It’s hard to sympathise with powerful people hounding out innocents — which is why the Coalition wanted us to know the Robodebt Royal Commission was a political witch-hunt. Poor Donald Trump wants us to know he’s the victim of a witch-hunt, too.
To be fair, maybe the Coalition and Trump are trading on the good reputation of witches. After all, a 2013 poll found most Americans preferred witches (also cockroaches and haemorrhoids) to politicians.
But much like polls, political terms tell us something about society and language. Words like “witch-hunt” take us on an illustrative - and sometimes illusory — journey through metaphor, semantics and the politics of, believe it or not, professional wrestling.
