The Witch Trials in Salem
The first such use reported by the Oxford English Dictionary dates to 1932. Another early
instance is George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia (1938). The term is used by Orwell to describe how,
in the Spanish Civil War, political persecutions became a regular occurrence.
The term is used when a hunt for wrongdoers becomes abused, and a defendant can be
convicted merely on an accusation. For example, in the History Channel documentary America: The
Story of Us, narrator Liev Schreiberexplains that "the search for runaway slaves becomes a witch hunt.
A black man can be convicted with merely an accusation. Unlike white people, they do not have the
right to trial by jury. Judges are paid ten dollars to rule them as slaves, five to set them free."
Use of the term was popularized in the United States in the context of the McCarthyist search
for communists during the Cold War, which was discredited partly through being compared to
the Salem witch trials.
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