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CONTENTS
C opy right
P rologue
Introduction
The Word ‘S capegoat’
The Ritual S capegoat
The King and the S capegoat
The C hristian S capegoat
C hrist the S capegoat
The Jew ish S capegoat
The S exual S capegoat
The Literal S capegoat
The C ommunist S capegoat
The F inancial S capegoat
The M edical S capegoat
The C onspiracy Theory
A lfred Drey fus
The P sy chology of S capegoating
C onclusion
N otes
S elect Bibliography
A cknow ledgements
PROLOGUE
It w as a dark and stormy night…
In July 1840 a terrible storm hit S t Kilda. The ‘island at the end of the w orld’ rises out of the sea 110 miles off the w est coast of S cotland.
The four islands that form S t Kilda boast the highest cliffs in Britain and some of the w orld’s largest colonies of sea birds. This is one of the most
unforgiv ing landscapes on earth and is battered by atrocious w eather most of the y ear. N o trees grow here and there is no shelter from the
elements. Yet man liv ed here for ov er tw o thousand y ears, cut off from the outside w orld for the most part. P eople on the mainland paid little
attention to this furthest outpost of the British Isles, and so the islanders w ere generally free to liv e as they chose, only v ery occasionally
disturbed by outsiders.
S t Kilda is so isolated that it w as often suggested it should be used as a prison, though only one person ev er w as imprisoned there. 1 A nd
S cotland’s turbulent and v iolent history passed the islanders by – kings came and w ent, w ars w ere fought, and the Jacobites w ere defeated at
C ulloden. O nce, soldiers w ere sent to inv estigate rumours that Bonnie P rince C harlie w as hiding out there, but they arriv ed and soon realized
that the S t Kildans did not ev en know w ho the Young P retender w as, let alone support his claim to the throne.
M ost Hebridean islands hav e outlandish legends associated w ith them, and S t Kilda is no exception. U ntil its ev acuation in 1930, it w as
ow ned by M acleod of M acleod, chief of the M acleod clan. It is said that ow nership had once been contested by both the islands of the U ists
and Harris. This dispute w as settled by a boat race to S t Kilda from the tw o islands, w ith the first to lay hand on the shore the w inner. A s they
neared their goal, the U ist men nosed in front of their riv als, but, sensing defeat for his Harris boat, C olla M acleod cut off his left hand and
threw it ahead onto the beach, thus becoming the first to claim the island for his master. A nd ev er since then, so the story goes, the M acleod
coat of arms has featured a red hand.
The reality of life on S t Kilda w as no less unusual. The islanders had no leaders and w ould discuss ev ery thing at a daily meeting or
parliament. They didn’t v ote or play any part in affairs on the mainland, nor did they pay any tax. In fact, they had no monetary sy stem and
gav e rent to M acleod of M acleod in gull feathers and oil – the sea birds also being their primary source of food. The islanders scaled the cliffs
and stacks w ith incredible agility , dexterously snaring the birds and collecting their eggs. But they w ere not the hardy seafarers and fishermen
y ou’d expect to inhabit such a place (they w ere mostly happy for the gannets and puffins to feed on the fish). A nd so those men out at sea
drow ned w hen the great storm of 1840 hit, their boats sw amped by the huge w av es. A day or tw o later, the bodies of the dead started to
w ash up on the shore. A mong them w as a bedraggled creature, still aliv e. It w as a G reat A uk, a large flightless bird that is now extinct, and
w hile no one knew it at the time, this w ould be the last sighting of one in the British Isles.
The G reat A uk w as an infrequent v isitor to these shores, and the islanders w ould most likely nev er hav e seen any thing like it before. Tw o
men netted the bird and took it to the tiny community ’s church. There it w as decided that this w as a creature of ill omen w ho had brought the
storm to the island. A nd so the last British G reat A uk w as put on trial, charged w ith being a w itch, and found guilty . It w as stoned to death on
the shoreline w here it had been w ashed up a few day s before, by islanders w hose ow n time there w as running out. 2
These day s seabirds hav e S t Kilda to themselv es. 3 What took place there is the usual story of tragedy striking a small community . F ear,
anger and ignorance all combined as the islanders sought an explanation for the calamity that befell them. A nd, as tends to happen in these
situations, an outsider – in this case, the G reat A uk – is held responsible for the catastrophe and punished. It is one of mankind’s oldest stories,
and one of the saddest.

Then there is the case of Easter Island, w hich is ev en more remote than S t Kilda, ov er tw o thousand miles off the coast of C hile.
‘Easter Island punched w ay abov e its w eight; but it boxed alone, as if in a looking-glass, and w e hav e been able to replay the mov es by
w hich it knocked itself out.’ (Ronald Wright)
F or hundreds of y ears it w as left completely undisturbed by the outside w orld. The island w as div ided into 12 or so areas, w hich fanned
outw ards from the centre. Different tribes occupied each territory , erecting the giant stone heads (moai), for w hich Easter Island is so famous.
These stood on platforms (ahu), facing inland, and honoured the islanders’ gods and ancestors. O v er time, the statues increased in size,
suggesting an element of competitiv eness, as the tribes strov e to outdo each other. The av erage erected statue w eighed 10 tons, but in one
quarry there is an unfinished head that w eighs in at 270 tons, w hich surely could nev er hav e been mov ed. In another crater 397 statues hav e
been left. A ll had been carv ed out of the rock, then throw n ov er and abandoned. S o w hy did the statues grow to such an unmanageable size,
and w hy w ere they toppled?
The answ er lies back w ith the struggle for surv iv al in such a hostile env ironment. The island used to be heav ily w ooded; today it is not.
F rom the moment of their arriv al in around A D 900, the islanders steadily denuded the place of all its trees. The Easter palm, w hich once
cov ered the island, w as the largest tree of its species, serv ing many uses – as firew ood for cooking and funeral py res, for thatching and
building houses, for making rafts and canoes, and, lastly , for transporting and erecting the giant stone statues.
O v er the y ears, the islanders cleared thousands of trees and mov ed millions of rocks to create w ind breaks and a sunken garden, all in a
desperate bid to help certain plants grow . But the deforestation led to soil erosion and the crops duly suffered. C ertain animal species gradually
disappeared as their habitat w as cut back. The land birds w ere hunted to excess and shellfish ov erexploited. M eanw hile, the tree clearing
continued.
Ev entually the day came w hen the last tree w as felled. In C ollapse: How Societies C hoose to F ail or Surv iv e, Jared Diamond asks the
famous question: What w as going through the mind of the islander the moment he cut dow n the last tree? (It is estimated that this happened
some time betw een 1400 and 1600.) We shall nev er know , but from that moment on the islanders fought ov er ev ery scrap of w ood. They had
no proper fuel, and stopped cremating bodies, mummify ing them instead. They w ere unable to build canoes and so could not fish. M ost
importantly , they now w ere unable to escape from the island. Lastly , they could not build and erect the huge stone statues quite as freely as
before. The result of all this w as starv ation, drastic population decline and, probably , cannibalism. A s the sev erity of their situation became
apparent, the islanders turned on each other, and fought and fought.
It is thought that the increase in the size of the statues w as linked to the urgency of the islanders’ plight, as they turned to their gods for
help, building larger and larger figures. But no rescuers came. The statue cult gav e w ay to disenchantment, and the angry islanders started to
topple the stone heads they had built to honour their gods once they felt they had been deserted by them. We hav e to assume that the priests
and leaders, w ho had appointed themselv es as go-betw eens w ith the div ine, also came to grief as they w ere show n to be pow erless to
prev ent this disaster.
In his excellent book, A Short History of P rogress, Ronald Wright observ es that the islanders ‘carried out for us the experiment of permitting
unrestricted population grow th, profligate use of resources, destruction of the env ironment and boundless confidence in their religion to take care
of the future. The result w as an ecological disaster leading to a population crash.’ He asks if w e hav e to repeat the experiment on a larger scale
and if the human personality is ‘alw ay s the same as that of the person w ho felled the last tree’. 4
When it comes to taking responsibility for things going w rong, the human personality has alw ay s been the same. Today , there is a
resistance among the islanders to the idea that their ancestors brought about this calamity , for w hich sev eral other explanations hav e been
adv anced. O ne modern scientist blames an influx of rats, others diseases brought by passing sailors, w hile some hold climate change
responsible. But the island had surv iv ed so many of these phenomena already , that deforestation is left as the most likely explanation. What
w e don’t know is if the islanders thought that technology and hard w ork w ould get them through the loss of all their trees. The island w as small
enough that they should hav e been aw are of the impending disaster. U ltimately Easter Island lost all its trees and w ith them 90 per cent of its
population (and w e hav e to ask ourselv es: if Easter Islanders can destroy their env ironment w ith such basic tools, how much more are w e
capable of today ?).
This w as an example of a pure ecological collapse, a disaster that took place in complete isolation. U niquely , there w ere no outsiders to
blame – no Jew s, no C ommunists, no C atholics. With no scapegoat around, the island’s leaders w ere unable to direct anger aw ay from
themselv es, and the blame shifted upw ards, through the leaders and priests, and tow ards the gods.
INTRODUCTION
‘Who can w e blame?’
F amily motto of the Earls of G resham
In the beginning there w as blame. A dam blamed Ev e, Ev e blamed the serpent, and w e’v e been hard at it ev er since. It is our original sin,
this refusal to accept responsibility for our actions. It is the reason w e w ere exiled from the G arden of Eden, the reason w e w ork and suffer.
But w hy do w e persist in this denial? Well, the blame game’s nev er made any sense – it’s just an inbuilt sy stem w e hav e to deflect guilt
elsew here and make it easier to liv e the unexamined life. But now it’s w orking ov ertime; nothing is our fault, it seems. We blame as w e’v e
alw ay s blamed, targeting minority and marginalized groups w hen things go w rong. But w e’v e found new and unusual w ay s of doing so too –
using pseudo-science and conspiracy theories – and technology makes it easier than ev er before to spread these dangerous ideas. Whatev er’s
w rong w ith us, there might not be a cure, but there’s alw ay s a culprit.
M arx blamed the capitalist sy stem, Daw kins religion, and F reud thought it all came dow n to sex. 5 Larkin blamed our parents, A tkins the
potato, 6 and M ohamed A l F ay ed still say s it’s all P rince P hilip’s fault (Dav id Icke agrees w ith A l F ay ed but adds that it’s because P rince P hilip
is a giant extraterrestrial lizard w ho rules the w orld). O nce w e blamed F ate or G od, now w e blame our genes and our upbringing (w ith a few
stragglers still holding the first tw o responsible). But blaming our genes is not the same as blaming ourselv es. We don’t seem much closer to
taking full responsibility for our actions and there’s alw ay s someone to pick on, alw ay s a scapegoat.

M ankind has achiev ed so much, made incredible progress in so many fields, and performed extraordinary technological feats. We are taught
all about these achiev ements but rarely about man’s stupidity and the w ay s in w hich he deceiv es himself.
‘N o one ev er thinks they ’re stupid, it’s part of their stupidity .’ (from The Wire, as a detectiv e interrogates a suspect).
This is essentially a book about stupidity , w hich, as Harlan Ellison stated, is the most common element in the univ erse along w ith hy drogen.
It’s about the particular kind that hits us after disaster, w hen w e single out one person for blame, and hold them responsible for ev ery thing.
That indiv idual becomes a scapegoat, a lightning conductor 7 for our rage and pain, carry ing it aw ay to some other place. A fterw ards, w e feel
that justice has been done, and order restored – until misfortune strikes again. Then the w hole furious process of ascertaining responsibility
begins once more.
This is a pattern of behav iour that has alw ay s been w ith us, reflecting a deep and univ ersal human need for purification and expiation.
Ev ery early society has stories resembling that of the G reat A uk, w here some unfortunate outsider w as saddled w ith the blame for a disaster
bey ond the control and understanding of man, and punished or driv en out of the community . But these primitiv e rituals hav e lingered on in
different forms, and they ’v e become increasingly destructiv e.
In the tw enty -first century , w e are faced w ith more choice than ev er before – in w hat w e believ e, in w hat w e eat, in ev ery thing w e do.
S imilarly w e hav e a greater range of things to blame w hen things go w rong. Whereas our ancestors had to content themselv es w ith the
perennial scapegoats – namely w omen, Jew s and certain animals – w e are able to apportion blame in ev er more imaginativ e w ay s for the
aspects of our liv es and ourselv es that disappoint us. The one thing w e w ill not do under any circumstances is accept ourselv es as w e are. We
prefer to find an explanation for w hy things are not perfect, and these rarely stand up to close scrutiny .
F or the w ider malaise that affects us all, there are dozens and dozens of conspiracy theories, all rooted in the idea that some shadow y force
is to blame – w hether it be the F reemasons, the Illuminati or giant lizards; C ommunists, Jew s or C atholics. F or our indiv idual problems, w e
hav e endless possible explanations; w hole industries hav e sprung up to prov ide more authoritativ e ones. Blame has gradually become a
product, to be bought and sold like any other. A nd those w ho trade in it hav e tended to become extraordinarily successful. 8
The relationship betw een the blamer and the blamed is a complex one. Really , the opposite of the prince is not the pauper, it is the
scapegoat. A s w e w ill see later, the ruler creates the scapegoat so he doesn’t share his fate. We like to hav e our hate figures, just as w e like to
hav e leaders (though w e tend to loathe them both equally ). They are inextricably linked, rev erse sides of a coin, one the shadow of the other
– much in the w ay G od and the Dev il are in C hristianity . The basic rule is as follow s: the more a leader promises, the more he or she w ill
subsequently hav e to apportion blame. O nce w e thought our kings w ere div ine and therefore infallible, that disaster had to be the fault of
another. These day s w e elect our leaders on the back of unrealistic promises w hich w e choose to believ e. They fail in these and w e replace
our leaders rather than ov erhaul the sy stem, w hich resists change. A nd so the cy cle of promise and blame begins all ov er again.
Think of William G olding’s Lord of the F lies, a book that has been required reading for most teenagers since its publication in the 1950s. A
group of small children is stranded on a desert island after a plane crash. In the absence of adults and established order, ev ents descend into
chaos quickly , in the midst of w hich leaders and v ictims emerge. Ralph is chosen as the boy to lead the children ov er Jack, the head of the
choir. M eanw hile, P iggy emerges as the most obv ious target for the boy s’ cruelty – fat and bespectacled, he inv ites persecution. But as the
nov el progresses, Ralph falls from grace as he tries to protect P iggy from the others. Jack gradually replaces Ralph, hav ing realized and
exploited the importance of P iggy ’s role. A nd so the original leader and the scapegoat both find themselv es outsiders, fighting for their surv iv al,
as Jack and the choir scour the island for them. This all show s how the leader and the scapegoat both exist on the margins of a society .
