Witch-hunt
A campaign to find and punish people accused of witchcraft, and by extension any hunt for scapegoats.
Also: witch hunt, witch-hunting, witch persecution
Witch-hunts are episodes in which communities or authorities seek out suspected witches, often after a death, an epidemic or a failed harvest. They occurred in early modern Europe, in colonial North America, and have continued in many regions up to the present. Historians stress that the victims were rarely practising anything, and were more often poor, elderly, women, outsiders or people in conflict with neighbours. The English phrase has also become a term for any unfair political pursuit, which some historians dislike, since it can trivialise real killings. The term describes social conduct rather than the existence of magic, and scholars treat it as a study of fear and blame.