Scapegoating

Over the past number of months, media articles and features thrashing particular individuals have been on the increase. It does not take much to understand that what the authors of such features are actually doing is simply an exercise in scapegoating in order to try and discredit the present government administration. It is for this reason that I have decided to write this commentary.

Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck called scapegoating "the genesis of human evil". Dr Peck wrote that scapegoating occurs when one refuses to be aware of one's imperfections and instead projects them onto other people. In his book The People of the Lie, he wrote that scapegoating "works through a mechanism psychiatrists call projection... [people] project evil onto the world".

Carl Gustav Jung called the projection of our "badness" onto other people the "Shadow". He noted that until we accept it and "absorb" it back into us, it will always cause struggles. War always involves scapegoating.

I think it is clear that within politics scapegoating is rampant. An example of this projection is what the Nazis did to their opponents. Since they considered themselves perfect (the Aryan Master Race), all imperfections were thought to lie elsewhere, that is, in other imperfect people. Their thinking was that once these imperfections were eradicated, Heaven on earth could reign.

The scholar John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) identifies two worlds, the primary and the secondary. The Primary World is the real world, in which we all live. The Secondary World is the world of fiction - of fairy tales, fables, and myths.

In the imaginary Secondary World writers often create characters that are clearly defined as good and evil, especially in children's literature, such as fairy tales. The good characters are all good and the bad ones, all bad. These one-dimensional concepts make it easier for children to understand the notion of good and bad. Often, what makes popular fiction "pop" is the fact the hero is Pure Good and the villain, Pure Evil; for example Spiderman is all good and the villain all evil.

In the real, Primary World, on the other hand, there is no good over here, and evil over there, with a clearly defined demarcation between them. What we have in reality is a continuum of good to evil. The result is that each group, defining itself as good and the other as evil, attempts to destroy each other.

Psychiatrists Melanie Klein and Joan Riviere wrote this about projection: "The first and the most fundamental of our insurances or safety measures against feelings of pain, of being attacked, or of helplessness - one from which so many others spring - is that device we call projection. All painful and unpleasant sensations and feelings in the mind are by this device automatically relegated outside oneself... [We] blame them on someone else. [Insofar] as such destructive forces are recognised in ourselves we claim that they have come there arbitrarily and by some external agency... [P]rojection is the baby's first reaction to pain and it probably remains the most spontaneous reaction in all of us to any painful feeling throughout our lives".

In the story of Adam and Eve, the first thing Adam does, when caught breaking the rules, is to point at Eve and say: "She made me do it". Eve, no different to Adam, then puts the blame onto the serpent. An old story, but a very perceptive one that clearly tells us that scapegoating is a human reaction which can be triggered by feelings of entrapment.

Where does this take us? Hopefully, to a level of becoming more objective when reading articles and listening to features on our media. It just can't be that someone is suddenly projected as all bad. Ask yourself how many times the Labour Party has applauded the present government into doing anything meaningful? Or have they been trying to scapegoat different people, for the simple purpose of trying to discredit our government? One wonders what future development plans the opposition party has for our country. All they seem to be interested in is flaunting other people's alleged misdemeanours. It is reminding me of the presidential pre-election tactics that are occasionally used in the USA when some months or so prior to Election Day some allegation about one or other presidential contender comes out in the media!

Is it possible that we cannot find other ingenious ways, than using tactics of scapegoating when it comes to objectively criticise for the good of our motherland?

Dr Cassar is a Nationalist MP.