By Gretchen Gibbs

I recently published a historical novel, sparked by my parents’ discovery that we had direct ancestors who played an important role in the witch trials of 1692, not in Salem but in nearby Andover. The Book of Maggie Bradstreet (Glenmere Press) tells this relatively unknown story from the perspective of a 13-year old girl, who, like everyone else, believes in witches until the people she loves begin to be hauled off to jail.

“I’m glad I don’t live in those times,” several people told me after reading the book. The implication of my readers’ comments is that our own time is very different. I don’t think so.
It isn’t that hard to fathom the minds of colonists threatened by starvation, Indians, wild animals, disease, and by a world unlike the one they left in England. They believed the end of the world was at hand. What a relief to find an explanation and a scapegoat in witches!

Isn’t our own time characterized by a similar dynamic? The threats are different, but they certainly exist – terrorism, economic disaster all over the globe fueled by the Wall Street mindset, the energy crisis, nuclear bombs, and global warming, to name a few. Environmentalists warn that the actual end of the world as we know it is a possibility. We have responded to this threat in a similar way as the colonists, by looking for scapegoats. The division of the country into red and blue states, with so much fear and hate on either side, seems a part of this scapegoating.

It is easy to see the Tea Party’s hate. Gays and liberals make good witches.

The Left tends to hate Wall Street, gas guzzlers, right wing radio, and the Tea Party. Since September 11, 2001, as a country we are united in our hatred of Islamists, even though we might deny it. The other day, I got a thinly veiled anti-Muslim tract on email, one of those messages we are instructed to forward to 20 others. It was based on the premise that the United Kingdom no longer covers the Holocaust in classrooms because of fear of offending Muslims. The sender was a good liberal who didn’t check her facts. I think she believed it because she fears terrorism, as we all do. Kind of like a colonist thinking that his headaches were caused by the scary woman who cursed and never went to church. Who knows what bad people might do.

And the response can be violent. The other day I was watching the news with a friend. When the program aired a report on Iran’s nuclear development, my friend bellowed, “Bomb them into the Stone Age.” He was hurt and said he was only joking when I accused him of being prejudiced against Islam.

Our country has always been prone to hysteria against outside groups. The McCarthy hearings in the Fifties weren’t called witch hunts for nothing. People who are different are perceived as threatening. And of course, in some way or another, we’re all different, and any of us can be scapegoated. The study of witchcraft in the colonial era is instructive as to how far this hysteria can go before people recognize the amount of damage it is causing, and begin to change their ways.

gretchen@zestoforange.com