The Witch Trials in Salem
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.
From the 1960s, the term was in wide use and could also be applied to isolated incidents or
scandals, specifically public smear-campaigns against individuals. The McMartin preschool trial of
1984 to 1990 is another iconic example of a moral panic which saw day care providers accused of
what was dubbed "satanic ritual abuse", i.e
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