FARMINGTON — The European witch craze of the 16th and 17th centuries was a pioneering effort by developing states of early modern Europe to perfect strategies of social control and to safeguard ideology, according to author Jon Oplinger. Yet as destructive as this early effort was, he contends that it was not until the 20th century that the full potential of the state to stigmatize and destroy was realized.

Such is the thesis that Dr. Oplinger, associate professor of sociology at the University of Maine at Farmington, spells out in his recently published book, “The Politics of Demonology: The European Witchcraze and the Mass Production of Deviance.”

Oplinger describes such 20th century crimes of state as the Holocaust, the purges in Russia, and the McCarthy era in the United States. In the author’s view, these are all manifestations of a common class event, characterizing periods when those in power are especially fearful of ideas different from their own.

Oplinger said, “It is at such times that the powerful muster their administrative know-how, technology and a good deal of their energy to attack those considered deviant. No one with even a passing appreciation of this century can fail to realize that terrible crimes have been committed in the name of prevailing ideology. Only by understanding the patterns which lead to such horrors can we hope not to repeat them.”

“The Politics of Demonology” is an exercise in comparative sociology, researched and written partly in response to the challenge of Holocaust historians to examine the Holocaust in the full light of the century.

Oplinger has degrees in history, anthropology and sociology, all from Kent State University.