In 2023, a modern-day witch hunt unfolded, instilling fear and paranoia within communities all over the world. The witch hunt was unlike anything seen before, as it targeted individuals not for their alleged practices of witchcraft, but for their perceived differences and ideologies. It started with the rise of a divisive political leader who exploited people's fears and prejudices. This leader, backed by a powerful group, began a campaign of scapegoating and demonizing certain individuals and communities. They labeled these groups as witches, branding them as threats to society. The witch hunt quickly spread like wildfire, fueled by social media and sensationalized news outlets.

The Witch Hunt in Poland, Daily Brief September 14, 2023

Without warning, the police showed up at Joanna’s home in Krakow, Poland, alongside a paramedic, after she had contacted her doctor.

Two police officers searched her apartment and asked for her phone. “It might be evidence in a crime,” they said. They wouldn’t tell her what crime.

Police escorted her to the hospital in an ambulance. And no, the police told her, she couldn’t call anyone to tell them where she was going.

They took Joanna (32) to a hospital, where additional police officers surrounded her in an examination area. Later, at a second hospital, other police officers ordered her to strip naked, squat, and cough, without providing a reason.

She describes feeling like a trapped animal. “I felt I wasn’t a human being anymore.”

“What do you want from me?!” she screamed.

What they wanted was evidence related to her self-administered medication abortion in April. It didn’t matter that she’d obtained the pills legally. In today’s Poland, authorities will track you down, harass you, and try to humiliate you regardless.

To be clear, Polish law does not criminalize having an abortion itself but rather providing an abortion or assisting someone in having one (outside of highly restricted situations). The government, well-known for rule-of-law abuses generally, is here scrambling around for anything that might help prosecute family members, friends, and healthcare providers.

And the lengths authorities will go to in this witch hunt suggest a disturbing zeal. In another case, the police search for evidence included pumping the septic tank at the home of a 41-year-old woman who’d suffered a miscarriage.

The climate of fear is chilling. Joanna was rounded up after her psychiatrist had reported her to the police.

In today’s Poland, anyone can be swept up in the government’s abuse of power.

• Daily Brief Audio Series

Witch Hunts, still a thing in 2023!

Perhaps you’re one of those people who thinks TFG is a treasonous motherf*cker who should be in prison, so you greet any news of legal proceedings that might lead to indictments of said treasonous motherf*cker with trepidatious hope.

Maybe you heard about the jury foreperson of the Special Grand Jury in Georgia who gave some media interviews after her service had been completed. This particular grand jury was not issuing indictments or even subpoenas, merely conducting hearings and interviews dedicated to determining who should be subpoenaed or indicted in the investigation surrounding 2020 election fraud. The foreperson, Emily Kohrs, gave several on-air interviews that are being shared on social media. The content of the interviews was not all that remarkable: she didn’t give any specific information, but when prodded, did say there were multiple indictments likely to happen and the names, when revealed, would not be a huge surprise.

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She is 30 years old, but looks much younger. Her manner is somewhat odd: a bit smug and flippant, a bit excitable and girlish. Not the affect of someone who is used to being on national television, so maybe she should be forgiven for not projecting an air of decorous propriety.

Of course, social media being what it is, this poor young woman is being skewered for everything from her looks to her intelligence to the fact that she did not, in fact, vote in the last two presidential elections. (I have a problem with that last fact, but only because I think both voting and jury duty are part of the civic compact we all have as citizens in a democratic republic.)

I’ve been following the reactions to her media appearances on Twitter over the last couple of days. Some are saying her interviews were inappropriate and should not have happened, and maybe that’s true. But the people saying she has somehow “tainted” the proceedings are being a bit histrionic. Kohrs did not violate any rules or protocols, and apparently in Georgia there’s a tendency to want grand jury proceedings to be held up for public scrutiny.

Some have criticized Miss Kohrs for wanting her “fifteen minutes of fame” and “enjoying the attention.” Some think, based on her statements, that she is obviously starstruck at the prospect of meeting TFG in person; others think she can’t wait to swear him in because she knows he will gleefully commit perjury and she wants him to go down for it.

But what is really interesting to me about this story is the way that a lot of media trolls are targeting Miss Kohrs for her interest in… witchcraft .

Given the predatory nature of many MAGA types on social media, particularly towards women, it’s not surprising Miss Kohrs already took down most ofher social media accounts. The one she briefly left up, Pinterest (you know, the one where we have pictures and mood boards about all kinds of things we like), had some posts related to Wicca, Harry Potter, and other witchcraft-adjacent topics.