This relationship is most v isible in politics. S uch is the intensity of the media spotlight these day s that all potential crises need to be dealt
w ith in a w ay that satisfies the w atching public. That public is most easily appeased by the creation of a scapegoat. A s alw ay s, the more
serious the crisis, the more important the fall guy . Think of politicians stepping dow n ‘to spend time w ith their family ’. C hancellor of the
Exchequer N orman Lamont w as held responsible for Black Wednesday in 1992, w hen sterling w as ignominiously ejected from the ERM . A s a
result he w as gradually marginalized, before being sacked the follow ing y ear. Lord C arrington stepped dow n after the A rgentine inv asion of the
F alklands in 1982. A s F oreign S ecretary , he w asn’t personally at fault for his department’s failure to foresee G altieri’s actions, but he took
responsibility for the mistakes and complacency of the F oreign O ffice, under the doctrine of ministerial responsibility . 9
Throughout history , it is only in the most exceptional of circumstances that a ruler w ill admit culpability . A nd quite often that is w hat makes
the leader exceptional – a w illingness to admit fallibility and learn from it. A fter losing half his troops at the battle of G etty sburg in 1863, C iv il
War G eneral Robert E. Lee declared, ‘A ll of this has been my fault. I asked more of my men than should hav e been asked of them.’ In the
same w ay , in the day s before the N ormandy inv asion, G eneral Eisenhow er prepared a short speech accepting all blame in the ev ent of failure.
A readiness to admit to mistakes may not w in the battle, but it can help w in the w ar.
But in today ’s political culture of spin, modern leaders are less ready than ev er to admit fallibility . The phrase ‘mistakes w ere made …’ has
entered the political lexicon, as the most passiv e and detached w ay of acknow ledging error, rather than responsibility . It has been a particular
fav ourite of tw entieth-century A merican politicians, from N ixon and Kissinger to Reagan and C linton. These three w ords w ere used repeatedly
by Republicans in the aftermath of the Iraq w ar.
This brings us to the most dangerous use of scapegoats – the blaming of certain indiv iduals to giv e gov ernments the freedom to act in
certain w ay s. This is an age-old strategy , and, most recently , S addam Hussein, O sama bin Laden and A bu M usab al-Zarqaw i w ere all similarly
demonized. The latter w as used to prov e a non-existent link betw een the first tw o, giv ing the A merican public the sense of a greater threat
against them than in fact existed, and justify ing the use of military force in Iraq. A s one can see, the urge to blame is sometimes incited in us,
and this form of demonization has been employ ed for centuries.
But let us look outside politics, for a moment, at the instances of scapegoating that happen in other hierarchies. The most extreme examples
occur after a terrible ev ent such as the murder of a child. While the police search for the perpetrator, the media conduct a frenzied w itch-hunt,
looking to hold someone else accountable also. P ublic anger is not focused solely on the w rongdoer; more explanation is needed. We like to
believ e that there is a sy stem in place to protect us from ev il such as this. A nd so, someone in authority must be held responsible, usually a
social w orker. The choice of scapegoat may seem entirely random but that is not the case – they w ill be chosen because they hold a position
of responsibility and y et are not utterly indispensable. The social w orker can be an object of distrust because he does a job that the public
doesn’t fully understand, and as a result does not seem as irreplaceable or admirable as, say , a policeman is.
A military defeat w ill usually produce a scapegoat or tw o. The C harge of the Light Brigade saw blame pinned on Lord Lucan and C aptain
N olan, rather than Lord Raglan, w ho issued the original order that w as both unclear (in designating w hich guns should be attacked) and contrary
to standard military practice at the time (launching a cav alry attack against enemy guns and infantry , w ithout support). A t sea, A dmiral By ng
w as blamed unfairly for the loss of M inorca in the S ev en Years’ War and executed by firing squad, leading V oltaire to w rite that sometimes an
admiral should be shot ‘pour encourager les autres’. A nd an improbable number of S pecial F orces missions hav e come unstuck after their chance
discov ery by a boy and his herd of goats. There’s alw ay s a goat to account for things hav ing gone w rong.
In 2007, the w orld entered the w orst economic crisis since the G reat Depression of the 1930s. It had been caused by the bursting of the
A merican housing bubble, leading to the spectacular collapse of Lehman Brothers in S eptember 2008. The fallout w as global, and saw plenty of
scapegoats targeted – from rich bankers and their bonuses, to short-selling hedge fund managers thought to hav e profited from the dow nturn,
and chief executiv es w hose self-interested, rash decisions led to this calamity . How much easier it is to attribute responsibility to them, rather
than face the truth of our ow n inv olv ement. The notion of collectiv e responsibility is one that w e prefer not to engage w ith. O nly those w ho
w ere financially v ery prudent can exempt themselv es from blame. The rest of us w ere happy to run up more debt than could be sustained for
long by a banking sy stem that depends, like so much of institutional life and commerce, on public confidence. This debt w as parceled up and
reshaped in a w ay that, for a w hile, concealed its origins. But ultimately it choked the sy stem. A nd w e shrieked at the likes of F red G oodw in,
chief executiv e of Roy al Bank of S cotland, blaming him for w hat w e had lost. He w as criticized for excessiv e spending and labelled ‘the w orld’s
w orst banker’ after RBS posted an annual loss of £24.1bn, the largest in U K corporate history . A s details of his pension emerged, his house w as
v andalized, as the public sought redress.
A s I w rite, the v enues for the 2018 and 2022 football World C ups are being decided (corruptly , as it turns out), and w e can be sure those
tournaments w ill produce as many v illains as they do heroes. It is ironic that team sports should produce so many fall guy s – so many
indiv iduals held responsible for an entire team’s defeat. Think of Dav id Beckham after the World C up in 1998. These day s he may be a
national icon, w ith the shameful public reaction to his sending off against A rgentina forgotten; back then effigies of him w ere burned publicly
across the country . But this w as harmless enough compared to the fate of A ndrés Escobar. The C olombian defender scored the ow n goal that
put his country out of the 1994 World C up. He w as shot dead on his return to his homeland – it is thought, on the orders of drugs lords w ho had
sustained large gambling losses as a result of his mistake. But, in football, ev en the penalty shoot-out is structured to put the blame for defeat
on one or tw o play ers. A nd referees are inv ariably blamed by managers and supporters for a team’s defeat.
The concept of a sporting scapegoat is perfectly illustrated by the av erage career of a football manager in the English P remiership. A
P remiership club is a reasonably simple organization – y ou hav e the board w ho run the club, and y ou hav e the team w ho do the ball-kicking
bit. The biggest, most financially successful clubs are able to afford a few truly w orld-class play ers w ho make them unstoppable on a good
day . Yet some teams are more successful than others despite operating w ithin similar parameters. That comes dow n to the ability of a
manager to motiv ate his play ers and make them play as a team. Those clubs w ho aren’t doing w ell are faced w ith a decision – of making a
change. M ost managers in the P remiership hav e prov ed themselv es elsew here and it might w ell be the play ers w ho are letting him dow n. But
it w ill almost alw ay s be the manager w ho is replaced (bureaucrats nev er sack themselv es and the play ers are numerous and all tied to long-
term deals). S uddenly a fresh w ind blow s through the club and results often improv e. The manager is the scapegoat w ho departs, taking the
sense of defeat and negativ ity w ith him. Yet ev ery one in the football w orld know s that it is not his fault. A nd this is w hy he is highly paid and
w ill w alk into another job straight afterw ards.
A ll of this show s that this instinct to blame is fundamental to our being. We cannot help it, but w e can be made aw are of it, and so be in a
position to resist it. I w ant this to be a book that w ill make people think more about the issue of blame and responsibility . We all hav e our ow n
personal stories of disaster and in each there w ill often hav e been at least one person acting as our ow n scapegoat, how ev er unconsciously w e
may hav e cast them as such. A nd sometimes w e may hav e been scapegoated ourselv es. Just as w e like to take things to pieces to see how
they w ork w hen w e’re children, w e like to do the same as adults, after crises. Look at the time and money spent on enquiries follow ing
tragedies such as Hillsborough, Bloody S unday , ev en the death of P rincess Diana. But these situations rarely make perfect sense.
S ome of the stories in this book w ill seem so ludicrous and backw ard that they may amuse rather than shock. A nd there is much comedy to
be found here, but it is balanced by tragedy . The persecution of w itches has often been play ed for laughs by subsequent generations, and
there is something inherently absurd about it, certainly the practice of ‘sw imming’ suspected w itches – if they float they ’re guilty , if they drow n
they w ere probably innocent. But w hat could be more hateful than a society purging itself of its w eakest and least economically v aluable
members in a time of crisis? There is much that just ev okes horror here.
M uch of this w ill seem obv ious – in that burning w omen and blaming Jew s for the Black Death are both clearly w rong, blatantly so. But our
forebears nonetheless did these things and w e forget our ow n capacity for similar crimes at our peril. It has been said that there is nothing more
unfair than judging men, w omen and societies of the past by the v alues of the present. In many w ay s that’s true, but w e should remind
ourselv es of these follies. To guard against any complacency of our ow n, how ev er, w e should ask w hich of our modern-day delusions future
generations might hold up as being ev ery bit as lunatic. We may like to think, after reading about the sacrifice of human scapegoats, that w e
hav e mov ed on from such cruel practices, but w e hav en’t – only the methods hav e changed. U nderneath, w e are still the same primitiv e
beings.
N o short history can be comprehensiv e, and there w ill be omissions – many intentional, others less so. A nd some may disagree w ith my
conclusions, thinking that a giv en person really w as to blame. They could be right. What I really w ant to do is to draw attention to our capacity
to blame, and the danger of listening to that insidious inner v oice w hen emotions are running high in the aftermath of disaster. A s already
mentioned, I w ant to show how the opposite of the prince is not the pauper, but the scapegoat – he or she w ho takes the fall w hen things turn
bad, as opposed to leaders w ho hav e taken credit throughout history w hen things hav e gone w ell, regardless of the extent of their ow n
inv olv ement.
 This is not meant to be rev isionist history , rev isionist history being the deliberate portray al of an alternativ e v iew of the past. P rimary
sources hav e alw ay s offered contradictory v iew s. S ome think that history is alw ay s w ritten by the v ictors, and that the identities of the hero
and the v illain are determined accordingly . M ost history does indeed focus on the deeds of great men rather than social ones w hich concentrate
on the liv es of the ov erlooked masses. In this book I hope to shine a light on those w ho w ere accused of directing the course of history (onto
the rocks most of the time), w hen in fact they didn’t. Really they w ere marginal figures w ho w ere taken by their enemies and placed at the
centre of things, w ith pow ers that they nev er had attributed to them.
S o, w hat is the importance of this subject and how is this relev ant to us now ? The reader w ill bear w itness to thousands of y ears of the use
and abuse of scapegoats. S capegoating is w ith us now in so many different guises. M any of the examples in this book w ill immediately call to
mind their modern counterparts. We may hav e made enormous strides in other fields but human nature has remained pretty constant. We still
crav e simple explanations for complex happenings. A nd w e cannot help but hold each other responsible w hen things go w rong. We take false
comfort in blaming others and in an age of technology w here spreading these ideas has nev er been easier, it is perhaps an opportune time to
take stock.
THE WORD ‘SCAPEGOAT’
‘They w ere try ing to use me as an escape goat.’
Jade G oody on Big Brother
The w ord ‘scapegoat’ w as first used by William Ty ndale, the translator of the Bible, in his 1530 edition. 10 He coined it to describe a ritual
from the Jew ish Day of A tonement in Lev iticus. In this tw o goats are sacrificed. The first is sacrificed to Yahw eh, so that he might pardon
Israel. This goat is a ‘sin offering’ and its sacrifice is an act of atonement by the people. Its remains are burned outside the community . The
second goat is dedicated to A zazel, a god of the underw orld. It is saddled w ith ‘all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their
transgressions in all their sins’ by the high priest of Yahw eh, and driv en into the w ilderness. The goat is led outside the v illage boundaries and
left there. It cuts a sorrow ful figure – as Holman Hunt show ed in his painting ‘The S capegoat’ – abandoned in a desolate landscape, w ith red
tassels tied to its horns. When these hav e been bleached w hite by the sun, the sins are deemed to hav e been expiated. The congregation’s
sense of guilt is passed on and expelled from the community . It stay s in the w ilderness, w hich could be a special and pow erful place for a
shaman or prophet. But the desert, w hen entered unw illingly , is only a curse. A nd that is how Holman Hunt show s it.
Ty ndale, it is interesting to note, met w ith a fate ev en w orse than the goat’s. He had sought to translate the Bible into English, and in doing
so, to make scripture av ailable to ev ery one through the new technology of printing w ith mov able ty pe. 11 But this brought him into conflict w ith
the C hurch at a time w hen translating the Bible from the V ulgate’s fourth-century Latin w as heresy . A s it w as, v ery few could read G od’s
w ord, and congregations w ere dependent on their priests to decode scripture for them. Ty ndale saw the clergy as too stupid, corrupt and
dissolute to be entrusted w ith the salv ation of others. He believ ed that only direct exposure to the w ord of G od could bring about change,
remov ing the C hurch as the link to the div ine.
The C hurch’s pow er w as not founded on scripture; there is no mention in the Bible of the pope, nor does it set up any hierarchy for man to
rule ov er man. But the clergy protected themselv es from change by locking scripture behind this barrier of language. They justified this ban on
translating the Bible by say ing that lay men w ere too taken up w ith w orldly affairs to keep the pure, quiet mind that w as necessary for reading
scripture. Ty ndale hit back, say ing, ‘This w eapon strikes themselv es, for w ho is so tangled w ith w orldly matters as the prelates.’ He predicted
that he w ould one day make it possible for a ploughboy to know more scripture than a scholar. His translation also allow ed w omen to read the
Bible, something that again upset traditionalists greatly . 12
S o, w hen Ty ndale approached the Bishop of London seeking patronage for his translation, he did not meet w ith approv al. The clergy w ere
then the city ’s largest property ow ners and employ ers too. They effectiv ely controlled the printing presses, and Ty ndale w as forced to trav el
to the C ontinent to find someone w ho w ould risk publishing his translation. His copies w ere smuggled into England and distributed cov ertly –
and pirated by others. There w as a lot of money to be made from this trade in illegal Bibles, though Ty ndale sought none of it, liv ing
extremely modestly and rely ing on the patronage of merchants. S ixteen thousand copies of Ty ndale’s Bible w ere distributed in a country w ith a
population of tw o and a half million, many of w hom w ere illiterate (per capita, the equiv alent of 326,400 copies today ). It is a staggering
number, though only a couple of copies surv iv e today . O w nership of one w as an act of heresy ; not that this applied to the C hurch. The Bishop
of London arranged for many copies to be bought, so they could be burned in public v iew . Ev en the most traditionally -minded baulked at this
inconsistent approach to the w ritten w ord of G od.
