people.

The term “hunt” could apply to searching for evidence that the person is a witch, rather than just the search for such persons.

And while Trump is not noted for his precise use of language, his statement could apply to searching for evidence that his associates were also targets of the hunt.

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I don’t know how feasible this is going to be, since recent examples are political in nature, but I’m going to highlight it anyway.

Colibri

4

Of course. The imaginary malicious group isn’t what’s being targeted. A witch hunt isn’t a hunt for a group or anything else. It’s a smear tactic where an opponent is falsely accused of being part of an exaggeratedly dangerous or imaginary cabal (coven).

5

That’s easy. Just see if they weigh the same as a duck…

6

I think the meaning of the term Witch Hunt has changed quite a few times - I would tend to think of it as meaning any targeted investigation in which a prejudiced negative verdict is firmly held before evidence is actually sought, found (or manufactured, or alleged to exist)

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I see it more as using lack of evidence for evidence, such as McCarthyism. “Doesn’t sink: Is Witch”. “Refuses to give evidence: Is communist”. “Didn’t call for peace: Is in favor of violence”.

Since ‘there is no such thing as a witch’, the characteristic of a witch hunt is that the evidence is manufactured out of air, and as such is impossible to refute.

The other characteristic is that witches are evil, dangerous and hated, which is what justifies the witch hunt.

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In my opinion, an overt or implied presumption of guilt, and sloppy rules of evidence, are the hallmarks of a witch-hunt.

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Hmmm.

I thought it was a characteristic of a “witch hunt” in the political sense, that you could take the pressure off yourself by naming others. You might not go totally free, but you could get a lighter punishment-- for the Salem colonists, it might mean the difference between being executed, and being buried in an unmarked grave without rituals, as opposed to being buried in the churchyard, with a marker, and prayers, which in the mind of a Puritan, was the difference between oblivion, and getting to heaven. For those accused of McCarthyism, it might mean a very light sentence of some sort, but not being blacklisted. Not naming names got you blacklisted, which was a kind of oblivion.

The parallels were pretty carefully drawn by Arthur Miller. I’ve read the original play, and seen it staged (as opposed to seeing recent Hollywood movies), and I did a research paper on McCarthyism once.

If Trump was asked to identify people in the photographs and videos of the insurrection in order to get off with a lighter sentence, it might be a witch hunt-- except those people were axiomatically guilty of something. Unless there was such terrific pressure to come up with names, that Trump was tempted to give any name, whether correct or not.

Another aspect of McCarthyism is the idea of “guilt by association.” Even if no one named you, if you were seen associating with someone who had been named, you might be brought in for questioning. That necessitates that more than one person be involved.

I don’t think you can have a witch hunt for just one person.

It’s a type of baseless persecution, but it’s not interchangeable with “baseless persecution.” There are other kinds, like “police tunnel vision,” when the police tend to narrow their focus to one suspect early in an investigation, and concentrate in looking for evidence that supports their theory, instead of gathering general information. Or “malicious prosecution,” when the prosecutor trumps up a charge against someone they previous lost a case against, or have another reason for wanting to “get” someone, like eliminating a rival.

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My impression is that the expression has become almost meaningless because it is used so regularly by people who are trying to discredit a valid investigation into their own conduct. It’s like “fake news” which started out as a term meaning news that was fake and then rapidly got subverted to mean news that was real which the speaker wanted to discredit.

However, I think the key characteristics of the original meaning were that a witchhunt (a) starts with the conclusion that someone is to blame for something despite it being far from clear that anyone is to blame at all, and (b) is conducted on the basis that the blame must be pinned on someone.

Unlike a proper investigation, a witchhunt cannot conclude that no one is to blame, or that the blameworthy person is unknown or unavailable. A scapegoat must be found even if that requires the investigators to be unjust or irrational.

Many of the features of a witchhunt that are described in other posts above (concerning evidential and investigative unfairness) are in my opinion just symptoms that flow from the nasty underlying characteristics of a witchhunt rather than being the key characteristics of a witchhunt in themselves.

I agree with others that “witchhunt” isn’t really an appropriate term for an investigation into one person. I would describe that more as “persecution”. To me, such an investigation lacks the necessary characteristic that a witch hunt involves going looking for someone to blame (rather than starting with the conclusion that a particular person is to blame).

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The English language doesn’t care about its history or pedants’ opinions about how words should be used. Words are used. If they are used frequently and prominently enough, that usage will become a meaning, in the dictionary sense.

Therefore, the term “witch hunt” as used by Trump and his acolytes is now a settled usage with a settled meaning. It doesn’t matter that the meaning is at odds with previous iterations of the term, or even, as in this case, completely reversed. A witch hunt used to be aimed at innocent individuals, seeking to demonize them. This newer meaning of witch hunt is the denial of a guilty individual seeking to demonize his accusers. It’s a clever riposte, leveraging the fact that a witch hunt is still considered a bad thing.

