A scapegoat

Summary 

In Ugly history: Witch Hunt, Brian A. Pavlac says that witch-hunting had started from the15 century until the 18 century in Europe and America. 'Witch' means the Satan-believer who gained black magic. According to Hammer of Witches, it says that women are easier impacted by demons, therefore many women who were doubted to be witches were tortured while in the questioning process based on the unproven-believe. Some strongly refused and were released, but some accepted the fault claims and were burnt to death despite their innocence. However, there were some jurists, scholars, and physicians who argued against no-evidence-based investigation of witchcraft. Until in the 18 century, the witch hunt decreased by the strengthened central government and the standardization of law.

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Response 

This TED talk caught my interest because I like to learn about history both good and bad. After I listened to the story I did not feel surprised or shock once I finished, even think that it still happens nowadays only just in a different way as it was said in the last past of the video. Even though there is no stake to burn the victim, these scapegoats still get damaged in their minds from the gossip that was spread by people in the society and the incident like this is getting worse once the internet is normally used. 

Five or upper years ago, I used to spend a long time to surf the internet, to read the news, to update trends or else, and every time the tea was spilled I went to read the whole story and also comments and see how netizen reacted to that topic. Sometimes I agreed with them and sometimes I did not, this was not a weird thing because everyone has a different thought. But on the internet, where everyone thinks they can say or do anything as they wish, who spoke different against the majority, especially when the topic was about the politic, will face the witch hunt in the form of cyberbullying. Besides being treated as if he or she is a real criminal, some victims of this cyberbullying even got their personal information spread all over the website. This made me feel sick and changed the way to update news and information such as sticking with the official pages and some trust-worthy websites, no more reading the comments on some websites, etc.

From what I said above, the definition of the witch in this cyber-witch-hunt on the internet is different from witch hunt in TED talk, it means a person who speaks out his or her opinion in a different way and causes argument which makes him or her get a backlash from strangers, which is very injustice and abusive in my opinion. Even if the real witch hunt already was vanished, but as the talker said in the last minute, in the present, there is false information spreading around in social and also the rational argument to fight against it, so witch hunt on the internet will die down one day in the future.

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Question

Do you think witch hunt is still existing in these days?