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Susan Raine, Kilian LaBonte-bon |Witch Hunts and Gendered Politics
she had kuru and as part of broader attacks on her
character. Political commentators, journalists, and
countless others outside of conspiratorial narratives
have scrutinized and often deviantized her laugh,
sometimes calling it the Clinton cackle. The word
“cackle” frequently invokes associations with evil and
witches. Furthermore, her laughter seems to be a threat
of sorts: a woman laughing—rather than being laughed
at—appears disruptive within patriarchal settings. The
danger might be that when one woman/witch laughs
in such a setting, others may follow, thereby posing a
greater challenge to patriarchal norms.
Defending Hillary Rodham Clinton: Concluding
Discussion
Any woman may experience misogyny, but women
such as Hillary Clinton, who dare to challenge the
established and inequitable order, those who choose
to pursue positions of power within deeply patriarchal
circles and call out men for their bad behavior, may
face extreme levels of it (McDowell, 2018). Perhaps
it should not be surprising then that Clinton’s openly
misogynistic opponent in the 2016 election, Donald
Trump, demonstrated no fear of rebuke for his
behaviors—no fear when he lurked menacingly behind
her during the second presidential debate, and none
when he spoke over her in the final debate, calling her
“such a nasty woman.” He faced no consequences when
he declared, “The only thing she’s got is the woman
card”—an absurd statement given her extensive
accomplishments and experience (Bordo, 2017).31
As dreadful an account of contempt, misogyny,
disrespect, and outright horror our article provides with
respect to the witch hunt that Clinton has experienced
for much of her life, we have covered only a portion
of the full catalog of disgrace. Clinton’s marriage, her
sexuality and gender, her feminism, her body, her
defiance, her success, her determination to just get
work done, and her existence itself: everything about
her has been scrutinized, dismantled, and demonized
by those opponents who could not and cannot stand
to witness a self-proclaimed liberal feminist succeed to
such a degree in politics in the United States.
31 To claim a highly qualified female politician, such a Clinton, is using
her gender as the primary reason that one should vote for her was a desperate
move coming from Trump. Unforgivably, it is one that fellow Democrat,
Bernie Saunders, implicitly supported (Bordo, 2017).
Social media allowed the narratives surrounding her
to take on a much darker quality. Individuals like Alex
Jones, groups like QAnon, and political figures such as
Donald Trump reaffirmed their patriarchal identities
and goals through their persecution of Clinton and the
Democrats. Growing populism and disenchantment
amongst the population buoyed the growing
conspiracies and witch hunt against her. Clinton was
a particularly tempting target for persecution precisely
because of her long list of accomplishments and her
often polarizing public persona. Moreover, Clinton’s
desire to have both a family and a career has always been
at odds with certain factions of the American public and
the American political milieu. Her insistence on living
a public life in service of her country will likely always
be viewed with derision and suspicion simply because
she is a woman daring to live a life outside of strict and
archaic gender roles and expectations. That she did not
seek to integrate a conservative Christian worldview
with American democracy was unforgivable to the
growing body of extreme religious conservatives.32
1 Hence, those who seek a scapegoat for the perceived
decline in the values they hold dear found meaning
in targeting and persecuting Clinton as a witch, both
metaphorically and literally.
Like the claims made against women (and some men)
during the European witch hunts, those made against
Clinton appear absurd. This does not matter to those
who spread and consume conspiracy-fueled narratives.
The “displaced anxieties” (Jensen, 2007, p. 228) and the
larger goal of nurturing a deeply patriarchal political
system guided by Evangelical values appeared to make
Clinton worth burning. Clinton, arguably one of the
most qualified presidential candidates in American
32 Christian fundamentalists insist that women maintain the
family and the home by contrast, men work outside of the home and are
authoritative on all matters. Thus, conservative forms of Christianity are
deeply and inherently patriarchal. As such, conferring rights to women
and children poses a direct threat to perceptions of ‘traditional’ culture and
society. Indeed, denying human rights to them is understood as central to
the preservation of Christian family and culture (Rose, 1999). The bias,
discrimination, and violence that women have experienced in American
society has significant foundations in religious discourse where women and
children are considered the property of their fathers, brothers, husbands,
and other male relatives. Theological foundations often allow for the physical
punishment of women, including violence that results in their deaths. As
such, conservative Christians regard male members of the family—and all
men more generally—as superior to women (Westenberg, 2017). This legacy
is embedded in many conspiratorial narratives, making them especially
appealing to many conservative evangelicals whose literalist approach to the
bible affirms power and authority as the purview of male members of society.
And, of course, religious approaches to sex and gender have also stymied
women’s attempts to acquire full equality across social institutions.

