It is a mistake to believe that theistic Satanists or witches (ie, people who genuinely believed that they had "communed with the devil" or possessed some form

It is a mistake to believe that theistic Satanists or witches (ie, people who genuinely believed that they had "communed with the devil" or possessed some form of supernatural powers) did not exist. Of course there is absolutely no evidence of ritualistic satanic abuse specifically, but there is little reason to conclude that "witches" in Salem are not plausible. That is one of the reasons why the long-established comparison between McCarthyism and the Salem Witch Trials is so apt. It is not beyond reason that there were people in Hollywood who were genuinely communists; there are communists in just about any profession today that you can think of, just as there were in the early 20th century. Hell, some of them may have even been Soviet agents; we know that Soviet agents operating in the US is something that happened. The fact that communists did in fact exist does absolutely nothing to excuse the flawed methodology that was used to track down and label communists.