Yesterday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2019. Today I think about the strategy for scapegoating. Never forget.
1. Identify collective problems. Rising crime, drug addition and job opportunities.
2. Create a common enemy and name the group you say is responsible for these problems. Illegal immigrants.
3. Instill fear. These people rape your daughters, kill your friends and take your jobs.
4. Build up your followers. Compliment them. You deserve better. Our country can be great again.Offer religion. You are good Christians with family values we need to protect.
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5. Create division. Them versus us.
6. Offer a simple solution. A wall.
7. Announce your strength. You are the only one who can take care of this problem.
8. Encourage chants for your admiring crowds. What are we going to build? A wall. Who’s going to pay for it? Mexico.
9. Repeat lies to strengthen your case against your scapegoats.
Note: For a more scholarly piece on scapegoating, read this Psychology Today article:
“The ego defense of displacement plays an important role in scapegoating, in which uncomfortable feelings such as anger, frustration, envy, guilt, shame, and insecurity are displaced or redirected onto another, often more vulnerable, person or group. The scapegoats — outsiders, immigrants, minorities, deviants — are then persecuted, enabling the scapegoaters to discharge and distract from their negative feelings, which are replaced or overtaken by a crude but consoling sense of affirmation and self-righteous indignation.”