Ty ndale not only challenged the C hurch by allow ing ev ery one to read scripture, he w ent one step further. His translation had one crucial
difference from the V ulgate. He translated the G reek w ord ‘ ’ as ‘congregation’ rather than ‘church’, so stripping the latter of their
authority . He denied the C hurch’s claim to hav e inherited leadership of the faith from S t. P eter. Ty ndale w as steadily gathering enemies, most
notably Thomas M ore, w ho became fixated w ith his heresy and w rote longingly of burning him. Ironically , Ty ndale had translated passages in
the Bible that w ould one day be used to condemn him: ‘A nd the fy re shall try e ev ery man’s w orke, w hat it is.’ 13 M ore and Ty ndale w rote
hundreds of thousands of w ords, railing endlessly against each other. Ty nale w as as elegant and expressiv e as ev er, M ore less so (w earing a
hair shirt and w hipping oneself does not hone one’s w riting sty le). He accused Ty ndale of fomenting unrest, going as far as to blame him for
the P easants’ War in G ermany (w hich had claimed ov er 70,000 liv es), and describing him as a hell-hound. Ty ndale w as equally outspoken,
w riting of the C hurch: ‘The parson sheareth, the v icar shav eth, the parish priest polleth, the friar scrapeth, and the pardoner pareth. We lack but
a butcher to pull off the skin.’
U nsurprisingly , Ty ndale w as condemned as a heretic and blamed for the religious turmoil that w as sw eeping Europe. In some w ay s then,
he w as almost a scapegoat, a man on w hom could be placed responsibility for the religious trauma that w as happening. He w as demonized
and declared a heretic w hen in truth he represented traditional C hristian v alues far more than the C hurch w ith w hom he found himself in
conflict. Really he w as a sy mptom of the ills that organized religion w as undergoing. The C hurch w as arrogant and out of touch w ith the
common man. Henry V III put his sexual desire ahead of his kingly duty . Luther w as leading a rev olt against an upheav al of tradition on the
C ontinent. But it w as easier to pick on an outsider and hold him responsible.
Hav ing spent many y ears ly ing low in Europe, Ty ndale w as ev entually betray ed and captured in A ntw erp in 1535. He w as subjected to a
degrading ritual in w hich he w as stripped of his priestly dignity before being throw n into a cell. Through all of this, he impressed his gaolers w ith
his decency and calm. O ne said that if he ‘w ere not a good C hristian man, they could not tell w hom they might take to be one.’ But his few
supporters w ere unable to delay his undoing, and the follow ing y ear he w as strangled and burned at the stake. He left an enormous legacy ,
and his translation liv es on in the King James V ersion of the Bible – 84 per cent of the N ew Testament is largely his w ork, as is 76 per cent of
the O ld Testament. A nd he opened the w ay for others; four translations of the Bible w ere published in the four y ears after his death, one of
them being the official English v ersion. The C hristian faith ow es much to Ty ndale, as much as it does to any church leader. It is often the
undoubted beauty of his w riting that makes passages of the Bible so memorable, rather than the actual message the scripture carries. He and
S hakespeare are tw o of the dominant figures in the English canon, and the w ord ‘scapegoat’ w as just one of his many gifts to us.
THE RITUAL SCAPEGOAT
Definition of a scapegoat: ‘A ny material object, animal, bird or person on w hom the bad luck, diseases, misfortunes and sins of an indiv idual
or group are sy mbolically placed, and w hich is then turned loose, driv en off w ith stones, cast into a riv er or the sea, etc, in the belief that it
takes aw ay w ith it all the ev ils placed upon it.’
F unk and Wagnall’s S tandard Dictionary
of F olklore, M y thology and Legend
The ritual of the scapegoat goes back right to the beginning of mankind. Ev ery early culture had ceremonies in w hich they remov ed sin
from the community . These v aried greatly , but one thing w as constant – the idea that sin w as a definite entity that could be transferred from
being to being, or object, and that w rongdoing could be w ashed aw ay . A s a species, w e’re obsessed by purity . A ll belief sy stems are not just
dev ices w e use to make sense of the w orld, they allow us to hope that w e can return to a state of innocence.
The ancients believ ed that spirits surrounded us, residing in plants, rocks and animals. The Romans had their sacred grov es, w hile the A rabs
thought the desert to be populated by the jinn. A w idespread confusion betw een the phy sical and the mental led to a firm belief in the
transmission of ev il. In The Golden Bough S ir James F razer describes many examples of this from all ov er the w orld. In the East Indian
Islands, the inhabitants thought a malign spirit could be channeled into leav es w hich w ere held against the patient, then throw n aw ay . In
C hina, kites w ere used to spirit sickness aw ay ; in the A leutian Islands it w as w eeds. In Indonesia, v illagers built little boats to carry aw ay
their demons. In India they buried their sins in a jar, w hich any unw ary passer-by could stumble upon, like an unw itting P andora (there w as
little concern w ith w hat subsequently happened to the expelled ev il). Iroquois Indians painted and decorated their oldest friends, before
strangling them. In the Himalay as dogs w ere stoned to death to expiate sin; in S cotland the dogs merely got chased. In India and Egy pt cow s
w ere the animal of choice. A nd so on. A ll of this is a logical step tow ards transferring ev il to another human.
Human scapegoats came to be used more frequently in time. The animals that w ere sacrificed as scapegoats w ere usually of high v alue, but
their human counterparts tended to be society ’s marginal figures – criminals or the disabled. S ometimes they could be priests, w hose holy
status protected them from this contact w ith ev il. O r they could be actors w ho w ere paid for their duties and the risks they took on. These
scapegoats w ere used either as part of a regular ceremony or in the aftermath of disaster. S ome cultures had ceremonies in w hich the
scapegoat w as dressed in fine robes and led through the crow ds as they cast their sins upon him. He w ould then be driv en out of the v illage
and stoned, or throw n into a riv er or off a cliff, thus carry ing aw ay all the people’s ills.
There are countless instances of such rituals. Baby lon’s most important religious celebration w as that of A kitu, celebrating the arriv al of the
new y ear (in our month of A pril). In this, the king w as deposed and stripped of his insignia of office. He w as then restored to his throne w ith a
ritual w hich inv olv ed slapping him in the face until he w ept. A fterw ards a human scapegoat, usually a condemned criminal, w as paraded
through the streets, then throw n out of the city and killed, to signal the beginning of the new y ear. In A lbania sacred slav es w ere kept in the
Temple of the M oon. O ne w ho show ed exceptional signs of inspiration and insanity w as chained up for a y ear, anointed w ith oils, then speared
to death. The sins of the people w ere then transferred to his corpse and the future foretold from the w ay it had fallen. In Tibet a man w ith his
face painted half w hite and half black w as proclaimed the King of Years. He sat in the market place ev ery day w hile passers-by cast their sins
onto him. Then he w as driv en out of the city to spend the next 12 months liv ing in a cav e. If he surv iv ed, he returned the next y ear and took
on the same role. The Hebrew s used scapegoats to deal w ith minor sins, though more serious transgressions – know n as abominable sins –
could not be dealt w ith like this; these included sodomy and hav ing sex w ith one’s w ife and mother-in-law at the same time.
In A ncient G reece the scapegoat w as know n as the pharmakos and, as elsew here, he performed a key role in society , cleansing it of a
sense of w rongdoing after disaster. 14 In A thens a number of outcasts w ere fed and housed at the city ’s expense. If disaster struck, tw o of them
w ere sacrificed, one on behalf of the men, one for the w omen. The scapegoats w ere dressed in robes and w ere led around the city w hile
pray ers w ere uttered for the city ’s sins to fall on them. Then they w ere taken outside the city w alls and stoned to death. S imilar rituals
happened elsew here in G reece, inv olv ing others on the margins of society . The Leucadians threw a criminal into the sea each y ear, ty ing birds
and feathers to him, as a sacrifice to A pollo. The G reeks of A sia M inor used dw arv es and the deformed as their scapegoats. These
unfortunates w ere fed, beaten ritually on the genitals to the sound of flute music, then burned to death. In the annual harv est festiv al of
Thargelia tw o scapegoats w ere sacrificed, usually the ugliest men w ho could be found. They w ere led around w ith strings of figs hanging from
their necks, before undergoing the usual genital-w hipping, stoning and burning.
M ary Renault’s nov el The P raise Singer (1978) depicts a scene w here the citizens of Ephesos select the pharmakos, faced w ith the barbarian
army of M edes outside their w alls. They chose a sw indler and paraded him naked through the tow n.
They stripped him, and put the ritual offering-cakes in his hands, hav ing to tie them there because he shook so, and led him out to the gate.
There they beat him as the rite prescribes, on his tenderest parts till he screamed aloud. Then ev ery one fell on him as they chose, to purge
their offences w hich he carried for them, and drov e him along w ith sticks and cudgels till he fell. I don’t know if he w as dead w hen they came
to throw him on the bonfire.
The Romans w ere a little more civ ilized than their neighbours but had similar purification rituals. Ev ery M arch a man dressed in skins and
representing O ld M ars w as led through the streets of Rome. He w as then beaten w ith w hite rods and driv en out of the city as a w ay of
ushering out the old y ear and w elcoming in the new , in the hope of a good harv est. The Romans also had the festiv al of S aturnalia, w hich w as
a period of general licence. M asters w ould serv e their slav es and all manner of things w ere permitted, from excessiv e drinking and dancing to
sex. A fterw ards one indiv idual w ould be punished, lifting guilt from the others.
The ancients believ ed that human sin could be purged through rituals. They dev eloped them to appease the gods, w ho w atched ov er
ev ery thing. The rituals w ere a w ay of sending a message to the heav ens to atone for the sins of a community and av ert punishment. In this
climate of utter ignorance of how natural ev ents happened it w as believ ed that plagues, famines and the like w ere a div ine judgement. A nd so
these ceremonies for remov ing sin and sickness w ere usually conducted at times of sev ere seasonal change w hen mortality rose – at the
beginning or end of w inter or during the monsoon. These rituals allay ed the people’s fear of infertility , both that relating to childbirth and the
harv est.
This method of remov ing sin has ev olv ed ov er the centuries. What w as once an ancient expiatory ritual, aimed at deflecting the w rath of
the gods and cleansing a society , has mutated into a method by w hich rulers can channel the anger of their subjects aw ay from themselv es
and onto some poor unfortunate. O v er time the term scapegoat has come to refer to any group or indiv idual on w hom falls the outpouring of
anger and blame follow ing disaster. There are essentially tw o ty pes of modern or post-ritual scapegoats: those created unconsciously , as an
expression of our rage and incomprehension, in w hose guilt ev ery one believ es; and those created as a conscious act, by those seeking to
deflect blame aw ay from themselv es. The unconscious ones came first, and existed the moment disaster struck. But in time it became a
conscious process – as conscious as the ancient rituals, but lacking the sense of theatre and the acknow ledgement that the v ictim w as just that,
a v ictim.
The ‘sin-eater’ is perhaps the only continuation of these ancient rituals. In the M iddle A ges a practice emerged for the transferring of the sins
of the dead. A t funerals, sin-eaters w ere paid to take on the sins of those w ho had recently died to aid their progression to heav en and sav e
them from purgatory . They sat next to the corpse, and food and drink w ere passed ov er it to them. By eating and drinking it, they
appropriated the sins of the deceased. U nderstandably , it w as not a sought-after job, and the rest of the time sin-eaters w ere treated no better
than lepers. The practice w as w idespread in Britain, particularly in Wales and the Hebrides, and instances of it w ere recorded as late as the
nineteenth century . The last know n sin-eater, Richard M unslow , died in 1906. He w as a S hropshire farmer, and from all accounts w as not the
unfortunate figure normally associated w ith the role.
Brew er records the follow ing: ‘In C armarthenshire the sin-eater used to rest a plate of salt on the breast of the deceased and place a piece of
bread on the salt. A fter say ing an incantation ov er the bread it w as consumed by the sin-eater and w ith it he ate the sins of the dead.’
The main difference betw een this role and that of the scapegoat is that the sin-eater performed his duties on behalf of the dead, and he w as
alw ay s permitted to liv e afterw ards, if not w ith comfort and respect. A lso, he w ould hav e been paid for his serv ices.
S capegoating is suddenly no longer a ritual act, but a behav ioural pattern; no longer a w ay of safeguarding a community , but instead one
that protects one or tw o people. Ev ery time there is a catastrophic ev ent the majority finds a minority to blame. S ometimes it happens almost
organically , at others the mob is steered tow ards its v ictim by the king.
THE KING AND THE SCAPEGOAT
‘Don’t touch me, I’m special.’
Johnny Rotten, on being tapped on the
shoulder in a pub in Ireland
Before w e examine the scapegoat further, let us look quickly at those w ho rule us. C ount A xel O xenstierna, the C hancellor of S w eden
during the Thirty Years’ War, famously w rote, ‘Know , my son, w ith how little w isdom the w orld is gov erned.’ O bv iously he w as right, but
w hy should this be so? How is it that our leaders and bureaucrats fail us so much and so often? A re our structures of gov ernment innately
flaw ed? In a healthy hierarchy blame should flow upw ards (w ith it being passed dow n in a corrupt one). But how often does this happen?
Robert A nton Wilson w rote of the How ard Hughes sy ndrome, w here ev ery body lies to the man in pow er, some to gain fav our, others to
escape punishment. The result is that the person at the top feeds on ‘flattering and deceptiv e garbage’ and gets a v ery w arped v iew of how
things really stand. F ew people in that situation are likely to accept any thing other than praise. A nd, after all, w e should remember that in a
hierarchy ev ery one know s w hat to do, except for the leader. He is alone in hav ing to decide w hat to do.
A riv al explanation for w hy things alw ay s go w rong can be found in that w onderful study of incompetence, The P eter P rinciple. Its author,
Ray mond Hull, noted that, ‘w ith few exceptions, men bungle their affairs,’ and maintained that in ev ery hierarchy w e rise to the lev el abov e
that at w hich w e are competent, and there w e stay . M ost achiev ements are dow n to those w ho hav e y et to reach their lev el of
incompetence. But is there a w ay of breaking this, of promoting people to the right lev el? A fter all, modern rulers rely on those beneath them
more than ev er. They hav e to dev ote themselv es to so many issues, w hich they w ill rarely be able to understand fully , rarely hav ing enough
time to think about them properly . S o they hav e to rely excessiv ely on the bureaucracy that supports them, w hich w ill alw ay s perpetuate
itself.
The S toics maintained that reason w as the ‘thinking fire’ that steered w orld ev ents, and the ruler of a state w as ‘the serv ant of div ine
reason [appointed] to maintain order on earth.’ 15 P lato believ ed in the idea of philosopher-kings, w ho w ould be educated in such a w ay that
they w ould rule the w orld w ith perfect w isdom. But his scheme of breeding great rulers w as nev er brought to fruition. The mandarins of C hina
tried something similar, putting potential administrators through y ears of study . The Turks attempted the same in the O ttoman Empire, taking
C hristian children from their homes and training them for leadership. A nd some might add to this the British establishment’s sy stem of public
schools, w hich for y ears produced the administrators of one of the most successful empires in history , sending them to be educated aw ay from
their parents at a y oung age, stunting somew hat their ability for empathy and understanding of others (particularly the nativ e people of the
Empire). But how do y ou bring up someone for such a rarified role as that of leadership? A nd, if w e don’t consciously train and create rulers,
how do they reach their position? F or answ ers, w e hav e to look at ourselv es.
