Witch Hunts
Subtitle: From Salem to Guantanamo Bay
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: March 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 311
ISBN-13: 9780773531864
Subjects: American history; Political oppression & persecution; Social history; Witchcraft; Political Science; History - U.S; Politics/International Relations; Cuba; USA; United States - General; Political Freedom & Security - Terrorism
Description: "Rapley analyzes witch hunts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and finds many of the same elements repeated in more recent miscarriages of justice - the Dreyfus case for treason in late nineteenth-century France, the persecution of the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama for the gang rape of two white girls in the 1930s, and the Guildford and Maguire terrorist prosecutions in Britain in the 1970s. All three cases took place during times of extreme fear and paranoia and in all cases the accused were innocent. Today, argues Rapley, the 'witch' lives on in the 'terrorist.' Pointing to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the first prisons created for 'witches' since Salem, he makes a compelling case that, in the wake of 9/11, today's America risks the same terrible results from modern-day witch hunts."--Jacket.