The Scapegoat
If we blame it on someone who is already defenceless life will be easier for ourselves. At least for a while.
This essay, occasioned by a reading of René Girard, will delve into biblical history and mythology, as well as systems analysis and the depressing news from Israel.
Woodcut, 2018.
René Girard is primarily known for his theories of mimetic violence and the scapegoat. There is a short introduction in a series of brilliant animations that outlines his theories. In the second of five episodes, the animator renders homage to Norman McLaren by alluding to one of his most famous animations. Two neighbours live in virtually identical suburban houses with pedantically kempt lawn. One day a flower sprouts exactly on their border and they both claim ownership. The pattern of the ensuing dispute and escalation is as familiar in international conflicts as it is in once friendly neighbourhoods.
The idea of mutual emulation finds some resonance in the economic theory of Thorstein Veblen, who pointed out the role of conspicuous consumption as a means of distinction. Girard holds that this mutual mimeticism is a source of conflict and violence.
The Scapegoat (Le bouc émissaire) is concerned with myths and biblical stories about victims of persecution, or what Girard argues must be the victims even though the narrative provides no direct evidence. As a literary scholar, Girard analyses the myths of Oedipus and Baldur, and finds in them evidence of collective persecution. Accusations of incestuous relations or the murder of one's own father, as in Oedipus, are to Girard clear evidence of a persecution leading to Oedipus' death. The omission or distortion of the persecution in the myth as it is told is significant, and Girard tries to convince his readers of his unconventional interpretation. Not surprisingly many have disagreed, and Girard spends a few pages trying to persuade his critics, probably without much success.
The first text he analyses is different, not a myth but a poem by the prolific composer and poet Guillaume de Machaut from the time of the black death, which swept France around 1350. As the real source of the disease was not well understood, Jews were accused of having poisoned the rivers. Here is a part of the unabashedly anti-Semitic verse by Machaut:
Ce fu Judée la honnie,
La mauvaise, la desloyal,
Qui bien het et aimme tout mal,
Qui tant donna d'or et d'argent
Et promist a crestienne gent,
Que puis, rivieres et fonteinnes
Qui estoient cleres et seinnes
En plusieurs lieus empoisonnerent,
Dont pluseurs leurs vies finerent ;
Car trestuit cil qui en usoient
Assez soudeinnement moroient.
[...]
Car tuit Juif furent destruit,
Li uns pendus, li autres cuit,
L'autre noié, l'autre ot copée
La test de hache ou d'espée.
Very roughly translated:
“It was the shameful, disloyal Jew who hated good and loved everything evil, who lent so much gold and money and promised Christians; rivers that used to be clear and clean they poisoned many places, where many ended their lives, those who used these rivers suddenly died. [...] All Jews were destroyed, some hung, some boiled, others drowned, or beheaded with hatchet or spear.”
As Girard points out, it is unusual that persecutors are so candid about their deeds. It is a naive persecutor who thinks himself justified in what he does, and does not shy away from being explicit. The naive persecutor does not know or understand what he is doing, and therefore is not afraid to admit their crimes. In more modern times, the perpetrators of crimes against humanity have often tried to cover up their actions.
The preposterous nature of the idea that any poison known at the time would have been able to spread with a river and affect thousands of people does not occur to Machaut. The out-group is different and has a weak position in society, but through the use of a powerful poison only a few individuals are able to spread the disease wide and far, according to the credulous line of reasoning. The persecution of innocent victims is symptomatic of times of crises and social upheaval. Not only those at the bottom of society, such as the poor and ethnic minorities, are at risk, the ruling elites also find themselves in a vulnerable position at such times.
But those who once were victims may become the new executioner.
What has Israel been up to, lately?
In a previous article I touched on the already dire situation in Israel and Gaza, as it appeared by the end of last year. The enormous suffering the news might expose us to, in more or less explicit detail depending on the source, makes many want to avoid the news altogether. I will not avoid it here, but keep it on a more analytical level.