M an is essentially a meaning-seeking creature. O ur desire for significance in this life is ev ery bit as strong as our need for food and shelter.
Essentially w e are incapable of accepting that much of life is inexplicable. A nd so w e use my th, art and religion as dev ices to explain and cope
w ith reality . Through them, w e tell stories to dispel this frightening notion that the univ erse is a v iolent and senseless place w here any thing can
and w ill happen to us. We listen most carefully to those w ho tell us that this isn’t actually the case, to those w ho can offer an explanation. A nd
this all too often turns into blame. Blame tells the most comforting story , one in w hich there is a v illain w ho seeks to thw art us, the heroes, at
ev ery turn. We are led to believ e that if the v illain is remov ed, all w ill be w ell.
F or most of our time on earth w e hav e liv ed close to hunger; the fear of famine has nev er been far aw ay . It w as only w hen w e mov ed
aw ay from a hunter-gatherer’s existence and tow ards an organized sy stem of agriculture that a food surplus w as created. This changed
ev ery thing, allow ing a degree of leisure for some. N o longer did each man hav e to labour ev ery day to feed himself and his family . S ome
w ere able to take on roles other than those of hunter and farmer. The stockpiling of food created kings, priests and bureaucrats (and art, in case
it sounds only like a bad thing). The first tw o claimed to be intermediaries to the gods w ho could intercede on man’s behalf, or ev en claimed
div ine status themselv es. They offered explanations for and protection from the turbulence of existence. In return for these serv ices, they
receiv ed a higher standard of liv ing. Their negotiations w ith the div ine tended to result in the acquisition of pow er and v ast tracts of land for
themselv es. It is w orth pointing out that religion w as not their creation; this is a manifestation of our true nature w hich is not secular, but they
exploited it to the full. They ensured through feudal sy stems that the masses had no rights in this w orld, w hile through religion they taught
them that they had ev ery right in the next. This w as the perfect w ay for the élite to protect their pow er, and so it has continued for centuries.
Early S umerian theology held that man w as created to reliev e the gods of the burden of w ork. A nd for thousands of y ears since then, w e
hav e w orked. M ankind has been largely submissiv e, the v ast majority sacrificing themselv es so that a small minority could liv e in comfort.
They did this because they had been giv en great promises of protection against the unknow n. But there w ere risks inv olv ed in this. The
earliest communities had leaders w ho w ere semi-div ine, and w ho nominally ruled the community as kings. O ften they represented the god of
v egetable fertility and so w ere rarely allow ed to die a natural death. Instead, to spare them the rav ages of old age, and so they could be
resurrected in a stronger form, they w ere ritually killed. U nderstandably , as time w ent on, the more resourceful leaders tried to av oid this fate
and introduced the idea of death by proxy . A conv icted criminal might be chosen to die in the king’s stead, or one of the king’s children might
take his place – one S w edish ruler sacrificed eight of his offspring.
S o roy alty could be a considerable burden. N ot only could a king face ritual murder at the first sign of a grey hair but he w as held
responsible for all natural calamities. In C opan in A D 850, the king failed to deliv er on his promises of rain and prosperity and so his people
turned on him, blaming him for their troubles, and burned dow n his palace. A s happened much later on Easter Island, the people’s anger flow ed
upw ards tow ards their leader. There w ere many other similar occurrences, as rulers sought to deflect blame, and so the scapegoat came into
being. Ritual seasonal ceremonies w ere slow ly superseded by human scapegoats.
A s w e can see, the king and the scapegoat exist at opposing ends of society , but are connected on a fundamental lev el. The king creates
the scapegoat lest he share his fate, but their roles are not alw ay s entirely separate. The king can become the scapegoat, w hereas the rev erse
cannot happen. O ne is basically pow erless, the other all-pow erful. A nd y et the underdog is credited w ith as much pow er as the king, being
seen as able to cause catastrophe at w ill. By attributing such pow er to their enemies, rulers effectiv ely strengthen themselv es. They create a
fear of their enemies and use this to grant themselv es further pow er. They are able to by pass normal conv entions of law and justice, claiming
that their enemies are so formidable and their acts so ev il as to require special measures. N ormal rules cannot apply . This has gone on
throughout history . Just as w itchcraft w as declared crimen exceptum by the C atholic C hurch in the fifteenth century , so G eorge W. Bush
throughout history . Just as w itchcraft w as declared crimen exceptum by the C atholic C hurch in the fifteenth century , so G eorge W. Bush

declared w ar on terror post-9/11 and ignored much of the G enev a C onv ention w hen dealing w ith suspected al-Q aeda terrorists. In both cases a
v ast, meticulously organized conspiracy w as alleged, and a more threatening enemy created.
Leaders hav e alw ay s demonized their enemies, making them out to be ev il and malign and accusing them of ev ery unnatural practice and
sin. This has the effect of dehumanizing them, creating the idea that they are a low er form of life, that they actually deserv e their terrible
treatment and that persecuting them is the right thing to do. S capegoats are alw ay s demonized, but w ith that extra ingredient of blame that
makes the persecution that much harsher, and giv es it an illusion of rationality , ev en v irtue. The king or leader can create a scapegoat for
w hen things go w rong, perhaps in the form of an enemy outside his people’s borders w orking tirelessly against them, as in the S ov iet U nion,
w hen S talin blamed ev ery thing on Trotsky . Equally , the king could hold a sinister ‘enemy w ithin’ responsible for his country ’s w oes, as
happened w ith the persecution of the Jew s, and w ith the w itch craze of the M iddle A ges.
There is another ty pe of scapegoat employ ed by the king – a figure v ery close to him w ho w ould take the blame in certain situations. The
first occurrence of this w ould be the w hipping boy . A t a time w hen kings w ere still thought to hav e div ine status it w as not believ ed right to
punish the prince or king should they transgress in any w ay w hen y oung. Yet it w as considered important for some punishment to be meted
out to show them that they had done w rong. S o a courtier of around the y oung prince’s age w ould be punished in his stead. These stand-ins
w ould be know n as w hipping boy s. They w ere usually w ell-born and educated w ith their master from birth, often becoming friends and
forming a strong bond. The prince w ould hav e few other play mates, so this relationship w as an important one, and it w as thought that to see
his companion punished in his place w ould upset the prince and make him less likely to stray afterw ards.
S ev eral English kings had w hipping boy s in their y outh and quite often they w ould ennoble them for their serv ices later on. C harles I’s
w hipping boy started life as plain William M urray but became the Earl of Dy sart and liv ed in Ham House for a good deal of his life. O ne could
argue that he fared better than his ill-fated master. It could also be argued that our current sy stem of ennoblement in exchange for donations to
political parties may be corrupt, although it represents progress from a sy stem based on spanking. O ther monarchies used these w hipping boy s
too. When Henry IV of F rance became a C atholic in 1593, he sent tw o of his ambassadors, D’O ssat and Du P erron, to Rome to suffer any
punishment the pope felt he should receiv e. C lement V III had them beaten on the steps of S t. P eter’s as they sang the M iserere. They w ere
ev entually made cardinals.
A fter the w hipping boy came the minister-fav ourite, w ho w ould perform much the same role for the king at a later stage in life, though w ith
more politics and less spanking (if y ou discount Edw ard II and P iers G av eston, w ho did both). 16 The minister-fav ourite w as a dominant figure
at court, particularly in the sev enteenth century , but he existed before that, and continues to do so. He w as a courtier w hose closeness to the
king created enormous tension throughout the rest of the court. He w ould be blamed for any unpopular decisions taken by the king, and there
w as no w ay of remov ing him, short of assassination or the monarch tiring of him (though the English tried using impeachment to effect this
remov al). These fav ourites existed outside the established channels of pow er and influence, rely ing on intimacy w ith the ruler (w hich could be
sexual, as betw een C atherine the G reat and P otemkin) to maintain their position. They serv ed in a priv ate capacity , w ith no official status, and
so w ere not subject to the authority of others. Really , they w ere M erlin-like figures, keeping to the shadow s, and blamed for bew itching the
ruler. They acted as ‘the negativ e identity of a king w ho could do no w rong; he w as a buffer, a lightning conductor, or at w orst a burning-glass
interposed betw een king and people at a time w hen a moral consensus for gov ernment policy could not be relied upon.’ 17
It used to be the aim of ev ery courtier to become the king’s fav ourite. Baldassare C astiglione w rote that, ‘The goal of the perfect courtier’
w as to gain ‘the lov e of his master in such a complete w ay as to become his fav ourite.’ But others felt that that betokened excessiv e ambition.
The Jesuit Juan de M ariana believ ed that for a king to be surrounded by faw ning courtiers w ould lead to ty ranny , and w as therefore the w orst
thing.
The religious conflict in Europe of the y ears 1550–1650 meant that it w as extremely useful for a ruler to hav e a minister-fav ourite to draw
the sting from the attacks of both the religious extremists and the staunch traditionalists, it being impossible to keep both sides happy . The ruler
could present himself as the bluff, w ell-meaning monarch, w hile the courtier could practise realpolitik openly . The proof of the success of this
sy stem is how these courtiers w ere almost univ ersally v ilified in the place of their masters. A lleging that a king had fallen v ictim to the sorcery
of another and that that influence w as colouring his decisions w as really the only w ay of criticizing a ruler w ithout challenging his authority . The
people could accept the omnipotence of a king, but not that of a fav oured courtier.
The latter hav e modern equiv alents. These include N ancy Reagan (accused of influencing her husband w ith her belief in astrology ), M artin
Bormann (as Hitler’s priv ate secretary he had enormous influence) and C he G uev ara (as C astro’s second in command). A ll w ere unpopular and
criticized by insiders for by passing the pow er structure and usurping those w ithin it w ho merited their position of influence. M eanw hile, outsiders
criticized them, holding them responsible for ev ery bad decision made at the top. P eter M andelson is perhaps the best modern example of a
minister-fav ourite – alw ay s so close to the seat of pow er, y et distrusted w ithin and w ithout; expelled from gov ernment in times of difficulty ,
and brought back quietly once matters had calmed dow n.
The jealousy of the other courtiers usually ensured the bloody dow nfall of the fav ourite. But remov ing him could sometimes hasten the fall
of the king. The three mediev al monarchs most know n for their fav ourites – namely Edw ard II, Richard II and Henry V I – all met the same
fate as them in the end. Edw ard II made P iers G av eston his ‘half-self’ and that brought them both dow n. But on the w hole relativ ely few
monarchs w ere assassinated w hen there w as a minister-fav ourite to blame instead.
O ther examples of lov er-fav ourites included the Earls of Leicester and Essex (both to Elizabeth I) and counsellor-fav ourites included C ardinal
Wolsey and William and Robert C ecil. S ome w ere attractiv e (the Duke of Buckingham), others unobtrusiv e bureaucrats (Lord Burghley ) and
some surprisingly hideous (Robert C ecil). To the outside w orld these men w ere haughty demi-gods, y et to their masters they w ere often
serv ile and seemingly tame. C ardinal Richelieu in particular epitomized this, and w as celebrated for his ability to produce tears at w ill.
O ne of the most successful courtiers w as G eorge V illiers. He became fav ourite to James I of England, supplanting others and rising sw iftly
through the peerage (championed in part by enemies of the king’s prev ious fav ourites) before finally becoming Duke of Buckingham in 1623.
But he did not find fav our w ith ev ery one. He w as blamed for a v ariety of debacles, both marital (concerning the P rince of Wales) and military .
P arliament sought to impeach him, but the king protected him. Ev entually he w as assassinated by one of the soldiers inv olv ed in one of the
military disasters. A fterw ards Thomas Wentw orth, Earl of S trafford, remarked, ‘it is said at C ourt there is none now to impute our faults unto.’
Ironically , Wentw orth himself w ould be executed for treason by a plainly reluctant C harles I. He had been utterly loy al to the king, but fell foul
of P arliament for supporting him in his campaign against the S cots. But this sacrifice only pav ed the w ay for the dow nfall of the king himself.
The execution of C harles I marked the end of the belief in the div ine right of kings. O liv er C romw ell w as attacking the institution of
monarchy as much as any thing else, and sought ritually to destroy it by putting the king to death. Kings had been deposed and killed before,
but w ithout the need for a trial. (Edw ard II and Richard II w ere both ov erthrow n by P arliament, and killed, but their assassins remained
hidden. The usurpers w anted rid of the kings, but not the monarchy , w hich w as preserv ed.) This ritual had different effects though, in that, as
the king died, a marty r w as born. The crow d rushed forw ard looking for trophies, dipping their shirts and handkerchiefs in his blood. A small
industry in roy al relics dev eloped, w hich w as not w hat C romw ell had intended.
 Tow ards the end of C harles’ rule the country w as torn apart by fighting, w ith few prospects of peace in 1642. The king’s enemies saw him
as an agent of the A ntichrist, and regarded these as the End Day s. Reformers sought to ban church decorations and stained-glass w indow s, all
seen as idolatrous. The Book of Rev elation, describing w hat w as to come, gained in popularity and fuelled the w itch craze. S enior officers in
C harles’ army had met at a pray er meeting in Windsor C astle in A pril 1648. They saw the renew ed outbreak of w ar as div ine retribution for
their sins, and the king as the embodiment of ev il. They resolv ed to destroy him in an open ceremony , expiating the ev il that afflicted the
country . This w as justified w ith the v erse from the Book of N umbers: ‘for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the
blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it’ (N umbers, 35:33).
The death of C harles w as a precursor to that of Louis XIV after the F rench Rev olution. Robespierre had stated that Louis must die so F rance
could liv e (though the F rench king w as dethroned before he w as executed, unlike C harles). This idea of ritual killing stretches back to Romulus
killing Remus and founding Rome. The tw o trials of C harles and Louis pav ed the w ay for a series of political ones throughout the tw entieth
century , as v ictors dispensed their v ersion of justice to their defeated foes in the court room.
THE CHRISTIAN SCAPEGOAT
Like all religions, C hristianity ’s primary challenge ov er the centuries – apart from seeking to defeat its riv als in the spiritual marketplace and
establish a monopoly – has been how to explain the existence of ev il. The scapegoat is central to that process. G iv en its G od’s omnipotence,
C hristianity has struggled to account for the terrible things that happen in this w orld. Ev en now the C hurch cannot fully agree on w hy G od
could allow ev il. In the eighteenth century , Dav id Hume famously raised the issue thus, w riting of G od: ‘Is he w illing to prev ent ev il, but not
able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not w illing? Then he is malev olent. Is he both able and w illing? Whence then is ev il?’A nd Hume had
a point. Whence indeed? What use is our serv ice to the Lord if he is unable or unw illing to interv ene on our behalf? G od’s representativ es on
earth hav e liv ed like kings for centuries, w hile the people they serv ed suffered. But w hy ? This w as a question they needed to answ er.
