Winnipeg Sun | 24Aug2010 | Orest Slepokura
http://www.winnipegsun.com/comment/letters/2010/08/23/15117651.html
Muslim witch hunt
Re: Mosque controversy.
In his seminal essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” Richard
Hofstadter described the cyclical nature of the collective hysteria
that will sometimes seize a broad swath of the American body politic:
“One finds here again the same frame of mind, the same conviction of a
conspiracy against a way of life, but now a different villain.”
From the early 19th century on, several religious groups, today
altogether mainstream, found themselves the object of such vilification
by conspiracy-mongers, including the Catholics, Mormons, and Jews. Now
it appears to be the turn of the Muslims.
Might Wiccans and other pagans be next to again rouse the fear and
suspicion of their American neighbours, with the onset a latter-day,
Salem witch-hunt hysteria sometime later in this century?
Orest Slepokura
(Except this fear was
founded on terrorist attacks.)
http://www.edmontonsun.com/comment/letters/2010/08/27/15166051.html Another Salem witch-hunt?
(Nascent orthodoxies take heat
for obvious reasons.)