This phenomenon is a subset of the often rational preference that people have for bullshit over reality. To the extent that you let reality govern what you think, you give up control over what you think.
That's totally true. Of course I do that all the time with the most scary things in which I have no control. LALALALALALA.
This is also a better emotional synthesis of what Fred Clark has been chipping away at for a while with his anthropology of Satanic panics.
2. Oh sure. The political example that I sometimes cite (borrowed from Ta-Nehisi Coates) is: "The arc of the moral universe bends toward justice." I prefer to believe that, despite considerable evidence to the contrary. The alternative -- that the universe doesn't give a fuck about justice -- is too depressing.
I ate at Comet Pizza last weekend. No sign of child molestation, and the food was good, but it was overpriced.
So on the one hand, the gunman's indifference to reality was genuinely costly in that it landed him in jail, but presumably he save himself the expense of buying a small, too-pricey pizza.
The casualties in the war against overpriced pizza are the real heroes.
It's a subset of fear of the outsider. Fear of the infiltrator, who walks among us but seeks to destroy us. Gypsies, Jews, or under officially non-religious and ethnically unaffiliated communist states, just call them "saboteurs".
I don't think 7 explains all of it. It's also just plain power - when it's directed at women who are otherwise of the dominant group, it's hard to call them outsiders.
I suppose witches are mostly women who don't fit the dominant paradigm.
Maybe the worst propagandists of all are those who can convince you that someone who appears to be of the dominant group is secretly an outsider. That's real ultimate power.
Subvert the dominant paradigm!
Someone wrote that one tweet at a time? And other people read it? No wonder the world is on fire.
12: It's the modern equivalent of serialized novels.
It's actually remarkably effective -- people that normally would never read a full-page article,can be tricked into reading something just as long when it's divided into a dozens of tweets.
I think you'll find that serialized novels tend to suck when collected.
15: Your tastes are idiosyncratic, Mossy.
Literally my entire age cohort despised Dickens.
Anyway, I'm not familiar with studies of witch panics but I suspect strongly that OP link is utterly wrong to conflate witch-panic with racial-other-panic, and possibly utterly wrong about everything.
The one witch-panic I'm dimly familiar with was in IIRC Lebombo in the 1980s. The targets were all of the same race and ethnicity as the attackers, and were distinguished by being richer and more successful than normal; the standard accusation was that they used zombies to work their fields at night, so improving their harvests. Another element was frequent lightning strikes unaccompanied by rain (an accident of microclimate, but considered freakish), IIRC killing cattle quite frequently, which in a very poor farming society presumably could make people pretty desperate.
I stand to be corrected, but I think that's pretty typical case.
18: I haven't read the linked thread because fuck twitter, but from my dimly remembered reading about the early modern witch craze in Europe, it was nearly always communities going after their own members. Even in religiously mixed areas of the Holy Roman Empire, it was generally protestants persecuting fellow protestants and Catholics persecuting fellow Catholics.
I suspect strongly that OP link is utterly wrong to conflate witch-panic with racial-other-panic, and possibly utterly wrong about everything.
She certainly got creative with that Wilson/Brown retelling.
May I request from everyone a non-relitigation of the Brown shooting?
I think a broadly shared agreement on that point is why the thread died off after gswift's attempt to pick a fight.
Back on the topic of the OP, never underestimate the degree to which plain sadism is a motivating factor in people's behavior.
Because people suck.
The study in 18 was the thesis this was based on.
As land holdings shrank, people streamed onto government Trust land, where residents became more competitive over resources. In these conditions, any sign of affluence would trigger an accusation of witchcraft against the rich, or against the poor, who perhaps had tried to bewitch the rich, or vice versa.
Yeah, the bit about how if that woman felt real fear when she found out she was just waiting for a cab she would have been relieved instead of aggrieved and demand she stay till the cops got there was on point. Some of the rest of that thread maybe not so much.
We could instead play the new latimes game where you try to get out of being wrongfully convicted by a dirty cop:
http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-brady-list-secrecy/
Or, I don't know, light the Anthropologist Signal? Someone around here has to actually know something about witches.
There was a Satanic possession/pedophilia hysteria in the 1980's here in the U.S., which led to several almost certainly innocent people convicted of hideous crimes and serving long sentences, and a much larger number having their lives ruined by being the subject of publicly known investigations. There wasn't a racial element. The victims were mostly owners or employees of day care centers in working class communities, roughly of the same socioeconomic class as their accusers and sometimes neighbors.
