The quote doesn't really make sense if you use a traditional definition of "witch hunt", because the phrase comes from actual historic trials where the charge was something like "consorting with demons". The penalty was often death, even though people don't actually consort with demons in the real world.
There were no witches, of course, and the underlying causes of real witch hunts are a matter of speculation. Some people say it was a way to get rid of the elderly, some people say that ergot poisoning could have played a role, some people say that mobs are violent and irrational by nature. But everybody who was tried in a historical "witch hunt" was innocent.
Still, with the advent of the internet, it's taken on a new meaning. Today, "witch hunt" means something like "piling on". The target may or may not be guilty, but the phrase implies that their alleged guilt doesn't necessarily merit the amount of attention that they are getting.
It might be interesting to investigate when that change in meaning happened, and why.
And historically, it often meant moral panic and mass hysteria. Compared to another comment, that's _all_ it means to me when applied nowadays. The mainstream reception of the threat of witchcraft is what's changed. You might see parallels with (theoretical) homosexual conversion in parts of the US, I suppose.
Speculating on historical drivers: coercive confession existed then as it does now. Some law-enforcement officers' careers depended on confessions. After 35,000 to 100,000 executions I bet the technique was pretty smooth.
I don't think it's used in that context at all. There doesn't need to be more than one "witch hunter" for something to be called a witch hunt.
> The target may or may not be guilty, but the phrase implies that their alleged guilt doesn't necessarily merit the amount of attention that they are getting.
This is correct.
it’s also called the paradox of tolerance, where if a society is tolerant of intolerance, eventually the intolerance will win by taking advantage of tolerance
During a 90s election in Algeria, a radical (and popular) Islamist party made it clear that if they won, their first action would be to cancel all future elections.
This basically put all the secular parties (both left and right) in a bind. Do you just proceed with the election as if everything's normal, even though it might be the end of democracy if the radical group wins? On the other hand, if you decide to boot out the radicals from the democratic process, haven't you now ended free and fair elections?
Which is the solution. Bind themselves and everybody else.
Have a constitution that enshrines the right to things like fair elections and free speech. Have an amendment process that requires two thirds of the Senate, in a Senate that only has one third of the seats up for election in any given year. And three quarters of the states, which rarely agree on anything. Things like that.
Then even if the populists get in once, they don't have the power to end elections or free speech. And once the people see their true nature, they lose the next one.
Obviously you do have to be very careful not to allow any end runs around that process.
Because extra-judicial persecution of "bad people" [0] is something Popper never discussed or advocated for in _Open Societies and Its Enemies_. He very specifically advocates for this only when all else has failed, and only by the state itself -- being as such action doesn't bode well for any liberal democracy that undertakes such action.
I know you've not read the book, but perhaps read the Wikipedia article you're citing.
0. I've seen a whole range of people called "bad people" by antifa types these days, from centrists all the way to white supremacists.
There are literal, and I mean literal witch hunts going on in Western nations by the authorities, like Britain or the USA. Generally they use the word satanic.
They are far rarer than 40 or 100 years ago.
Obviously amongst the general population you also have things like Qanon and the Satanism within Pizzagate and in most developing countries they still exist at troubling numbers.
But I don't get your point, so no idea if that's OT