Systems analysis is often an enlightening alternative to thinking in purely moral, ideological, legal, or even psychological terms. It has been applied to much good work (see Donella Meadows' introduction), but of course it can also be used for nefarious purposes. Of all the commentaries on the situation in Gaza, a recent interview with Michael Hudson stands out as one of the most clear-sighted as well as a deeply depressing account. Even Israel-friendly news outlets have had to admit that children and women are killed in high numbers, that aid is being blocked, hospitals and apparently most houses are bombed to rubble. When World Central Kitchen – a Western group of aid workers – were shot we were told it was a mistake that would be investigated. The claim that it was an accident doesn't necessarily hold up to scrutiny. As Hudson points out, from a systems thinking perspective there is a plan that perfectly well explains the actions and their intended consequences. Journalists are targeted, because seeing too much grotesque images is bad not only for Israel's reputation but also for Biden's already sinking popularity, and Israel needs Biden to send them more weapons.
Hudson says:
And you’ve read, obviously, the whole news of the last week has been the attack on the seven food providers that were not Arabs. And this was, again, from a systems analyst point, this is exactly what the textbook says to do strategically. If you can make a very conspicuous bombing of aid people, then you will have other aid suppliers afraid to go, because they think, well, if these people, aid suppliers, are just shot at, then we would be too.
Exactly the same thing can be said about doctors and journalists; seeing that they are not safe in Gaza, they will be reluctant to volunteer. Asked why Israel is targeting civilians, journalists, and aid workers, Hudson replies:
Well, it’s targeting everyone. It’s targeting all civilians because it wants a land without Palestinian people. It’s targeting the most critical people necessary for a Gazan society to survive. It targets the journalists because it doesn’t want the world to see what it’s doing, because Israel has already lost its standing in the world. The United States tells them, especially, you’ve got to kill the journalists because if you don’t kill them, we, the Biden administration, are going to look bad. We already have the Americans turning against the war.
Of course it cannot be taken literally that the US ”tells them to kill jounalists,” but we should care much less about what White House spokespersons happen to say and instead pay attention to their actions, their vetos in the security counsel, their lack of condemnation when Israel does things that make themselves along with all their supporters look increasingly bad. Weapons are being exported whether or not the Biden administration says they would prefer the bombing to proceed a bit more cautiously. Weapons or parts of military equipment are exported also from several European countries, which means there are profit motives for these countries to hold back their condemnations.
Hudson continues:
In order to drive the rest of the Gazan populations out, you have to, number one, get rid of the journalists. Number two, you want to get rid of the hospitals. As you’re bombing the people, a lot of them are going to get injured. You want all the injured people from the bombs to die. For that, you have to bomb the hospitals. You especially have to target the doctors for killing. Not only will there not be doctors to heal the wounded people, but other doctors, doctors without borders from other countries, will be afraid to go into Gaza because if you go there, you know that if you’re a food worker bringing aid or a doctor or an aid worker, you’re going to get shot because you’re at the top of the target list.
The self-described Most Ethical Army in the World has been using an artificial intelligence program known as Lavender to rapidly and efficiently create target lists. The intelligence of this program being somewhat sloppy, mistakes occur in about 10 per cent of the cases. However, what explains the large number of civilians killed is that the targets picked out by Lavender have been taken out by bombing their homes at night, often taking their whole family with them. I think the use of AI serves a real purpose here, and not primarily the one of simplifying the bottleneck of slow human decision-making. Its actual function is to insulate the human actors from any sense of moral responsibility by delegating the decisions to a machine. Given the high proportion of bombed buildings in northern Gaza, similar results probably could have been achieved by going through each street in alphabetical order. But Lavender and other mechanisms and policies have a rational and efficient appearance. Civilian casualties are tolerated in ratios such as 15 to a single Hamas associate, or higher ratios for high ranking commanders. Statistical calculations of civilian casualties inform the decisions of where to bomb. It's all so rational, it might look as if hatred or revenge were not even a part of the equation.
The endgame, according to Michael Hudson, is that Israel will stop bombing when there are no more Palestinians to bomb. The prospect of a two state solution has been unlikely for decades. A one state solution of peaceful coexistence is even more unlikely in the near future. Sad to say, I find Hudson's prediction plausible that it will have to be either a completely Jewish state or a completely Palestinian state.