There's two things going on which could be separated -- is the writer doing a good job of describing a type of real-but-also-insincere fear, and is it the same thing that drives literal witch hunts? I'm not sure about the latter, I don't know much about witches. But the phenomenon she's talking about seems real.
I once knew a lawyer who had a witch for a secretary.
I haven't read the linked thread because fuck twitter,
Fwiw it's compiled into an essay, not a series of tweets.
It's actually remarkably effective -- people that normally would never read a full-page article,can be tricked into reading something just as long when it's divided into a dozens of tweets.
How long are full-page articles? This appears to be less than 1,000 words.
4.
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET--Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point--"
MY POINT EXACTLY."
Then again, this was only a few dozen tweets, and the G*rlands/Abr*msons of the world do a lot more.
33: But it started off on twitter. The taint remains.
I can see you're having big feelings.
In a big feeling, taints stay with you.
Like a lover's voice fires the mountainside
If hating twitter is wrong I don't want to be right.
Well, would you be relieved if it went away? Or would you tell Twitter that it would be a crime if it left before the cops got here?
Pretty sure per the kids today it's "big mood".
This is still rather genius. (note twitterstorm != tweetstorm)
"Coincidence? I don't believe in coincidence. My hair is itchy."
IHMHB an ancestor of mine executed for witchcraft in 17th century CT. Guy accidentally shoots another guy, confesses, is fined, etc. A few years later, old woman is accused of causing the accidental discharge. Here's the indictment:
Lydea Gilburt thou are here indited by that name of Lydea Gilburt that not having the feare of god before thy Eyes thou hast of late years or still dust give Entertainment of Sathan the great Enemy of god and mankind and by his helpe hast killed the Body of Henry Styles besides other witchcrafts for which according to the law of god and the Established Law of this commonwealth thou Deservest to Dye.
Anyway, I think I would really agree with the article in the OP, but I haven't got to read it yet. It sounds like it matches my conclusions about the way fear and power related.
43: I'd be relieved if it went away, but how relieved would depend on how it went away. Quietly disappearing would be OK, but some sort of spectacular implosion would be better.
45 is great.
46: Are you tracking down the descendants of the accusers to seek vengence? It kind of seems like you should.
Would you read it if someone emailed it to you 280 characters at a time?
I'll read it eventually. It's just a busy week.
Literally my entire age cohort despised Dickens.
Step up and throw down.
Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend, Great Expectations are all completely fantastic. True the Esther chapters of BH are unfortunate, but the rest more than makes up. Also, Balzac was serialized,
FOR MORE ON SCAPEGOATS, OU WITCHES AS THEY ARE NOW KNOWN EN ANGLAIS, REGARDEZ MON LIVRE "THE SCAPEGOAT"
By Dickens I mean A Tale of Two Cities, and will hear no defense of it. And for throwing down, I give you The Bonfire of the Vanities, without which Tom Wolfe would have sunk unremarked back into the loamy ooze from whence he slithered.
For a second there I though Balzac was alive, and doing market research.
I really liked ATofTC when I was a freshman in high school, and then at some point I found out we'd read an abridged version, and I hadn't really read most of it anyway, but I had really enjoyed the discussions.
See, Heebie's experience is what everyone could have had if the book had been edited down to size instead of being serialized.
56. So many worthy books I just haven't read-- is Girard worth it? I also haven't read Elias Canetti, or the Gourevitch book about Rwanda.
57: Bonfire of the Vanities was an OK book. The film adaptation of it was one of the worst movies that I've ever paid to see in the theater.
Haven't read the Gourevitch, but for a wider view I always recommend Prunier.
I thought it was a good book, but I was a much younger, stupider, asshole at the time. In any case, his later atrocities outweigh any qualities it may have.
64: You're too young to have ever been much younger.
As one ages one accumulates mass, thus causing one's local time to run ever more slowly; whereas in one's lithe and wholesome youth the years rush past like butterflies.
I liked AToTC, but I don't think it's very representative of Dickens. Fully second lw on Bleak House and Great Expectations (haven't read OMF). Though the original ending of GE is the right one, and I will fight anyone who disagrees.
gswift's attempt to pick a fight
What? I have 0 interest in rehashing that thing. I'm just pointing out that it's an indication the author is operating from perception and not reality.
Agree completely about GE and about the ending.
No love for David Copperfield? That's my other favorite Dickens nove.l
It starts out good, but then it just turns into stunts, not actually tricks at all.
70: Ha! I was just listening to a podcast about how he made the Statue of Liberty disappear.