An image from Emily Kohrs’ Pinterest page that is being circulated on social media as proof that she “promotes witchcraft and spells”

Cue the pitchforks, cudgels, and stupid memes. This is a witch hunt .

Now Miss Kohrs’ integrity is being attacked, she is being ridiculed for being “crazy,” and is also now a target of right wing hatred of the Christo-fascist variety.

Maybe this is a good time to remind everyone that witchcraft is not only an extremely popular cultural movement, but also a legally-sanctioned religious practice. Witchcraft is also a life-affirming path that honors nature.

Emily has had to take down her Pinterest board as well. I imagine before too much time goes by she will also have to change her phone number and address.

Witch hunts do still happen in parts of the world, and it’s horrifying to see such superstition, ignorance, and misogyny in the contemporary world. We tend to frame such occurrences as taking place in uneducated, unsophisticated societies. But the fact that this young woman is now being hounded for a few pagan-themed images on her Pinterest page, just because she’ decided to speak publicly about doing her civic duty to participate in our justice system, is appalling in the extreme.

This attitude makes me think of those young women thrust into the limelight some 300 years ago in Salem, Massachusetts, manipulated, groomed, and prodded to accuse their neighbors of unspeakable crimes. Those young women were also eventually targeted by their communities. The difference is: Mary Warren, Abigail Williams, and their cohorts, caught up in a maelstrom of corruption and delusion, were encouraged to speak, and to lie, in order to punish the innocent. Emily Kohrs, who is part of an effort to find the truth and implement justice, is expected to remain silent, and to hide who she is, and to refrain from implicating the guilty.

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Wikiwitches: giving back a soul to the victims of the witch-hunt

The association Les sans pagEs host a Wikiwitches workshop on the theme of witch-hunts in Switzerland on November 4, 2023 at the Geneva library. Other workshops will follow throughout Switzerland. The term “witch” evokes a multitude of themes, from Halloween celebrations to horror stories, religious blindness, inquisition, power, violence and torture. However, much remains unclear on this subject. The association Les sans pagEs wishes to conduct Wikiwitches throughout Switzerland in collaboration with Wikimedia CH, in order to complete the mapping of people persecuted during the great witch hunts, and to make this history available to all. The general mananger of Les sans pagEs, Natacha Rault, answers some of Wikimedia CH’s questions below.

• Procès en sorcellerie dans le canton du Valais (Witchcraft trials in the canton of Valais)
• Procès en sorcellerie à Fribourg (Witch trials in Fribourg)
• Procès en sorcellerie dans le canton de Vaud (Witch trials in the canton of Vaud)

This last article is a draft and remains to be refined. There’s still a lot to be done on this subject on Wikipedia! On Wikidata, our ambition is to survey the people executed for witchcraft for Switzerland, and then produce a methodology to extend this project worldwide. We think, for example, that a smartphone application that lets people enter data would be a good idea to enable them to participate, even without having to actively contribute to Wikidata or Wikipedia.

Where are the sources for new contributions? What are the challenges facing witch research in Switzerland?

Natacha Rault: The primary sources used for Wikidata are trial registers, as witch-hunting was one of the first legal procedures of recorded inquisitorial trials (before that, justice was summary and often undocumented). These registers are often in Latin or Old French, and have to be translated before they reveal their substance! We are therefore dependent on the results and advances of academic research, as well as on the digitization and transcription of legal registers, which are often to be found in cantonal archives in Switzerland.

Many men were victims of the witch-hunt. Is there a place for them in your project?

Natacha Rault: Our research focuses on the victims of witch-hunts, most of whom were women. For example, we worked on the biography of Pierre de Torrenté, a man who fell victim to the greed and prevarication of Walter Supersaxo, prince-bishop of Sion, still considered the hero of the Valais today. There were also many LGBT women victims of these hunts, but their stories have been rendered invisible because women’s sexuality was never taken into consideration and theirs denied.

Are there still witches today?

Natacha Rault: The witches we chased away weren’t witches at all. Let’s face it: real witches like me only exist in fantasy culture! Nevertheless, in contemporary feminism, the theme of the witch as archetypal feminicide has been politically recuperated. What’s more, many feminists wonder why there are so many monuments to the dead from the First and Second World Wars, but why there is only one place in Norway where a memorial has been made with all the names of women murdered and tortured during witch trials. It is the Steilneset Memorial.
On the other hand, witch-hunts continue: in some countries, you can still be accused of being a witch as part of a legal procedure, and in others, old or undesirable women, albino girls or girls with disabilities are quite easily disposed of by being accused of being witches.

