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When we hear somebody speaking of witch-hunts ,we immediately think of Salem ,probably the most popular example for the stupidity of man and all the other cases in the 17th and 18th century where people were burned and hanged. But have there been other cases of witch-hunt in the history where things like that happened? And is witch-hunt something that could happen again in our time? In the following I will comment on this.
As old as mankind is, people were interested and fascinated about supernatural appearances. You can see this clearly in the caves of Lascaux and Les Trois Freres where wizards were drawn on the walls by the Cro Magnon man - 15.000 years ago. During the years, the interest developed into different ways of believing in supernatural things; from practicing rites to practicing the knowledge of medical science into telling fortunes in our time. But why did it all turn into something negative and repugnant? The answer to this lies in the action of man. When catastrophes, other bad and inexplicable things happen, people are always searching for a scapegoat who can be blamed for everything. These people are always minorities who can't defend themselves against the powerful and can be treated as guilty. An example for this is the Christ-hunt in the 1st century when the emperor Nero himself burned Rome and blamed the Christians for this. They were an excellent scapegoat because of their other believes, different look and because of the secrecy of their worship they were uncanny to the Romans. Although they were hunted, Christianity became during the centuries one of the biggest world religions. Now they were the ones with power and took advantage of it by founding the inquisition. In these times (13th century) were many secret groups that had other faiths then the Christians had and the easiest way to stop them was to accuse the people for being witches/wizards. The time of the inquisition was one of two big witch-hunt periods, the other was in the 17th/18th century. The last witch trials were in the end of the 18th century but this does not mean that it had stopped - it was only called different, because witch-hunts nothing more then haunting and killing for being different, for being a scapegoat to others and for standing in the way of the powerful people who don't permit any other groups. It's the hunt of the Jews I'm speaking of. Hitlers power raised and so he started to eliminate the Jews for being wealthy and powerful. Other reasons were that they had another religion, a different look, everything about them was different and for that they were killed brutally. Jew became, like witch, an invective. Some years later then, during the Cold War, the Americans treated Communists like witches. McCarthyism started and these people had no chance to live normally because they lost their jobs and their honor or were put into jail. Although they have lived in an enlightened era, people let things like this happen and did not learn from the past.
Witch-hunt was always about the good and the bad ones, majorities and minorities, powerful and powerless people and because we still have these aspects in our world it could come to a witch-hunt again. Maybe that we don't accuse people for being witches, but for being in another way different.
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