68: That the author has found a witch to fear?
68: If you really want to rehash your disagreement with many other commenters here, including me, about the Wilson shooting, maybe we could do it some other time, I'm not feeling it today. If that's not what you're going for, you seem to have forgotten that your position on that, as encapsulated in your enthusiastic quibbling with this post, is highly controversial.
Reiterate 21. Totally not worth the time.
BTW, Killing Eve is excellent and I'm only two episodes in.
|| Excellent article in Slate by my best friend from high school! Just in case any of you may have started to get swayed by all the testimonials to Brett Kavanaugh's excellence as a carpooler
||
My gym owner just sent out a message to members that instead of having the usual 9:00 Saturday morning workout, the trainer is just going to leave the gym unlocked from 5:30 pm today until whenever they get back in town on Sunday, and members can drop in and work out on their own.
This is a "swim at your own risk" kinda day meaning there will be no coaches/coaching. So don't do anything stupid!
This seems like a monumentally bad idea from a legal standpoint.
78: Eh. How often do they get serious injuries, and do you think it'd be that much more often without the trainer watching? The risk sounds fairly low to me. You need a big injury, sustained by someone who's enough of an asshole to sue the gym because the owner let them use the equipment unsupervised, and occurring in a context where supervision would plausibly have prevented it.
I'd say they probably shouldn't leave the gym unlocked with no one there as a matter of course, but on occasion? Doesn't seem all that risky to me.
Serious injuries may be rare, but I'm determined to make it happen.
80: Don't hurt yourself just to win the argument.
73: I'm not going to rehash any of it. But anyone, like the author in the OP does, who asserts "He was, in fact, shot while running away" is saying what they want to be true and it has no basis in the real world.
Now that you've brought up your version of events three times, are you done?
It's not my "version", but whatever, I'm out.
I mean, if you want to talk about anything else, go for it. That one is just a squabble where I don't think anyone's changing anyone else's mind here.
Or, I don't know, light the Anthropologist Signal? Someone around here has to actually know something about witches.
I'm not an actual anthropologist, but I do know a bit about witchcraft. (Those who are newer here may not have seen the blog I did ten years ago [!] going day-by-day through the Salem witch trials and other major events of the year 1692, including another more obscure witchcraft scare in Connecticut.)
I think the theory linked is good and probably applies to a lot of things, including at least some witchcraft scares, but I agree that it's a little misleading to make witchcraft the central metaphor. Or, perhaps better, the use of witchcraft as a metaphor refers more to the contemporary popular interpretation of past witchcraft belief than to the specifics of actual belief, which have cross-culturally been a lot more like Mossy's example in 18. (This includes early modern European and colonial American witchcraft beliefs, which aside from occasional flareups like Salem were mostly about assigning blame for economic injuries like mysterious deaths of cows.)
Good god, 45 was funny.
("Fergus McContrary" snort)
I am confused by how many people are commenting here about how the author of the thing in the OP has it wrong about real witch panics when it did not seem at all like that's what she was trying to talk about.
Well, her whole thing is about "fear of witches" but she never rigorously defined what she meant by that.
I mean, it's clear from the actual discussion that real witch panics are not her main concern, but the terminology does make it seem like they might be.
I get that witch hunts have an awfully specific meaning that she doesn't intend, but I'm also having trouble thinking of a better bogeyman that she could have used. Zombies/monsters/vampires don't evoke the same kind of "kids working themselves into a lather over the old lady in the old house who they think is a witch" that she's intentionally invoking.
How many variations on voke can I use in one sentence? Stay voke, folks.
87: Yes, she clearly wanted to talk about racism, about didn't have anything coherent to say, so she rambled about witches instead.
it's clear from the actual discussion that real witch panics are not her main concern
It sure is. Literally the only thing connecting her main concern to historical witch panics is the word "witch." Here is what she had to say about it:
The witch's house is what you call the haunted house in your neighborhood, when someone lives there. It might be the serial killer's house, or the pervert's house. It doesn't have to be a witch. The point isn't what it's called.
I mean, I'm not trying to pick a fight here (although the crowd does seem to be in an ornery mood tonight), I just didn't understand where the witch panic stuff was coming from.
No, she's got something coherent to say, about a very recognizable pattern about how people behave in the presence of targeted people or groups. Acting aggressively on the basis of what seems to be a sincerely felt emotion that the actor describes as fear, but which doesn't lead them to try to safely disengage from the situation the way people do when they're genuinely afraid of something.
