The inbuilt tendency to scapegoat

One of the most paradigm-shifting books I've read in recent years was I See Satan Fall Like Lightning by cultural anthropologist Rene Girard, who I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of years ago when he participated on a panel discussion at Saint Paul University.

In a 2005 interview in New Perspectives Quarterly, Girard said:

In mythology, a furious mob mobilizes against scapegoats held responsible for some huge crisis. The sacrifice of the guilty victim through collective violence ends the crisis and founds a new order ordained by the divine. Violence and scapegoating are always present in the mythological definition of the divine itself.

It is true that the structure of the Gospels is similar to that of mythology in which a crisis is resolved through a single victim who unites everybody against him, thus reconciling the community. As the Greeks thought, the shock of death of the victim brings about a catharsis that reconciles. It extinguishes the appetite for violence. For the Greeks, the tragic death of the hero enabled ordinary people to go back to their peaceful lives.

However, in this case, the victim is innocent and the victimizers are guilty. Collective violence against the scapegoat as a sacred, founding act is revealed as a lie. Christ redeems the victimizers through enduring his suffering, imploring God to "forgive them for they know not what they do." He refuses to plead to God to avenge his victimhood with reciprocal violence. Rather, he turns the other cheek.

The victory of the Cross is a victory of love against the scapegoating cycle of violence. It punctures the idea that hatred is a sacred duty.

Girard explores in a most convincing way the origins of violence and scapegoating. It is his thesis that society is founded on murder, the murder of a scapegoat, who becomes a safety valve for the violence that becomes contagious until the victim is killed. When the victim is "sacrificed," and the mutual violence suddenly dissipates, that society would view the victim as a god. But in the case of the mythology, the "god" or victim was guilty of the evils that were befalling society. The "proof "came in how much better everything was after the victim's murder.

He also points out that the Jewish Scriptures begin to unveil a truth that victims could be innocent. There is also the scapegoat motif in the Old Testament, the goat upon which all the sins of the tribe were placed. Girard came also to believe that the Christian Scriptures reveal the ultimate innocent victim, Christ and break apart the secret, shrouded in mythology, of the foundational murder. He also writes quite compellingly of how the whole notion of the victim is a distinctly Western working out of Christian belief, though in a more and more secular way.

So now we have the victim, but we have lost sight of Christ. And I can understand that much of the best intentions of the human rights codes designers is to prevent scapegoating and othering. But, unfortunately, it is just creating a whole new set of "others" and scapegoats in the process.

As human beings we all have an inbuilt tendency to project onto other people the unpleasant things we do not wish to see about ourselves. We have a propensity to blame and to scapegoat, to demonize the other. That's why it is important that we examine our lives and hearts, that we take responsibility for our sinful natures and that we develop character and virtue.

This is why Christians are commanded to love our enemies and to recognize that we war not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places. In other words, to secularize this, we war against false ideologies and lies, not against the human beings who may believe them.

This is a long preamble to a discussion over at Lawiscool that had me thinking. It follows a charge that the supporters of Mark Steyn are Orwellian.

Law is Cool: This is hardly the first human rights complaint in Canadian history, and all have followed a similar pattern. As stated, most actually have a measure of respect and deference to the Commission, allowing them to resolve issues amicably. Instead in these cases, respondents have verbally abused complainants, called the tribunals into disrepute, and even rallied for their disbandment. In at least one related case, this intimidation has resulted in the withdrawal of the complaint.
A truly principled movement would have been established independently of any actual complaint, and instead these measures are seen for what they are, motivated by self-interest. Calls for legal reform are frequently done, and without indignation characterizing this specific response.

Comment by Sav — May 9, 2008 @ 11:22 pm

you throw words around and you dont know what they mean.

ORWELLIAN? Who’s got the orwellian position here? HINT: Its the one that is trying to impose on everyone else its morals as to what is allowable topics of discussion. Its the anti-freedom position. Its the position that suggests government can decide for you which political opinions are okay to have. I mean how can you suggest that its orwellian to support free speech - do you have ANY clue what you’re talking about - oh yeah it was BIG BROTHER, and the people wanted bigbrother to regulate more but the poor people were left to decide what to read for themselves. How horrible.

Those traits are not only orwellian, they are objectively fascist. I dont even mean that as the backwards slur lefties throw around without knowing what it means. Having the state step in to provide a solution in an area that was previously left to the choice of the individual (what to read), is objectively, positively fascist. Mussollini would have LOVED it.

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Law is Cool: Actually, we have a pretty good idea of what Orwell is about. See our posts on the subject previously.

Fascism is a far-right ideology, more akin to what Steyn fans espouse, rather than what liberal human rights activists exemplify. Neither fascism or Nazism ever aspired to protect minorities; in fact, both exerted the power you describe to protect majority interests at the expense of minorities.

This is really interesting. First of all, I absolutely reject the premise that Mark Steyn or his fans are fascist or even far-right. They are conservative. Methinks I see some use of scapegoating and demonizing and seeing the "other" in a negative light on the part of the Lawiscool poster.

But Lawiscool does make a point. I do agree that fascism and Naziism trampled all over minority rights. Jews were scapegoated by the Nazis and sent by the millions to their deaths. So were disabled people, homosexuals and Christians who spoke up against the regime.

Jews are routinely scapegoated in the Middle East in countries that want to blame Jews for their plight rather than recognize their own societal dysfunctions.

Scapegoating is evil. It is wrong. Period. It is sick, a form of psychopathology, denial and projection.

But interestingly, the kind of scapegoating that happened in Marxist regimes targeted social classes and bourgeois thinking (and religious belief), and ethnic groups, too. Marxist regimes were guilty of mass murder that liquidated or starved nations of people (ask the Ukrainians) or classes of people (ask the intelligentsia.)

Canada's secular fundamentalist multiculturalism is, on the surface, very respectful of minorities. But how much real diversity of opinion is allowed within the multicultural framework? Yes, lots of different races and different outward religious emblems (except Christian of course) but the only view that is able to be expressed publicly is that of Barbara Hall or Jennifer Lynch.

The scapegoats, the out group, the other, are the minority of Canadians who happen to be conservative, especially socially conservative Christians. And Jews have always been vulnerable as a scapegoat. In North America, they are far more vulnerable to hate crimes than Muslims, according to the latest statistics.

I exhort people on all sides of this debate to do self-examination to make sure we are not demonizing or projecting our own inward ugliness onto others. Until we are prepared to gaze at the sin within, we are in no position to judge the sin of others. But we must also not let our own sin be an excuse for refusing to discern truth and to call things as we see them. But let us not be clouded by our own resentments and anger.

Let's be careful not to scapegoat Muslims either. But that does not mean that Muslim beliefs and practices and acts done in the name of Islam should not be criticized. The same goes for any belief system.