Geopolitics as a Scapegoater's Paradise
How Hate Sustains Empire—and Destroys Civilization!
“In psychology, the idea of scapegoating is used to explain victimization in families. As a scapegoat, an individual is treated as an object against whom the prejudice of the group is projected. The individual becomes a lightning rod for the group’s hatred, which, in fact, is a self-hatred even though it seems to be focused on another. Because the group, whether a family or a peer group, cannot live with this hatred of itself, it transfers its unwanted feeling unto another. The transference is perverse in that the group’s self-hatred becomes entrenched. Co-optation of the victim is necessary. A vicious and seemingly unbreakable cycle is maintained, and the ritual is deepened.”--Doubt, Keith. Sociocide: Reflections on Today’s Wars (p. 34). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
We usually think of psychology as the study of individual and group behaviors. Today it is much more as sociologists like Keith Doubt must be knowledgeable in related disciplines ranging from anthropology, theology and geopolitics. In order to explain the world as it is the social sciences, and a few more disciplines, might be lumped together as social impact studies. Never have our societies been more complex and integrated and our need to understand the impacts that shape them more urgent.
Doubt’s book, Sociocide: Reflections on Today’s Wars, is a valuable primer on the present day world. And yes, sociocide is a topic we must entertain as it is all about us. We must now see the world as a great collective where anything is possible and countries, civilizations, and empire’s, can suffer social pathologies that threaten planetary existence.
Scapegoating is one of the most pernicious and common place and transparent pathologies we suffer. It is astounding it is so prevalent when it is so damaging to our societies yet populations are blind to its existence, and we so easily are manipulated by it. It has its origins in the Bible, but also in school yards where children play. There must always be insiders and outsiders as we seek like minded souls to the point of wars, racism, violence.
In the realm of politics scapegoating is vicious, transparent and ruinous to our societies, especially when it becomes the hallmark of politics and geopolitics.
Where politicians fail to provide real leadership they are very nimble scapegoaters:
It simplifies complex problems into emotionally resonant narratives.
It unites a base against a common “enemy.”
It distracts from institutional failures or unpopular policies.
Canada’s former prime minister was asked how he planned to address Canada’s housing crisis. His prompt reply was that it was a provincial jurisdiction— nice try, he anoints provincial governments as the handy scapegoats. He just couldn’t mention that the unrestricted flow of refugees—a federal responsibility— was a primary cause of the crisis. Scapegoating is always a handy tool where governments are delinquent and refuse to take responsibility for their over sights and policy failures. His job was to work with and coordinate with the provinces. Only one of the many reasons he goes down in history as a political dilettante never worthy of high office— unfortunately there are many more just like him.
When scapegoating becomes integral to geopolitics, it is a major threat to global survival as it is essential to maintain tyrannies. It is sustenance for empires as they can only sustain their forever wars with an endless supply of scapegoats.
Scapegoating is only one of many momentous forces destroying Western Civilization. Alarmingly, it is deeply embedded in both political cultures and transmitted to whole populations where the vortex of decline gains more and more momentum and reeks more destruction. We are trapped in a mimetic rapture of our own making.
“The only way out of the mimetic cycle is to become conscious of it.” — René Girard. In other words, “To break the mimetic rapture is not to escape desire — it’s to be converted to a different kind of desire. One that is not rooted in rivalry, but in love. Not in domination, but in communion.”
Hate sustains the empire. Hate is its constitutional prerogative for declaring war on the world and its reckless and delusional pursuit of absolute dominance. It has no regard for consequences and no regard for the legitimate self-determination of other countries— as it happens, forming by far the world’s majority.
The empire’s very existence depends on keeping us on the mimetic treadmill of hate, racism and war.
When the prime minister of Denmark fears a Russian invasion of Western Europe she betrays her historical ignorance. Russia has neither the means or motive to do so.
The Ukraine war was forced on Russia by NATO’s wanton belligerence with the despicable Zelensky as the empire’s puppet— the empire relies on puppets to fight their proxy wars as the mimetic habit of empires.
One of the unstated reasons for the Ukraine war is Europe and Russia were developing a very mutually beneficial trading relationship underpinned by cheap Russian gas via the Nord Stream pipelines. The US blew it up. To this day this reality goes unacknowledged. So NATO’s war on Russia served a double purpose further subjugating Europe as a colony of the empire.
