About 1450~1700 in Europe, there was a time when everybody was in fear. During these days if you say anything strange, the next day you’d be up on trial, and whatever you do and whatever you say, you’d likely be tortured to death including burning, hanging, and drowning. The reason for this nonsense was simple. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Exodus 22:18. Witches were said to be followers of Satan. There were rumors that witches ate children, and many of these superstitions made people feel horror and detest of witches. In A History of Torture, George Ryley Scott says: “The peculiar beliefs and superstitions attached to or associated with witchcraft caused those who were suspected of practicing the craft to be extremely likely to be subjected to tortures of greater degree than any ordinary heretic or criminal. More, certain specific torments were invented for use against them.”
About 12,000 people are known for certain to be killed at this time. However, people are still not sure of the exact reason why witch hunt was practiced. Some say it’s because of the churches who tried to conceal religious weakness by the crusades. Others say it’s because of the counter-reformation. There are many theories, but the important thing is that the witch hunt is still continuing to this day. Witch hunt does not only represent the incident after the Middle Ages. It could also be stated as things like the Holocaust or Stalin’s Great Purge because all of these include innocent hundreds and millions of deaths.
At the time of World War II, Germany was led by Adolf Hitler who was also the leader of the Nazis. He claimed that the Aryans were the master race in the world. The other races were dirty to him compared to Aryans, so he hated anyone who was not of the “Aryan race.” Among those races, Jews were also included. Hitler claimed later on that the Jews were seeking for world domination. He eventually ordered people to kill all Jews (also included other races). This killing of approximate 6 million innocent Jews was called the Holocaust.
Before this terrible incident happened, there were many changes happening in Russia. It was the time during the World War I when the tired, hungered Russians revolted against the monarchy. The Bolsheviks came into power, and Russia became a communist country. During Lenin’s time, things looked OK (not that bad). However, as Stalin, a man of steel, came into power, the union (now Soviet Union) became a living nightmare. Nobody was able to talk freely, and there was nothing such as freedom. Everybody was being watched by the secret police, and every property that the people had was taken away by the government. This terrible political structure is called the totalitarianism. You could feel the tense and fear in the novel “1984” by George Orwell. This novel shows a world that is dominated by the communists. Everywhere, you could see the poster of “Big Brother” and the caption “Big Brother is Watching You.” It’s also terrible that the Oceania, one of the three totalitarian superstates, practiced the three slogans: war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. As you can see even in the first slogan, war is peace, that world is just the opposite of Utopia. This meant that, in order to maintain the three social classes, war had to happen, so there was no ending in the war. This was a brief view of the life in the novel, but the same thing was happening in the Soviet Union. Everybody was under the Great Purge. Like the witch hunt, people who were suspected as anticommunists were disappeared or evaporated.
These are two examples of witch hunt after the Middle Ages witch hunt. This may only seem as a history of the past, but the witches are still on its hunt. In the present day, witches are not only a person like a dictator. It’s all the people who ostracize (to exclude from society) a person. Interestingly, as the technology improves, people start to use it as a weapon. The best weapon for these modernized people would be medias like the Internet. A good example of social ostracism is the case of Prof. Hwang. As people found out that Prof. Hwang Woo Suk was a fraud, many of them rebuked him. Eventually, not knowing the full truth and believing the press fully, people ostracized the professor through the Internet. It was later said that there were few people who were jealous of him and tried to make him lose credit, so they passed all the blame to Prof. Hwang even thought he wasn’t responsible for the full blame. Now, Prof. Hwang works in his laboratory he founded in Jang-heung.
I sometimes wonder whether it would’ve been this bad if everybody didn’t blame him so badly. We may become overwhelmed by the atmosphere and criticize somebody. However, this small thing (we think) we do, criticize somebody this may lead to something much more critical. Various examples have been given of witch hunts through history. What we have to do is to understand the past and not let it happen again. This small understanding and knowledge of the past would prevent a tragedy of millions.
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_hunts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-reformation
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_did_Hitler_and_the_Nazis_hate_Jews_and_try_to_kill_them
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-Suk
http://blog.naver.com/byul25?Redirect=Log&logNo=140024670617
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