International Journal of Coercion, Abuse, and Manipulation Volume 9, Issue 2 2026 32
history, simply had to be stopped. Her threat to
the growing populist, hyper-conservative brand of
Republican politics and religion that was fomenting
and finding voice under Trump’s presidential campaign
was too much. Evidently, “the convenient way to make
sense of the social, political, and cognitive chaos that
Clinton’s intrusion into politics would make was simply
to characterize her as a Witch and to hunt her down”
(Lim, 2009, p. 265).33
1
As in the witch hunts of centuries
past, those with power and influence cast aspersions on
Clinton’s character: allegations of demonic allegiance,
unbound sexual practices, cannibalism, the abuse
of children (including blood sucking), seduction,
deception, breaking of social norms, and questioning
the divine order (Goodare, 2016 Jensen, 2007
Westerkamp, 1999). The application of the “stigmatic
label” witch is required (Jensen, 2007, p.3) to restore
order and cleanse the political order (Voltmer, 2020).
Notifying the population of the threat, conspiratorial
narratives and ideologically driven fear and misogyny
saturated social media—the Malleus Maleficarum of
the Internet age.
When viewed through the lens of Wood et al.’s (2017)
analysis, Hillary Clinton has evidently been the subject
of a witch hunt since the late 1970s when Bill Clinton
assumed the governorship of Arkansas, with the hunt
against her intensifying further in 1993 when she became
First Lady. Her political goals in the 2000s saw the
witch hunt reach new heights. As Clinton approached
the apex of American power—the presidential office—
her opponents, terrified of what they might lose,
chose to pull the noose tighter still. Chants of lock up
Crooked Hillary and a mock witch trial for Clinton at
the Republican National Convention (Bordo, 2017)
amidst the unfiltered and unchecked diatribe against
her made for a public spectacle: an intense reminder of
what can happen to women who are viewed as out of
33 Other American female politicians have achieved high levels of
success, though none so much as Clinton. Considered at the very least as
unlikable, Clinton differed dramatically from one prominent Republican
counterpart, Sarah Palin. Palin’s political career in the 2000s seemed
acceptable in part because she was likable and therefore less threatening,
having not breached an important gendered expectation. Palin, however,
was also less competent than Clinton (Lim, 2009). Although Palin was not
subjected to the same level of malicious attack as Clinton has been, she did
experience negative bias, discrimination, and political exclusion because
she was a woman and a mother. Moreover, Democrats primarily were
responsible for much of the gendered disdain levelled against her (Martin,
2008). As leader of the Tea Party—an earlier populist movement—Palin
and her colleague, Michelle Bachmann, gained acceptance within their
very conservative base largely because they embraced and wanted to protect
traditional women’s roles (Bracewell, 2021). They simply did not challenge
or engender fear in conservative right-wing men in the way that Clinton
did.
place and out of control. Even those Republicans who
had worked well with Clinton while she was a senator
and then as secretary of state “subjected her to snarling
interrogations worthy of a trial for witchcraft” (Bordo,
2017, p. 29). Republican undermining of Hillary seemed
endless, and most Republican politicians seemed to
accept that conspiracies and Trump’s open misogyny
were the means to their party’s ascendency to power.34
.1
As a means of socially controlling women in power,
misogynistic stereotypes and caricatures of women in
such positions serve to stifle their political agency and
fuel fears about feminism. The cruelty that women in
power endure may also have the effect of deterring other
women from entering politics (Miller, 2018 Vasby
Anderson, 1999).35 Certainly, our analysis here could
be adopted to address the ways in which many women
(and non-binary people) experience intense and overt
levels of misogyny and discrimination throughout
their careers. Measures taken to prevent women’s
success at the highest levels of politics are evident,
for example, in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
and Senator Elizabeth Warren’s careers (Ferris, 2020
Women in Leadership, 2020). Protecting patriarchal
political power structures at any cost appears to have
supplanted any notion of healthy political competition
and democracy. The more successful women are in
the political sphere, the more intense the closing of
patriarchal ranks has become.
Furthermore, in Clinton’s case, this attack approach
can also attract some women to join the witch hunt.
Accusations of child-trafficking, sexual abuse, and
the butchering and consumption of babies were
instrumental in attracting women to the initially
masculinist QAnon movement through social media
(Bracewell, 2021). In populist politics, feminine
identities largely center around traditional notions
of motherhood and maternal duty (Bracewell, 2021).
Populist movements focus on presenting everyday
34 Many Republicans spoke out against Trump (NBC, 2016) and
continue to do so (Republican Voters Against Trump, 2025). Moreover,
not all Republicans have treated Hillary viciously or fabricated falsehoods.
For example, George Bush Senior and Junior publicly supported and voted
for Clinton (BBC, 2017). Also, there have been occasions when Republican
women quietly expressed discomfort at seeing Clinton being treated so
poorly in the public realm (Hitt, 2009).
35 Miller notes, “Julia Gillard, first female prime minister of Australia…
met with taunts of ‘ditch the witch’ from protestors. Nancy Pelosi, the minority
speaker of the US House of Representatives, has faced similar witch-related
insults, and recently Theresa May [British prime Minister from 2016–2019]
was filmed laughing loudly, and her so-called ‘witch’s cackle’ quickly went
viral” (Miller, 2018).