The Oldest Trick in the Book

Panic-Driven Scapegoating in History and Recurring Patterns of Persecution

Ben M. Debney

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9789811555688
• eBook ISBN:
  9789811555695
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book investigates the normalisation of blame-shifting within ideological discourse as a broad feature of history, working from Churchill's truism that history is written by the victors. To that end, it explores historical episodes of political persecution carried out under cover of moral panic, highlighting the process of 'Othering' common to each and theorising a historical model of panic-driven scapegoating from the results. Building this model from case studies in witch panic, communist panic and terrorist panic respectively, The Oldest Trick in the Book builds an argument that features common to each case study reflect broader historical patterning consistent with Churchill's maxim. On this basis it argues that the periodic construction of bogeymen or 'folk demons' is a useful device for enabling the kind of victim-playing and victim-blaming critical to protecting elite privilege during periods of crisis and that in being a recurring theme historically, panic-driven scapegoating retains great ongoing value to the privileged and powerful, and thus conspicuously remains an ongoing feature of world politics.

© The Author(s) 2020

B. M. DebneyThe Oldest Trick in the Bookhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5569-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Theorising Panic-Driven Scapegoating

Ben M. Debney¹

(1)

Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Ben M. Debney

Email: [email protected]

Modelling Panic-Driven Scapegoating

Modelling Panic-Driven Scapegoating I: Deviance Production

Modelling Panic-Driven Scapegoating II: Moral Panic as a Social Relation

End Abstract

In private I observed that once in every generation, without fail, there is an episode of hysteria about the barbarians.

—J.M. Coetzee¹

The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.

—James Madison²

Never let a good crisis go to waste.

—Rahm Emanuel³

This chapter theorises a model of panic-driven scapegoating—the proverbial Oldest Trick in the Book. For the purposes of this exercise, we define scapegoating as a specifically ideological act in which some are blamed for the consequences of the policies or conduct of others with positions of power and privilege to protect. Panic-driven scapegoating is defined as that which occurs in the midst of moral panics, defined for the purposes of this study as periods when society is overcome by fear of external threat. Such external threats understood to be so dire as to imperil its existence—though ultimately illusory (such are to be distinguished from existential threats for which evidence abounds and for which moral panics often tend to enable, like the climate crisis⁴).

One early example of this phenomenon was the Diocletian Persecution (CE 303), the result of the eponymous Pagan Emperor casting early Christians as enemies of society and subjecting many to torture and death. Analogous contemporary examples, where the only major difference seems to be the group cast as existential threats, are not hard to find.⁵ As an exercise in historical persecution, the Diocletian Persecution is useful for illustrating the way insecurities wrought by crisis are ‘projected’ onto scapegoats represented as ‘existential threats’—dangers alleged to imperil the existence of society as such. In the Diocletian Persecution, the crisis for the Roman ruling class arising from the challenge of emerging Christianity became a threat to Roman society through a propagandistic conflation on their part of their own class privileges and interests and the common interest of the mass of the population—an alleged threat to society then being used as an excuse to defend elite power and privileges. Construction of the Christian as a scapegoat in this manner then was the catalyst for the degeneration of Roman society into mob hysteria fuelled by what we understand today to be moral panics, or the hijacking of dispassionate, rational thinking by scare politics designed simply for the purpose of crisis management.

At the core of the Diocletian Persecution, as a representative example of the kind of panic-driven scapegoating constituting the core focus of this study, was an ‘Othering’ logic based on exclusionary, ‘us and them’ binary logic, crucial to the purpose insofar as it facilitated the targeting inherent to the process of demonisation.⁶ Analogous to the deviance production driving moral panics, the ‘Othering’ of early Christians during this period presents as a precedent for many comparable episodes that followed. With ‘Othering’ and deviance production as its key linking point, this study contends that the kind of construction of false crises to mask real ones and persecution of scapegoats in the name of crisis management typified by the Diocletian Persecution represents a tangible scapegoating praxis with a historical continuity—one characterised by a Faustian bargain, were attitudes and behaviour ordinary considered anathema to social values are permitted in the name of temporary expediency, cast as necessary evils to neutralise and overcome the alleged threat. Otherwise unacceptable to normative moral codes when carried out by official enemies, and generally portrayed as regrettable expediencies taken on by selfless leaders whose hands were tied in appropriating more power to themselves, these crimes are typically enacted under the pretext of restoring security and order. At the same moment, the ideological narratives underwriting them typically become permanent features of the political landscape.

