The Devil You Know
Witch hunts should start with a look in the mirror.
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I woke up this morning, flipped open my computer to start working, and—as part of my usual work routine—I opened up LinkedIn to do some networking. This was the first post I saw:
I come from a family of lawyers. I can’t escape anything having to do with the law. We debate Supreme Court decisions at dinner; we get each other’s opinions on cases people are working on; and don’t even try to discuss famous court battles with us. You will regret whatever your opinion is on Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.
This post being at the top of my feed was par for the course, and the article that accompanied it is thoughtful, relevant reading. It’s also a subject that has been on my mind constantly over the last year.
Witches are everywhere
When we think of witch hunts, we tend to think of a bunch of frumpy Puritans in Salem, Massachusetts getting burned at the stake for probably being not frumpy enough, or whatever.1 In reality, witch hunts have taken infinite forms over the course of human history: The French Revolution, the Nazis rooting out Jews, Communists getting people to snitch on their neighbors, Senator Joseph McCarthy getting people to snitch on Communists. What comes around, goes around in a low-trust society.
We’re also surrounded by witch hunts today. For example, here are some which happened over the last year:
Parents in Loudoun County, VA created a list of parents who didn’t seem “woke” enough, opening these parents up to harassment.
Texas and Tennessee are among two states to participate in controversial book bans including the book Maus—a graphic novel depicting the Holocaust.
Cultural bans of Russian art, products, and people like Anna Netrebko and Alexander Malofeev after Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine.
Journalists losing their minds and calling for others to be fired for the bad judgment of retweeting a tacky joke.
The highest court in the United States not being able to trust its own staff (and maybe each other) after a draft of a possible decision that could overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked.
The January 6th… everything.2
Purity tests and public apologies
A key part of any witch hunt is purity tests. We require victims to show undying loyalty to a cause at the risk of losing that which they most value. For those accused of witchcraft, their necks were literally on the line. Today, you have next to no chance of being elected for a high-ranking GOP position unless you have the blessing of His Grace, Donald J Trump. Heaven forbid you anger him and his fury beats down upon you!
Even for those who make a mistake and end up apologizing publicly, it might not be enough to save them from utter disgrace. We have come to view The Public Apology as a victim’s last words before execution—commending their soul to God in hopes their legacy is not that of internet shame—before putting their neck on the chopping block.
And we are always looking for ways to catch people up in their words. Take, for example, John Hawthorne’s cross-examination of Martha Corey in the Salem Witch Trials:
“At one point, Hathorne asked her: ‘Were you to serve the Devil ten years? Tell how many?’ American Studies scholar Katherine Howe—herself the descendent of three Salem witches—notes the trap that the question sets: If the witness says yes, then she has conceded a decade-long pact with Satan; if she says no, then the prosecutor will ask how many years she did agree to serve. Perhaps sensing her insoluble dilemma, the witness responded by laughing.”3
We use our speech, our clothing, our mannerisms to signal to others that we are in the “right” grouping of people. Look at any given Twitter bio or whether someone says, “Latinos”, “Latinx”, or “those Mexicans…”, and notice how it signals which group you are a part of and who the outsiders are. And how we love setting traps, so we can police each other’s language to show which of us is the most virtuous. Much like Martha Corey, we might find ourselves in an impossible and unwinnable situation.
I have a back injury for which I use a service dog. When I speak with disability advocates or other disabled people about it, I sometimes get interrupted to be reminded how to not speak about my own disability (and sometimes to tell me my dog is too fat). What a time to be alive when I can’t even be disabled correctly.
The Devil is hiding in plain sight
In Agatha Christie’s novel And Then There Were None, a group of strangers are invited to an island as dinner guests at a fancy estate. A framed copy of an eerie poem sits in their room foreshadowing the rest of the novel. One by one, they are picked off and murdered per the lines of the poem, leaving no survivors.
But who was the murderer? Warning: If you haven’t read the book or seen any of the dozens of film or television adaptations—there are spoilers ahead.
Each of the characters was invited onto the island because they were responsible for the death of an innocent person. Scotland Yard investigates the murders and eventually, a bottle washes up explaining what happened. Mr Justice Wargrave, a criminal judge who spent his life balancing his need for justice and his thirst for blood, finally devised a way to get both—stage this dinner party, fake his death as the 6th victim, and then kill himself in a way that looks like a murder.
