Scapegoats

Transferring Blame

Tom Douglas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780415110198
• eBook ISBN: 9781134836819
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Scapegoats are a universal phenomenon, appearing in all societies at all times in groups large and small, in public and private organizations. Hardly a week passes without some media reference to someone or something being made a scapegoat. Tom Douglas examines the process of scapegoating from the perspectives of victims and perpetrators, tracing its development from earliest times as rite of atonement to the modern forms of the avoidance of blame and the victimisation of innocents. The differences and similarities between the ancient and modern forms are examined to reveal that despite the modern logical explanations of behaviour, the mystical element in the form of superstition is still evident.
Directly responding to the Diploma in Social Work's call for texts on anti-discriminatory practice Scapegoats should become essential reading for all social workers in training and practice. Will also be a invaluable resource for all professionals engaging in groupwork and group workers in training.

Part I

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Ancient ritual

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The ancient process of the transfer and disposal of evil, which has come to be known as ‘scapegoating’, seems to have existed ever since human beings held the concept that they were under the supervision of divine beings. However, it is a moot point which arose first: the perception of divine beings or the human's wish to be absolved from culpability, to escape punishment, to stop a process of entailed consequences. Whatever the truth may be, it is certain that Tyndale's development and use of the word ‘scapegoat’ provided an accurate and easily understood means of describing a process that is extremely basic to the human condition.

The three chapters in Part I are concerned with the origins of the term and with a description of the ancient processes of scapegoating. The aim is to define the purposes and consequences of the performance of these rituals and to consider the role of those selected to be victims whether inanimate, animal or human.

Chapter 1

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Origins

Tyndale's word and its continued use

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Scapegoat—Any material object, animal, bird or person on whom the bad luck, diseases, misfortunes and sins of an individual or group are symbolically placed, and which is then turned loose, driven off with stones, cast into a river or the sea, etc., in the belief that it takes away with it all the evils placed upon it.

(Maria Leach 1950)

In 1590 Robert Kers was stricken with a disease which was believed to have been laid upon him by a warlock while he was at Dumfries. Agnes Sampson, a witch, cured him by taking the disease upon herself and then attempted to transfer the disease to either a cat or a dog, by means of laying cloths upon these animals. However, Alexander Douglas of Dalkeith apparently touched the cloths before the animals and as a result wasted away and died. Agnes Sampson was later convicted of witchcraft. This story, recorded by Frazer,¹ describes very clearly another major aspect of the scapegoating procedure, the belief that evils, disease, bad feeling, etc., can be transferred from one person or object to another by the performance of the appropriate rituals. Of course, the fact that the poor soul who caught the disease and died was a member of the family of Douglas adds a certain piquancy to the tale for me.

Dr George Habash, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was allowed into France at the end of January 1992, ostensibly to seek treatment in a Paris hospital after having had a stroke. Habash, described as a terrorist and a man wanted by the Israeli government, was admitted to France while President Mitterrand and his Foreign minister were on a state visit to Oman.

The outcry which this event caused was predictable and, as a result, French Interior Ministry Officials resigned, as did the head of the French Red Cross responsible for flying Dr Habash into the country. The Daily Telegraph described the situation as ‘a decision mind-boggling for its political ineptitude and moral impropriety’.

At this time President Mitterrand's government was recorded as becoming increasingly unpopular, with the prime minister Mme Edith Cresson reported to be deeply unpopular and lacking in authority over her ministers.

What was done was wrong, without doubt, and as a consequence people were punished, as was to be expected. But lying behind the justice of such punishment was a very considerable feeling that had the government been more popular the resignations and sackings would have been regarded as excessive. What justification is there, then, for such a response?

Because the government was seen as weak it was attacked with more ferocity than previously. Thus, in order to stay in power with some semblance of authority, the government had to overreact to assuage the wrath of the population. This was done by sacrificing very publicly people who were important enough to satisfy the public but who may have had little or nothing to do with the original scandal. They were in effect the scapegoats. The blame was attached to them and they were despatched to the political wilderness.

Seldom does a week pass without some reference in the media to someone who has been made a scapegoat. Indeed, it would not be stretching the truth to say that it has become one of the favourite words of the latter half of the twentieth century to describe those in public, and in private, who are apparently unjustly or unfairly blamed for certain events.

