History Main / WitchHunt

And fear walk hand in hand

There is a menace in this community. They may look like us, but they are not us. They lurk among us, waiting for their chance to do us harm. Anyone could be one of them: your neighbor, your friend, even a member of your family. But don't be fooled, they're only pretending to be your loved one. In reality, they are a witch/Jew/[[PaedoHunt child molester]]/[[RedScare Communist]]/[[ReligionOfEvil devil worshipper]]/ShapeShifter! We must root out this menace and destroy them, no matter what steps we have to take. After all, the community's safety is far more important than niceties like civil rights and due process, right?

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* ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' had elements of this inspired by the ShapeShifter masters of the Dominion. The fact they keep up the blood screenings even though they know that the guy who came up with it was a changeling and it didn't work on him is a bit of a WallBanger.

** Also played straight by Barty Crouch Sr. who during Voldemort's first reign started massive witch trials, literally, that involved Hugo Bagman, a famous athlete, Sirius Black, sentenced without trial, and eventually his own son who was sentenced to life in prison. Note only one of these three was actually guilty.

* In L. Jagi Lamplighter's ''[[ProsperosDaughter Prospero Lost]]'', Theo and Miranda discuss the witch hunts; Theo says that many of them ''were'' witches, and when Miranda says that records show that many were innocent, she realizes that the Circle of Solomon would have ensured that the records showed them.

* In L. Jagi Lamplighter's ''Prospero Lost'', Theo and Miranda discuss the witch hunts; Theo says that many of them ''were'' witches, and when Miranda says that records show that many were innocent, she realizes that the Circle of Solomon would have ensured that the records showed them.

* In RudyardKipling's ''TheJungleBook'', after Mogwli kills the tiger, the village hunter Buldeo tries to claim the corpse and Mogwli drives him off with the help of wolves. Buldeo believes him to be a witch and the village drives him off.
* In TheWitchOfBlackbirdPond, when a serious illness sweeps the town, angry residents begin looking for someone to blame as children start dying. They immediately go to fetch Hannah Tupper, whom the town has always whispered about being a witch. When Kit helps her escape, their anger and accusations turn on her.

*** Two of them, actually. Bagman was guilty of the crime he was accused of, but was able to argue convincingly that he thought he was doing the right thing. The person he passed information two convinced him that he was working for Dumbledore.

* Parodied in ''HarryPotter'': The Prisoner of Azkaban., answering the FridgeLogic of many people who may think "If a witch was caught, wouldn't they use their powers to escape?" about such hunts; with the witches and wizards, using, well, ''[[CaptainObvious magic]]''. - Harry reads up on history that says any [[WitchHunt Witch Hunts]] that genuinely caught a witch and tried to [[KillItWithFire burn them at stake]] would be fruitless, as the magicians would just use a 'Flame-Freezing' charm to make the fire harmless and only cause gentle-tickling. An individual called Wendelin the Weird liked doing that so much that she let herself be caught 47 times in various alias and disguises, giving TooKinkyToTorture an interesting variation.

*** ItGetsWorse: the society ''itself'' is communist, and everyone in it (not just the PCs) is a mutant.

* In TheWitchOfBlackbirdPond, when a serious illness sweeps the town, angry residents begin looking for someone to blame as children start dying. They immediately go to fetch Hannah Tupper, whom the town has always whispered about being a witch. when Kit helps her escape, their anger and accusations turn on her.

** Interestingly, this was such a WitchHunt that the afore mentioned play ''TheCrucible'' was written in response to and as an allegory of [=McCarthyism=].

** As a more modern version of that, the Satan Scare of TheNineties.

** An oft-neglected category is ''Muslims'' pretending to be Christians, who faced the same amount of persecution. However, more Muslims had left Spain by the time the Inquisition was started than had Jews. Also, the Inquisition had an incentive to convict people with money (it seized the assets of those it convicted), and (as elsewhere) more Jews were "money men" in Spain than Muslims (Islam treats moneylending even more harshly than medieval Christianity), and Jews were considered Christ-killers, so the Inquisition focused more on ''marranos'' (converted Jews) than ''moriscos'' (converted Muslims).

* The Fugitive Slave Act of the Civil War period had Southern slavers be able to come into the North and reclaim slaves that had fled there. However, since there were plenty of free black people and not very many people cared about blacks that much, the slavers could just point a finger at a free black that had lived in the north all his life and say "That's him."

* The Fugitive Slave Act of the Civil War period had Southern slavers be able to come into the North and reclaim slaves that had fled there. However, since there were plenty of black slaves and not very many people cared about blacks that much, the slavers could just point a finger at a free black that had lived in the north all his life and say "That's him."

* The Inquisition, which sought to root out heresy. And witchcraft. And Jews...