Witch Hunts, Old and New

Witch Hunts, Old and New

The phenomenon of targeted sex-crime prosecutions of mostly white, middle-class men in the Anglophone world is often described as a witch hunt. I thought it might be interesting to see how many similarities there are with historical witch hunts conducted in Europe and colonial America. There are even comparisons to be made with less developed societies that still have witch hunts or prohibit witchcraft today, as well as political purges like MacArthyism or China's Cultural Revolution. A further example is the lynching of black American men, well into the 20th century.

I did some background reading and jotted down a list as things occurred to me, anticipating that perhaps I could come up with half a dozen points and work them up into an article. When I finished the list, I counted 22 items, which feels a bit ominous. I'm drawing mainly on my observation of the modern British sex witch hunt, but I understand that similar events are happening in Australia and Ireland. Canada seems even worse in some respects. I recently read about similar concerns expressed by medical and legal experts from New Zealand. I suppose I should include South Africa and various other countries on the dark continent as part of the Anglophone world, but they seem quite busy dealing with other problems. 

The USA is the interesting one. For a long time, there have been strong constitutional protections for defendants and an equally strong belief that those protections are worth upholding. Recently, the corrosive cancer of Marx-Feminism has had success in denying due process and presumption of innocence to men, particularly university students. I do hope that my American cousins will see this danger and fight back. Your example is important to the rest of the world.

Below, in no particular order, are the similarities between the old witch hunts and the new.

1 The majority of historical witch hunts were demographically targeted. The most common target group in Europe and colonial America was women over 40. Modern witch hunts in Africa and south Asia are often directed at certain tribes or castes. Contemporary sexual witch hunts in the Anglophone world also have a target group: white, middle-class men. 

2 Witch hunts arise from a faith ideology, rather than through rational enquiry. In medieval Europe, this was Christianity. In other parts of the world, Islam or traditional spiritual beliefs are the starting point of a campaign of persecution. The faith ideology motivating the witch hunt against white middle-class men in the Anglophone world is Marx-Feminism.

3 Witchcraft trials generally don't prosecute malicious acts that have caused actual harm. Instead, they prosecute the beliefs, inclinations or lifestyles of the defendant - whether they are actual beliefs or just what he is accused of believing. "Witches" are therefore being prosecuted as heretics. Their main, or indeed only, sin is failing to believe what the witch hunters think is the correct belief. This is a common thread running through all kinds of witch trials: medieval trials, Soviet purges, MacArthyism, sorcery prosecutions in Saudi Arabia, and the current phenomenon of sex witch hunts. 

4 Closely related to 3) above, is how witch trials are used as a tool to enforce or impose ideological orthodoxy. Again we see this in medieval trials, Saudi Arabia, and communist purges. The ideology being imposed by the contemporary sex witch hunt is Marx-Feminism.

5 Witch hunts rely on a concept of the demon or bogeyman. This is an artificial construct intended to convince people that there is a peril that must be rooted out, and to gain their support for practices of dubious legality. In the middle ages, accused witches were the demons: literally demonised. Other types of demonisation might include the Nazi portrayal of the Jew, the idea of "Counter-revolutionaries" in communist Russia and China, Communists in the MacArthy enquiry, homosexuals, imaginary Ritual Satanists and of course The Paedophile. The character of Goldstein in George Orwell's 1984 is a fictional example. All of these are essentially the same character, composed of a curious collection of contradictions. The paedo-jew-demon is a hidden menace, yet easy to spot because we know one when we see one. He is seductive and attractive, yet hideous. He is an evil mastermind, yet stupid and has only animal cunning, not human intelligence. The demon-paedo-jew is purely evil by nature, yet still makes a conscious choice to do his evildoing (instead of the good doings which he is said not to be capable of...). 

6 Medieval witchcraft trials often disregarded contemporary due process. An enquiry by the Holy Inquisition found that almost all witchcraft trials under their jurisdiction had violated some law or procedure. This stemmed from the concept of Crimen Exceptum, advocated by Heinrich Kramer in his 1487 book Malleus Melleficarum. Crimen Exceptum is a crime so exceptionally awful, that the usual rules and procedures should be set aside because they get in the way of securing a conviction. The problem with this is that is presumes the guilt of the defendant. The modern sex witch hunt is doing the same, most often by breaching rules on fair trial, presumption of innocence, disclosure of evidence and a host of procedural rules that are tossed aside because they are inconvenient obstacles to rubber-stamping the presumed guilt of the defendant.

