And just like that, Kamala Harris is, supposedly, a Witch.
The claim took less than 24 hours to hit the media again. And while this is not a new accusation, it is certainly one our community should be mindful of.
As almost everyone on this side of the Moon knows at this point, U.S. President Joe Biden announced on Sunday that, in an unprecedented move, he is exiting the 2024 presidential race and endorsing his vice president, Kamala Harris, to succeed him.
Here are the key points of that story: Biden spent Sunday talking to members of Congress, governors, and supporters. The plans for Biden to exit the 2024 race were set into motion the night before and finalized on Sunday.
“And while it has been my intention to seek reelection,” Biden wrote in a letter posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, “I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.” He then wasted no time endorsing Vice-President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic Party’s nominee for President.
Kamala D. Harris, Vice President of the United States and presumptive 2024 Democratic Party nominee for President. Official White House portrait.
Evening past, and so did the morning. But by noon on Monday, political opponents of Harris were calling her a Witch. They accused her of invoking Satanic force, casting spells, and doing anything else within the arsenal of the patriarchal imagination that might scare voters away, lest they be preyed upon by occult forces.
James Lindsay – sorry, “James Lindsay, anti-Communist,” according to his blue-check verified account on X – appears to have been the first.
Let’s talk about @KamalaHarris saying “to see what can be, unburdened by what has been.” This phrase, which she repeats all the time, is not mysterious. It’s esoteric. That is, it’s occult. It’s a Marxist and Luciferian incantation, and that’s easily seen.pic.twitter.com/SUGOJS0cFH
— James Lindsay, anti-Communist (@ConceptualJames) July 21, 2024
Lindsay – apparently an expert on occult practices – insisted in subsequent posts on X that the “people who know, know” and that it’s “coded and Gnostic in its formulation, and the principle she’s articulating is ultimately Luciferian/Hermetic, a la Marx.”
“We can set aside the hand gesture she typically makes while uttering this incantation, although we shouldn’t,” he continued. “It’s blatantly up on the right (what can be, a worldly utopia) and down on the left (unburdened by, or liberated/emancipated from the mundane status quo),” adding a picture of a statue of Baphomet.
He follows up his post with some deconstruction of Harris’s comments and their relationship to communism.
It is important to note, before the next sentence, that Lindsay claims he popularized the use of the term “groomer” against the LGBTQ+ community. Lindsay was banned from Twitter in 2022 and then reinstated after Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company. Lindsay, by the way, is not a Christian conservative. He is part of the New Atheism movement, holds a PhD in mathematics, and claims to defend classical liberalism. Prior to his realignment, he supported the Democratic Party and volunteered for Barack Obama.
He also refers to the Pride flag as “the flag of a hostile enemy” and is an opponent of critical race theory, noting on Twitter in 2021 that there is a forthcoming genocide of whites if critical race theory “isn’t stopped.”
Lindsay’s claims are of a piece with other misogynistic attacks on Harris – JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, has called her a “childless cat lady,” and social media is rife with terms like “DEMONcrats,” “Kamala the Witch,” and “Killer Kamala.”
One persistent thread has been the idea that Harris is uniquely unsuited to the presidency because she has not given birth to children, although the same could be said for the previous 46 presidents as well. Will Chamberlain claimed she was inadequate to the task by simply posting the words “No children.” (Harris is a stepmother to her husband’s two children.)
There is an important Christian conservative thread weaving in the misogyny. Various people who “Preach Jesus” have been in an uproar that Harris is a Witch. One YouTuber claims that “God is holy and he ain’t call no Witch that’s calling to have innocent babies killed.”
Meanwhile, there are others. A 2014 “prophecy” from the late Kim Clement that claims “God warns against the installation of a Witch in the White House and urges recognition of the man He has raised up” is now surging on TikTok and YouTube.
Judge Joe Brown adds an antisemitic spin as well, explaining that Kamala Harris has “Jewish children she adopted,” married “a Jewish husband,” and is a “corrupt Witch.” He offensively adds that “she ain’t Black.”
The patriarchy has a long history of desperately tearing down confident women with Witchcraft accusations. From Hypatia of Alexandria to Catherine de Medici, the accusations continue to repeat themselves.
The London Sunday Times described Hillary Clinton as an “unkillable” zombie moving “relentlessly forward.” A Fox News commentator referred to her as a blood-sucking “vampire.” Even Governor Jerry Brown of California said that Hillary Clinton’s emails have a “dark energy.”
Following Kamala Harris’s successful vice-presidential debate against Mike Pence in 2020, Donald Trump labeled her a “monster.” “[Trump] has previously reserved the term ‘monster’ for terrorists, murders and major natural disasters,” NPR’s Juana Summers noted at the time.
We’re likely to see more of these claims. Misogyny is a deep illness in our society.
The accusations should also remind our community that Witches and other members of the Pagan community are politicized simply by being.
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