O ne explanation came in the form of the Dev il, as a counterpart to the C hristian G od – his scapegoat ev en. In ancient times there had been
just one god, a sky god. But he w as felt to be too inaccessible and so w as gradually replaced by a troupe of lesser gods, w ho w ere capable of
both good and bad deeds, as epitomized by the gods of ancient G reece. Ev en then w e expected too much from them. A t the beginning of The
O dy ssey , Zeus laments man’s tendency to blame the gods rather than himself:
What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, w hen it is their ow n w ickedness
that brings them sufferings w orse than any w hich Destiny allots them.
In pagan antiquity , gods and mortals w ere much closer, so it w as not unusual for the former to appear to the latter (w hereas these day s it is
generally a sign of 24-carat lunacy ). These pagan gods w ere territorial; they w ould only hav e jurisdiction in a particular area, and so it w as
usual to w orship the local deities w hen y ou w ere trav elling. 18 There w as alw ay s room for another god alongside them, just so long as that god
w as not seeking to displace them. This is w hy C hristianity managed to hav e considerable ov erlap w ith traditional pagan religions in its early
y ears, as it expanded w estw ards into Europe. Religion being mainly about ritual then (as opposed to faith), C hristianity could complement,
rather than compete w ith, the local animist beliefs and practices. Their cults w ere preserv ed, and w orship of Diana, Hecate and others
continued, along w ith their more lurid rituals. The C hurch reasoned that it w ould deal w ith these at a later date; the priority w as to get the
C hristian message across, and the heathen lasciv iousness could be stamped out afterw ards.
In the thousand y ears after the first C hristian Roman emperor, C onstantine I, C hristianity spread w idely across Europe. Ev angelicals tended
to be of noble status and so they approached their fellow nobles, w ho imposed the new religion on their subjects. C hristianity had to repackage
itself as it expanded to compete effectiv ely w ith the local beliefs. The concept of original sin 19 lacked the appeal and simplicity of the pagan
horned god and his N ordic counterpart Loki (being too complex an idea, particularly w hen it came to explaining failed harv ests and the like), and
so the Dev il w as brought in as a figure of blame.
P rev iously the Dev il had not been a cornerstone of the faith. In the O ld Testament, he barely appears and is a minor figure. In Islam,
S atan is also a minor figure, but a foolish one, more like Loki than the C hristian Dev il. He is a relativ ely harmless trickster and w ill be forgiv en
on the final day . Karen A rmstrong points out that the epithet ‘the G reat S atan’ for A merica is derisory but not as condemnatory as w e in the
West might think. The C hristian G od is responsible for both good and ev il, as he is in the Jew ish faith. A s a result G od’s actions are cruel and
w illful, from N oah’s ark and the flood, to S odom and G omorrah and the killing of the first-born in Egy pt. M alak Yahw eh w as his messenger,
responsible for G od’s destruction and bringing pestilence and other curses from him. But the messenger could only insulate G od so much from
the harshness of the punishments he inflicted on mankind. It became harder and harder to justify his actions and the scale of them made
blaming our human w eakness almost impossible. A nd so, in the N ew Testament, ev il w as passed onto the Dev il. F rom a literary perspectiv e,
G od and Jesus need the Dev il as a counterpart, just as S herlock Holmes needs M oriarty , or James Bond Blofeld. The N ew Testament w ouldn’t
be the same w ithout him. He acted as a signifier for ev il and, being responsible for it, let G od and ourselv es off the hook.
S ince then the Dev il has flitted in and out of fashion w ith the C hurch. In the popular imagination, he blossomed, gaining more and more
names – S atan, Lucifer, M ephistopheles, Beelzebub, Lev iathan, the P rince of Darkness … O nce he had been portray ed as an angel, but he
sw iftly took animal form, as a goat originally (echoing the classical figure of P an, and the rising C hristian fear of sexuality ) and later as a
serpent, snake or w olf. S oon he became a hy brid, w ith elements of each creature as w ell as human characteristics. He might hav e the legs of
a chicken, or be cov ered in boils and scars. But w hatev er his appearance, scarcely any of it originated in scripture. Instead his appearance
echoed those of pagan figures such as the horned god. John M ilton portray ed S atan in P aradise Lost as an archangel w ho turned against G od,
and changed him from a grotesque figure, w ho play ed tricks upon mankind, into a terrible one. F or him, it w as ‘Better to reign in Hell than to
serv e in Heav en.’ This idea of fallen angels is present in the Bible, in the Epistle of Jude and the S econd Epistle of P eter. They w ere held back
by the Lord to aw ait final judgement and so roamed among men on Earth, spy ing out their w eaknesses and testing them by , say , putting
fossils in the ground, or these day s by publishing books by Richard Daw kins. These angels could enter liv ing bodies and become w itches or
w izards. They could reanimate corpses, become ghosts or, more commonly , take possession of animals to serv e the Dev il.
Ev en today C hristianity is not entirely sure w hat attitude to hav e tow ards the Dev il. M odern thinkers such as F reud and Jung might put ev il
w ithin us, and the majority hav e adopted this more sophisticated v iew of ev il. But there are still many – mostly the more ev angelical branches
of C hristianity – w ho agree w ith the ancients and hold that ev il lies outside, and is the w ork of another being, namely the Dev il. It w as
Zarathustra (thought to hav e liv ed in Iran around the tenth century BC ) w ho first dev eloped this concept of a shadow y all-pow erful figure of
blame. Each being is faced w ith an army of enemies. Existence is a constant struggle against them, and they are under S atan’s control. He is
the arch-enemy of mankind w ho uses the great pow ers at his disposal to thw art us. Essentially , Zarathustra created the idea of this single
figure of blame w ho is responsible for ev ery ill that w e suffer.
S ev eral major religions adopted Zarathustra’s beliefs, though his ow n follow ers are v ery few in number these day s – the largest centre is
M umbai, w ith 60,000 adherents. His outlook suited those w ho hated uncertainty , and fav oured extremes instead. It div ided the w orld into
friends and foes, and created an env ironment in w hich people w ho w ere gentle and kind in priv ate life could, in good conscience, condemn
others to the stake, or otherw ise persecute them for religious reasons. They did not w ant to know their enemies, or seek to understand them
further. This thinking w ould shape much of history .
There w as a dow nside to blaming ev ery thing on the Dev il. Karen A rmstrong w rites in A History of God that ‘one of the problems of ethical
monotheism is that it isolates ev il. Because w e cannot accept the idea that there is ev il in our G od, there is a danger that w e w ill not be able to
endure it w ithin ourselv es. It can then be pushed aw ay and made monstrous and inhuman.’ A ll too often w e define ev il by pointing at
monsters – Hitler, S talin, P ol P ot – but really ev il tends to come in more subtle guises and w e create them ourselv es.
The G nostics also believ ed in the Dev il, and saw the Earth as his creation. F or this, the C hurch persecuted them v igorously throughout the
second and third centuries A D (this started a tradition that w ould continue much later w ith the persecution of the C athars and others w hose
beliefs clashed w ith the official line, culminating in the C rusades and the Inquisition). A fter the S econd C oming didn’t materialize the persecution
of C hristians intensified, and the G nostics felt that such a hostile w orld could only be the w ork of the Dev il. They preached self-destruction and
marty rdom as a w ay of reuniting themselv es w ith G od. Had that prev ailed, C hristianity w ould hav e gone the w ay of untold numbers of loony
cults w ho v oluntarily self-destructed (the mov ement follow ing Jesus w as just one of many riv al sects at that time). G nosticism concentrated on
salv ation – the present being ev il – and w as an intensely pessimistic belief sy stem. The tendency to pin all w rongdoing on one person w as
innate to them. To deal w ith the threat they posed, the C hurch leaders denounced them as being heretics and serv ants of S atan, and they
w ere driv en out.
It w as in a hostile climate such as this that the Book of Rev elation – by some distance the Bible’s most extreme text – w as w ritten.
M illenarian beliefs hav e alw ay s emerged in times of great social upheav al, and Rev elation is testament to that. It w as w ritten at a time w hen
the Jew s w ere fixated upon ridding themselv es of their Roman masters, probably w hen the Emperor Domitian sought brutally to be
w orshipped. S atan appears in it as a huge red dragon and there is much more about red heifers and numbers of the beast. This is the only book
in the Bible in w hich the issue of ‘natural ev il’ features. The Dev il is held responsible for it – from earthquakes to famine and flood. But the
C hurch has alw ay s struggled to explain natural ev il and has tended to blame it on the sins of man.
C hristian thinkers hav e furiously debated the subject of ev il. Irenaeus did not believ e in shifting all blame onto an outside force and he
passionately argued for the theory of original sin. His idea w as that all humans hav e carried the burden of A dam and Ev e’s original sin since
S atan entered the garden and used the serpent to tempt them. A ccording to Irenaeus, G od offered Jesus as a ransom for the souls held by the
Dev il, but the Dev il killed Jesus, w ho nonetheless inflicted a mortal w ound on him. The Dev il continued to harbour anger tow ards humanity ,
and the attacks suffered by the C hurch and C hristians w ere proof of that.
S t. A ugustine also believ ed in original sin, but linked it w ith sex, and this v iew has persisted in C hristianity . A s a faith it has alw ay s liv ed in
fear of sexuality , despite claiming to be the religion of lov e, and this is largely dow n to one man and his w ritings. S t. A ugustine grew up in
N orth A frica in the fourth century A D. His early life had been, by his ow n admission, one of unbridled excess. He had a mistress w ith w hom he
had a child before getting engaged to another w oman. But some form of breakdow n, and the Epistles of P aul, conv inced him that chastity w as
the path he should take. He equated original sin w ith the sexual act, w hich transmitted that sin from generation to generation. A nd so he
shaped the C hristian attitude to sex and w omen, w ith far-reaching consequences. It is perhaps w orth remembering that A ugustine formulated
these extraordinarily bleak, ev en misogy nistic, ideas around the time of the fall of Rome, and that informed his outlook and doctrines. He w as
try ing to explain how C hristian Rome could fall to pagan G oths.
O ther religious leaders of the time had different v iew s. Tertullian w as the author of numerous early w orks of theology in the second century
A D, in w hich he maintained that the Dev il w as a creature, not a div ine being. He w as the shadow of G od, filling the w orld w ith lies, and w as
present ev ery w here. Tertullian listed the follow ing demonic activ ities: astrology , horse-racing, attending the theatre, w earing make-up, taking
baths and frequenting tav erns. A nother scholar of the time, O rigen, disagreed and thought that the Dev il w anted to be G od and that it w as
pride that had brought about his fall. O rigen also believ ed that our flesh had been corrupted but the spirit w as still pure. He castrated himself 20
in a literal attempt to follow the teachings of C hrist, so perhaps w e should leav e his ideas there and mov e on to the man he sought to emulate
– the ultimate C hristian scapegoat.
CHRIST THE SCAPEGOAT
‘The blood of marty rs is the seed of the church.’
Tertullian
The scapegoat is in many w ay s the central figure in C hristianity . A s a faith, it has alw ay s lauded its marty rs, ev en w hen the need for
marty rdom v anished. A ny one could become a marty r, dy ing in the same w ay that C hrist did. M arty rs w ere meant to die brav ely , their
stoicism hav ing a profound effect on onlookers. In doing so they expiated their sin, w ashing it aw ay w ith blood, just as the w ater of baptism
did.
Ty ndale’s scapegoat is just one of many figures in the Bible w ho is persecuted by the majority . A bel, Joseph, M oses, John the Baptist, the
S erv ant of Yahw eh, all underw ent death or brutal suffering at the hands of others in the O ld Testament. A nother v ictim, Jonah, w as chosen
by sailors during a storm as the one to be throw n ov erboard to sav e the ship. A nd Ty ndale’s scapegoat w as the biblical forerunner of the
greatest v ictim of all – Jesus, the son of G od, w ho died upon the cross, taking on the sins of mankind. John recorded the High P riest C aiaphas
say ing that, ‘it is better for one man to die for the people, than for the w hole nation to be destroy ed’ and this is one of the central themes of
C hristianity .
Jesus w as the second A dam, and his rise balanced the fall of the first. The idea w as that A dam sinned so completely that only C hrist could
undo the damage by dy ing on the cross (this ‘sy mmetry ’ in the Bible is also seen in how the disobedience of Ev e is echoed by the obedience of
M ary , and the Tree of Life in the G arden of Eden becomes the True C ross). He w as seen as the greatest example of a scapegoat by S ir James
F razer, but he w as to be the last one. It is w ritten in the Talmud that, after Jesus’ crucifixion, G od w ould accept no more sacrifices like those in
Lev iticus. 21 By dy ing on the cross for us, he remov ed the need for further expiation. A nd unlike many scapegoats, he accepted his fate
v oluntarily . He w as also an example of the scapegoat w ho w as stronger than those w hose sin he took on. Before his death, though, there
w ere sev eral occasions w here he nearly met the scapegoat’s end.
In Luke’s gospel, there is a passage in w hich C hrist angered a mob in N azareth w ith his preaching:
When they heard this ev ery one in the sy nagogue w as enraged. They sprang to their feet and hustled him out of the tow n; and they took
him up to the brow of the hill their tow n w as built on, intending to throw him dow n the cliff, but he slipped through the crow d and w alked
aw ay .
This w as an archety pal scene of the mob v ersus the scapegoat. F orcing the v ictim off a cliff (incidentally , there is no such cliff in N azareth)
or stoning him w ere the tw o ideal w ay s of committing collectiv e murder. N o one person has sole contact w ith the v ictim.
In a rev ersal of this incident, Jesus encounters a man possessed by unclean spirits. Jesus used exorcism as a method of expelling ev il. These
spirits w ere in the serv ice of the Dev il and w ould come out w hen confronted by C hrist. But unlike in other rituals, he w as able to destroy them
rather than merely shift them from one being to another. In the G ospel of M ark, the scene is described thus:
A nd no sooner had he left the boat than a man w ith an unclean spirit came out from the tombs tow ard him… A ll night and all day , among
the tombs and in the mountains, he w ould how l and gash himself w ith stones … Jesus had been say ing to him, ‘C ome out of the man, unclean
spirit.’ ‘What is y our name?’ Jesus asked. ‘M y name is legion,’ he answ ered, ‘for there are many of us.’ A nd he begged him earnestly not to
send them out of the district. N ow there w as on the mountainside a great herd of pigs feeding, and the unclean spirits begged him, ‘S end us to
the pigs, let us go into them.’ S o he gav e them leav e. With that, the unclean spirits came out and w ent into the pigs, and the herd of about
tw o thousand pigs charged dow n the cliff into the lake, and there they w ere drow ned. A nd w hen the people heard about it, they w ere afraid
and begged Jesus to leav e the neighbourhood.
