Scapegoat

Infanticide, poisoning, natural disasters, plague... These are the crimes that medieval authors branded on the Jews. They were the collective objects of hatred at the time, the scapegoats that society was hostile to and expelled. Starting from the collective persecution of Jews in the Middle Ages, Rene Girard in this book continues his "e;mimetic desire theory"e; proposed in his previous works, closely tracking an important phenomenon throughout ancient and modern human history - persecution. He believes that human desire does not come from oneself, but from imitating others; people just want what others want. With this theory, Girard interprets the myths and legends of different human civilizations, and has discovered various patterns of collective persecution of minorities by the majority of society from between the lines: when society faces a crisis, driven by mimetic desire, the whole society points its spearhead at minority groups, eliminating the crisis by eliminating or expelling them. Whether it is ancient myths or human history, the persecution and sacrifice of the scapegoat has always been the principle of creating social order in every society.