In every good story there is a villain, a person or persons responsible for a great evil, an injustice or people being harmed or killed who do not deserve it. "The Crucible" is a historic dramatization of the Salem witch trials of 1692 and 1693. The villains are the leaders who held the trials and who did not prevent the atrocities that put men and women to death for being convicted of being witches. In Nazi Germany Hitler is the villain who successfully gives rise to the Nazi party, launches World War II, interns and murders the Jewish people of occupied Europe. In the McCarthy era in the United States in the 1950s for which "The Crucible" is an allegory, Senator Joseph McCarthy and his cronies are the villains, ruining people's lives with their investigations into Communism.
Yet, the vilification of Puritan leadership, of Adolf Hitler, of Joseph McCarthy denies the reality that none of these leaders succeeds without the consent and cooperation of those whom they lead. The Salem witch trials could have never happened if the people of Salem objected to their fellow citizens being tried for witch craft. Adolf Hitler was elected to leadership in Germany. The rise of the Nazi party, the development of a Nazi ideology that led to the extermination of millions of European Jewish people, none of it would have been possible had the German people not elected Adolf Hitler to power and supported the advancement of the Nazi regime. Joseph McCarthy could not have advanced his own "witch trials" without support and powerful allies.
We are responsible for the actions of our leadership.
Today police are murdering young unarmed Black men who often have either committed no crime or minor crimes. The police go unpunished for these murders.
If we remain silent, then we are as responsible for these murders at the hands of law enforcement as the Puritans were for the witch trials, as the Germans were for the rise of Nazism and the resulting murder of Europe's Jewish people, as Americans were in the 1950s for Senator McCarthy ruining the lives of so many people through his investigations.
Text authored by Peter Eldritch (Peter Jirak)
First posted to Facebook on March 17, 2015
Illustration credit
- Illustration by: Leontura
- Licensed through istockphoto.com