What is unusual about this scene (apart from the concept of the S on of G od) is that, for a moment, the roles w ere rev ersed and the
multitude fled from the scapegoat, charging ov er the cliff that usually they w ould hav e driv en him ov er. A lso, the demoniac stones himself,
imitating the fate that the crow d w ould hav e inflicted on him. A gain Jesus escaped the mob, but he w ould not do so forev er.
Jesus w as a political threat to the Romans at a time of great instability . The Romans sought his dow nfall and had him crucified like a
common criminal. But most C hristians did not w ant the Roman Empire as their enemy , and the P assion narrativ es transfer blame onto the
Jew ish authorities. The local representativ e of Roman pow er, P ontius P ilate, is portray ed as hav ing to condemn Jesus against his ow n
judgement, at the v olition of the Jew ish S anhedrin.
A fter C hrist’s death his follow ers believ ed that ev il w ould be destroy ed sooner rather than later. His apostles continued his teaching but,
after they died, a w hole host of different interpretations sprang up, since Jesus had left behind no w ritings. But he seemed to suggest that the
end of time w as coming soon and, as a result, many of his follow ers w ere expecting a S econd C oming. The Jew s rose against the Romans in
this belief, fighting a holy w ar against them betw een A D 66 and 70. The M essiah failed to come to their aid and they w ere defeated. In the
subsequent search for explanation they turned on each other. P harisees blamed S adducees and v ice v ersa, and the Dev il w as also held
responsible.
The centuries after the death of C hrist saw extensiv e persecution of C hristians by the Romans. 22 The latter became increasingly fearful as
their empire grew w eaker and more threatened. A t that time C hristians w ere regarded as a minor Jew ish sect and liv ed in expectation of an
imminent A pocaly pse, so w ere perhaps less mindful of fitting in w ith the customs of others. But their togetherness w as perceiv ed as sinister,
and their rituals shocking, particularly the Eucharist. They w ere accused of child murder, incest, cannibalism; of w orshipping a ‘donkey god’ and
their priests’ genitals. A ll of these accusations w ould in turn be used by the C hurch against their enemies, in particular the Jew s. U ltimately our
imagination is relativ ely limited w hen it comes to w ickedness, and the authorities trot out the same list of accusations tow ards minorities they
w ish to demonize.
The scapegoat figure of C hrist is echoed in other religions and is a different, stronger scapegoat than the archety pe. This sort takes on the sin
of others because it is able to. The A ztecs had Tlazolteotl, the goddess of childbirth, w ho ate the sins of men once in each indiv idual’s life time –
much as, in the animal kingdom, mothers might eat the excretions of their y oung to keep the nest clean. The Hindus hav e S hiv a, w ho is the
only being able to absorb the poison that emerged w hen the gods churned the M ilky O cean. A nd there is a C hinese smiling Buddha w hose fat
stomach can be rubbed as a w ay of passing human suffering into him. Throughout this, his expression does not change from one of joy . These
are all positiv e figures, full of pow er, able to take on this burden of sin because they are stronger than others. These religious scapegoats are
far remov ed from the scapegoat as a mere v ictim.
THE JEWISH SCAPEGOAT
O v er the centuries, the C atholic C hurch has done more than its fair share of demonizing. A s so often happens, C hristianity suffered
persecution w hen w eak, and became the persecutor w hen strong. The C hurch w as not slow to denigrate its enemies. A s it grew in pow er, its
leaders managed to perpetuate the illusion that they w ere still under threat from dark, malign forces, w hen really these w ere just the great
threats of w ar, famine and disease that ev ery one faced ov er a thousand y ears ago. The fear of the Dev il w as deliberately aroused in Europe,
mainly in the elev enth, fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, and this w ould lead to the extensiv e persecution of w itches. But the pow er of
competing religions, predominantly of the M uslims and Jew s, also had to be dealt w ith. A series of C rusades w as launched against the former,
though its first v ictims w ere in fact the Jew s.
To the great indignation of the C hristian w orld, C aliph al-Hâkim of Egy pt had brought about the demolition of C onstantine’s Basilica of the
Holy S epulchre in Jerusalem. A fter that, the idea of retaking the Holy Land w as born. G regory V II w as the first pope to attempt to launch a
C rusade, but he w as unsuccessful. U rban II fared better, promising his troops that death on a C rusade w ould, w ith repentance and confession,
lead to a place in heav en (this encouraging idea w ould pav e the w ay for the sy stem of indulgences, w hose corruption became a major cause
of the Reformation).
The C rusaders set out in 1096 but the mission did not begin as U rban had planned. F or some of these C rusaders it seemed slightly illogical
to trav el so far to fight an unknow n enemy w hen the more immediate enemies – the killers of C hrist, in fact – w ere in their midst. They
slaughtered the Jew ish communities in the Rhine v alley , many of w hom had lent the money the C rusaders needed to set out on this religious
quest in the first place. The Jew s aroused resentment for their success and education, and, ultimately , in the hearts of the C hristian masses,
they still carried the blame for the persecution of C hrist. In 1215, at the F ourth Lateran C ouncil, P ope Innocent III had ruled that Jew s should
w ear a y ellow patch and a horned cap, marking them out as C hrist’s murderers. Betw een the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries they w ere
expelled from F rance, Italy , England, Bohemia and the G ermanic states. It w as only after the F rench Rev olution that they w ere recognized as
citizens of F rance. 23
In fifteenth-century S pain the Jew s w ere persecuted by the Inquisition, w hich expelled those w ho did not conv ert to C atholicism. This
conv ersion did not stop them from being considered tainted. They w ere know n as conv ersos, but also, pejorativ ely , marranos – or pigs. It w as
around this time that the concept of blood as a carrier of racial qualities emerged. Blood became central to anti-S emitic my th. Jew ish men w ere
thought to hav e tails and to menstruate, so they bled and then had to replace the blood, w hich they did by killing and eating C hristian children.
The blood-libel accusation w ould resurface again and again.
The Jew s w ere blamed for a multitude of other ills – principally the Black Death – forcing P ope C lement V I to issue a bull say ing the Jew s
w ere not responsible. But he could not blame G od instead, nor could he blame man for his sins – that w ould hav e prov ided ammunition for
those responsible for many of the anti-S emitic attacks, w ho ev en accused Jew s of poisoning w ells and food supplies. Instead, the pope
attributed the plague to a misalignment of the planets, w hich is as close as the C hurch w ill ev er get to say ing that it, like the rest of us, just
doesn’t know . This w as a rare occasion w hen the C hurch did not designate a minority as ev il-doers.
The conv entional resort w as to blame heretics, lepers, homosexuals 24 or larger groups such as the Jew s, ev en the female half of the
population …
THE SEXUAL SCAPEGOAT
‘But now the w oman opened up the cask,
A nd scattered pains and ev ils among men.’
Hesiod
The w itch hunts of the M iddle A ges and afterw ards are one of the most spectacular and disturbing examples of blame being misdirected onto
the v ulnerable. They w ere driv en by a need to find those responsible for small local tragedies (the death or illness of a child or liv estock, or any
domestic accident), at a time w hen it w as feared that the Dev il lurked behind ev ery mishap. The religious instability of the time prov ided a
fertile env ironment for this persecution, as communities purged themselv es of their least respected and economically v aluable members, w ith
the full encouragement of the authorities. A mass w av e of scapegoating sw ept through Europe as tens of thousands of w omen (and some
men) w ere accused of w itchcraft and burned, hanged or drow ned. A fear of w itchcraft w as nothing new how ev er, and the real causes for this
misogy ny lay much deeper, in the v ery earliest my thologies, enshrined in the stories of creation.
The ancients believ ed that w e originally existed in a state of purity , and for some, this meant a w orld w ithout w omen. A ccording to G reek
my thology , men had liv ed side by side w ith the gods, free from pain and labour and disease. Woman w as an afterthought, as she w as in the
Bible. P andora w as only sent by Zeus as a punishment to men, after P rometheus had stolen fire from the gods, and as an accompaniment to
his entrails being pecked at daily by v ultures before regrow ing ov ernight. P andora brought w ith her a large jar w hich she w as told nev er to
open, but she did, and so released all the ev ils in the w orld. S ince then mankind has been condemned to w ork, grow old, w eaken and finally
die. This story w as first w ritten dow n by Hesiod in the eighth century BC and its message is echoed elsew here in G reek my thology – from the
F uries and the G orgons to S cy lla and C hary bdis (w ho w ere both originally sea ny mphs), C irce, M edusa and M edea. A ll reinforce this original
expression of feminine ev il.
The goddess A të w as responsible for infatuation as w ell as mischief, delusion and blind folly . S he w as the daughter of Zeus and Eris, the
goddess of strife. A të w as thought to hav e triggered the Trojan War by turning up uninv ited to the w edding of P eleus and Thetis (though some
v ersions hav e it that Eris prov oked the Judgement of P aris). There, she encouraged Hera, A phrodite and A thena to fight ov er a golden apple
inscribed ‘F or the F airest’. 25 The argument w ent on and on, and in the end Zeus sent them to a shepherd, P aris, for his v erdict. Hera offered
him Europe and A sia to rule, w hile A thena promised him the gifts of w isdom and w ar, and A phrodite the prize of the most beautiful w oman in
the w orld – Helen, w ife of M enelaus. P aris duly chose A phrodite as the fairest, and gav e her the apple. A nd so Helen fell in lov e w ith him,
and they fled to Troy together, w ith all the tragedy that came after.
A të w as also later thought to hav e caused A chilles’ argument w ith A gamemnon, w ho blamed her for his infatuation w ith the girl he had
taken from A chilles. Euripides w rote:
Delusion, the eldest daughter of Zeus: the accursed
Who deludes all and leads them astray …
… took my w ife aw ay from me.
S he has entangled others before me.
How ev er, in his final play s Euripides allow ed that ev il and stupidity could not be attributed solely to external causes, to goddesses such as
A të or the interv ention of another being. Instead, ev il resides at our core and that must be confronted.
A fter P andora came Helen of Troy as the focal point of A ncient G reek misogy ny . F amously she w as blamed for the bloodshed of the
Trojan War; it w as her beauty that prov oked it, not M enelaus or the G reek leaders w ho supported him. U ltimately , her husband had to get her
back partly because his kingship depended on it. A nother v ersion had it that Zeus used Helen to cause a w ar to thin out a population that w as
threatening to become unmanageable. Euripides w rote in his play about Helen that Zeus ‘might lighten mother earth of her my riad hosts of
men.’
A s their my thology testifies, this fear of w omen w as endemic to G reek society . In A thens in the sixth century BC , w omen had the legal
status of children, just as, in early Jew ish law , w omen w ere not regarded as fit w itnesses for legal matters. It is ironic that, according to the
three G ospel accounts, the resurrection of Jesus w as only w itnessed by w omen. G reek w omen w ere mostly confined to their ow n part of the
house and w ere giv en no formal education. N o A thenian citizen w as allow ed to enslav e another but there w as an exception that a father could
sell his unmarried daughter into slav ery should she lose her v irginity before marriage. A child w as thought to hav e reached its full potential by
being born male, w hereas baby girls w ere ‘mutilated’ v ersions of the male, according to A ristotle. He believ ed that w omen w ere inferior to
men – they did not go bald, so w ere more childlike, and also had few er teeth. The tw entieth-century British philosopher Bertrand Russell
commented of this, ‘A ristotle w ould nev er hav e made this mistake if he had allow ed his w ife to open her mouth once in a w hile.’ M eanw hile,
the G reek play w right M enander w rote in the third or fourth century BC : ‘He w ho teaches letters to his w ife is ill adv ised: he’s giv ing additional
poison to a snake.’
The snake is also, of course, central to the C hristian creation my th of A dam and Ev e in the G arden of Eden. There, too, w oman’s
disobedience caused us to fall from grace. Ev e, like P andora, disobey ed: ‘The serpent did beguile me and I did eat.’ In doing so, she aw oke
man to the misery and hardness of life, and for that she has not been forgiv en. O v er the centuries, male leaders hav e used the my th that
w oman’s disobedience is to blame for the w orld’s ills to justify their patriarchal pow er. M esopotamian and C eltic my ths did not contain an
equiv alent of the F all of M an – an Ev e or P andora figure – but it w as the G reek and C hristian traditions that most shaped Western attitudes
tow ards w omen. These asked man to believ e that he sprung up fully formed and independent of w oman. A nd C hristianity led the w ay . While
Jesus’ attitude tow ards w omen w as new and enlightened, show ing far more compassion and respect to them than w as usual at the time, the
O ld Testament is full of blame and misogy ny . In Ecclesiastes it is w ritten: ‘F rom a garment cometh a moth, and from w oman w ickedness.’ 26
This should not be that surprising. C hristianity is, after all, a religion w ith an unusually sev ere attitude tow ards sex. The C hurch w as run by
men, and so it blamed w omen. It does not accept its central female figure as a sexual one, casting her as a v irgin. It demands celibacy from its
priests how ev er that may perv ert the sexuality of some of them. A nd it is only beginning to allow the role of contraception as a w ay of
prev enting the spread of A IDS in A frica. A dherence to these strictures dates back to the w ritings of S t. A ugustine and other early C hristian
leaders – the ideas of the fourth century A D still sold to a populace in the early tw enty -first century .
Ev e w as v ilified by these leaders, but not in the Bible. They made her responsible for the fall of man, for his expulsion from Eden. 27
Tertullian w rote of w oman:
You are the dev il’s gatew ay ; y ou are the unsealer of that forbidden tree; y ou are the first deserter of Div ine Law . You are she w ho
persuaded him w hom the dev il w as not v aliant enough to attack. You destroy ed so easily G od’s image, man.
Tertullian did not blame the Jew s or the Romans for the death of C hrist; instead, he blamed the female sex. This all led tow ards the theory
of original sin, w hich held that the V irgin M ary w as the only human other than Jesus to be free from it. The only w ay in w hich w omen could
of original sin, w hich held that the V irgin M ary w as the only human other than Jesus to be free from it. The only w ay in w hich w omen could

hope to follow , ev en to emulate, her w as through chastity .

N ot ev en chastity could sav e a w oman w ho stood out. Hy patia w as born in A lexandria betw een A D 350 and 370, and is one of the most
exceptional w omen in history . S he w as proficient in (and taught) philosophy , geometry and astronomy , surpassing the philosophers of her time.
S he w as also admired for her character. A llegedly , w hen one of her smitten students exposed himself to her, she presented him w ith her
bloodstained underw ear as a w ay of dousing his passion. The local C hristians resented her, despite her obv ious gifts and v irtue, and soon saw
an opportunity to bring her dow n through blame.
