History Repeating Itself

Throughout history, the past tends to repeat itself over and over again. Sometimes
for the better and sometimes for the worst. Both Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma
Gandhi used peaceful protests to gain equality and freedom, and they both succeeded.
However usually when history does happen to repeat itself, it is never really a good thing.
That is because most of the time innocent people get involved and their lives become
endangered and are sacrificed. A couple of events that could be considered as history
repeating itself would be the Salem Witch Trials, McCarthyism, and the Guantanamo Bay
incident. In these incidents, both the court and the public got in the way of innocents
being vindicated.
The Salem Witch Trials took place in Massachusetts in 1692 and ended in 1693. It
was a series of hearings and prosecutions of people who were assumed to be performing
witchcraft. Those who were convicted of being associated with witchcraft were burned to
death or hanged by the neck in front of the villagers. To be accused of something as
horrid as this would bring disgrace to your name and your family. There were people who
would take advantage of having attention and try to accuse innocents of witchcraft. Back
then, it was hard to come up with evidence that someone wasnt guilty, so most of the
innocent Puritans were killed and had their names besmirched upon.
McCarthyism was a campaign against suspected communists in the United States
government. It took place in the 1950s and was carried out by Joseph McCarthy.
McCarthy had made public accusations that over 200 communists had infiltrated the
United States. The United Stated wanted to rid the world of communism after they had
witnessed what communist leaders could do. Many people who were assumed to have

been involved in a communist party were either blacklisted or lost their jobs. A majority
of the suspected communists were actually innocent and had their names besmirched
upon. McCarthyism was sometimes referred to as a witch hunt because of how this
incident had resemblance to the Salem Witch Trials. However, they obviously didnt
realize that they were repeating the same mistake in accusing other innocent people.
In Guantanamo Bay the United States had set up a detention camp to imprison
and interrogate any suspected terrorist working with the Al Qaeda. To obtain information
from the suspects they used methods such as force-feeding of hunger strikes, water
boarding, and long periods in solitary confinement. Although some detainees were
released from the detention camps, a large number of them were still being held back.
And of course not all suspects were guilty of working with the Al Qaeda, so many of
them suffered and died from the torture.
To conclude, history is always repeating itself and the outcomes are not always
great. By moving on from a terrible past, we create a more worst one to leave behind. In
all three of these events: the Salem Witch Trials, McCarthyism, and Guantanamo Bay,
innocent lives were sacrificed and their names were besmirched. We can only hope that in
the future people can learn from these mistakes because as long as we live, more historic
events will occur. And by not learning from our mistakes, history will repeat itself.

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