The Witch Is Gone, But the Witch Hunt Isn't Over

Summary

Professor Kim Hak-cheol discusses the historical reality of witch hunts in Europe, debunking inflated death tolls and revealing that economic hardship, religious competition, weak central authority, and human psychology drove the persecutions. He then draws modern parallels, showing that witch-hunt-like dynamics persist today in regions with weak rule of law and in phenomena such as cancel culture, urging reflection and reliance on institutional safeguards.

• Historical witch hunts peaked in the 17th-18th centuries, not the Middle Ages, with around 40,000-60,000 executions, far below popular myths of millions.
• Persecutions arose from a mix of religious rivalry, economic distress, climate crises, inflation, weak central authority, and human tendencies to scapegoat vulnerable outsiders.
• The psychology of pollution and boundary-crossing explains why marginalized individuals, even longtime neighbors with accumulated grudges, became targets.
• Strong centralized legal systems reduced witch hunts; today, similar dynamics appear where state power is absent, such as in parts of rural India and sub-Saharan Africa, with thousands killed in the 21st century.
• Cancel culture is presented as a modern secular form of witch hunt, characterized by mass online attacks, disregard for procedural justice, and a 'double bind' where any reaction is condemned.
• The discussion calls for recognizing one's own capacity for both cruelty and forgiveness, and draws on religious and humanistic teachings to resist the dehumanizing logic of collective persecution.