1.4 The witch-hunter

As mentioned before the witch-hunt process starts with several people feeling irritated for whatever reason and talking together about that. However, this dissent normally will dissipate and dwindle away. Here the 'witch-hunter' comes in and plays its crucial key role in the witch-hunt.

Sometimes the witch-hunter was a member of the local community with no official power and back-up. They were able to focus and crystallise the dissent into a witch craze and local lynching parties. Sometimes they were in service of the Church or the State as official witch-hunter, like McCarthy in the USA and they work 'formally' and according to the rules and laws.

Witch-hunters and victims
Witch-hunters have a special relationship with victims.

• They put lots of effort into soliciting for witnesses. The more the better.
  
  
• However, this huge attention for the evil's victims had only one sole purpose: extracting as many as possible witness statements.
  
  
• Actually supporting or empowering victims to deal with their difficult situations themselves, is out of the question altogether, unless the promise if it will help to get a witness statement.
  
  
• Discriminating between made-up, imaginary evidence and actual evidence, let alone apportioning responsibilities and blame outside the perpetrator-victim duality is seriously reducing the amount of useful witness statements.

Strong public moral identification
Witch-hunters talk loudly and repeatedly about evil and evil people with the intention to do well, to honour God, its world order and to protect the vulnerable from the evil.

One can be tempted to think that witch-hunters were necessarily dishonest, mischievous or cruel people. Especially the institutional witch-hunters often seemed to be decent and normal people, though they also seemed to have had problems of their own with their own good standing in the community and with their self-esteem.

Either way, presenting themselves as saviours of the victims and the defenders of the true spirit of Christianity is a crucial condition for keeping the momentum of the witch-hunt going. People need to be convinced that they follow the witch-hunters in a just and fair fight.

Witch-hunters often are honestly not aware of what is going wrong. To understand this, compare them with a full colour-blind person who cannot recognise colours. The witch-hunters 'blindness' is in how they frame - often real happened - facts and other imaginary evidence into non-sensical conclusions and accusations (with as perhaps regrettable but certainly necessary collateral damage of the witch's death). Hence it is important to look a bit more in depth in how in witch-hunt times was dealt with evidence and allegations.