ORGIN OF INTEREST

I have been fascinated by the idea of the scapegoat ever since, as a small boy, I encountered the term in readings at Sunday School. For many years this fascination was more or less dormant and was only occasionally sparked into life by references in the press, on the radio and in conversation about people and groups who were deemed to have become, or been made, scapegoats by others. Then, as my interest in painting and art history was aroused, I came across Holman Hunt's painting of the scapegoat.

When I started to work with groups of people it became obvious that scapegoating was a ubiquitous occurrence in groups of all sizes. Now the term started to be surrounded and complicated by ideas like blame, prejudice, visible difference, intense dislike, frustration, displacement and maintenance. I watched members of groups being made scapegoats and worked hard to try to understand what was happening as well as to try to learn how to prevent the apparently harmful manifestations that occurred.

I was now intrigued by what was seemingly ancient ritual behaviour in modern groups. Was there, or is there, an aspect of human behaviour that is universal and manifests itself in attempts to diminish or alleviate guilt and fear of punishment by some form of transfer of responsibility onto someone or something else? Where does the concept of the tangible nature of ‘bad’ originate, enabling it to be redirected like a stream of water or a current of energy from one human being to another or to some other living creature and even to inanimate objects? Can this transfer be effected by a simple ritual pattern? What level of belief must exist about the nature of things—and about the process of the accumulation of ‘badness’ in particular—to consider that such a method of dispersal might be effective? Do the current psychological and sociological approaches by attempting to be logical and rational miss something which is part of the mainstream of human experience? If so—what?

Is there some basic need in human beings to ward off responsibility, to transfer badness to others even though, currently, we would eschew the ritual and mystical aspect of such an idea? But from whom or what do modern blame-shifters seek to evade censure? Someone has to take the blame to allow the rest of us to continue our normal functions, nominally at least, free of guilt or responsibility for events past.

Within the therapeutic milieu of groups, groupwork and group therapy—and also within organisations—people are often referred to as ‘scapegoats’ and reference is frequently made to the process of scapegoating. Within groupwork much has been written about the act of scapegoating—the process of being a scapegoat—and a very distinct and well-defined concept or series of concepts has emerged. In essence these tend to put the scapegoat as a person who is, in some ways, necessary; by taking the responsibility of blame for some of the bad things that are happening to the group and within the group, a scapegoat can make it possible for the group to continue to function. Consideration must also be given to the method by which the scapegoat is chosen by the group or organisation and to the way in which some scapegoats select themselves.

In this respect, the element of victimisation is very great, but the entire concept of the scapegoat—i.e. a person standing-in for others in order to accept blame and responsibility for some occurrence—is as old as humanity itself.

It is my intention to trace the behaviour patterns that were established around the scapegoat concept, blame-laying and blame-acceptance and maintenance, and to follow their development and change through the ages to the modern usage.

Mary Renault,² in her book The Praise Singer, gives a graphic description of a scapegoating process from ancient Greece (see quotation at the head of Chapter 2).

As we shall see later, people like this victim were selected because they were malefactors or diseased and were often stored and maintained by the city until such time as they were needed to fulfil their role, which inevitably ended in death.

ORIGINS OF THE WORD

William Tyndale, born in Gloucester in 1494, scholar and protestant, translator of the Bible, was strangled and burnt at the stake by the Catholic establishment at Vilvoorde a few kilometres north of Brussels in the year 1536. After his death his prophecy, that he would have made it possible for a ploughboy to know more scripture than the scholars, started to come true. Indeed, when the English translation of the Bible was undertaken after 1538 it was based essentially upon Tyndale's translation, but in order to prevent an outcry the translation was credited to one Thomas Matthew.

In this way Tyndale's version of the Bible survived through King Henry's Great Bible, and a great deal of it is still to be found in the King James Bible, the authorised version.

Tyndale's reading of Leviticus, chapter 16 verse 10, is as follows:

But the goat, on which the lot fell to be scapegoat, shall be presented alone³ before the Lord, to make an atonement with him and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.

