For the Witches
Due to my own social circumstances, I tend to focus mostly on secular humanist variants of white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy — these being the variants that I am most likely to encounter daily, as I live in a liberal city on the West Coast of the United States and work at the city’s premier university.
Current events in the United States, however, have me considering Christian white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy — the original variant and, if not the most prevalent variant, still the defining variant of white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
Every black and indigenous person living in the New World who knows the confluent histories of their peoples knows that Christocentrism was part and parcel of the projects of settler colonialism and slavery in the New World. The fact that black and indigenous peoples were not White and/or not Christian — a tautology — was justification for their enslavement and extermination. Yet I find that few who I know remark upon the fact that, at the very same time that Christocentrism was fueling genocidal and ethnocidal projects in the New World, it was also fueling an ongoing ethnocidal project in Europe: the witch hunts. As Mircea Eliade wrote in his History of Religious Ideas, “In the last instance, [undertaken as much by the Reformed Churches as by the Inquisition,] the witch hunts pursued the liquidation of the last survivals of ‘paganism’: that is, essentially, fertility cults and initiation scenarios. What resulted was the impoverishment of popular religiosity, and, in certain regions, the decadence of rural societies.”
The leaders of the witch hunts in Europe were wealthy men, proto-capitalists among them, who were familiar with the logics of the genocidal and ethnocidal projects being advanced in the New World and deployed the same or similar logics in pursuing their own ethnocidal project at home. Amitav Ghosh makes this point forcefully in his most recent book, The Nutmeg’s Curse. I am compelled to quote Ghosh at length on the matter.
[Witch-hunting] literally demonized huge numbers of generally poor European women, with tropes drawn from colonialist perceptions of Amer-indians as devil worshipers. European images of witches grilling dismembered human body parts, for example, derived directly from representations of the supposedly cannibalistic rituals of the Tupinamba, a Caribbean tribe in whose culinary culture the grill was a central element.
The temporal overlap between European witch-burnings and the "Great Dyings" of the Americas did not come about by coincidence; it has been said, with good reason, that the collective mind of Europe at this time was "beset by Christian heretics, alien Jews and American Indians who committed unspeakable crimes involving the use of human flesh and blood." These conjoined processes of violence, physical and intellectual, were all necessary for the emergence of a new economy based on extracting resources from a desacralized, inanimate Earth.
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It was customary, through much of the twentieth century, to treat Western witch hunts as remnants of the Dark Ages, aberrations in the story of progress that led to the Enlightenment and the triumph of rationality and humanism. But recent scholarship has demonstrated that this was very far from being the case: there were no large-scale witch-burnings in Europe in the Middle Ages. The phenomenon was specific to the early modern era, and it occurred in the context of many other developments that were distinctive of the time: religious upheavals; the formation of centralized states; the circulation of printed texts; the consolidation of new forms of patriarchy; the colonization of the Americas; and, not least, the severe environmental disruptions of the Little Ice Age. It was in the midst of these multiple crises that new forms of thought began to take shape among Europe's educated elites, ideas of witchcraft among them. These ideas may have intersected with peasant notions of natural vitality, but they were also different, in that they formed a highly elaborated body of doctrine, articulated by some of the leading intellectuals of the time. As the historian Brian Levack notes: "Witch beliefs ... were mainly the property of the literate and ruling elites, and not the common people. ... In order for the intensive hunting of witches to take place, it was necessary for ruling elites to believe that the crime was of the greatest magnitude and that it was being committed on a large scale and in a conspiratorial manner."
As I have come to see it, the witch hunts were an assault on indigeneity within Europe that complemented European’s assaults on indigeneity without. These twin assaults on indigeneity prepared the way for humanism to prevail by enabling European Man to make the “enlightened” claim that his local peculiarities were universalities that peoples all across the globe must be made to aspire to. The “purification” of Christendom from all pagan devilry, the sought after goal of witch-burning Catholic Inquisitors and Protestant Reformers alike, set the stage for the “purification” of the Kingdom of Reason from all superstition by the Scientific Inquisitors and the Scientific Reformers of the Enlightenment.
It is no wonder today that a movement to rehabilitate witches within the West has accompanied a growing resistance to the War on Terra that is presently being waged by white-supremacist capitalist patriarchs, their proxies, and their would-be successors. Concomitantly, it should also be no wonder that Christocentric elements within the white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal order are renewing and rebranding persecutory practices that harken back to the witch hunts, believing that these persecutory practices will help them secure their threatened power centers.
The practice of persecuting and prosecuting women who would have abortions and those who facilitate abortions is one of the major persecutory practices being renewed and rebranded in the United States. Abortion figured prominently amongst the non-Christian fertility rites/rights that Christian white supremacist (proto-)capitalist patriarchs supressed during the witch hunts. In “Abortion Trials and Tribulations”, the historian Pauline Jackson writes, “The practice of abortion, the accusation of abortion, or even the suspicion of abortion was sufficient to justify a charge of witchcraft during the period of the inquisition.” Jackson goes on to quote the theologian Rosemary Ruether, “The Inquisitioners feature prominently the accusation that witches interfere in the ‘venereal act’ by producing abortions or preventing conception. This reflects not only the Inquisitioners’ obsession with sex and their projection of it upon women but the fact that such village witches knew folk methods of abortion and contraception that the dominant religion sought to suppress.”
Christian white-supremacist capitalist patriarchs who have and continue to persecute those who would have or facilitate abortions are effectively weaponizing fetuses against anyone and everyone with a womb. This was true of the Inquisitors and Reformers during the early modern period, and it is true of the Anti-Abortion movement in United States in the present late modern period.
