René Girard: Contagion and Scapegoat

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Good evening. This is Radio
Free Beszel. I am

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Alphonse. Tonight, contagion
and scapegoat.

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In my previous episode I spoke
about René Girard's

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theory of identity and
desire, and I briefly

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touched on his theory of
the scapegoat. In this

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episode I'm going to go
into much more detail.

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And I have found that it
is shockingly relevant

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today in our time of pandemic,
of social justice,

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of intense polarization. I'm
going to begin with a

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story that Girard tells which
has come down to us

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from the ancient world,
from the Greek city of

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Ephesus in the second century,
which at that time

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was suffering from a plague.
And a philosopher who

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was in the city at the time,
Apollonius of Tyana,

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told the people that he
could rid them of the

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plague if only they would
follow him and do as

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he said. So he led the citizens
to the theatre -

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which i presume was an outdoor
amphitheatre - and

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there they saw an old
man who looked like a

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beggar. He was hunched over.
He was in rags. He

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had a bag with a crust of
bread. And Apollonius

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told the people, You need
to kill that man.

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And they were astonished.
They said, It's just

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a beggar - it's just an
old man! But Apollonius

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insisted, and so they began
to stone him. And when

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the first stone struck,
the old man looked up,

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and in his eyes was red fire.
And then the people

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knew that he was a demon
and they redoubled their

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efforts, and threw so
many stones that

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they pounded his body
to a bloody pulp.

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And afterwards they said
that he looked as

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if he was foaming at the
mouth like a dog.

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And in celebration of their
victory over the

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demon they erected a statue
to the god Hercules.

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Girard chooses his story
because it seems to be

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midway between history and
myth. It seems clear

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that there really was a
collective murder in

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Ephesus, but at the same
time we don't believe

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that the old man was
a demon. What Girard

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argues is that actual
historical murders

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are obscured behind myth.
Now this kind of

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collective murder was hardly
rare in Greece.

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In Greek cities at certain
festivals they

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would choose someone, often
someone marginal,

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like a beggar. And they
would take that person,

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and they would beat him,
and they would expel

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him from the city, and they
would kill him. And

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this was done in the belief
that it would rid

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the city of illness and
disorder. And the name

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that was given to this
victim was pharmakon,

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which means poison, remedy
or scapegoat. It is

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the root word of the modern
words pharmacy and

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pharmaceutical. So deep is
the connection between

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disease and plague and
scapegoating that it's

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embedded in our language today.
What the scapegoat

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does or what the murder
of the scapegoat does

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is that it resolves disorder
in the community.

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If you have a community
where the distinctions

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between people have
broken down, where

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respect for authority
is disappearing,

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where people feel that the
society is unstable,

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the scapegoat ritual can
resolve the problem.

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But after the murder, it's
covered up. And Girard

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says in the ancient world
this was through myth.

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The first thing that is
done is to insist that

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the victim is guilty. Now
this happens actually

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before the murder,
but it's certainly

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recorded in the stories
afterwards. And

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you can see this
in the idea that

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the old man was actually
a demon.

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There's a second step that
sometimes happens,

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which is deification. If
someone is so powerful

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that they can place the
community at risk, or

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that their death can save
it and remove disorder,

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that suggests that perhaps
this person is a God.

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And Girard claims that the
origin of many gods

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and myth was actual scapegoat
rituals, by

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which he means they weren't
myths at all,

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they were actually historical
collective

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murders that were concealed
behind myths,

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and the victims were
deified. And in fact

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many world myths - certainly
many that I

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have read - revolve around
the death of a monster

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or a god or a person, which
saved or even founded

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a society or a culture.
But what's the cause of

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the disorder that leads
to scapegoating? Girard

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says that it's mimetic
desire - the imitative

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desire that I described
in my previous episode.

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What happens is that since
we imitate the desires

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of others, he argues, we
end up competing for

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the same things. We end
up in rivalry. And that

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rivalry intensifies. If I'm
copying what you want

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and you're copying what
I want then we're going

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to end up in a vicious circle,
a feedback loop.

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And as that intensifies,
the thing itself

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drops out and what we're
actually imitating

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is each other, mirroring
each other. I

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mirror your anger. I
mirror your hate.

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And you do the same to
me. I mirror your

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violence and you mirror
mine. So emotions too

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are contagious, and
in fact empathy

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amplifies the feedback
loop.

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As this happens in society,
the conflict can

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spread. Other people
can imitate the same

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desires. Other people can
be sucked into the same

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conflicts. And then smaller
conflicts dissolve

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into larger ones, Girard
says, like tributaries

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feeding a river, until
finally you have a war

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of all against all: a community
where there's

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polarization and conflict
and hate everywhere.