And verses 21–2 offer:

And Aaron shall lay his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat and shall send him away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. The goat shall bear all their iniquities upon him to a solitary land; and he shall let the goat go into the wilderness.

It is generally accepted that Tyndale invented the word ‘scapegoat’ to express what he understood to be the literal meaning of the Hebrew word ‘azazel’, a word which appears to have several meanings. For instance, Milton⁴ says that Azazel is the standard bearer of the rebel angels. In Mohammedan demonology, according to Brewer,⁵ Azazel is the counterpart of the devil, having been cast out of heaven for a refusal to worship Adam. His name is then rendered as Eblis (Iblis), which means despair.

Yet again, Azazel as a being appears as a vicious wilderness demon similar to Lilith the vampire demon. Then the man who was deputed to take the goat into the wilderness in the Hebrew atonement ceremony, usually a person regarded as being disposable and often unclean, was customarily identified with the animal. In the passage of time, any kind of unfortunate outcast came to be known as Azazel.

Another form of the word ‘Azal’, this time used as a verb, has the meaning of ‘to remove’. In its reduplicated form of Azazel it was occasionally used to emphasise the meaning, e.g. to remove completely.

Given these complexities of possible meanings, from where did Tyndale derive the word ‘scapegoat’? In order to discover this we shall need to look rather more closely at the ritual that the passage in Leviticus was describing.

Brewer⁵ says about this ceremony that it was

Part of the ancient ritual among the Hebrews for the Day of Atonement laid down by Mosaic Law…two goats were brought to the altar of the Tabernacle and the high priest cast lots, one for the Lord and the other for Azazel. The Lord's goat was sacrificed, the other was the scapegoat; and the high priest having, by confession, transferred his own sins and the sins of the people to it, was taken to the wilderness and suffered to escape.

The italics are mine, and have been used to bring into prominence the word ‘escape’. Most authorities, when writing about the scapegoat of the Day of Atonement, actually describe the goat as being ‘driven’ into the wilderness. If Tyndale had read into the Hebrew the idea that the goat was ‘suffered to escape’, then his coining of the word ‘scape’ goat becomes much clearer.

The word ‘scape’ is what the dictionary describes as an ‘aphetic’ form of the common word escape, i.e. it has lost its first letter and was a form used in the thirteenth century. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology⁶ records that Tyndale ‘intended to render the supposed literal meaning of the Hebrew Azazel… “the goote on which the lotte fell to scape” ‘. This translation led in turn to the Vulgate using the phrase ‘caper emissarius’ and to the French translation becoming ‘bouc emissaire’. The dictionary goes on to suggest that the correct interpretation may well be ‘a goat for Azazel’ who, as we have already seen, was a wilderness demon. Now this raises an interesting question. The Bible expressly forbids the worship of demons (Leviticus 17.7) and yet we are being told that if the first goat was for the Lord then the second goat was for Azazel, he being a demon.

The only other prevalent use of the aphetic form of escape appears to be as ‘scapegrace’, which also carries a religious connotation in that a person so described was one who had escaped the grace of God. This manner of use was prevalent in the nineteenth century, having replaced the earlier version of ‘want-grace’.

The word ‘scapegoat’ does not appear in later translations of the Bible. For instance, the Revised edition of 1884 inserts the name Azazel and has a marginal note which offers ‘dismissal’ as an alternative reading.

It becomes fairly clear that what Tyndale was trying to convey by the use of the word scapegoat was a significant difference between the process of sacrifice, which was the fate of the Lord's goat, and that of the ritual transfer of evil. In the second process, death might be the ultimate outcome as far as the scapegoat was concerned. Indeed, as we shall see many times and in different places, it was the intended outcome, but it was certainly not the prime reason for the performance of the ritual.

Indubitably this was to cleanse the community of its sins by the process of transferring the sins to an animal and allowing it to escape into the wilderness. The fact that the animal could be in contact with others or with human beings, and that the sins might then transfer to them, seems to have been a matter of little concern. Indeed, in later versions of this ritual of transfer of evil there is obvious and deliberate intent to transfer it to others irrespective of whether this contact will bring about ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Part I Ancient ritual
• Part II Social behaviour: examples and analysis
• Part III Theories and explanations
• Part IV Management
• Bibliography
• Index