7 Today, we ridicule historical witchcraft trials for using evidential tests that should have been recognised as obvious nonsense at the time. The best known of these was the ducking stool. This was a chair attached to a crane device. The accused was strapped into the chair and then lowered into a lake or river. If she survived the attempted drowning, it was said that this could only have been because she used her evil magic powers. She was therefore guilty. If she drowned then she was just a normal human being after all and declared innocent, which I'm sure wasn't a great consolation. Contemporary sex witch hunts have a slightly better disguised equivalent of this. If an accuser gives a confident, accurate and consistent account of her complaint, this is said to indicate that she's telling the truth. If an accuser gives a changeable account, riddled with provable errors and lacking essential details, this is also said to indicate truthfulness. The perverse reasoning, based on no behavioural science but nevertheless relentlessly repeated by feminist activists, is that the trauma of the abuse makes the accuser give an inaccurate, unreliable account. And this very inaccuracy and unreliablity is said to prove the truth of the account.

8 Medieval witchcraft trials often relied on forcing confessions by torture. This was rare in England, but common in Europe. We also know that political "witches" in communist purges were mistreated until they made untrue confessions in hope of respite. Medieval torture is not (yet) being applied to defendants in the contemporary sex witch hunt. However, police and prosecutorial behaviour is calculated to be as unpleasant and threatening as possible. Elderly men have their doors needlessly smashed in at dawn and are dragged out of bed. Families are falsely targeted as accomplices, to put pressure on the main defendant. Careers and reputations are deliberately sabotaged before trial, both as pre- and extra-judicial punishment, and to undermine the integrity of the trial.

9 I was surprised to discover that a very small number of medieval witchcraft accusations made it as far as a formal trial, and the majority of defendants was actually acquitted. The same proportions occur in the modern sex witch hunt. As Marx-Feminists like to remind us, very few sexual complaints make it to trial, and very few contested sexual trials result in a conviction (although the percentages aren't very different from other types of crime). In historical witchcraft trials, it's largely accepted that this is because the overwhelming majority of accusations was utter horseshit. And the same is true in the sex witch hunt now in full swing, except no one admits it.

10 A minority of witchcraft defendants were found guilty not of the main charge of witchcraft, but of minor crimes. These were often innocuous or technical in nature, and certainly not worthy of being burned at the stake. This is also true of sex witch hunt defendants. A minority has committed lower level crimes causing little or no tangible harm to anyone, and not deserving a heavy penalty. The footballer Adam Johnson is a good example. He was acquitted of most of what he was accused of, but convicted of relatively minor, non-violent crimes. His punishment of 6 years imprisonment exceeds the maximum sentence for unlawful wounding.

11 Witchcraft is, of course, supernatural. The harm it caused by its spells and curses was done through some mystery mechanism with no rational explanation. Likewise, it is often asserted that modern sexual misdemeanours cause harm through mechanisms that cannot be explained. An example is the pretext given for prosecuting men for possession of child pornography. Mere viewing of this material, it is said, harms the person depicted in the image because it "re-victimises" them. It is not apparent how the subject of an image becomes aware of each viewing. People who have participated in sexual activity underage but without any coercion, violence, trickery or ill effects are said nevertheless to have been harmed by it. This is despite the absence of injury, and despite the characterisation of the experience as positive by the underage participant. Again, there is no rational explanation for how harm can have been caused in these circumstances.

12 No discussion of witch hunts would be complete without mention of witch hunters. The most infamous of these was Matthew Hopkins. Heinrich Kramer, mentioned above, is another example. These two witch hunters, and others, usually have some shared characteristics. They are self-appointed. They have a dubious past and questionable previous conduct. They are not legally trained. They have a thinly-disguised financial motive. Their methods frequently make them criminals in the very same way as their targets are said to be criminals. They are often used as paid fingermen, snitches or informants, to take the lead in fraudulent prosecutions so that more senior figures can pretend to remain impartial. Modern examples demonstrating most or all of these characteristics include online vigilantes who entrap men into phantom crimes against non-existent youths, professional victim Peter Saunders and bogus journalist Mark Williams Thomas.

13 Witchcraft convictions and executions were rare under inquisitorial trial systems, compared to adversarial systems. The same is true today in sex witch hunts. All major Anglophone countries have adversarial systems, where the state attempts to prove its version of the defendant's misdeeds, without first bothering to determine whether it's true or accurate. Conviction rates under this system are much higher than in countries with inquisitorial systems, like France, Germany and Japan. Inquisitorial trials primarily attempt to establish an accurate version of events, and only then examine whether a crime was committed and who the perpetrator was.