Did you have trouble understanding the piece?
90: I'll bet literal money there are a bunch of well-developed anthro concepts she could have used, but didn't, because she doesn't actually know anything beyond anecdote, she's just standing around talking. Which I guess is an easy thing to do if you can only review yourself 280 characters at a time.
And misusing "witch" as she does isn't a nothing detail: as we're collectively pointing out, actual witch scares (not the imaginary versions she's talking about) are a live and pervasive phenomenon, including in the US.
She's using "witch" in its (maybe specifically American?) pop-culture sense, which as heebie notes is probably the best metaphor for what she's saying. It doesn't correspond particularly closely with actual real-world witchcraft beliefs/panics, but that's a problem with the pop-culture concept, not her argument or use of the metaphor.
Did you have trouble understanding the piece?
Could it be that you maybe forgot to read it?
she's just standing around talking
Isn't that what we're doing?
94.1: It is a recognizable pattern of behavior. I'm calling her incoherent for falsely conflating witch-scares with racism.
94.2: You are by your own admission incapable of parsing sentences, so maybe you want to lay off the rock-throwing on that point.
97 last: We're standing around talking, citing facts which we know based on scholarship we have read, and can link to when we want.
Using "witch" in the pop sense that all her peers use it is misusing it?
If "witch-fear" is a standard American usage in the sense the OP link uses it, then I'll follow teo in 96. I'll still question the extent to which that describes American racism.
falsely conflating witch-scares with racism
I really think you should read the piece before continuing to carry on this way.
101.1 to 102. And I did read the piece. If I hadn't I wouldn't have commented on it.
We have witches in ways our ancestors wouldn't have understood.
Oh, you might be surprised.
I don't know that "witch-fear" is a widely used term in her sense, but "witch" and "witch hunt" certainly are, with the key idea being that witches don't actually exist so fear of them is without a basis in reality even if it is subjectively real.
101: the claim isn't that it's a general description of racism. The claim is that this kind of manipulative use of fear is one pattern of racism.
Her application of the "witch" metaphor makes perfect sense if you start from the premise that lots of American white people are afraid of non-white people even though they are not actually dangerous to them.
Don't 60% of US residents believe in the literal existence of Satan? Really doesn't have to be a metaphor at all.
So her argument is that people's behavior in a lot of situations demonstrates that they are aware on some (not necessarily conscious) level that their fear doesn't have a real basis in actual danger to themselves, but that they are using it as a tool to exert power over the people they claim to fear. Again, this is exactly what "witch hunt" conventionally means in the American pop-culture sense. Racism isn't the only example she gives (she says online harassment is the context in which she first came up with the theory), but I think she's right that it does fit a lot of examples of racist behavior.
109: But only 26% of U.S. adults were willing to vote for his candidate.
I tried to grow tomatoes and the plants disappeared. Witchcraft or groud hogs?
My friend found four baby snakes, one at a time, all over her house, yesterday. The first two she caught and released on the pavement and the snakes both died immediately. The other two she released in the grass. (She's a bit unglued right now.)
Snakes don't lay eggs in batches that small.
Their poor mother must be worried sick.
"How can I keep the other 45 in the house with me before I lose them too?"
If your "friend" is really just you seeking reassurance, I fucked up. Sorry. Time for sleep.
I don't have time to click through, teo, but wonder how important Tituba really was.
I'll argue with you, gswift! Actually, I won't, because I don't remember the details, but I've never seen anyone address this video, and I don't think these guys were interviewed by the DA (who I didn't trust at all). When a big working class white dude at the scene, in the moment, says "He had his fucking hands in the air," I believe him.
I realize no one's mind is going to change. We don't actually have to argue.
I also hate the fuck out of Dickens, but I've mentioned that before.
I have no opinion about witches.
Oh, and even now, when I reach into the bushes to retrieve a ball (not a euphemism) I think "I wouldn't do this in New Mexico." When everything is strip malls and Buffalo Wild Wings, it's kind of cool that there are some genuine regional differences. LB probably never worries about coming across a snake (not a euphemism) on her commute.
"Snake" wouldn't be a euphemism in this case, it would be a term of opprobrium. So, not in the metaphorical sense, I meant.
Do they have skinks in that part of the country?
My friend found four baby snakes, one at a time, all over her house, yesterday.
O my God. Four baby snakes (but are there more?!) is pretty much a nest of vipers in her house. And I don't care if they are "baby snakes:" they are snakes, fer f***'s sake, all cold-blooded, and slithery, and reptilian. I would be seriously freaking out, and afraid to open a cupboard door.