Bishop C y ril of A lexandria had roused a mob against the local Jew s, urging them to sack their homes and turn their sy nagogues into
churches. When the Imperial P refect objected, the crow d not only attacked him, but accused Hy patia of hav ing bew itched him into supporting
the Jew s. Her intellectual and musical accomplishments w ere seen as clear signs that she w as a w itch, and so one of Bishop C y ril’s follow ers
led a mob to her academy . They dragged her to a church, stripped her and, according to some accounts, skinned her w ith broken tiles and
oy ster shells. Then they burned her remains. Her murderers w ere nev er prosecuted, and C y ril, w ho had set all of this in motion by denouncing
her in a sermon, rose higher and higher in the C hurch, ev entually being canonized. It remains one of the most shameful episodes in C hristian
history . But the attitudes behind it are not unique. O ne of the reasons for the persecution of the C athars 28 w as their ‘heresy ’ of allow ing
w omen to play a more prominent part in society . Denied w orldly influence, the only great pow ers that w omen w ere credited w ith at this time
w ere supernatural ones.
F rom the fifth century to the fifteenth, w itchcraft w as w idely thought to exist. 29 It might be difficult for the modern mind to comprehend, but
this belief w as deeply ingrained and w idespread. N othing w as ev er seen to hav e happened by chance and almost ev ery thing bad that took
place w as the result of w itchcraft. Just occasionally misfortune w as G od’s punishment for our sins, but more often than not it w as the w ork of
some neighbouring hag. They w ere the intermediaries betw een lay men and the Dev il, the ev il counterpart to the priest. They had plenty of
assistance in their foul deeds. It w as thought that the earth w as ov errun by demons, and their number w as added to by the souls of w icked
men and w omen, and of stillborn children. M ale demons w ere incubi, female ones succubi. They could make themselv es lov ely or hideous.
A ccording to the fifteenth-century Dutch scholar Johann Wey er, there w ere 7,405,926 of them, div ided into 72 battalions, each led by a prince
or a captain. It w as possible to breathe these demons in, and so they could get lodged in y our body and thus cause illness and pain.
Witchcraft w as a collectiv e endeav our; instead of indiv idual w itches running around casting spells, obliv ious to each other, there w as a
shared ethos, w ith rituals and nightly meetings, or S abbaths. It w as this idea of an ov erall plot that gav e the w itch hunt such pow er and
impetus. The w itch hunters w ere looking for the enemy w ithin, rather than finding an external hate figure, though he existed in the form of the
Dev il. He w as not allow ed to influence man directly and so used these intermediaries to test the souls of men. Rid the w orld of w itches, the
thinking w ent, and y ou reduced the spread of ev il.
F or the anti-w itch inquisitors, feminine carnality w as at the heart of w itchcraft, spreading and compounding our original sin. A t their
S abbaths, the w itches w ould regularly meet and hav e sex w ith the Dev il. There w as alw ay s a great deal of curiosity about this – w as sex
w ith him more enjoy able than sex w ith a man? The confessions of suspected w itches (often under torture) became ev er more lurid in their
descriptions of the unholy member, w hich w as like that of a mule or a man’s arm and uncomfortably cold (most of w hat w as know n of the
Dev il w as information extracted, and shaped, by torture). The S abbaths w ould take place at a crossroads or by a lake, leav ing the ground all
scorched afterw ards. In F rance and England, w itches rode broomsticks to get there; in Italy and S pain the Dev il carried them, hav ing assumed
the form of a goat, w hich w as his fav ourite shape. A nd it w as as a goat that he w ould host the S abbath. The w itches and w izards w ould
dance until they collapsed, then any new comers w ould kiss the goat’s hindquarters, deny their salv ation and spit on the Bible. They w ould
recount their sins, and if they hadn’t committed enough w ould be reprimanded by the Dev il w ho w ould flog them w ith thorns or a scorpion.
Then proceedings might be rounded off w ith a dance of toads w hile the Dev il play ed the bagpipes.
Witches w ere believ ed to target fertility abov e all else, w hether it be in humans or crops. F or so much of history , procreation has been a
relativ e my stery , and a fav oured explanation for its failure w as the ugly old w oman coming betw een the beautiful y oung lov ers. S he could do
so in surprising w ay s. A ccording to the M alleus M aleficarum (of w hich more later) w itches often stole penises, ‘in great numbers, as many as 20
or 30 together, and put them in a bird’s nest or shut them up in a box, w here they mov e themselv es, like liv ing members, and eat oats and
corn.’ A s proof of this, the authors offered the follow ing story : ‘A certain man tells that, w hen he lost his member, he approached a certain
w itch to ask her to restore his health. S he told the afflicted man to climb a certain tree, and that he might take w hichev er member he liked out
of a nest in w hich there w ere sev eral members. A nd w hen he tried to take a big one, the w itch said, “You must not take that one,” adding,
“because it belonged to a parish priest”.’ Here, an old anti-clerical joke w as adopted as anti-w itch propaganda. 30
U p until the early fourteenth century , accusations of w itchcraft tended to be made by members of the political classes against each other as
they jostled for pow er. In 1317, P ope John XXII had a F rench bishop burned at the stake, accused of using w itchcraft in a plot against him.
King Edw ard II also claimed that his political enemies used w itchcraft against him. The common people w ere rarely affected by such concerns.
But w itchcraft w as a charge that w as so easily brought and so hard to refute that the pow erful could use it against their enemies w henev er
they w anted to crush them and had no firm crime to pin on them. It w as used as a pretext for the v iolent persecution of indiv iduals and
communities w hose real transgressions w ere entirely political or religious.
A prominent example of this w as the extermination of the S tedinger in 1234. They had liv ed peacefully w ith a remarkable degree of civ il
and religious freedom, but found themselv es harassed by the A rchbishop of Bremen, among others. They refused to pay the taxes and tithes
demanded of them and rose up to driv e out their oppressors. Ev entually the archbishop appealed to P ope G regory IX for help. But the first
inv asion w as repelled. The pope called for a crusade to put dow n this den of iniquity , accusing the S tedinger of w itchcraft, dev il w orship and
the usual litany of crimes. A great army w as raised on the back of this, and the rebels w ere defeated. A similar process w as used against the
Templars (w ho w ere accused of child murder, sodomy , etc.) betw een 1307 and 1313. They too w ere exterminated (there w as also a financial
imperativ e here; the F rench kings seized the Templar w ealth). The thirteenth century had seen great outbreaks of religious ferv our – including
the F lagellants w ho marched from tow n to tow n in their bloodstained processions – and these extreme sects could turn against the C hurch as
much as they could be absorbed by it. S o there w as a need, more than ev er, for the C hurch to find a common enemy .
The arriv al of the Black Death and its spread across Europe made this all the more urgent. A t least 30 per cent of the population in Europe
w ould die of this plague, w hich killed an estimated 25 million v ictims. Jew s w ere the first to be blamed for its arriv al, and many of their
communities w ere exterminated by v engeful mobs. M uslims and lepers w ere also held responsible. The w itch craze w as beginning to take root,
and w itches w ould be added to the C atholic C hurch’s roster of useful scapegoats as they exhausted the others, quite literally , by exterminating
them. P rev iously there had been incidents of w itchcraft and subsequent trials, but no sy stematic campaign to deal w ith w itches. It took the
C hurch’s inv olv ement to achiev e this. The fourteenth century w as – like the fifth century BC in G reece and the third century A D in Rome – a
time of calamity , of plagues and w ars, w hen fear and uncertainty w ere rife. N ew forms of belief challenged the once omnipotent C hurch and
its monopoly on truth. It w as no time to be out of the ordinary , particularly as a w oman. F or the next couple of centuries the w itch craze ran
freely . There w ould be so many trials for w itchcraft that other crimes w ere ov erlooked. A nd the more w itches the authorities burned, the more
they found to burn.
A t the fore in the w itch hunt w ere tw o Dominican Inquisitors, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob S prenger. They had conv inced P ope Innocent
V III of the v ery real threat posed to the C hurch and to civ ilization by w itchcraft, and so obtained almost unlimited pow ers from him. In 1484
Kramer had been inv estigating a case in Rav ensburg, in G ermany . Eight w omen w ere due to face trial, accused of ‘causing injury to people
and animals, and for raising “tempests” to destroy the harv est.’ S ubsequently ov er 20 w itches w ere burned at the stake. A fterw ards he
mov ed east w ith his w itch-hunters but met w ith different treatment in Innsbruck. There the bishop considered Kramer senile and dangerous,
and set the accused w itches free. S o Kramer and S prenger sought more pow er from the pope.
Later that y ear Innocent V III issued a papal bull declaring open season on w itches:
A nd at the instigation of the Enemy of M ankind they do not shrink from committing and perpetrating foulest abominations and filthiest
excuses to the deadly peril of their ow n souls … Wherefore w e … decree and enjoin that the aforesaid inquisitors [Kramer and S prenger] be
empow ered to proceed to the just correction, imprisonment, and punishment of any persons, w ithout let or hindrance, in ev ery w ay …
S prenger w as alleged to hav e burned ov er fiv e hundred w itches in a single y ear, y et w as also the founder of the C onfraternity of the Holy
Rosary , set up to honour the V irgin M ary . He and Kramer w ere most famous for the book they w rote together, the M alleus M aleficarum
(know n also as the ‘Hammer of the Witches’). This became one of the most read books of the time and is probably the most misogy nistic text
ev er published. It first came out in 1486 and, like the Bible, it benefited from the new technology of the printing press for its success; there
w ere 13 different Latin editions in print by 1523, 15 G erman editions printed up to 1700 and 11 F rench. Its principal message w as that w itches,
hav ing struck a pact w ith the Dev il, w ere responsible for all misfortunes, and it offered much adv ice on how to deal w ith them.
The authors drew heav ily on the Bible and inv oked its authority . M ost famously , they quoted the line from Exodus w here it w as w ritten,
‘Thou shalt not suffer a w itch to liv e’. The misogy ny of the M alleus M aleficarum w as ov ert – w omen are the ‘more credulous’ sex, being
feeble, carnal, insatiable. A w oman is ‘a liar by nature’ and ‘an imperfect animal’, ‘a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, an ev il of
nature painted in fair colours.’ A nd so on. Kramer and S prenger helped mov e w itchcraft from being an ecclesiastical sin to being an actual crime
in the ey es of the law , on the grounds of the damage done by w itches to the property of others. The book stated that w itches w ill not admit to
being w itches and must therefore be tortured. ‘M ind that [they ] generally deny the question’. Witches ‘w ill not be able to w eep’; a truly absurd
claim, since the trials w ere punctuated by frequent outbursts of w eeping from the terrified and brutalized suspects (courtrooms at that time w ere
chaotic places, w here the testimony and statements w ere often drow ned out by noise). During proceedings, the feet and foreheads of the
accused w ould be examined w ith particular care for signs of clov en hoov es or horns, since w itches and sorcerers w ere thought to hav e v ery
close links to the goat. The rest of their bodies w ould also be scrutinized for any mark that might denote inv olv ement w ith w itchcraft. Here
ev en the slightest phy sical abnormality could be seized on as firm ev idence of S atanic allegiance.
Legal representation w as almost impossible in these cases. A prev ious pope, P aul II, had permitted the use of torture to extract confessions
w hen w itchcraft w as suspected. The prev ailing v iew w as that it w as a crime so terrible that normal standards of ev idence need not apply .
Witchcraft w as a crimen exceptum , and proof w as so hard to find that regular legal procedure could not be follow ed. There w ere numerous
methods of torture, notably the w itches’ chair and bridle. A suspect’s feet and legs could be crushed, or their genitals burned. S leep depriv ation
w ould also be used. The C hurch itself w ould not carry out the sentence of death. Instead, as in the animal trials that feature in the next
chapter, they w ould pass the culprits ov er to the civ il authorities, usually w ith a meaningless plea for mercy to be show n. The execution w ould
be carried out, for that is how most w itch trials ended.
A w itch w as, in 80 per cent of cases, a w oman. Was this purely the result of a patriarchal, misogy nistic society ? In many w ay s it w as –
men w ere thought to be stronger, both phy sically and morally , and in matters of ‘reason’. Women w ere deemed more v ulnerable to the Dev il’s
w iles. Like Ev e, they w ere ‘first in sin’. A nd the w omen accused w ere usually not part of a male-led household, so they had no male figure to
protect them. Women accused w omen too, and could comprise betw een 30 to 40 per cent of w itnesses. A lmost all communities at that time
w ould hav e had a pool of possible w itches. They w ould be older w omen w ho had, by the time they w ere in their forties or fifties, built up a
reputation for w itchcraft. M any of them w ere on bad terms w ith their children and spouses, or they might hav e been w idow ed, and so w ere a
financial burden on the community .
A n accusation of w itchcraft w ould most likely come from someone y ou knew rather than a stranger. There w ere three principal ty pes of
accusers – middle-aged w omen, men in their tw enties and early thirties, and teenage girls; usually indiv iduals w ho w ere going through a
particularly turbulent phase of their life. A community w ith around a hundred households w as the ty pical backdrop for a w itch drama. These
cases w ere almost alw ay s firmly rooted in local personal relations. F irst there w ould be a quarrel of some kind. Then, one terrible ev ent –
w hether it be the death or illness of a child, adult, or of liv estock – w ould gradually turn popular opinion against someone, as the mood
darkened and turned to blame. O nce an indiv idual v oiced this feeling that someone w as responsible, then the accusation could be formalized,
w itnesses found, and a case brought against the suspect. When the trial w as ov er (and the suspect found guilty ), there w ould be a great sense
of togetherness, now the difficult person had been eliminated. O rder w as felt to hav e been restored.
These isolated incidents w ere one thing. A w itch hunt w as something totally different, how ev er, and outbreaks of this mania took place all
ov er Europe. F or it to occur there needed to be a popular, legal and political belief in w itchcraft. Where torture w as banned, w itch-hunting w as
rarer. These hunts mostly happened in w hat w as then the Holy Roman Empire, w hose structure lent itself to moral panic; w ith no strong
ov erall leadership and small fragmented states, w itch-hunting sprang up in the gaps. M any major w itch hunts happened along religious fault
lines, w here there had prev iously been conflicts betw een faiths or sects.
The papacy w as at its most excitable w hen leading the fight against w itchcraft. Innocent V III became pope in 1485 and did as much as
any one to fuel it. His bull of 1488 called upon Europe to rescue C hristianity from this ‘sea of w itches.’ In ev ery country , he appointed
inquisitors w ith the pow er to conv ict and punish. P ope John XXII w as also obsessed w ith w itchcraft and had added it to the list of heresies in
1320. He appointed bishops w ho shared his fears and one of them, the Bishop of O ssory in Ireland, led the first trial of a w oman accused of
hav ing sex w ith the Dev il. Lady A lice Ky teler w as a v ery w ealthy inhabitant of Kilkenny , w here she liv ed w ith her fourth husband. He had
recently fallen ill. S he w as accused of poisoning him and of hav ing disposed of her prev ious three husbands through w itchcraft. This accusation
came from her children w ho felt that she fav oured her son from her first marriage. S he w as charged w ith these deaths, of obtaining her fortune
through sorcery , and also of running an anti-C hristian sect w hich made potions to harm C atholics using the sw addling clothes and brains of dead
babies. M any of those w ho testified against her w ere her debtors. Lady Ky teler managed to escape to England the night before she w as due to
be executed but her maid P etronilla didn’t. The inquisitors tortured her, and she duly confessed to hav ing w itnessed her mistress hav ing
intercourse w ith the Dev il (w ho had assumed the form of three black men) and to hav ing acted as a go-betw een. P etronilla w as one of only
tw o people burned in Ireland as a w itch.