14 Some researchers suggest that outbreaks of witch hunting occur at times of socio-political turmoil. Compared to upheavals in Europe through the middle ages, our era is stable. However, there are signs of socio-political unrest in the Anglophone world. There has been a recent trend of increasingly extreme left- and right-wing polarisation. This could be considered a parallel to the Catholic-Protestant duality in historical religious conflicts.

15 Witch hunts often have underlying economic motivation. In the middle ages old unmarried women were a burden on finances and resources, as are elderly members of less developed societies. These groups are disproportionately persecuted by witch hunts to relieve pressure on the community. Accusations in India and Pakistan very often have property disputes in the background context. Falsely provoking criminal proceedings is a way of gaining unfair advantage. It's no different in the contemporary sex witch hunt. Accusers use a criminal trial to bolster civil claims for damages, and many jurisdictions offer large amounts of cash compensation to accusers, regardless of whether their victim is convicted.

16 Historical accusations of witchcraft were largely motivated by social squabbles, almost always of female origin. Local gossip built up momentum, but formal prosecution required authorisation by a (usually male) figure with official responsibility. Today's gossip is conducted online, in discussion groups on social media. Groups of people conniving and colluding are just a few clicks away. As in the old witchcraft trials, formal prosecutions have to be sponsored by an authority figure.

17 In medieval times, there was a perception of the female sex being more prone to sin. This was commonly accepted, based on the role of Eve in Genesis. There was something intrinsic to female nature that was vulnerable to moral misconduct. Therefore social and legal rules were developed to keep women's purported nature in check. Today, the position is reversed. Relentless propaganda repeatedly asserts that men are violent, abusive, deceitful and sociopathic. These qualities, it is said, are intrinsic to male nature, or "toxic masculinity." Social and legal rules are being imposed on men to keep their purported nature in check. Of course, modern men don't correspond to this fictional feminist bogeyman figure any more than medieval women cavorted with serpents and tempted innocent men with magic apples.

18 Heinsohn & Steiger suggest a theory (which I don't find entirely convincing) that medieval witch hunts targeted women who provided contraceptive advice or products. This was undesirable after the Black Death had killed around half the population in the mid 14th century. Governing authorities wanted to repopulate Europe, and therefore tried to prevent birth control. The modern sex witch hunt targets men during life periods of greatest reproductive opportunity, typically early middle age. The Marx-Feminist objective of depopulating the white, middle class demographic group would therefore represent an inverse comparison to Heinsohn & Steiger.

19 Historical witch hunts placed an emphasis on confession to reduce the level of punishment. This was often because the evidence against a defendant was so weak that the prosecution would quickly collapse in the face of any challenge. The parallel in the modern sex witch hunt is plain to see. Plea bargaining in the USA threatens defendants with many charges and consecutive penalties for each. After heavy intimidation, the defendant is then offered a greatly reduced penalty in exchange for a confession. In Britain, a confession gives a defendant a one third reduction of the penalty imposed. 

20 Witchcraft has a peculiar legal status in Papua New Guinea. The practice of white magic is allowed but using black magic is illegal. This might seem silly to most of us, but there was the same distinction in historical witch trials. Christianity and Islam contain plenty of purportedly supernatural practices, which were or are legal. Supernatural rituals falling outside established faith doctrine were illegal. The same kind of distinction often occurs in modern sex witch hunts. A faith ideology of how sex should be practiced has been developed by Marx-Feminists. Activities within that are legal. Any sexual behaviour that falls outside the Marx-Feminist dogma is harshly punished, even when it affects no one other than the defendant and causes no harm.

21 Defendants in all manner of witch hunts are very often prosecuted for being something which attracts disapproval, rather than doing something that has caused harm or loss to others. Medieval witches were tried as heretics, rather than for poisoning people with potions. People denounced by Joseph MacArthy were accused of being communists, rather than actually doing something treasonable to harm the USA. The current sex witch hunt almost always prosecutes men for being sexual in a way not approved by Marx-Feminism, rather than for actually doing harm to anyone: sexual crimes featuring physical violence are extremely rare.

22 Very often, someone who questioned the verdict of a Holy Inquisitor in a witchcraft trial was himself accused of heresy. Likewise, anyone who stands up for due process and presumption of innocence in contemporary sex witch trials is accused of being pro-rape or a paedophile apologist.

Looking over the list, it seems that the witch hunt phenomenon occurs in many different societies and has taken various forms throughout history. Perhaps witch hunting serves some kind of need in human societies: as an overflow outlet for ignorance, prejudice, greed and petty hatreds? Or maybe witch hunting arises naturally from characteristics common to all human societies. 

That's all for now. I have to go and feed my black cat.

Christopher Trinnaman
https://teamtrinnaman.weebly.com/