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The witch.

She haunts our cultural imagination, and not just in the Halloween season.

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The consort of Satan, the powerful, dangerous woman who can make crops fail and turn men impotent. In 2016, she should be the stuff of fairy tales and ghost stories.

Instead, she still seems to be terrifying grown men.

When Australian politician Tony Abbott was leader of the opposition, he chose to stand in front of a sign that read “Ditch the Witch” as he berated then-prime minister Julia Gillard for introducing a carbon tax. When Christy Clark was leader of the opposition in British Columbia, an NDP cabinet minister sneered in the house, suggesting her choice of transportation wasa broom-stick. Kathleen Wynne in Ontario and Rachel Notley put up with a steady stream of bloggers and social media commenters who call them witches — mostly metaphorically, but sometimes not.

And then, of course, there’s Alex Jones, the American broadcaster, conspiracy nut, and fervent Donald Trump supporter. Jones took to the airwaves earlier this month to insist that Hillary Clinton was quite literally possessed by demons.