Treatment of "witch children" in Africa, example of really bad stage blue

[Mulky]

Pretty graphic and hard to watch, it's about the treatment of children accused of being a witch in certain parts of Africa.

 

 

[Leo Gura]

So, the African Spanish Inquisition?

[Mulky]

Ya, I guess so, but specifically with helpless children.  Those who mistreat and neglect the kids are able to do so because their beliefs cause them to have no empathy for the "witch" children.

[Yarco]

There are a couple good documentaries about how albino children are treated in Africa. Pretty much the opposite problem... actual witches want to use them and their body parts for magic.

[Scholar]

One thing to notice is that, the priest seems to be using this mechanism as a way to establish power. In one of the scenes a priest establishes a random boy in the crowd to be a witch. You realize what kind of power the priest has, because at any point he can basically accuse anyone, and the crowd will believe him.

Subconsciously, the crowd will fear the priest, because they know each of them could be next, and so they will further please the priest, and their belief will become even stronger. They certainly don't want to appear to be a witch, and the best way to do that is to buy into the story and become radically convinced of anything the priest will say.

 

So the priest has an incentive to keep establishing his power by accusing people to be witches, while the crowd is incentivised to believe him and do everything he does.

 

There was an interesting case I think in mexico or some other south american country, where scammers went into a village and pretended a prostitute was a goddess. Because the people in the village were supersticious, they at some point began to believe in the story. Initially it was about scamming them for money, but the woman seemed to have enjoyed her position of power so much that she would at some point start picking random people within the group, and tell the others to kill and eat them, including the initial scammers who had been in control of the prostitute.

The dynamic was that, because everyone initially believed in the goddess, none of them dared to speak against her, because it would potentially make them the next victim. So everyone would follow her commands, and even kill and eat family members. You couldn't opt out of it, once the group dynamic was established, you were unable to escape it.

Even if none of them had believed in the goddess at that point, because they all feared to be pointed out as the next victim, they had to play along. But likelihood is, is that people would have believed her just because it was necessary for their survival.

 

 

I suspect this is a more of a stage red example, not really stage blue.