There are easier ways to be a serial killer.
Throughout the entire book, no one suspects Wargrave, and it’s not just because he’s one of the “victims” in the middle of the pack. No one suspects him because he’s elderly, distinguished, and trustworthy. As a judge, he’s on the upper rungs of society, and he probably has no shortage of people attempting to curry his favor. He’s older, wealthy, and educated giving him plenty of social capital. And who would ever suspect a gentle old man of being a bloodthirsty monster?
When you look at old engravings or illuminated manuscripts in The Bible, Satan and demons are represented as ugly. But would any of us ever invite evil into our lives if it was sticky and smelly and covered in warts? Of course not. We let the charismatic, down-to-earth leader march into our neighborhoods to oust the “outsiders.” It’s the charming stranger we go to with our problems when he offers us an incredible deal. We let the handsome and seductive Dracula into our home, and only when we realize he’s only there to suck our blood, do we start to realize the error of our ways.
Hindsight is 20/20
The early Salemites were right—the devil was hard at work in their community—he just wasn’t casting spells or causing children to have fits. The real story was nowhere near as exciting, but instead, a depressing and persistent reminder of our own follies.
In the 17th century North America, the government was unstable. You had Englishmen transplanted from their native coasts onto foreign soil. When they weren’t getting in heated fights with the indigenous peoples, they had plenty of grievances to air with each other—particularly over religion and how it should be practiced. Despite having little structure, they were also expected to conduct legal proceedings the way they did back in Europe. To put it gently, these trials were a hot mess.
Virtually all of the defendants were social outsiders—people in the community who were less religious, rude, solitary, promiscuous, or just odd. Eventually, the hysteria increased and even beloved members of the community were singled out and hanged. But don’t worry, they pardoned most of them 18 years after the trials ended, and Massachusetts finally exonerated the rest of them in 2011.
At the height of moral panic and mass hysteria—much like the one I would argue we are living through right now—it’s easy for us to think we know who the villains and heroes are. We are quick to point out the witches; subject them to purity tests; signal our virtue to our allies; and congratulate ourselves for a job well done when we’ve successfully shamed the witch into a dark corner.
But if the Salem Witch Trials have taught us anything, this means we are not the heroes of that story. The devil was at work in this narrative, but not within the person we condemned.
Quick fact check: No one in the Salem Witch Trials was burned at the stake—they were hanged, except for one poor soul who was crushed and a few other people who died in prison. Not that this was any better than being burned at the stake…
Keep in mind that this investigation is a political one, not a criminal one. That doesn’t mean it can’t uncover valuable information but bear in mind that it’s not going to be as balanced as say, an FBI investigation.
EDIT: I’m looking at this again this morning (6/11/22), and I’ve had a good night sleep, so I remember what I wanted to actually say about this. The whole January 6th incident is made up of finger pointing from the reason people showed up to the Capitol in the first place to wreak havoc and make lawmakers pay, to the political reaction to the event and trying to root out lawmakers who may have been involved.
While I genuinely want to get to the bottom of the issue, I am worried about how bad the rebound is going to be. If you look at the examples I cited above, none of them worked out well for the instigators:
The French Revolution: Robespierre—one of the lead instigators of the movement—ALSO got sent to the guillotine as soon as he started to talk any sort of reason.
Nazi Occupation of Europe: This should go without saying, but just so we’re clear: When you run a murderous totalitarian regime, people usually don’t like it and eventually get wise. It’s often just a matter of time before you die in a bunker.
The Rise of Communism: One of the ways the Soviet Union controlled their people was by getting them to distrust each other and rat each other out. You do not need a crystal ball to know what happens when people don’t trust each other because then they’ll stop trusting the government.
The Rise of McCarthyism: The complete irony of Senator McCarthy’s rampage against communism is not lost on me, but I have always wondered if it was lost on him. He and Stalin definitely read the same handbook on social-political control.
TL;DR: There is no honor among thieves.
Well done on this piece--I love how far afield you range in your comparisons. Here’s one more: the show Essex Serpent now airing on Apple TV+. It’s a nice social hysteria story.
Fair commentary. Check the motives of the accuser.