Scapegoating

Victims and Villains

The French literary scholar and theologian René Girard exposed an important, ancient, and defining weapon used by the cultlike phenomena of authoritarianism. Indeed, one of the most constant and effective techniques employed by authoritarians like Trump and his MAGA base is the victimizing or scapegoating of the “other.”

George Will, the eminent conservative commentator, has said several times during TV interviews that the followers of Trump, regarding the matter at issue, have more interest and passion in hurting the opponent than in winning. My learned barber, Pat O’Connell, incredulously observed during the lead-up to the election of 2024 that many people seemed willing to risk death by refusing vaccination and, with certainty, allowing large numbers of others to die “just to make President Biden look bad.” This attitude has increased among the radical and the gullible cult followers under MAGA leadership, evidently ready to “drink the Kool-Aid.”

This takes us right into Girard’s theological system, one especially focused on social divisions, wars, projections of guilt, and violence of all sorts. Girard was a literary scholar and had no intention of creating a whole new perspective that explains the meaning of the Judeo-Christian faith. Nevertheless, the discipline of literature led him into a wide range of inquiry beyond its defined field and into unique ways of looking into the heart of the combined Judeo-Christian myths.

He comes to a profound appreciation of their ultimate successes. Even in the face of religious decline and the rise of secularism in Western culture, Girard is convinced that the Jesus story is succeeding in its mission. He observes that this is occurring through what he regarded as the slow but steady reversal of the negative dynamic at the very heart of social dysfunction and human sin.

John Hill, a colleague and friend, explains Girard’s theological insight in a paper he delivered to a meeting in which I participated.¹

“The conflict arising from competing desires which could have prevented the very emergence of stable human society has invariably been overcome by diverting the violence of all-against-all into a violence of all-against-one. Such scapegoating has such a remarkable power to create social unanimity that people consider it a sacred phenomenon; thus is born the category of ‘the sacred,’ providing the very foundation of all human culture (The cult at the root of culture).”

“Israel had been constituted to stand in the greatest possible contrast to all other nations—a people formed from victims rather than being formed by eliminating victims. So, a renewed Israel would once again be grounded in God’s unbounded love—the revelation of a different kind of peace and social order than the prevailing peace and order of societies like the Roman Empire, which were invariably grounded in violence (e.g., war, slavery, human sacrifice, subsistence inequality, imprisonment, execution, etc.)

^“Girard observes that the stories of the Hebrew Scriptures, even when they most closely resemble the world’s classical mythology, subvert that mythology by exposing the one thing that mythology always conceals: the villains and the victims of mythology and literature are not actually responsible for the crises which their deaths, ruin, or expulsions resolve. The story of Cain and Abel, for example, strikingly resembles the story of Romulus and Remus (each is a story about the founding of a great city); yet the story of Romulus and Remus is told to explain why Romulus was right to kill his brother, whereas the biblical story is about the innocence of Abel.”

“The preeminent theme Girard sees in ‘the good news’ of Jesus was ‘the dawning of the Kingdom of God, the establishment of God’s Culture of Life.’ According to Girard, the very possibility of this culture lay in the imaging of God’s ways that Jesus himself modeled. ‘He taught them to renounce the habits that would draw them back into the maelstrom of contagious rivalry: the love of money, the coveting of power and privilege, the allure of retaliation, the passing of judgment. His insights are not moralisms but wisdom.’ He demonstrated a passion to imitate his model, ‘Father…in heaven,’ and do his Father’s will (“Be merciful as your Father in heaven is merciful.’ Luke 6:36). He was committed to this loyalty even unto death. Jesus also taught them to expect persecution by the Greco-Roman Culture of Death, but that his death would lead to an understanding and growing rejection of the dynamic of victimization on the part of human beings and human society.

“On reflection, Girard contends that the culture of death could be dismantled only by subverting it from within, the strategy of entering the world of mythology in order to demythologize it. Jesus became the ultimate human victim, THE scapegoat. Caiaphas spoke for the culture of death when he said, “It is better that one man die for the nation than that the whole people should perish”. But Jesus exposed the mechanism of scapegoating and the innocence of the victim.

“At table, Jesus substituted a human sacrifice—himself—for the animal sacrifice—the lamb. Except that this time it would not be a sacrifice in the old sense; rather, it would be the end of sacrifice, in that old sense. This time, on behalf of all time to come, his death would not be another triumph of victimization but the undoing of victimization by the divine generosity of self-offering love. Sooner or later, Girard assumes, everyone else has to decide either to stand with the victimized or with the crowd yelling, “Crucify him!”

Girard finds the Jesus story to be the good news for the Culture of Life. Indeed, he believes that the effect has been successful beyond recognition. Gradually, the attitude has spread that victims are not deserving of condemnation and abuse in the assumption that they are guilty, that they are the ones causing the problems of society. Instead, human societies have come to understand that it is the victimizers who are guilty.

One can notice how the worm has turned in such a definitive way that the accused, including scapegoating political villains such as Trump, invariably make the claim that they are the victim instead of the victimizer. Putin swears that the Ukrainian leaders are all Nazis and that his fellow countrymen who disagree must be “spit out like flies.”² This is a classic form of scapegoating, joined with the demand that the world see him and his nation as the victim. Guilty leaders, rapists, children on the playground, seek to win support in wearing the mantle of the victimized scapegoat.

The stunning success of the Jesus story, Girard claims, has been established and is gradually moving toward the goals of nonviolence and application of the models provided. However, the old dangers are still with us, the mission is ongoing. Girard’s theological system is painfully aware that whole societies can return to the use of victimization and scapegoating, such as used in the regime that overran his country at the beginning of WWII and in Putin’s Russia.

America must ensure it does not become another painfully good example. We must not follow Trump and MAGA into the sad confusion of who is the victim and who is the vindicated servant of justice and peace. That is one compelling way to understand the threat of Trumpism.

1. The Rev. John Hill of Toronto, a close personal friend and colleague of many years, delivered the following insight during a meeting of the Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Mission. https://journeytobaptism.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/17/2023/05/GatheringPresent_2004Hill.pdf

2. Badash, David. “‘Textbook Definition of Genocide’: Experts Warn as Putin Announces ‘Necessary Cleansing’ of Russia.” The New Civil Rights Movement, 17 Mar. 2022, https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2022/03/textbook-definition-of-genocide-experts-warn-as-putin-announces-necessary-cleansing-of-russia/