On top of that, there is the looming conflict between Israel and some of its neighbouring states with much more at stake than the continuing welfare of the state of Israel. Iran and Israel have already exchanged attacks on each others territories, with Israel having an interest in provoking an escalation. Iran, even more than the Yemeni Ansarallah (popularly known as the "Houthis") have the power to block international shipping, in particular of oil. Should that happen, the global economy will face interesting times.
Escalation has its own entry in Donella Meadows systems theory book. It is a reinforcing feedback loop in arms races or conflicts. "The escalation is exponential and can lead to extremes surprisingly quickly. If nothing is done, the spiral will be stopped by someone's collapse—because exponential growth cannot go on forever" (Meadows, p. 192). The best advice is never to get into such a situation. Otherwise the spiral of violence may be ended if one side unilaterally withdraws, or if a new system can be negotiated with some balancing mechanism to keep the escalation in check.
All ancient myths of scapegoats, Girard suggests, are – likely or possibly – based on real historical events. The perpetrators of the ongoing genocide in Gaza will surely construe it precisely as one of those myths Girard recounts, with all kinds of false and exaggerated accusations attached to the victims. And they behave like those naive perpetrators who are convinced of their own righteousness, which makes them reveal their genocidal intent in barely concealed terms.
Stories of mass rapes and beheaded babies allegedly committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023 have circulated in the New York Times and other media, without any credible evidence to back it up. It is true that Hamas fighters killed about 1000 people including many civilians, and abducted some 240 Israelis. There should be no need to add to that any fictional atrocities, except for the purpose of justifying a highly disproportionate revenge. On the contrary, these stories have been thoroughly debunked, and testimony of crimes committed against the civilians of Gaza is readily available.
When victims are accused of incredible atrocities without any evidence in a massive propaganda operation, then, with Girard, we should recognise the mythomaniac story telling which has no roots in reality, but serves the function of distracting attention from the actual crimes which in this moment are committed against Palestinians.
The newest testament, so far
Lastly I will address an old classic, an anthology I used to insist on having read to me as bedtime stories before I had learned to read myself. My recollection of the book may be rusty and my grasp of it rudimentary, but Girard fills in some of the blanks.
Girard devotes the last half of the Scapegoat to a selection of biblical stories. There is John the Baptist, the schizophrenic "Legion," and Peter's betrayal of Jesus. Girard's analysis often picks up on innocuous details which turn out to be significant.
In Mark 14:30, Jesus predicts that "even in this night, before the cock crow twice, thou [Peter] shalt deny me thrice." The literary effect when this comes to pass, in the end of the chapter, is astounding. It appears almost as a miracle, although as Girard insists, Peter's betrayal has a perfectly rational psychological explanation. Jesus has been taken into the palace of the high priest for interrogation, and Peter has followed from afar. In the palace, Peter approaches a fire and tries to be one of the community, but his dialect betrays him as an outsider. A young female servant recognises him as one of the followers of Jesus.
And when she saw Peter warming himself, she looked upon him, and said, And thou also wast with Jesus of Nazareth. But he denied, saying, I know not, neither understand I what thou sayest. And he went out into the porch; and the cock crew. (Mark 14:67-68)
Peter acts as if in a dream, and surely he is afraid, but not enough so to stay out of the palace. He also desires to be accepted by the community, but feels ashamed for his attachment to Jesus.
Pour ne pas se faire crucifier, le meilleur moyen, en dernière analyse, est de faire comme tout le monde et de participer à la crucifixion. (Girard, p. 230)
Peter is not a bad person throughout, nor is he good, he is just unreliable and of feeble character. He is not that different from most of us. We are all susceptible to betray someone who is persecuted when we realise that the persecution might soon turn against us too. That is probably why many journalists have been reluctant to speak out for their colleague Julian Assange, whose fate already must have frightened many from reporting on sensitive issues.
The outcast who calls himself Legion, "for we are many" (Mark 5), is a clear case of a schizophrenic, or someone "possessed by unclean spirits" according to the evangelical authors' diagnosis; but in Girard's not so convincing analysis he and his community are engaged in some kind of mutual game of reflection. As he practices self-harm by cutting himself with stones, Girard claims he does so out of concern for being lapidated by the villagers ... I think it is clear how the scholarly reading has gone awry here. In fact, Girard briefly entertains the doubt that he may only be projecting his pet theory, only to decide that his reading must be correct.