The question for language is whether this meaning will be picked up and used by others in the future. Will guilty individuals generally refer to their accusations as a witch hunt or will this usage live and die with Trump? If it becomes a general term, then will the older meanings become merely historical, so that the term won’t be used in association with the innocent? I’m sure language watchers are panting to find out.

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As I understood it, “witch hunt” was the concept from the original Salem trials and similar hysteria, of targeting a group and searching for (concocting?) evidence of a basically non-existent crime. I.e. in a fundamentalist religious group like the Pilgrims it was highly unlikely that there were actual witches to be found, but it was convenient for the people in charge (or those seeking to elevate their stature) to claim that such existed and they would find and root them out, even resorting to false accusations and forced confessions with coerced co-accusations to find victims to justify the effort.

In modern parlance I believe it has come to mean strong persecution by persons of power on the flimsiest of premises targeting one or more individuals, in order to find them guilty of something whether true or not - and using false evidence if necessary. Or, the use of such a process whether it suceeds or not. And it’s collateral use today, to deflect actual prosecution by complaining charges are not true but simply fabricated for the purpose of persecution.

The difference between prosecution and witch hunt is the zeal with which it was prosecuted, and the level of evidence to warrant such an investigation.

So for example, if someone were repeatedly targeted and accused over and over about events in a foreign consulate despite repeated lack of evidence of malfeasance, most likely for political reasons, we would call that a “witch hunt”. Bonus points for gender-related inferences.

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Actually it goes back a bit further. The original Witchfinder General (apparently a self-assigned title) was Matthew Hopkins, who did his witchfinding between 1644 and 1647 in East Anglia. There were witch trials before him, but he was responsible for about 100 “witches” being executed, a drastic increase in their number.

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Of course, witch accusations and trials go back to earliest England and were common even in the time of King Arthur, as we see from the documentary “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”.

Just - the Salem trials are legendary despite likely being something common of the era and earlier.

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The flaw I see in this analysis is that words mean what people use them to mean. Those people can still be lying or mistaken.

The current use appears to have the intent of saying that Trump is not guilty. That he is an innocent party being unfairly accused. And that said accusers are looking for an excuse to go after him.

They appear to be using it exactly how one would use it for an actual innocent person. That they are wrong/lying about Trump being innocent wouldn’t change that, any more than the words “not guilty” have changed meaning because so many criminals will say it.

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Since the meaning of the phrase is somewhat a matter of opinion, let’s move this from GQ to IMHO.

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Firstly, thanks to everyone who has replied. Some interesting points raised on both sides.

Second, can I renew my request not to discuss Donald Trump. It’s not about him.

Let’s instead consider a hypothetical and fictional case. Some money goes missing from the till at Shopco. New hire Eric Psmith is wrongly suspected of stealing it. He is questioned several times by the management and store detective. They find no evidence of his involvement, not surprising since he’s innocent. Nevertheless, he is informed that his services will no longer be required.

Is Eric the victim of a witch hunt?

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To me, no. He is the victim of false accusations and a wrongful termination.

To me one of the hallmarks of a witch hunt is that there are no witches. That is, there is no crime to solve. So crimes are invented in order to persecute or punish individuals (or, perhaps, just to raise the status of the person doing the investigating/punishing). “She turned me into a newt”, to follow the Monty Python reference.

For Eric in your example to be a victim of a witch hunt I think you would need to include that the store manager really wanted to fire Eric for other reasons or knew that catching a thief would get himself promoted so he manufactured the idea that there had been a theft at all.

It also, at least to me, has the connotation that there is a public frenzy surrounding the finding of witches (or communists, or whatever) which makes the rewards for “finding” a witch high. The public is scared of and hates witches so they are OK with shabby due process or evidentiary standard in order to be safe from witches.

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Unfortunately, you can’t discuss the new meaning of witch hunt promulgated by Donald Trump without mentioning Donald Trump. It is completely about him.

He is if he calls it a witch hunt and other people go along with his characterization.

In politically or culturally charged situations, words are malleable. No matter how fervantly people want to keep them within boundaries, they slip through. Words like “woke” or “politically incorrect” or “fake news” are used by both sides in often diametrically opposed meanings. You can rail as much as you want that Trump’s use of “fake news” is just as opposite to the proper meaning as his use of “witch hunt” and that will get you exactly nowhere. The people who are listening will take his definition over yours.

The answer is to listen or read the context of the usage and to evaluate the intended meaning from it, rather than trying to impose a “proper” dictionary definition.

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Agree with this analysis