[programmarchy]

René Girard has done an anthropological investigation of this topic. The gist of it is through the psycho-social mechanism of scapegoating, opposing groups can simultaneously believe they are victims while acting as oppressors, often using their victim status as justification for their oppression of "the other".

Girard explores this phenomenon of scapegoating and postulates it goes back to primitive humans e.g. during a drought tensions rise within a tribe, and a certain "witchy" tribe member is singled out to take the blame and either expelled or murdered. After this, social tensions in the tribe are relieved (even if the drought does not subside), and the scapegoat paradoxically becomes a sacred, or savior, figure. Through history, this develops into ritual and religion. It provides a useful lens to reason about messianic cults, as well as social power dynamics.

There's a good overview on his Wikipedia page, but he delves into this particular topic in the book Violence and the Sacred. He also pioneered the field of Generative Anthropology, which other academics like Eric Gans have built upon, theorizing about the mechanism in much more detail, and using it to explain effects in modern culture.

[AndrewKemendo]

Thank you for referencing Girard!

Agreed that this is a compelling hypothesis

Have you looked through “A thousand plateaus” from Deleuze/Guattari (I don’t know anyone who has actually read the whole thing)?

[programmarchy]

I timidly approached Deleuze a few years ago but didn't make it very far, haha. Should probably give it ago again... did you find it useful?

[AndrewKemendo]

Yes! Though if I could follow along for more than a few pages I would probably get more out of it.

I’m going to actually restart with just Ch15 and see if that is a better approach