A simple comparison of the Diocletian Persecution and the ‘War on Terror,’ with its Othering logic of ‘if you think for yourself, the terrorists win,’ suggests a historical tendency periodically to degenerate into mass panic and paranoia in reaction to an alleged threat—a tendency that, in this instance, spans roughly 1700 years.⁷ It is significant in both cases that the alleged threat turned out to be illusory long after the dust had settled—and more to the point. Long after it had done its job in mobilising society against the scapegoats de jure. This presents as a further problem insofar as particular scapegoating discourses might eventually be exposed and discredited, though not the underlying dynamics driving new variations on a theme with an ancient vintage. As a feature of history, this process of panic-driven scapegoating goes no little way towards accounting for the fact that the 1700 years between the Diocletian Persecution and the ‘War on Terror ’ consists of a seemingly endless litany of wars, pogroms, massacres, genocides, indefinite detentions without trial in concentration camps and gulags, draconian political measures from repressive bills to police states and show trials, as well as any number of other forms of harassment, persecution and scapegoating of vulnerable sections of the population. In one form or another, all seemed to involve one or another demonised Other, rendered as scapegoat through deviance production, whose alleged evil justified the violence and injustice being metred out (it bears mentioning at this point that one of the major problems in beginning this study of historical patterns of scapegoating was not so much lack of data as a considerable surfeit).

In developing the theoretical foundation for a model encompassing these kinds of features on a firm empirical foundation, this chapter traces moral panic research from its founding in the 1970s by Stanley Cohen, through to further notable development by others like Stuart Hall et al., with the ultimate goal of building on Cohen’s recommendation that future research examines moral panics as patterned phenomena recurring throughout history. By comparing specific examples of moral panics historically, this study looks to establish the scapegoating model—not by comparing two examples, which constitute a parallel, but at least three, which establishes a pattern and the likelihood of more.

Modelling Panic-Driven Scapegoating

Before we can introduce moral panics, our model of panic-driven scapegoating needs to address the question of demand, which in this case is produced by crisis. The audience for the campaign of scapegoating must be mobilised in defence of those whose interests are threatened by the crisis, so in the demonologies driving moral panic the interests of society at large are identified with the interests of elites, who are by definition the only stratum of society with class privileges whose defence necessitates scapegoats to begin with (scapegoats are unnecessary to defend nothing).

The first phase establishes the parameters of the crisis in terms that freely conflate ‘class privilege’ and ‘the moral good,’ while simultaneously invoking a binary, Self. vs Other logic with a view to provoking moral panic; the audience for the scapegoating narrative must be compelled to choose under conditions of high drama whether to align themselves with elites, or resist the ideological compulsion associated with binary thinking and risk association with the alleged threat. Therefore:

1. I.
   Mobilisation phase: self-interestedly framing the parameters of crisis. A crisis emerges. Framed in terms favourable to elites, it is associated with an ‘existential threat’ said to preclude rational discussion and debate. ‘Act now or be damned.’

The next phase directs the incipient moral panic generated through the construction of a crisis narrative favourable to elites towards a suitable, or at least convenient, target. Therefore:

1. II.
   Targeting phase: constructing targets for scapegoating through ‘production of deviance’ (see below). A cause for existential threat is found in a folk demon, which is constructed with the aid of ‘deviance amplification’ (see below); half-truths are exaggerated for to create an imaginary hobgoblin with which to menace the public.

Applied to each of the case studies throughout this research project, this second criteria establishes the basis for Cohen’s historically patterned moral panics. As the basis for theorising a model of panic-driven scapegoating, however, this is only half the job. The other half requires establishing that this historical patterning of moral panics has a scapegoating function—questions we are largely yet to account for given the fact that, as we have seen, scapegoating doth never prosper. In this respect, though, we are fortunate. If scapegoating can be said to involve such things as victim-blaming, playing the victim, absolving oneself of responsibility, employing sanitising language and refusing to distinguish between being criticised and being attacked, then social psychology accommodates the issue in classing these and related behaviours as ‘moral disengagement.’ Insofar as these behaviours encompass the subjective mechanisms of blame-shifting, they provide the necessary link between moral panics and scapegoating.

The next step in our model of panic-driven scapegoating, then, is to examine the relationship between the mobilisation through moral panic of audiences for scapegoating demonologies or conspiracy theories, the construction of suitable targets and the construction of suitable pretexts for actions to be carried out in the name of responding to the alleged existential threat. As exercises in scapegoating, this model contends that such ideological pretexts involve victim-blaming and a hard-wired victim complex as a matter of definition. Therefore:

1. III.
   Legitimation phase: constructing a pretext through moral disengagement for the persecution of scapegoats. ‘Deviance amplification’ produces moral panic; elites exploit that panic to establish a pretext for a response to the crisis that serves their own interests and victim-blames. Calls for calm or restraint are associated with the threat.

Once the machinery of panic-driven scapegoating is set in motion, then, comes the execution phase, where the previous three stages are set in motion together. Therefore:

1. IV.
   Persecution phase: crisis leveraging through scapegoating. Elites cast themselves as solutions to crises framed in their own interests, using panic as leverage to carry on with activities they had planned to do anyway and persecute scapegoats as part of their self-legitimising morality play.

The last criterion addresses the question, ‘Cui bono?’ or who benefits...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Theorising Panic-Driven Scapegoating
• 2. Patterning Moral Panics
• 3. Features of Scapegoating
• 4. Modelling Patterns of Scapegoating
• 5. Case Study I: Witch Panic
• 6. Case Study 2: Communist Panic
• 7. Case Study III: Terrorist Panic
• 8. Conclusion: Scapegoating Doth Ever Prosper
• Back Matter