Witch-hunts

=WITCH HUNTS =



A witch-hunt is when people search for witchcraft. It involved moral panic, mass hysteria, and mob lynching. This wasn’t illegal. It occurred from the Early Modern Period to the Thirty Years War.

=MCCARTHYISM=

McCarthyism was when people went around looking for innocent people and exclude them from everyone else. McCarthyism is a witch-hunt because people were rounded up in the US and were thought to be Communists or to have Communist ties, which was just as bad as being a witch. People were harshly investigated under false information during the 1692 witch-hunts and during the McCarthy era in the 1950s. Joseph McCarthy was a senator who investigated the issue of Communism infiltrating the US government. This period of time was known as the Second Red Scare and it increased fear that the Communists were influencing America. During this time, many Americans were accused of being communists and became subjects of aggressive investigation. When McCarthy started to accuse Army officers of being communists, they turned on him.

=HOUSE UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES COMMITTEE=



The House Un-American Activities Committee was a group established in 1937 under chairmanship of Martin Dies. They supported the KKK and investigated people who committed crimes of un-American nature. The people who were bright before this committee were there because they were associated with Communism. If they were convicted, they lost their jobs and were financially ruined.

=MODERN DAY WITCH HUNTS=




 * On February 16, 2008 a Saudi woman Fawzi Falih was arrested and convicted of witchcraft and now faces imminent beheading for sorcery unless the King issues a rare pardon


 * There have been alleged-witch persecution and public trials in Indonesia, even in the 2000s. Hundreds have died because of persecution.


 * There continued to be occasional prosecutions under the [|Witchcraft Act] in the 19th and 20th century. The most well remembered is that of the medium [|Helen Duncan] in 1944, the last person to be imprisoned under the Act. Supposedly the authorities feared that by her alleged [|clairvoyant] powers she could betray details of the [|D-Day] preparations, but the accusations in court centered round defrauding the public. She spent nine months in prison. The last conviction under the act was that of [|Jane Rebecca] [|Yorke] . The Act was repealed in 1951.