I would be seriously calling the cops on whatever neighboring white person hexed the house.
77: The author bio doesn't mention being your best friend in high school, which seems like an important omission.
"The witch's house is what you call the haunted house in your neighborhood, when someone lives there. It might be the serial killer's house, or the pervert's house."
I would have thought that would be the Boo Radley house.
In a small town, one man has to be both the serial killer and the pervert.
Of course, farming communities will have a cereal pervert.
After pumpkins, witches are like the most common form of Halloween decor, but Boo Radley is next-most and also clearly well-known.
Also my friends have now found the seventh baby snake in their house.
The seventh seal would be more ominous.
So snakes #5 and #6 are still on the loose?
But the seventh baby seal would be cuter than the seventh baby snake.
Has anybody identified the species of these beasties?
108, 110: I'm familiar with the political sense of "witch hunt", as in McCarthy. Analyzing the OP phenomenon within that framework, as in 108, does indeed make perfect sense, but the author doesn't do that. She clearly isn't talking about political-level witch hunts, she's talking about individual actions and interactions. The closest she gets to the political level is saying that she notices a pattern of behavior. Since she wasn't talking about political witch-hunts I assumed she was talking, incorrectly, about actual literal witch hunts.
It seems though she's using a third sense of witch hunt, embodied in her description of children working themselves up about the local witch (/pedophile/whatever). She presents this account as if it's a fairly standard experience, or at least a standard trope. Maybe that's an American thing, or maybe I'm unrepresentative, but it's very alien to my experience. I was aware people did such things, but thought it very rare, so I assumed, apparently incorrectly, she was basically talking shit.
All three usages obviously describe phenomena which exist and to some extent overlap with one another, and with other animosities, but I think are also different and distinguishable.
119: Obama's DOJ didn't find those witnesses credible:
Although there are several individuals who have stated that Brown held his hands up in an unambiguous sign of surrender prior to Wilson shooting him dead, their accounts do not support a prosecution of Wilson. As detailed throughout this report, some of those accounts are inaccurate because they are inconsistent with the physical and forensic evidence; some of those accounts are materially inconsistent with that witness's own prior statements with no explanation, credible for otherwise, as to why those accounts changed over time. Certain other witnesses who originally stated Brown had his hands up in surrender recanted their original accounts, admitting that they did not witness the shooting or parts of it, despite what they initially reported either to federal or local law enforcement or to the media.
None of this is responsive to gswift, whose complaint was about the statement that Brown was "running away" when he was shot. Here is what the DOJ report says about that:
While credible witnesses gave varying accounts of exactly what Brown was doing with his hands as he moved toward Wilson - i.e., balling them, holding them out, or pulling up his pants up - and varying accounts of how he was moving - i.e., "charging," moving in "slow motion," or "running" - they all establish that Brown was moving toward Wilson when Wilson shot him. Although some witnesses state that Brown held his hands up at shoulder level with his palms facing outward for a brief moment, these same witnesses describe Brown then dropping his hands and "charging" at Wilson.
The DOJ said the bullets, to the extent that it could be determined, all hit Brown in the front:
There are no witness accounts that federal prosecutors, and likewise a jury, would credit to support the conclusion that Wilson fired at Brown from behind. With the exception of the two wounds to Brown's right arm, which indicate neither bullet trajectory nor the direction in which Brown was moving when he was struck, the medical examiners' reports are in agreement that the entry wounds from the latter gunshots were to the front of Brown's body, establishing that Brown was facing Wilson when these shots were fired. This includes the fatal shot to the top of Brown's head. The physical evidence also establishes that Brown moved forward toward Wilson after he turned around to face him. The physical evidence is corroborated by multiple eyewitnesses.
Back to the OP, she's right about witch homes. AIMHSHB, there was a house in my suburban home town where the Sunday school teaching dad murdered his mother, wife, and three children, and disappeared. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_List
It was a normal house, but kids sneaked in regularly to feel the scare. Someone, probably teenagers, torched it less than a year after the event.
We had a house that we were sure was haunted in our neighborhood when I was a kid -- can't remember if it was witches or ghosts. It was just an odd, old-timey (Victorian maybe?) house that didn't fit in with the rest of the cookie-cutter suburban neighborhood we were in. I have no idea who lived there, but I remember being genuinely afraid of that place when I was maybe six years old.
