Ebola, Salem Witchcraft, COVID, "Young Goodman Brown," and "Spectral Evidence"

Some six years ago I compared the Ebola scare of the time to the Salem witchcraft trials, as chronicled by Marian Starkey in The Devil in Massachusetts (See blog post Nov. 24, 2014). I highlighted the scapegoat theme and the racism underlying much of the “mass hysteria” in both Salem in 1692 and the U.S. in 2014. I barely mentioned the way misguided fears overshadowed scientific, medical, and public health expertise in the Ebola episode.  I was struck that as a nation, maybe we hadn’t evolved as much as we might like to expect between 1692 and 2014.

 

Lately, looking back on 2020, I see similar parallels.  COVID-19 was referred to as the “Chinese virus” and people of Asian descent were targeted for threats and harassment. This virus, along with what might be considered election “mass hysteria,” put me in mind of Hawthorne’s story reflecting on Salem witchcraft, “Young Goodman Brown,” published in 1835.

 

Young “good man” Brown presumably thinks he is one of the Puritan “elect,” who by God’s special “election” can do no evil.  Yet his curiosity leads him into the forest one night to observe a witches’ meeting.  He is shocked to see some of his well-respected neighbors at the scene, including the deacon, the minister, and his own supposedly innocent wife, Faith. In the end, as the devil calls on his followers to pledge their allegiance to him, Young Goodman Brown calls out to “resist the Wicked One!” and suddenly finds himself alone in the forest with a drop of dew on his face.

 

“Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?  Be it so, if you will.  But, alas, it was a dream of evil omen…”

 

Here Hawthorne alludes to what was referred to as “spectral evidence” in the historical Salem witchcraft trials, the court accepted the testimony of “witnesses” that they had been “visited” in the night by the accused and caused harm. Had the witnesses only dreamed of this “visitation” by a witch? “Be it so, if you will,” but the accused “witches” were hung on the basis of such “evidence.”

 

In our own age of conspiracy theories, it seems spectral evidence has reappeared and overtaken a significant segment of our population. On the basis of no empirical, documented evidence whatsoever, but only of wild fantasies and over-active imaginations, we have the pandemic being dismissed as a hoax, while masks and social distancing are accused of being a government plot. QAnon believers and other conspiracy theorists commit violence in the mistaken conviction that Hillary Clinton and the deep state are engaging in sex trafficking or the 5G cellular network is spying on us or spreading the virus or who knows what? We now have lawyers and elected officials, who should know better, introducing “spectral evidence” into election fraud cases on the basis of nothing more than wishful thinking, outlandish fears, or imaginary beliefs.

 

As a result, unnecessary deaths, violence, threats (including death threats), and the undermining of democracy, as well as of public confidence in elections, have occurred.

 

Young Goodman Brown becomes “a stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful if not desperate man…from the night of that fearful dream.”  He believes that everyone he imagined seeing at the witch meeting, including his wife, Faith, are hopelessly evil hypocrites, everyone, that is, except himself.

 

Fortunately, he commits no violence and makes no threats (though he may well have applauded at the witch hangings), but his community relationships, even his marriage, are destroyed.  He has lost his faith in others, and “his dying hour was gloom.”

 

Conspiracy theorists of today have lost their faith in science, medicine, evidence, reason, and in democratic institutions. They end up either dying of COVID or spreading it to others who die, harassing those who wear masks, committing crimes in the name of their wild fantasies, and supporting the corruption of our courts, our democracy, and our very Constitution.

 

Some years after the Salem witchcraft trials, church leaders and trial jurors apologized, convictions were reversed, and compensation rendered to the families of those wrongfully accused and convicted. Let’s hope that, similarly, starting in 2021, we come to our senses. Meanwhile, Happy New Year!

The Devil in Massachusetts

Marion Starkey’s 1949 study of the Salem witchcraft trials bears revisiting in light of the recent public hysteria over Ebola.

We like to flatter ourselves that we have progressed beyond the kind of mass delusion based on superstition, fantasy, and fear that resulted in the deaths of twenty innocent people in 1692.  And, indeed, it is hard to imagine a repeat of those events occurring in 21^st century America.  However, Arthur Miller, in The Crucible, found them a salient analogy to the McCarthyism of the 1950s, and we could cite any number of examples in recent history of persecution based on fears surrounding race, religion, gender, and homosexuality.

The Ebola scare, originating in West Africa, obviously has a racial component.  Would it be so scary, would we react the same if it had originated in Northern Europe?

In 1692 there were those who claimed the devil was attacking the spread of Christianity into the so-called “New World” by unleashing bands of witches on the God-loving people of Salem.  Irrational fears of the native “heathens,” not to mention the “voodoo” practices of the slave, Tituba, from Barbados, fed this religious fantasy.

In addition to documenting the seeds of the Salem events in the Parris household and the spread of hysteria through the village and into the courtroom, Starkey uses modern psychological theory to argue that the good people of Salem suffered from a kind of mass projection of guilt over their own “sins” onto certain individuals who were feared or disliked. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne, in “Young Goodman Brown” and The Scarlet Letter (see post 10/24/12), had earlier dramatized the same phenomenon without the aid of modern psychology.

In the current Ebola scare, we project our fear and sense of vulnerability, not only onto the victims of the disease, but also onto anyone who had contact with them or who even looks like them.  We almost perversely ignore the medical and scientific facts of how the disease is spread in favor of our worst fears.

This contemporary scapegoating suggests that the 322 years between 1692 and 2014 may be shorter than we like to think.