Too many Americans seem to conduct politics via witchhunts. The snarl and the killer eyes gleam. Sensible people, moral people, compassionate people drop all restraint to join in the fray. Social and news media blast out the bits that will provoke the most reaction.
The current witchhunts are very familiar in their contours, narrative, and, likely, outcome. The most talked-about witchhunt has a couple of targets that are loosely connected in the witchhunt narrative: White supremacy; Christian Nationalism; heteronormativity; Evangelicals; Trumpers; and Conservatives. (See Thomas Edsall’s opinion piece in The NY Times on January 28th, 2021.) One particularly over-the-top pronouncement is that the religion brought to America by the Europeans was not Christianity but “the Religion of Whiteness.” Notice the pure, absolutist definition of the Other as not Christian–despite all evidence to the contrary–but only “White.” Such statements might attract unwanted attention. Witchhunters like such purities.
Today, the witchhunters are some religious and political liberals, secularists, Democrats. (To their everlasting credit, many don’t play in this game. And, oh, we could go on and on about the witchhunters from the Right, too!)
The witchhunters are sounding the alarm about a great crisis as epitomized by a paradigmatic, exemplary event: the attack on the Capitol. They have produced bodies of literature that allegedly “prove” how horrible Whites or Evangelicals or Christian Nationalists or Heteronormativists or Trumpers or Conservatives are.
The literature dances along the line of potted American history that leaves out disconfirming aspects to their narratives. Pants of journalistic exaggerations on the scope of looming Rightwing authoritarian dangers are breathed onto the public. A few social scientific studies by “engaged” scholars provide an uncertain bracing for the jerry-rigged scaffolding around the story. The Democrats, of course, and the liberal media are tempted to provide a bullhorn because it certainly serves their interests. They are sort of the Anti-Fox News.
Their hope is for a paradigmatic revolution about how we understand our nation. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions seems like a map to the gameplan of current efforts to vilify the Trumpian losers. Some key evidence that demands a new explanatory scheme, a paradigmatic event (experiment), a classic text, disciples of the new paradigm, etc.
If you will do the research, you will notice that this witchhunt is similar to previous ones like those in Salem, Massachusetts against people on the border of town society (according to Mary Douglas), the Modernist Protestant War against the Fundamentalists (Shall the Fundamentalists Win and throw us back into ignorance and tyranny?), the Satanic ritual abuse scare a few years back, and the child sex abuse scare that spun out of control. There are so many of these fanatical endeavors to push some outside the bounds of society.
Wars and plagues leave people looking for others to hate and blame. World War One was terrible for liberal and conservative churches alike because they became so viciously anti-German. One liberal pastor did a sermon on how the Christian could feel God’s power as they bayonetted “a Hun.”
As you will notice, these witchhunts can be found on both the Right and Left. They tend to only be loosely connected to reality, end up fostering a lot of counter-hatred and grief, and the so-called histories and scholarship peters out into nothing. Although some of these things are over after the plague or war is over, some of the cultural damage can linger for years. Conservative and liberals, who disagree with the witchhunters can easily expend all their energy on criticizing and not paying enough attention to reinforcing the democratic traditions of American communities.
The best path is not to get sucked into the morass of a mythmaking, prejudice producing, stereotyping mega-event.
Rather, look to your own community, ask your own questions, listen to neighbors –particularly those who disagree with you, and create your own narrative about what is happening. Those are your facts, your data by which to test these witchhunt stories.
If you do the conversations and collect your own data fairly and empathetically, no one can know your reality better than you do. Your story, if well-grounded in understanding and knowledge of those around you, is then a good gauge by which to test all the fiery stories that are coming your way.
Is your church, synagogue, temple, or friends participating in the witchhunt? You won’t be able to talk to them if you don’t know your own social world very well. You will just have opinions and generalizations not grounded very well into specific, concrete reality.
There is another advantage to collecting your own data. You will no longer just be reactionary but have your own voice, your own positive story to add to our discussions. You may even learn to listen to those who are off on some witch hunt. Most are well-meaning but ill-directed. They may have part of the story (but likely not the whole story.) No one can shut down your life and you shouldn’t try to shut down anyone else’s either.