Those of you who read the paragraph above without flinching really ought to pause for a moment to consider what I am saying: the constitution of the government of the United States, the reigning hegemon of Empire (with a capital ‘E’), is such that it is possible for the nation’s highest court to legitimate the weaponization of fetuses by Christian white-supremacist capitalist patriarchs, harkening back to the witch hunts of the early modern period.
Having sat with this for a moment, consider what other genocidal, ethnocidal, and ecocidal projects can be and are still being legitimated under the constitution of the government of the United States. Haven't abolitionists in the United States been telling the world-at-large that slavery, first renewed and rebranded by the Old Jim Crow order, has been renewed and rebranded again by the New Jim Crow order? Haven't water protectors and land defenders in the United States been telling the world-at-large that corporations are perpetuating centuries of “cultural genocide” in and through the process of constructing pipelines traversing the sacred waters and lands of indigenous peoples? Ay, and in the midst of all this, hasn’t a new American Inquisition emerged? There are right wing organizations who have taken it upon themselves to “protect” school-aged children from being corrupted by the charms of intellectuals engaged in Black studies and Indigenous studies, heretics who teach that the spirits of centuries of victims of genocide, ethnocide, and ecocide remain with us and will haunt us until we commune with them and make reparations.
When the journalist and activist Chris Hedges writes about “Christian fascists” he is writing about the Christian white-supremacist capitalist patriarchs and their proxies who are engaged in renewing and rebranding persecutory practices harkening back to the early modern witch hunts. As Hedges writes, “The connecting tissue among the disparate militia groups, QAnon conspiracy theorists, anti-abortion activists, right-wing patriot organizations, Second Amendment advocates, neo-Confederates and Trump supporters that stormed the Capitol on January 6 is this frightening Christian fascism. […] Blow by blow autocratic power is being solidified by this monstrous Christian fascism which is bankrolled by the most retrograde forces of corporate capitalism.”
Liberal globalists, of course, affirm a secular humanist variant of white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy that is “more diverse, more equitable, and more inclusive” — that is to say, in other words, that their variant is “fitter, happier, more productive”, like a pig in a cage on antibiotics. Liberal globalists claim to be appalled by the Christian fascists’ adoption of brazen persecutory practices harkening back to the witch hunts, but, in truth, liberal globalists are appalled at being confronted with crude reminders of the debts that their own subtle persecutory practices owe to such brazen persecutory practices. Again, let us not forget: the “purification” of Christendom from all pagan devilry, the aim of witch-burning Inquisitors and Reformers alike, set the stage for the “purification” of the Kingdom of Reason from all superstition by the Scientific Inquisitors and Reformers of the Enlightenment. The Christian fascists refer us back to the crude beginnings of white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy, taking after the Christian Inquisitors and Reformers who (mis)took indigeneity for devilry. The liberal globalists refer us to the progressive refinements of white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy, taking after the Scientific Inquisitors and Reformers who (mis)took indigeneity for superstition. Thus, it should be no wonder that liberal globalists confronting Christian fascists exclaim in protest, “It is the twenty-first century! We are supposed to have made progress!” — To which all those who know better reply, “Same as it ever was.”
The Christian fascist wants to make a grand spectacle of winning the War on Terra and, thus, makes a show of the engaging in persecutory practices. The liberal globalist, by contrast, would prefer to win on “technicalities”, a strategy that enables them to deny responsibility for the persistence of persecutory practices and to make a self-righteous show of feeling sorry for the persecuted. Yes, the liberal globalist believes that instituting relatively indiscriminate rules against abortion in order weaponize fetuses is a “barbaric” practice, but the civilized thing to do, according to the liberal globalist, is to institute a constellation of seemingly disparate technical measures that serve to give the “right kind” of women a statistical advantage and to put the “wrong kind” of women at a statistical disadvantage. Indeed, this is what the liberal globalists mean when they talk about “making progress” — “progress” means the destitution of explicitly oppressive rules and norms by way of the institution of implicitly oppressive technical measures and variable controls. Thus, it should be no wonder that liberal globalists are arguing against abortion bans by citing the statistics that prove that the “right kind” of women are liable to suffer from abortion bans as much as (or even more than) the “wrong kind” of women.
What we are dealing with at present are two factions with preferences for different sorts of powers. The white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy advanced by Christian fascists prefers to exercise ruling and disciplinary powers. By contrast, the white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy advanced by liberal globalists prefers to exercise normalizing and optimizing powers. That being said, it should be noted that Christian fascists have no issues advancing normalizing and optimizing powers for the cause as long as they may continue to privilege the maintenance of ruling and disciplinary powers. Vice versa, the liberal globalists have no issues advancing ruling and disciplinary powers for the cause provided that they may continue to privilege the maintenance of normalizing and optimizing powers in the process.
As I see it, the rise of Christian fascism in the United States points to the fact that normalizing and optimizing powers are proving increasingly ineffective at maintaining certain aspects of white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Those white-supremacist capitalist patriarchs who feel most threatened by the failures of normalizing and optimizing powers are now advocating for the return to prominence of ruling and disciplinary powers, often harkening back to the ruling powers previously exercised by the witch hunters of the early modern era. These threatened white-supremacist capitalist patriarchs — the Christian fascists and their allies — hope that the return to prominence of the ruling and disciplinary powers that birthed the white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal order will protect the order from imminent threats and threats on the horizon.
We who would counter power ought to be dismayed by Christian fascists instituting the return of powers that harken back to the witch hunts, but let us take care not to advantage the liberal globalists over and against the Christian fascists in our dismay. Instead, let us wonder how we might play each one against the other to their mutual disadvantage.
