One example of moral panic was the witchcraft craze in Europe:
"On the continent of Europe, roughly between 1 400 and 1650, hundreds of thousands of people-perhaps as many as half a million, up to 85% of whom were women-were judged to have "consorted with the devil" and were put to death. Much of Europe, especially France, Switzerland, and Germany, was in turmoil with suspicion, accusations, trials, and the punishment of supposed evildoers. A kind of fever-a craze or panic---concerning witchcraft and accusations of witchcraft swept over the land. Once an accusation was made, there was little the accused could do to protect herself. Children, women, and "entire families were sent to the stake .... Entire villages were exterminated ....Germany was covered with stakes, where witches were burning alive." Said one inquisitor, "I wish [the witches] had but one body, so that we could bum them all at once, in one fire!" (Ben-Yehuda 1985)
I want to come back to a Colonial American version of this, the Salem episode, which I think is even more typical of the idea of moral panic than the European manifestation.
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