Kids today won't even know how to prove someone is or isn't a witch.

Thank goodness we're past all of that nonsense! /s

A lot of people tend to imagine that witch accusations were a constant thing, but my understanding is they follow the pattern of moral panics.

Many here may remember the satanic panic that came and went in the 80s. There was a similar panic about mods vs rockers in the uk. The red scare of mccarthyism was another. A friend of mine analyzed a 2002 flare up of anti-romany sentiment and violence in italy (maybe just rome?) which also fit. Probably pogroms against jews fit the pattern too.

Moral panics are volatile - they bloom for a time and then wither. So probably there were short term bouts where women (and rarely men) who were percieved as deviant or unwelcome were at risk of being swept up in this panic and labelled a witch. Subjects of a moral panic are believed to pose some kind of threat to society, often legitimizing them as targets of violence.

Sorry champ, that only works on poor people. You gotta be way smarter to take down the rich.

“Build a bridge out of her!”

A lot of the "witchy" things women would do back then was actually just a cover for gossip. There ain't shit in the tea leaves, she's just having a coded conversation with her fellow women.

Later we just started saying they were hysterical and send them to an asylum for insane women. How do you prove you're not crazy when you're just a weak-minded woman and psychology barely exists as a field of medicine?

Now we just straight up ignore them. Or we make fun of their body. Usually both.

Same as 'paedophile', I guess.