IIRC Girard posits kind of a confusing multi-step process that involves something like:
people become more and more similar due to memetic desire, competition, imitation, etc. ironically, as people become more similar, they become more divided and start more fights (since they increasingly want the same things, I guess). So, tension increases and the situation threatens to break out into some kind of violent anarchy.
in order to forestall a messy civil war, people instead fixate on a scapegoat (per Ben’s quote above). everyone exaggerates the different-ness of the scapegoat and gangs up against them, which helps the community feel nice and unified again.
So the scapegoat is indeed different in some way (different religion, ethnicity, political faction, whatever). And if you ask anybody at the time, it’ll be the massive #1 culture-war issue that the scapegoated group are all heathens who butter their bread with the butter side down, while we righteous upstanding citizens butter our bread with the butter side up. But objectively, the actual difference between the two groups is very small, and indeed the scapegoat process is perhaps more effective the smaller the actual objective difference is. (One is reminded of some of Stalin’s purges, where true believers in the cause of communism were sent to the gulag for what strike us today as minor doctrinal differences. Or the long history of bitter religious schisms over nigh-incomprehensible theological disputes.)
IIRC Girard posits kind of a confusing multi-step process that involves something like:
people become more and more similar due to memetic desire, competition, imitation, etc. ironically, as people become more similar, they become more divided and start more fights (since they increasingly want the same things, I guess). So, tension increases and the situation threatens to break out into some kind of violent anarchy.
in order to forestall a messy civil war, people instead fixate on a scapegoat (per Ben’s quote above). everyone exaggerates the different-ness of the scapegoat and gangs up against them, which helps the community feel nice and unified again.
So the scapegoat is indeed different in some way (different religion, ethnicity, political faction, whatever). And if you ask anybody at the time, it’ll be the massive #1 culture-war issue that the scapegoated group are all heathens who butter their bread with the butter side down, while we righteous upstanding citizens butter our bread with the butter side up. But objectively, the actual difference between the two groups is very small, and indeed the scapegoat process is perhaps more effective the smaller the actual objective difference is. (One is reminded of some of Stalin’s purges, where true believers in the cause of communism were sent to the gulag for what strike us today as minor doctrinal differences. Or the long history of bitter religious schisms over nigh-incomprehensible theological disputes.)