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Susan Raine, Kilian LaBonte-bon |Witch Hunts and Gendered Politics
and other Democrats have consumed adrenochrome
from the blood of children are blatantly false accusations
based on conspiratorial hearsay rather than scientific
methodologies. Moreover, dead and/or injured
children have not been found, dispelling any truth to
the accusations that Clinton and other Democrats have
ritually abused and cannibalized children. No snuff
film showing Clinton and Abedin torturing a young
girl has been submitted as evidence in a court of law.
Clearly, these claims and others have no foundation
and are not supported by any professional standards or
investigative procedures.
Criminal justice agencies and medical findings identify
the true causes of the verified deaths there is no
evidence to support the conspiracy that the Clintons
had people murdered.27
1
Problematically, conspiracists
often ardently advise, “Do your own research!” as a
counter to knowledge produced and disseminated by
traditional social institutions.28 This self-styled research
does not conform to the standards of academic and
other forms of professional investigation, including
those of investigative journalism.
When Edgar Welch, a father of two young children,
arrived armed with a rifle and handgun at Washington
D.C.’s Comet Ping Pong Pizza, ready to free the allegedly
sexually abused children in the restaurant’s basement,
he found none. Indeed, Comet Pizza has no basement
(LaFrance, 2020). The only children present were
those eating pizza with their families and friends in full
public view. The entire premise of basement-dwelling,
Satanic-worshipping, pedophilic Democrats gathering
at the beloved, family-friendly pizza restaurant is based
upon the claims of influential individuals capitalizing
on the distrust of American citizens in the existing
political system.
27 Disciples of Q (the leader of QAnon), known as QTubers, “engage
in elaborate presentations of evidence” (Barkun, 2013, p. 7) in the form of
video essays on platforms like YouTube. QTubers and other similar adherents
and/or perpetrators of conspiratorial narratives are what Wood et al. (2017)
describe as unreliable experts whose statements are hyperbolic, false, or
unreliable.
28 Influential American conspiracy theorist William Milton Cooper
(1943–2001) coined the phrase to encourage his readers to reject official
governmental and other institutional narratives so that the ‘truth’ might be
uncovered. In the contemporary era, the phrase has become increasingly
popular in conspiracy culture (Ballentine, Celniker &Dunning, 2022).
Both Donald Trump and Alex Jones were the public
face of these and other claims.29
1
During a particularly
dramatic outburst, Alex Jones accused Clinton of being
the most prolific serial killer ever and of working for
Satan (Kirk, 2020). While the criminal justice system
may not recognize Alex Jones as an expert, enough of
his viewers believed his accusations against Clinton to
engage in the perpetuation of the evil cabal narrative.
Moreover, prior to his first presidency and during
it, Donald Trump, who formed a close relationship
with Jones during the pre-election period, has made
numerous significant and serious claims about Clinton
that have no foundation at all. Methods and evidence
are absent from the process of making extreme, and as
we argue, blatantly false accusations. Alarmingly, the
fact that Trump and Jones simply proclaim something
to be true seems to satisfy their followers that it must
be so.
Clinton has faced an unimaginable array of blatantly
false accusations based on unreliable methods.
Certainly, we could catalog many more examples, but
these few are more than sufficient for our purposes
here.
Criteria 10. Classic Witchcraft Accusations
Wood et al. (2017) round out their criteria for
identifying a witch hunt with classic witchcraft
accusations. As noted earlier, this characteristic of
witch hunts has eight features (of which at least three
must be present) as follows: (a) “orgiastic or group
sex,” (b) “cannibalism, including drinking blood,” and
(c) “sacrifice, torture, or murder of babies, animals,
or other innocent victims,” (d) “corpses, graves,” (e)
“feces, urine, or oral contact with anuses,” (f) “clothing,
objects, symbols, or rituals supposedly associated
with witchcraft or devil worship (e.g., robes, masks,
dancing, spells, ceremonies, desecration of graves or
religious objects),” (g) “appearances of Satan or other
spirits, exercise of supernatural powers such as flying,
psychokinetic control, or unnatural strength,” and (h)
“rapid transport of a person to a distant place through
flying or other unlikely means” (Wood et al., 2017,
901).
This article does not address every conspiratorial claim
made about Hillary Clinton. Rather, we present some
29 Even although Pizzagate did not originate with either person, both
men were responsible for continuously promoting it to large audiences.

International Journal of Coercion, Abuse, and Manipulation Volume 9, Issue 2 2026 30
of the most well-known and persistent narratives.
