Grindelwald once said during a public speech in Paris:
"Magic blooms only in a select few."
Yet many Muggles, like kings in fairy tales, longed for superhuman power and would even sell their souls to the devil for it.
Others chose to commit genocide against wizards. Second Salem was an American No-Maj extremist organization dedicated to exposing and eliminating wizards. They had always reminded the world that wizards lived among them. At the beginning of the twentieth century, no one paid them any attention, but after the religious reforms of the Middle Ages, their claims came to be widely accepted and believed.
The earliest "witchcraft accusations" concerned the weather. Decades of extreme weather pushed Europe to the brink of apocalypse, and many pamphlets left behind from the Middle Ages depicted witches using weather magic.
The Little Ice Age made winters longer and shortened the growing season, forcing people in the Alps to shift from farming to herding.
After another outbreak of the Black Death in 1630, people believed the plague spread because wizards had poisoned them.
Rumors ended with the wise, but people caught up in panic and herd mentality easily displayed anti-intellectual behavior.
Crowds were prone to emotional impulses. They lacked reasoning ability, were rarely moved by evidence, and were swayed by intense feelings. Anyone capable of stirring the souls of the masses possessed fanatical faith.
During the First Crusade, there was a "Peter the Hermit." He was short and dark, ate neither bread nor meat but only fish, wore tattered clothes, and went barefoot. Yet such a man could inspire others with only a few simple words.
During the September Massacres, the Jacobins could line up those deemed "insufficiently enthusiastic about the revolution" in formation and blast them into pulp with cannons. They could melt gold and pour