“Scapegoat theory” refers to “the tendency to blame someone else for one's own problems.” It’s a process often derived from and always resulting in feelings of prejudice toward the person or group being blamed. As a psychological defense rooted in denial, it allows the perpetrator to maintain a positive self-image by projecting responsibility and/or blame. Scapegoating is a psychological outlet that relieves negative feelings about him or herself. It is also provides an element of gratification and almost always results in conflict.
We are and have been witnessing profligate group scapegoating. It is the liberal perception that those who oppose or disagree with them have broken their ‘perfectionist moral code’. It is a response to losing in 2016, and projecting the blame for unpopular public policies and conduct, onto the opposition who are cast as immoral enemies of liberal righteousness. It is being measured out in aggressive rhetoric and behavior of individual “brittle personas” in a culturally sadistic manifestation of a group superego.
The typical clinical reaction of the object of this aggressive behavior expectantly retreats under the burden of cohort assigned guilt. They hide in response to the battering of their ego, modelling the same behaviors as victims of domestic violence. This is what underlies the 2016 election surprise and the cultural response to the liberal serial hoaxes and bureaucratic conspiracies … and the seeming inability of Conservatives to effectively deal with it. The first step in healing from scapegoating is to understand the dynamic and your clinical response to it.We must confront liberal scapegoating as it morphs into expressions of ‘atoning violence’.
Understand that this unabated ‘mimetic contagion’ has placed you and more broadly, society, at risk. The social order will only be restored once the collective consciousness concludes that justice has been done … and societal order (in their minds) has been restored. Given the relentlessly violent expressions of the self-appointed liberal collective conscience, we are all at risk.