Witchhunt Narrative and the Intellectual Climate of America

这项研究的重点是美国的宗教和政治不容忍导致政治迫害现象的方式，在这种现象中，少数个人被指责为一系列不幸和灾难降临到一个社区。惩罚邪恶的仪式起源于中世纪的欧洲，但在新世界发生了变化，清教主义和严酷的自然环境塑造了大陆早期定居者的智力气候。殖民地时期发生在马萨诸塞州塞勒姆的著名巫术审判是美国特有的巫术现象的典型代表。在整个美国历史上，对邪恶“女巫”的追捕周期性地重新出现。其中一次重要的复兴是20世纪世纪的红色清洗，最终导致20世纪50年代的麦卡锡主义。这一清洗表明，排斥的言论多么强烈地吸引了公众的想象力，将某些人认定为对国家构成社会和政治威胁的女巫。本研究的目的是探讨潜在的共同知识的假设和困境，标志着塞勒姆巫术审判和红色清洗在20世纪50年代，特别强调的叙事结构中的猎巫描绘。被批评，被批评。通过研究政治和宗教文献、小说以及对20世纪50年代塞勒姆巫术审判和红色清洗的批评，我们试图捕捉美国人心灵的中心悖论，在人道的自由主义和对自身正义形象的不宽容追求之间撕裂。

This study focuses on the way religious and political intolerance in the United States led to the phenomenon of the witch hunt, in which a small number of individuals are blamed for a series of misfortunes and disasters which befall a community. The ceremony of punishing evil originated in Europe in the Middle Age but was transformed in the New World where both Puritanism and the harsh natural environment molded the intellectual climate of the continent's early settlers. The famous witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts, in the Colonial Period represent a typical example of the peculiarly American version of the phenomenon. Throughout American history the hunt for evil "witches" reemerged periodically. One important such reemergence was the red purge in the twentieth century that culminated in McCarthyism in the 1950s. This purge showed how strongly the rhetoric of exclusion appealed to the popular imagination in its identification of certain people as witches who represented a social and political threat to the nation. The aim of this study is to explore the underlying common intellectual assumptions and dilemmas that marked both the Salem witchcraft trials and the red purge in the 1950s, with special emphasis on the narrative structure in which the witch hunt was depicted. Justified, and criticized. By looking at political and religious documents, novels, and criticisms about the Salem witchcraft trials and the red purge in the 1950s, we attempt to capture the central paradox of American psyche, torn between humane liberalism and intolerant pursuit of its own image of justice.