Many thanks for the exciting information on this new project, Natacha.

Read more

• Anyone interested in participating in Wikiwitches or finding out more can find out more on the project page.
• Natacha Rault video Everybody can push the edit button
• Les sansPages

Photo: By Ruby Mizrahi / Wikimedia Foundation, Natacha Rault, Bildschnitt von Wikimedia CH , CC BY-SA 3.0

Archive notice: This is an archived post from blog.wikimedia.org, which operated under different editorial and content guidelines than Diff.

The witch hunt quickly spread like wildfire, fueled by social media and sensationalized news outlets. People became more susceptible to believing misinformation and conspiracy theories, which further stoked the flames of hatred and fear. Soon, it became impossible to distinguish fact from fiction, as people blindly followed the leader's divisive rhetoric.

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Those who were labeled as witches faced a barrage of harassment, discrimination, and violence. Innocent people found themselves ostracized from their communities, losing their jobs, and becoming targets of hateful attacks. The mob mentality took hold, with people turning against their neighbors, friends, and even family members. The authorities, either powerless or complicit, failed to protect those who were unjustly accused. The judicial system became a tool of persecution, as the accused were denied their right to a fair trial. Loyalty to the leader became the determining factor in whether someone was deemed guilty or innocent. In this atmosphere of fear and suspicion, anyone who dared to speak out against the witch hunt was branded as a sympathizer or collaborator. The few voices of reason and compassion were drowned out in a sea of hatred and intolerance. It seemed as though society had regressed, abandoning the values of empathy and understanding. As the witch hunt continued, it became clear that its true purpose was to divert attention away from the leader's own misdeeds and failures. By scapegoating certain groups, the leader hoped to maintain power and control over the population. The witch hunt became a tool to silence dissent and maintain a climate of fear. By the time the witch hunt ended – its duration marked by countless lives destroyed, families torn apart, and communities shattered – the damage was irreparable. Trust had been eroded, societal divisions had deepened, and the scars of persecution would linger for generations. The witch hunt of 2023 serves as a chilling reminder of the dangers of mob mentality and unchecked power. It is a cautionary tale, a call to remain vigilant and compassionate. The wounds inflicted by this witch hunt must serve as a reminder that humanity must strive towards empathy, understanding, and justice, lest history repeat itself..

Reviews for "Witch Hunt 2023: Are We Repeating History or Learning from It?"

1. John - 2/5 - "I was really excited to watch "Witch Hunt 2023" as I am a huge fan of supernatural thrillers. However, I was left disappointed. The plot felt convoluted and lacked coherence, making it difficult to follow the story and connect with the characters. Additionally, the special effects looked cheesy and unconvincing, which took away from the overall experience. I expected more from this film, but unfortunately, it fell short of my expectations."

2. Emily - 3/5 - "As someone who enjoys mysteries and suspenseful movies, I had high hopes for "Witch Hunt 2023." While the film had its moments, it ultimately failed to captivate me. The pacing was slow, and the plot twists felt forced and predictable. The performances of the lead actors were decent, but the script didn't allow them to fully shine. Despite a promising premise, "Witch Hunt 2023" fell flat and left me wanting more."

3. Sarah - 2/5 - "I found "Witch Hunt 2023" to be a big letdown. The storyline had potential, but the execution was lackluster. The characters lacked depth and development, making it hard to invest in their journey. Additionally, the dialogue felt forced and unnatural, making it difficult to connect with the emotions portrayed on screen. Overall, I was expecting a thrilling and engaging experience, but instead, I found myself disappointed by the mediocrity of "Witch Hunt 2023.""

4. Daniel - 2/5 - "I am a fan of supernatural movies, but "Witch Hunt 2023" failed to capture my interest. The plot was confusing and poorly developed, leaving many plot holes unanswered. The pacing was slow, making the movie drag on unnecessarily. Despite the potential for intriguing twists and turns, the film fell flat and didn't deliver on its promises. I was left feeling unsatisfied and unimpressed by "Witch Hunt 2023.""

5. Megan - 2/5 - "I was hoping "Witch Hunt 2023" would be a thrilling and suspenseful ride, but sadly, it fell short. The storyline lacked depth and failed to hold my attention. The performances of the cast were adequate, but they were let down by a weak and disjointed script. The film appeared to be a missed opportunity to explore the complexities of witchcraft and the supernatural. Ultimately, "Witch Hunt 2023" left me wanting more substance and excitement."

From Salem to Social Media: The Evolution of Witch Hunts in the Digital Age