At a recent NATO skull session of its leaders it was decided they would kick in 5% of their GDP to finance the empire’s wars at a time they are morally and fiscally bankrupt, and more than willing to slash social spending in the process. They are more than willing to be the empire’s vassals to the point of slashing their own fiscal throats.
As empire’s decline and their tentacles wither the homeland becomes host to internecine violence and social fragmentation. It becomes the cauldron of violence and social fragmentation it inflicted on its former victims.
Each one of us is programmed to hate whether it be Russians Chinese, Palestinians, Iranians or North Koreans as scapegoats as necessary to justify the empire’s wars against these peoples, and others over and over again. We become zombified automatons complying to the empire’s every wish. Where the Mainstream media should be the agent of truth, it is the loathsome propagandist for the empire.
Ultimately we become hate-based mimetic societies internalizing the racism and violence of the empire. After five hundred years of Western imperialism it is little wonder racism is so deeply embedded in our societies.
We are no longer authentic societies as we have allowed ourselves to become mimetic and sociocidal where forever wars, violence and social fragmentation are tearing us down. Where we flatter ourselves as being the last bastions of social democracy this has died by our own hands. Governments of the West are in full collapse and hostage to the empire; its delusional behaviors and its forever wars.
Recent reading tells me that societies must be sovereign to survive, thrive and progress. This is so true as we see Western nations that walked away from democracy and humanist values. We are slave states to numerous ruinous ideologies ranging from predatory capitalism, to militarism, forever wars, neoliberalism and most crucially Girard’s mimetic rapture freezing our societies in time and decline.
China and Russia are authentic cultures after suffering the wars, revolutions and famines and tyrannies inflicted on their cultures and the killing of millions of their people. Over the last forty years they have rebuild their societies focused on peace and prosperity and have achieved stable and progressive equilibriums.
For the last sixty years the West has waged war and empire and now is suffering its day of reckoning. The vaunted empire is not all-powerful. Like all others throughout history it is in full collapse. Where they are born of lust for absolute power and endless riches, they die in a pitiful demagoguery.
As early as 1956, C. Wright Mills warned in The Power Elite that political elites were engaging in a self-serving “higher immorality.” Seventy years later, we are witnessing the consequences: a scapegoater’s paradise, where those in power have abdicated their duty to provide responsible, representative, and accountable governance. Instead, they have perfected the art of scapegoating—both at home and abroad. There must always be a scapegoat: to justify every imperial war, to excuse every policy failure, to mask every act of incompetence. Just as predatory Western governments have weaponized chaos, they have also weaponized scapegoating—turning it into a global pandemic that fuels endless wars and violence.
Moving forward there must be radical reform in how we govern ourselves. The industrial Revolution is almost three hundred years old and now there must be a social revolution worthy of the 21st century and the momentous challenges we face.
Epilogue
The present US Secretary of Defense, Peter Hegseth, has made the comment “we are not at war with the Iranian people – just its nuclear programme.”
How many incredulous comments like this does it take to sink an empire?— count them and you have your answer.
How many super yachts does it take to sink an empire?— count them and you have your answer.
How many wars and genocides does it take to sink an empire?—count them and you have your answer.
How long do persistent mimetic behaviors take to destroy our societies?— just look in the magic mirror, on the wall…..
PS : There are reports of paleontologists rushing to Washington to pick through the bone yard of fossilized government.
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"My dear soul, flee from the worthless, stay close only to those with a pure heart. Like attracts like. A crow will lead you to the graveyard, a parrot to a lump of sugar." ~ Rumi
Yes, that is all true, but helping sustain the world's bully is a business choice ignoring morality. The (rest of the world) is re-aligning in sovereign but cooperative relationships in BRICS+ https://warwickpowell.substack.com/p/brics-and-the-architecture-of-a-post
Complex societies have a metabolic cost that can no longer be met https://kathleenmccroskey.substack.com/p/the-deceit-of-progress and https://warwickpowell.substack.com/p/its-energy-stupid
and so the collapse of "Western" society, beginning in 1945, progressively unwinds while on one hand we ignore the signs yet prepare for the final conflagration as a compensation.
So often have I mentioned that, what is needed, is a world-wide social revolution...with guillotines and all. The pacifiers have brain washed us to the point where we no longer are capable of standing up to defend ourselves.