“It’s a witch hunt. It’s just a continuation of a witch hunt. … I think they are sick people.” — Donald Trump on Fox News reacting to the Fulton County election conspiracy indictments
Drive north on I-93 from Boston’s Logan International Airport to Manchester, N.H. — a drive that became a happy ritual for me as I covered Granite State presidential primary elections over the years — and you’ll pass an exit that leads to Salem, Massachusetts.
It’s a spot Donald Trump might want to visit while he’s in New England, since Salem was the site of the country’s most infamous actual witch hunt. We know how often Trump has witch hunts on his mind. NBC News just released a report revealing Trump has posted or reposted the words “witch hunt” some 250 times since his social media platform Truth Social went live in 2022. And he’s used the phrase in countless interviews and rallies.
Here’s a chilling reminder of what happened in Salem.
In 1692 and 1693, the colonists there were gripped by a mass hysteria, convinced that Satan was afoot in the small Massachusetts village recruiting allies to wipe out the Puritans. Neighbor turned against neighbor. Fear of being accused of witchcraft ran rampant through Salem and surrounding communities. More than 200 people were brought before a special court to stand trial for witchcraft. Defendants were encouraged to reveal other witches with whom they consorted, and only confessions of guilt and the naming of accomplices spared the accused from the gallows. In just over one year, 19 people were found guilty of witchcraft and hanged.
The playwright Arthur Miller was deeply disturbed by the paranoia, the betrayals and the ostracization that took place in Salem. His response was to write “The Crucible,” a play about the witch trials, which premiered on Broadway in 1953 to great acclaim. But Miller’s real aim was to draw parallels to the House Un-American Activities Committee that in the 1940s and 1950s conducted investigations to root out Communists the committee claimed were agents of the Soviet Union working to destroy America from within.
During the height of the Red Scare, many of those brought before the committee were entertainers and artists in Hollywood, members of the military and government workers who were threatened to confess and give up names of fellow American Communists or face blacklisting. Miller himself was dragged before the committee, but despite warnings he could face a prison sentence for failing to cooperate, he refused to give up names of so-called “fellow travelers.”
How Trumpian, how MAGA this all seems to me.
Trump, ironically, orchestrates witch hunts of his own. What else was Jan. 6, the day a howling mob stormed the U.S. Capitol chanting “hang Mike Pence” as they confronted enemies conjured up by Trump?
Like the inquisitors of HUAC and the judges of Salem, Trump demands absolute fealty, and he mercilessly metes out punishment to those who refuse. As of last week, every member of the U.S. House GOP leadership has endorsed Trump’s bid for reelection.
That includes the last holdout, House Majority Whip John Emmer, the one Republican leader who did not vote against certifying the results of the 2020 election. In October, when Emmer won the Republican conference’s nomination to become speaker, Trump doomed his bid, condemning the congressman as a RINO “totally out of touch with Republican voters.”
Emmer got the message. When he finally endorsed the former president, Trump told an associate, “They always bend the knee,” according to reporting from The New York Times.
There are others, of course, who have been targets of Trump’s wrath. Fulton County election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss can tell the story of what happens when the Trump mob sets its sights on destroying those caught in the whirl of paranoia that surrounds his ongoing claims of a rigged election.
A Trump caucusgoer in Iowa gave Patricia Murphy a perfect summation of Trump’s appeal: “He’s willing to stand up to people that want to destroy us,” she said.
In the most chilling scene of “The Crucible,” Arthur Miller recreates an actual moment from the Salem witch trials. A farmer named John Proctor who has fallen under suspicion is told he will face the gallows unless he signs a statement admitting to practicing witchcraft. He refuses in an impassioned show of integrity.
“Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them you have hanged!” Miller’s Proctor said.
The real John Proctor was hanged on Aug. 19, 1692.
I’ve seen many productions of “The Crucible,” and just a few weeks ago, I started to watch another on London’s National Theatre streaming service. But I had to stop when I came to the scene where Proctor is brought before the hanging judges. It’s just too heart-wrenching to watch a man go to his death because he refuses to betray his neighbors and his own principles.
I wonder if Donald Trump wins New Hampshire by a wide margin and heads inevitably to the GOP nomination, are there John Proctors today who won’t bend the knee and will work to stop him from leading us back into the dark times of past American witch hunts?
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