I agree with the comments of both of you and, as mentioned, there are parallels to today.
I see the root cause of this and some of the problems of today as stemming from governments pretending things to be true that are not true in order to justify doing what they want to do. Here are 5 examples including the witchcraft.
1) Pretending that witches are real was used to justify the “trials” and executions referred to in this article. (But even Mrs. Bill Clinton can’t turn you into a frog.)
2) Pretending that black people are not fully human was used to justify slavery in America.
3) Pretending that Jewish people are not fully human was used to justify the holocaust by the Nazis. (Seeing all the pro-terror support today helps me understand that the Nazis had a lot of support from otherwise normal Germans.)
4) Pretending that preborn people are not fully human is being used to justify abortion, even up to birth in some places.
5) Pretending that homosexuality is normal is causing all sorts of problems including males competing against females in athlete competitions as well as the mentioned genital mutilations that have become popular to support among the left.
How did a thread on the Salem witch trials transform into your “pretendings.”
They were not pretending they believed in witches, they actually believed in witches. Witch-scares were common in Europe for hundreds of years, which was the source for what happened in Salem.