Scapegoat Mechanism
Description
"The second movement in mimetic theory is that of the scapegoat mechanism. As rivals become more and more fascinated with each other, friends and colleagues may be mimetically drawn into the conflict as rival coalitions form. What began as a personal battle may escalate into a Hobbesian battle of all against all, threatening the cohesion and peace of an entire community. One way of solving this problem is to find someone to blame for the conflict that all the rival coalitions can unite against. This unfortunate person may or may not be guilty. All that’s required for the scapegoating solution to work is that his guilt is universally agreed upon and that when he is punished or expelled from the community, he will not be able to retaliate. The proof of his guilt is found in the peace that now returns to the community, obtained by virtue of the unanimity against him.
Mimetic theory allows us to see that the peace thus produced is violent, comes at the expense of a victim, and is built upon lies about the guilt of the victim and the innocence of the community. This mechanism functioned at the origins of the human species, when this peace appeared as if by magic and was attributed to a visitation from an ambiguous god who came first as the terrible cause of the conflict but then was revealed to be its cure. Prohibitions emerged to forbid the imitative behaviors which lead to conflict, rituals developed that consist of a well-controlled mime of the redemptive violence against a victim (originally human, later animal and so on), and myths were born as the stories that tell of how we became a people as the result of a visitation from the gods. This method of controlling violence with violence can be found in the rites and myths spread all over our planet and gave rise to human culture.
Scapegoating also operates in individuals at the level of identity. We all construct identities over against someone or something else. I’m a woman, not a man. I’m a liberal not a conservative. I’m an atheist not a believer. And most problematically, I’m good not bad. When we need some other person or group to be bad so we can maintain our sense of ourselves as good by comparison, we have engaged in scapegoating. We are using others to solidify our identity the same way a community uses a scapegoat to solve its internal conflict."