When Jesus happens upon the man in the mountains, he cures him by transferring the spirits possessing him onto a herd of pigs, who rush out of a cliff to drown themselves. (Jesus was way cool.) The villagers are not pleased with this because of their ambivalent dependence on the schizophrenic, if we are to believe Girard. That is why they ask Jesus to leave. Would it not be cause enough that a stranger precipitates a herd of pigs into the sea?
Two means of collective capital punishment are alluded to in the passage, that of chasing the victim out of a cliff and lapidation. "Everybody participates in the destruction of the cursed but nobody enters into direct physical contact with him. No-one risks being tarnished. Only the group is responsible. The individuals all share the same degree of innocence and responsibility." (Girard, p. 260, my translation). In other words, the mechanism is not so different from how the Lavender AI program obscures the direct responsibility of each individual.
In the last chapter, Girard offers his take on the the Gospels. Their representation of the persecution of victims differs from what Girard has identified as pervasive in all myths; here the martyrs are identified as innocent and the persecutors as being wrong, albeit not knowing what they are doing. Although there had been predecessors such as Socrates, the Christian martyrs were the first ones to have a structural effect on a larger level. When Christianity itself became a dominant power it pursued witches and indigenous people. But, Girard says, throughout Western history, the representations according to the persecutor have diminished. Which is not to say that the violence has diminished in quantity or intensity, but the persecutors are no longer able to persistently impose their narrative and their depiction of their victims. If it took centuries to demystify anti-Semitic persecutions and witch hunts, modern incidents are discredited in a few years (Girard, pp. 295-6). Holocaust revisionism is illegal in Germany and France, but regrettably the same states (along with US and the UK) today repress those who try to express even the mildest solidarity with Palestinians or call for a cease-fire.
Usually, the scientific attitude of searching for explanations of disasters in physical causes has been less compelling than finding simple but false explanations in social relations, that is, by appointing scapegoats. Girard even suggests that the scientific attitude as such could only prevail after the witch hunts of innocent victims were identified as mistaken, not the other way around. And to achieve the feat of turning people's attention to the patient exploration of natural causes instead of blaming some victim, it is necessary to show that the persecutors hate without a reason and act without any appreciable positive effect, which is precisely the contribution of the Gospels (Girard, p. 299).
A mysterious figure called the Comforter (le paraclet in French, from Greek παράκλητος: advocate) briefly appears in Jesus' farewell speeches.
But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. (John 14:26)
He will come and clarify what Jesus himself has failed to get across to the masses, even to his disciples, sometime after he himself is gone. The Comforter is identified with the Holy Spirit, the most enigmatic character of the Trinity because it appears more like a vague philosophical idea than some personified entity. The Gospels, according to Girard, have succeeded in turning around the mythical scheme in which the victim is guilty, whether you call it the victory of Christ over Satan or the victory of the Spirit of Truth over the Spirit of Lies. And the Spirit of Truth is the same as the Comforter or the Holy Spirit.
The message of redemption, that Jesus died for all our sins, has always appeared incomprehensible to me. "When the Gospels affirm that Christ henceforth will take the place of all victims, we don't see in it anything but sentimentality and pompous piety," Girard notes (p. 296), but Matthew 25, which he then goes on to quote, explains clearly that it has nothing to do with Jesus as an individual: All you have done to help the poor, the sick, you have done to me, says Jesus. And conversely, those who have helped Jesus without caring for the sick and the poor have missed the point. It is our attitude toward any victim that matters.
The perpetrators of genocides, witch hunts, pogroms, ritual sacrifices, and the like, they invariably justify their actions, even claiming to serve God. Our sense of justice may demand retribution, but breaking the spiral of violence instead demands forgiveness. Forgive them, for they know not what they do.
References
René Girard: Le bouc émissaire. Grasset, 1982.
Donella Meadows: Thinking in Systems. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008.
And, although I didn't say a peep about it, for a basic understanding of human behaviour at both of its extremes I must recommend:
Robert Sapolsky: Behave. The biology of humans at our best and worst. Penguin Press, 2017.