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And the scapegoat solves
this. Because when

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the community turns on
a single individual

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and transfers all that
hate and all that

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anger onto him, then
they are unified.

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And when they have expelled
him or destroyed

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him, that unification lasts
- at least for a

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time. They may repeat the
process with someone

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else. And so scapegoating
the works once

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may become rituals that are
continued over time.

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Girard says that human
sacrifice was

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foundational to many
ancient societies,

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and it was only over time
that animals replaced humans.

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And eventually in
some societies

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there was no bloodletting
at all.

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And who is chosen to be
the scapegoat? It's

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someone who's different.
Girard particularly

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emphasizes four qualities:
someone who is

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foreign; someone who's
diseased or lame;

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someone who violates
sexual taboos, like

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those against bestiality
and incest;

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or someone who is
exceptional, like

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a king, or an artist,
or a thinker.

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In fact, he says that the
Oedipus myth is an

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example of this. For Oedipus
is all four of

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those things: he is a
foreigner, he's lame,

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he has sex with his mother,
and he's a king.

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If Girard is right, the
tragedy of Oedipus,

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the Greek play, reenacts
an actual sacrifice.

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And I don't think
it's an accident

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that the beggar in the
story in Ephesus

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is killed in the theatre.
In fact, I've recently

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rewatched the movie Gladiator,
and i was really

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surprised to find at the
end it reenacted almost

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exactly how Girard describes
a scapegoat ritual.

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There's one complication,
which is two men

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die: the gladiator and
the emperor. And

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the emperor has three key
qualities that Girard

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identifies: first, he's
emperor, he's powerful;

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second, he's been
forcing himself

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on his sister sexually;
and third,

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he has a hare lip. Those are
three of the four key

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qualities that Girard identifies
for scapegoats.

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But in the final scene, when the
gladiator and the emperor die,

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they are surrounded by
ring of soldiers, and

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beyond them the community
of Rome in the Coliseum.

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And this is how Girard
describes scapegoat

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rituals: the community surrounds
the victim. Often

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they stone him or they force
him off the edge of a

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cliff, but they don't lay
a finger on him. And in

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fact that's what the soldiers
do when the leader

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at one point tells them
to sheath their swords.

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When the emperor and the hero
die, we see the sun over Rome.

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An unstable situation with
a bad emperor has been

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solved and peace and order
have been restored.

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So even today the
scapegoat ritual

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seems to be embedded
in our culture.

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But today we seem to
be in a particularly

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difficult situation. We're
in the midst of

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the pandemic. There
is social disorder

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and polarization and
there's a loss of

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respect for authority -
exactly the conditions

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that Girard describes
lead to scapegoating.

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And on top of that, we have
conditions for mimetic

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contagion. That's what social
media seems to be

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all about: the fear of missing
out, the imitation,

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the rituals of exclusion
and cancellation.

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Social media leads people
to imitate and for

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social contagion to occur.
The psychologist

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Jonathan Haidt has identified
social media as the

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likely cause of a lot of
mental illness today.

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And he's pointed to particular
features of

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it: the like button, and
the share button.

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And these are two mechanisms
of imitation

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and copying of mimesis
and mimetic contagion.

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Furthermore, our culture
emphasizes empathy.

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But empathy, while it can
be good, can also be

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negative, as an amplifier
of memetic contagion,

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as an amplifier of the hate
and the antagonism

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between people. Now those
who scapegoat are

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unaware of what they've
done. They must be,

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because they must be unified
against the victim.

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And so they all believe that
the victim is guilty.

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And then sometimes they
disguise that crime by

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turning the victim into
something that he isn't:

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a demon or a hero or a
god. But there's one

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other thing, Girard says,
that the perpetrators

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of scapegoating may do,
which is to say that

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they're better than that,
to believe that

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they're beyond it, to say
that their fathers

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or their grandfathers
have scapegoated, but

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they do not. And this illusion
actually makes it

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easier for them to do it.
It makes it easier for

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them to convince themselves
that the victim is not

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innocent, that they are actually
enacting justice.

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We have the perfect storm.
We have the social

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media. We have the pandemic.
We have the

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social disorder. We
have the empathy.

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We have the belief
in our own virtue.

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And if we scapegoat we will
not know that we did

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it. Girard cites a philosopher,
Emmanuel Levinas,

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who says that, if everyone
agrees that someone

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is guilty, release him
for he is innocent.

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This is Alphonse, for Radio
Free Beszel. www.beszel.ca.

11:14
Good night.