CCME "Witch Hunt"
Source: www.answers.com/topic/witch-hunt
Metaphorical usage
Further information: moral panic
In modern terminology 'witch-hunt' has acquired usage referring to the act of seeking and persecuting any perceived enemy, particularly when the search is conducted using extreme measures and with little regard to actual guilt or innocence. It is used whether or not it is sanctioned by the government, or merely occurs within the "court of public opinion".
The Oxford English Dictionary describes the first recorded use of the term in its metaphorical sense in George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia (1938). The term is used by Orwell to describe how, in the Spanish Civil War, political persecutions became a regular occurrence.
The term is used when a hunt for wrongdoers becomes abused, and a defendant can be convicted merely on an accusation. For example, in the History Channel documentary America: The Story of Us, narrator Liev Schreiber explains that "the search for runaway slaves becomes a witch hunt. A black man can be convicted with merely an accusation. Unlike white people, they do not have the right to trial by jury. Judges are paid ten dollars to rule them as slaves, five to set them free."[58]
The best known case is probably the McCarthyist search for communists during the Cold War,[59][60] which was discredited partly through being compared to the Salem witch trials.[59]
Another example of metaphorical use was the McMartin preschool trial of 1984 to 1990, an iconic example of a moral panic which saw day care providers accused of satanic ritual abuse. The trial was widely termed a witch-hunt.[61]
