Scapegoats (Sacrificial Targets for Blame)
Definition: The Scapegoat is a person or group designated to absorb the blame, anger, or fear generated by a crisis in the system. In Girardian terms, scapegoating is a “collective dimensional collapse” – reducing complex, systemic tensions into a single target of blame. By uniting against this target, the Dominator System channels conflict away from the powerful Dominant Players and achieves a false resolution of disorder.
The Scapegoat is marginal or marked as different, making them a believable culprit in the Master's House narrative.
Importantly, Scapegoats are usually innocent with respect to the system's real problems; their “guilt” is a symbolic fiction. As Girard showed, when social stress and mimetic rivalries build up, the community unconsciously picks a Scapegoat to expel or punish, thereby purging conflict without addressing its root causes.
Mechanism:
Scapegoating in the Master's House serves as a safety valve to preserve the larger structure.
It follows a ritualized script: many contradictions → one simplified enemy.
Complexity and nuance get flattened into an “us vs. them” storyline.
This is sacrificial logic: rather than solve or hold the contradictions, the Master's House expels the Scapegoat.
For example, if a corporation faces a widespread culture problem, it might fire a single “bad apple” employee, portraying them as the cause of the issue. Briefly, order is restored as everyone agrees on the removal of the offender – meanwhile the deeper issues remain untouched.
Girard calls this the “founding murder” myth – the idea that peace comes by sacrificing one for all.
Indeed, the aftermath often sees the Scapegoat paradoxically sanctified (“the trouble went away thanks to removing them”), which cements belief in the righteousness of the Master's House.
This is false clarity born of violence and exclusion, which Girard and others identify as a core feature of human hierarchies.
Relation to Other Roles:
Scapegoating often works in tandem with Peacemakers:
Initially, when tensions rise, Peacemakers try to smooth things over. But if their efforts fail to “metabolize” the conflict, those very Peacemakers can be flipped into Scapegoats.
In other words, the facilitator who couldn't fix the unfixable gets cast out as the problem.
This cruel reversal is common: the nurse who spoke up about systemic issues is blamed for “negativity,” the minority employee who voiced discrimination concerns is labeled “difficult” and terminated. Scapegoating thus punishes those who reveal the system's cracks, ensuring others stay silent.
Examples:
History and current events abound with scapegoating.
Social media platforms ironically accelerate this mechanism: online mobs quickly converge on an individual (often a somewhat representative transgressor) to blame for a broader angst. For instance, amid public frustration at misinformation, a particular influencer might be scapegoated as “the source of all fake news” and banned, giving a sense of action while the platform's algorithm (which amplifies outrage for profit) escapes scrutiny. In politics, leaders routinely scapegoat minority groups or outsiders for economic and social woes – e.g. immigrants are falsely blamed for unemployment or crime, a pattern research shows is used by authoritarian regimes to rally support.
Bureaucracies scapegoat “rogue” underlings for scandals (“it was a lone bad actor, not our policy”).
A concrete case: after the 2008 financial crisis, low-level loan officers or a few greedy traders were vilified, while the systemic risk-taking culture and deregulation were left largely intact.
In corporate DEI contexts, when diversity initiatives falter, the lone diversity officer (often a woman or person of color in a new role) may be scapegoated as “not effective enough,” diverting blame from an uncooperative leadership culture.
The Scapegoat mechanism ultimately ensures the Master's House survives by sacrificing someone else. This is evil as dimensional erasure: a human being with a rich inner life is reduced to a function – ‘the cause of our woes' – and cast out”. This brings temporary peace, a “False Peace,” while the Dominator Logic resets itself for another cycle.