Hence, we cannot, for example, say with any certainty
(or dismiss outright) that some conspiracies about her
incorporate features of classic witchcraft accusations
category (e): “feces, urine, or oral contact with anuses.”
We can identify, however, at least—and indeed, more
than—three features, not only in the conspiracies
that we have discussed thus far, but also in some of
the representations and discussions of Clinton that
intersect with key conspiracies about her.
Accusations of orgiastic, group sex are often a feature
of the Pizzagate pedophile ring allegations and its
variations cannibalism and the drinking of blood
are evident Pizzagate offshoots, including the kuru
and adrenochrome conspiracies. Moreover, themes
of sex, the consumption of human flesh and blood,
the sacrifice, torture, or murder of a variety of
innocent victims of all ages, permeate a wide variety
of conspiratorial statements made by QAnon, Alex
Jones, Donald Trump, and other conspiracists. Indeed,
for many conspiracists, these behaviors are taken-for-
granted standard fare of anti-Clinton narratives. Prior
to Twitter banning him early in 2021, Trump was the
principal promoter of QAnon material, including the
endless narratives alleging Clinton’s child sacrifice
rituals (Sommer, 2023). Similarly, claims that Clinton
is an agent of Satan, possesses supernatural powers,
and engages in Satanic rituals to extend her power
flourish in conspiracies about her. Clinton’s detractors
alleged she possessed “extraordinary powers ” that Bill
Clinton was her ‘familiar’ 30
1
and that she could morph
into an otherworldly and nefarious “man-woman
called ‘The Clintons’” (Bordo, 2017, p. 30). Together,
these aforementioned examples meet classic witchcraft
features a, b, c, f, and g: two criteria more than required
to meet the standard for a witch hunt.
Beyond Wood et al.’s thesis, numerous conspiracists
explicitly depict Clinton as a literal witch. Furthermore,
the witch is considered the worst form of what Lim
(2009) identifies as the Unruly Woman—one who
breaches societal norms and gendered expectations—
and is despised for it. Furthermore, deception is central
to the “woman as witch”: she is a deceiver who can
30 Historically, witches were understood to have a familiar –their own
personal demon. The nature of the familiar varied regionally across Europe
but in some areas often were small animals such as lizards, toads, cats,
insects, or dogs (Goodare, 2016). Mice, hares, ferrets, imps, and even claims
of shape-shifting animals all have been recorded as examples of familiars
(Winsham, 2025).
transform herself. Clinton’s ability to reinvent herself
when Bill Clinton ran for governor in Arkansas stoked
suspicion amongst political and religious conservatives.
To them, she was a liberal feminist wolf in conservative
sheep clothing: a witch capable of calculated deception.
Moreover, her political engagements and tours were
questioned in ways that her male counterparts never
were (nor their makeovers). Casting her as a witch, her
critics felt compelled to unmask her, to reveal the true
Hillary Clinton (Lim, 2009).
As Brisini (2019) notes, historically, not only were
those accused of being witches associated with
disrupting existing hierarchies of power, but they
were also considered cannibalistic. Conspiracies
claiming Clinton is infected with kuru do not merely
use metaphor— they identify her as a literal witch who
is both biologically and socially troublesome (Brisini,
2019, p. 209). The consumption of children parallels
the claims of the Malleus Maleficarum (1486), which
identified that witches were responsible for butchering
babies and eating them (Brisini, 2019, p. 211).
In addition, Clinton has long faced accusations of
occult practices, ranging from using Voodoo for
political gains to membership in a Los Angeles coven
(Brisini, 2019). Clinton’s detractors have depicted her
with stereotypical witch imagery: on a broomstick
(Bordo, 2017), wearing a cape and pointed hat, etc.
(Miller, 2018). Images of Clinton as the stereotypical
ugly witch, laughing with demonic glee, flying through
the air, saturated anti-Clinton online media content.
Some opponents have even scrutinized her laugh
itself as an indicator that she is a witch. As Lim notes,
“Witches are frequently identified by the shrillness of
their voice and the deviousness of their laughter” (Lim,
2009, p. 263). Kuru is also known as the “laughing
death,” because as the disease progresses to the second
stage, associated neurological deficits may result in
uncontrollable hysterical laughter. Moreover, as Brisini
(2019) remarks, while the kuru conspiracy focuses a
great deal on Clinton’s alleged cannibalism, “it is the
associated gendered claim that Clinton is literally a
witch that underwrites the conspiracy’s broader appeal
(p. 209).
Clinton’s laugh has been the subject of much discussion
and derision, both in connection with the claim that