She clearly isn't talking about political-level witch hunts, she's talking about individual actions and interactions. The closest she gets to the political level is saying that she notices a pattern of behavior. Since she wasn't talking about political witch-hunts I assumed she was talking, incorrectly, about actual literal witch hunts.
She's making a psychological analysis, talking about the manipulative use of motivated fear to perpetuate racism. It's inherently individual, because it's the psychology of the individual. These individuals are doing things that are currently a salient part of the political climate, but white ladies have been calling the cops on black men since the dawn of time.
It seems though she's using a third sense of witch hunt, embodied in her description of children working themselves up about the local witch (/pedophile/whatever).
She's using the laymen meaning of "witch", as in the spooky women that come out around Halloween.
but white ladies have been calling the cops on black men since the dawn of time.
You submit that this is functionally the same thing as televized Congressional hearings or mass deportations?
What the FUCK happened to the analogy ban?
We never made it stick on Twitter generally.
So that's what Ogged was doing.
I have about as much enthusiasm for relitigating the Michael Brown shooting as I do for relitigating the 2016 Democratic primaries.
And even less for a Michael Avenatti run.
"She clearly isn't talking about political-level witch hunts, she's talking about individual actions and interactions"
Yeah, and I have a harder time seeing that - in part because ISTM that the dynamic of a witch-hunt developed inside community. To that extent the ritual abuse scares of the 80s seem closer.
I would after that scandal how many people took jobs at day care centers expecting to be able to do a human sacrifice now and then and were horrified to find it was all dirty diapers and wiped noses.
Realistically, entry-level personnel would only be cleaning up the congealed baby fat afterwards.
They still probably showed up to work in robes, carrying obsidian knives, under the theory of dress for the job you want, not the one you have.
My friends have found their 8th baby snake!
At this point, do you really want to stay friends with them? Clearly cursed.
28
You called? Fear of witches is actually the fear of the crypto other, or of that which does harm without overtly appearing dangerous. What makes witches so dangerous is that anyone can be a witch and no one has any way of knowing (except perhaps in retrospect). Witchcraft is something that certainly occurs in "modern" contexts both implicitly and explicitly.* It taps in on a fundamental human fear of the uncanny: the thing that appears to be that which it is not.
One pretty classic explanation (e.g. Evans-Pritchard) is that witchcraft is used to understand why things happen, especially in worlds where there are no coincidences. You get sick? Lose a family member? Piano falls out of the sky and kills you? Witchcraft. Witchcraft doesn't replaced immediate physical cause (poorly stored food, cancer, bad movers), it explains why that particular misfortune happened to you (and not someone else) at that particular time (and not some other time).
*Racism can motivate accusations of witchcraft but certainly isn't the same phenomenon. Fear of the crypto Other, e.g. the crypto Jew or the black person passing certainly could be described as a form of fear of witches, though obviously you're talking about complex phenomena so I don't think it could be described solely as fear of witches.
Thanks Buttercup. Any answers on 90/95?
What makes witches so dangerous is that anyone can be a witch...
Don't believe those for-profit witch schools. If you don't have the grades to get admitted to an accredited program, spend a couple of years in community college before trying again.
It's not like landing a plane. Video games aren't enough training to do it right.
But god help you if you have a community-college NEWT when the next dark lord rises.
153: IANAA, but it seems that there is a useful distinction to be drawn between what you're talking about, and the kind of thing that one might for want of a better term call "scapegoating" - picking out members of a visible group and accusing them of doing bad stuff.
There is a difference between "my crops failed because Bob my neighbour is a witch and cast a spell on them" and "the Jews are poisoning the wells".
In the first, which I think is what you're talking about, everyone agrees that there are witches out there who are normal in appearance and behaviour but secretly do bad stuff, and the argument is over "is Bob one of them". And our answer to that will probably reflect how we feel about Bob.
In the second, everyone agrees that there is a group that are obviously different in appearance and behaviour, but the argument is over "are they doing bad stuff". And our answer to that will reflect how we feel about Jews.
What the OP is talking about seems closer to the second than the first.
entry-level personnel would only be cleaning up the congealed baby fat afterwards.
For rendering into baby oil.
Covered up by the powerful baby oil and baby powder industrial complex.
Covered up by the powerful baby oil and baby powder industrial complex.
They may alternatively be mulched to create the nutritious drink known, descriptively, as an Innocent smoothie. (cf. raspberry smoothie, banana smoothie etc).
I thought I was getting pure popes! I demand a refund.
Innocent Smoothies - they're pure indulgence