Feminism and the European Witch-hunt

Many modern feminists see the European witch-hunt (waves of witch-hunting campaigns across Europe and the British colony in north America from 15th to 18th centuries) as a genocide of women. As such, they see witch-hunting as directly connected to women's oppression today: modern feminists are 'the daughters of the witches that they failed to burn.'

Historians of early-modern Europe tend to disagree that witch-hunting targeted women as women but the mainstream view is often that it was superstitious peasants turning on their neighbours, which the European elites had to try to restrain.

Against this, Elaine Graham-Leigh is presenting a Marxist view which sees witch-hunting at village level as the result of social strain, as emerging capitalist relations start breaking down communities. This wouldn't though take off into widespread witch-hunting if it wasn't useful to the elite. Witch-hunting was a tool which elites could use to advance social control in areas where they felt particularly under threat. It's evidence of the violence at the heart of class and of capitalism.