When social justice warriors aren’t engaged in bitter online battles against their alt-right counterparts (as well as anyone who disagrees with them), you can expect them to be at each other’s throats. Cue the occult practitioners—witches, wiccans, warlocks, voodoo priestesses, or whatever they call themselves—who are now at war over the cultural appropriation of magical spells.
Magic isn’t real, but watching them fight on Twitter is a magical experience. The battle was kicked off by a Middle-Eastern Twitter user named Sanam, who goes by the username @trustmedaddy. Preaching to her 13,000 followers, Sanam declared:
“Magic is not for white people. Leave that shit to brown + black women and stop fucking up the cosmic balance with ur [sic] fake witchy shenanigans.”
She makes the claim that magic originated from all the “brown” countries in the world, in a way declaring practices like Wicca and Runic Magic to be cultural appropriation of “brown + black” culture—never mind the fact that these occult practices arose simultaneously with their counterparts in the Middle East and Africa.
You’re on notice, Harry Potter.
Sanam’s claim did not stand unchallenged. A black woman bearing the name “Feminist Witch,” whose username is @LOLatWhiteFear, issued a harsh rebuttal to Sanam for emphasizing “brown” over “black”:
“So you felt the need to say brown first lol meanwhile all practices come from Africa. From black people. From my people. Lol yea but ok.”
Who knew that every practice in the world came from Africa? Certainly not the Japanese, Iroquois, or the Celts, whose cultures arose simultaneously with any culture on the African continent.
A Hispanic witch, or bruja, weighed in to say she agreed with Sanam. She stated that watching her white friends mess around with Tarot cards made her uncomfortable.
“I need to be real with you. I have a few yt (white) friends who fuck with tarot and general witch things and it makes me UNCOMFORTABLE as a brujx.”
Onlookers expressed puzzlement at how “fake witchy shenanigans” could be so successful at “fucking up the cosmic balance,” given that none of it is real. And if her magic is real (it isn’t)—and the magic practiced by Harry Potter fans isn’t—why would it matter, anyway?
Ultimately, anyone who’s big into magic can’t be expected to be big on logic.
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter and on Facebook.