In the decades before the Reformation, the C atholic clergy used the charge of w itchcraft against P rotestants. If an accusation of heresy
didn’t stick, then one of w itchcraft often w ould. In time the Lutherans and C alv inists came to believ e as firmly in w itches as the C atholics had
(once again, the persecuted became the persecutors). Luther and C alv in might hav e quarreled w ith Rome ov er ev ery thing else, but not
(once again, the persecuted became the persecutors). Luther and C alv in might hav e quarreled w ith Rome ov er ev ery thing else, but not

w itchcraft, in w hich they shared a firm belief. The force of the w itch hunts came partly from the intensity of the clashes betw een P rotestants
and C atholics as the Reformation and C ounter-Reformation raged.
The major w itch hunts took place in G ermany , S w itzerland, north-east F rance and southern Holland, w ith lesser epidemics striking England,
S cotland, S pain, central and southern F rance, northern Italy and S candinav ia. The w itch mania peaked betw een 1580 and 1650, the 20 y ears
from 1610 being perhaps the w orst. Economic depression, as the peasants suffered from a mov e to a more communal sy stem of agriculture,
added to the political and religious turmoil and created a v olatile atmosphere.
The C hurch’s inquisitors w ere keen to ascertain the size of the task ahead of them, and the strength of the enemy they faced. F rom their
questioning of suspects they tried to w ork out how many w itches there w ere to pursue, just as historians today struggle to agree on how
many w itches w ere burned. In 1570, it w as calculated that there w ere 300,000 w itches in F rance, at a time w hen the entire population of that
country w as around 15 million. In other w ords, tw o per cent of the population w as believ ed to be attending the w itches’ S abbaths and kissing
the goat’s hindquarters. A round that time Henri Boguet, a judge and demonologist, calculated that there w ere 1.8 million w itches in Europe.
The figures of w itches executed hav e been equally exaggerated. A t one point it w as claimed that ov er nine million people w ere killed. N ow
it seems more likely that this figure is betw een 40,000 and 50,000. 31 The most reliable figures suggest that a thousand w itches w ere killed in
Britain, half of them in S cotland; 5,000 in S w itzerland; 32 4,000 in F rance; and 20,000 in G ermany . M ore than these numbers w ere put on trial –
the av erage conv iction rate w as 50 per cent, though at the height of the w itch craze in G ermany an accusation w as tantamount to death.
Elsew here the judges w ere a little more sceptical of the cases being brought before them, but not by much.
In sixteenth-century F rance, fires for burning w itches blazed brightly in ev ery tow n. In a ty pical trial of the time, the husband of an accused
w itch could testify that his w ife had been in bed w ith him at the time of the alleged w itches’ S abbath, but it w ould be in v ain, and she w ould
find herself on the py re. In 1573 G illes G arnier w as conv icted of being a w itch and a w erew olf. He w as a loner w ho liv ed in the w oods w ith
his w ife and w as accused of hav ing killed sev eral small children – there hav ing been sev eral local instances of children being attacked by
w olv es. In one case the w olf w as thought to hav e looked like G arnier. He w as burned at the stake, hav ing had to pay for the costs of the
prosecution. In another case in A uv ergne in 1588, a hunter w as attacked by a w olf in the w oods. He fought it off, sev ering its paw as he did
so. Back at his host’s house, he produced the paw , w hich had turned into a w oman’s hand, w ith rings on its fingers. His host duly identified it
as that of his w ife and she w as burned at the stake. In C onstance, S w itzerland, in 1487, tw o w retched old w omen w ere put to the rack,
hav ing been accused of causing a sev ere storm. U nder torture, they confessed to that and much besides. They admitted to hav ing met the
Dev il often, and hav ing sold their souls to him. The register at C onstance reads ‘conv icta et combusta’.
There w as a rare case of w itches being acquitted in P aris in 1589. F ourteen w omen w ere accused and closely examined, w hile naked, by
four commissioners w ho w ere also doctors. They pricked the suspects all ov er, to test for insensitiv ity to pain, w hich w as a key sign of
w itchcraft. But they found them to be ‘v ery poor, stupid people, and some of them insane. M any of them w ere quite indifferent about life, and
one or tw o desired death as a relief from their sufferings.’ 33 They w ere seen as being more in need of treatment than punishment and so, in an
unusual act of leniency , w ere sent home. Today these ‘w itches’ w ould be treated by psy chiatrists. The reality is that the accused w ere often
unfortunate, slightly deluded w omen w ho fell foul of their neighbours in some w ay , and w ere denounced as w itches – a charge from w hich
there w as no coming back.
These w itch-hunts w ere the perfect opportunity for the dow ntrodden members of society to be noticed and to make their mark. Those
accused of possessing abnormal pow ers w ere sometimes members of the élite, but usually they w ere uneducated and unintelligent people
w hose imagination had conquered their reason. 34 S ometimes they did start believ ing the accusations made against them, of possessing dark
pow ers, w hich they then tried to use against their enemies. This added a terrible irony to the tragedy and assisted their accusers greatly .
The main w itch-hunters w ere the C hurch and its clerics, led by the pope and his bishops. But others assisted them – leaders and bureaucrats
and self-sty led w itch finders. Bodinus w as a leading example of the latter in sev enteenth-century G ermany . He believ ed that, ‘He w ho is
accused of sorcery should nev er be acquitted, unless the malice of the prosecutor be clearer than the sun; for it is so difficult to bring full proof of
this secret crime, that out of a million of w itches not one w ould be conv icted if the usual course w ere follow ed.’ Henri Boguet sty led himself
‘The G rand Judge of Witches for the Territory of S t C laude’ and drew up a code of practice for w itch trials. Ev idence that w ould be inadmissible
for normal crimes could be used, including from children or from people of notoriously bad or unreliable character.
To begin w ith, the continental w itch craze did not take hold in England w ith quite the same ferocity as it had in mainland Europe. Witchcraft
w as first made a crime in England by Henry V III in 1541, but not until the accession of Elizabeth I w as it acknow ledged as a serious offence.
C lerics came back from their continental exile alarmed by the perceiv ed threat of w itchcraft (in England, there w as alw ay s a link betw een
w itch-hunting and fear of C atholicism).
The S cots embraced w itch-hunting w ith great enthusiasm, combining the burning of suspects w ith public banquets of celebration. King James
V I w as a noted obsessiv e. He w as conv inced that w itches w ere try ing to assassinate him, and ev en w rote a book on the subject entitled
Daemonologie. He led the N orth Berw ick w itch hunt in 1590 after he had nearly drow ned w hile sailing back from Denmark w ith his bride. In a
story that reads more like a poem by Edw ard Lear than a conspiracy to murder a king, C ellie Duncan w as accused of w itchcraft and of hav ing
w hipped up the storm that nearly drow ned James. U nder torture, she implicated nearly 40 others, w ho w ere also interrogated. They all
confessed to hav ing met the Dev il in N orth Berw ick and to conspiring w ith him against his greatest enemy , the king. A fter their meeting they
set to sea in a siev e w ith a cat that the Dev il had giv en them. They threw this creature in the w ater and so caused the storm. They confessed
to ev er more unlikely crimes, testing ev en the king’s w illingness to believ e, y et w ere found guilty and executed. A fter that, the w itch craze
properly took hold in S cotland, w ith an acquittal rate of under one per cent. M any of those accused of w itchcraft confessed, preferring death to
a possible acquittal and the endless persecution for being a w itch. O ne such v ictim said, ‘I made up my confession … choosing rather to die than
to liv e.’
When James acceded to the throne of England his people w ere w ell aw are of his glorious deeds. A n act against w itches w as passed in his
first P arliament in 1604 stating that they should be burned ‘aliv e and quick’. U nder C harles I the w itch persecution declined but during the C iv il
War there w as a rev iv al. This w as a time w hen the population w as w orried about impending disaster. The A pocaly pse w as expected by
many , and a solar eclipse in A ugust 1645 w as seen as a sign of this End Time. The general feeling w as that S atan knew he didn’t hav e much
time av ailable and so had unleashed all his ev il minions. M ore and more sects sprang up and there w ere countless strange reports – of a
w oman giv ing birth to a headless baby , of the corpse of a ‘profane-speaking man’ being dug up and fed to dogs, and of a pond turning to
blood.
It w as in this climate of fear that M atthew Hopkins emerged. He w as the self-sty led Witchfinder G eneral, responsible for a large proportion
of England’s w itch deaths. He had grow n up in rural S uffolk, the son of a local minister. He w as a P uritan, and is described often as a
gentleman (an odd appellation for a man w ho killed w omen for a liv ing). Little is know n about his early life. He may hav e practised as a
solicitor at one point, but the ev idence for this is slight. He w as said to hav e made w itch-hunting his calling after ov erhearing w itches discussing
their meetings w ith the Dev il, and claimed that they then sent one of their imps to destroy him. He mov ed from tow n to tow n in Essex and
their meetings w ith the Dev il, and claimed that they then sent one of their imps to destroy him. He mov ed from tow n to tow n in Essex and

East A nglia, exploiting the general chaos and lack of ov erall rule. He w ould let it be know n that he w as approaching an area, w here parishes
w ould usually w elcome him, the local authorities or landow ners fearful of attracting a charge of w itchcraft themselv es. O nce there he w ould set
up w ith his assistant, John S tearne, another dev out P uritan, and conduct surv ey s and question suspects.
Hopkins’ first v ictim w as Elizabeth C larke of M anningtree, an old w oman w ho had fallen foul of her neighbours. The w ife of a local tailor
had fallen ill and he had gone to consult a fortune-teller, w ho had accused C larke. S uspicions of w itchcraft had long surrounded her, and
Hopkins w as commissioned by the local magistrates to question her, on the suspicion of w itchcraft. Torture w as illegal in England at that time,
but Hopkins used sleep depriv ation and ‘w alking’ (exhausting the suspect by marching them round their cell). A suspect might be asked to recite
the Lord’s P ray er; one tiny stumble or slip (and just imagine how nerv ous they w ould hav e been) w as taken as a sure sign of guilt. A detailed
examination of the suspect’s body w ould be made, for something that might be the Dev il’s M ark. A third nipple w as particularly sought after as
a sign that the w itch had suckled the Dev il and his imps. These imps w ould v isit in animal form, so the suspect w ould be tied up and placed on
a stool as w atchers w aited for them to come. A fly landing on her w ould be ev idence of guilt. The suspect w ould also be ‘pricked’ w ith pins
and kniv es, as the interrogators looked for parts of the body that felt no pain. This w ould be seen as a definite sign of w itchery .
A fter three day s of being w atched Elizabeth C larke confessed to hav ing had ‘carnall copulation’ w ith the Dev il and a lot else besides. S he
w as made to implicate many other w itches and this led to England’s largest w itch trial (assuming there aren’t going to be any more), in
C helmsford. Tw enty -nine suspects, all w omen, w ere in the dock, along w ith a few others accused of more conv entional crimes. Hopkins took
the stand as the first w itness against the first batch to be charged. He told of imps disguised as ferrets and rabbits and toads, and described how
one attacked his ow n grey hound. The suspects’ confessions w ere read out and all fiv e w ere found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. 35
N ot ev ery one w as conv inced of the guilt of these w itches. 36 A rthur Wilson, the stew ard for the Earl of Warw ick, saw only poor, unhappy old
w omen, w ho w ere suffering from v arious delusions. O ne of them w as 84 and died a month after the trial, probably from the plague, defeating
the hangman.
Hopkins did not only target w omen. O ne of his v ictims w as an 80-y ear-old v icar, John Low es, w ho had been in dispute w ith his parishioners
for some time. He w as a C atholic, w hen they w ould hav e preferred a P uritan, and w as by all accounts an argumentativ e man, believ ed to
hav e struck one of his parishioners in a row . When he defended a member of his congregation as being no more of a w itch than he w as, this
w as taken as an admission of guilt. He w as arrested on a charge of w itchcraft and questioned by Hopkins. A s w ith a female suspect, he w as
stripped and examined for the Dev il’s mark. He w as depriv ed of sleep and w alked forcibly around his cell until he collapsed from exhaustion.
A fter day s of this, and in a state of hallucination, he confessed to a v ariety of crimes, including sending an imp to sink a ship that had gone
dow n in a recent storm. He w as hanged alongside a number of other conv icted w itches, and this execution w as w idely attended. Low e w as
supposed to hav e boasted of a charm that w ould stop him from being hanged, so many turned up to see the truth of this.
Hanging w as the preferred method of execution. A lmost no w itches w ere burned in England, despite the popular belief that they w ere. Trial
by fire w as three times as expensiv e and so used sparingly , mostly for heretics rather than w itches. 37 It also required more raw materials.
When M ary Lakeland w as burned at the stake for murdering her husband she w as low ered into a barrel of pitch, chained to a post and
surrounded by straw and brushw ood. It w as much cheaper to build gallow s and hang sev eral w itches together.
The economics of w itch-hunting are fascinating and highly relev ant. When Hopkins w ent to A ldeburgh, the w hole process including the trial
cost £40. This w as a sev enth of the tow n’s budget for the entire y ear. The carpenter w as paid £1 to erect the gallow s and the executioner
receiv ed 11 shillings. M eanw hile, Hopkins w as paid 20 shillings per conv iction – so there w as a good financial reason to find suspects guilty . His
record w as hav ing 19 w itches hung in a day . Hopkins complained about his expenses, believ ing that he should receiv e more for his efforts, but
20 shillings w as a month’s w ages for a labourer or footsoldier. The trials w ere expensiv e; a plaintiff had to be unusually confident or angry and
afraid. O ne judge inv oiced for £130 (w hich w ould be ov er £100,000 today ) for his and his assistant’s costs for a month’s w itch-hunting. This
w as paid by the county committee from funds garnered from Roy alists and C atholics.
The most cost-effectiv e w ay of dealing w ith w itches w as the ordeal by w ater, a practice that has gone dow n in folklore. 38 ‘S w imming’ them
w as supposedly illegal but King James saw it as a w ay of identify ing those w ho had rejected their baptism. S uspects w ould hav e their left
thumb tied to their right big toe and their right thumb tied to their left big toe. Then they w ould be cov ered in a blanket and low ered by rope
into a pond or riv er. If they sank and drow ned, they w ere innocent. If they stay ed afloat, they w ere guilty . S uspects w ould often be dressed
in sev eral lay ers of baggy clothing, w hich trapped air and ensured a degree of buoy ancy . S truggling and taking in a lungful of air w ould also
help. S tay ing afloat meant that their master, the Dev il, had sav ed them.
Hopkins w as attacked by some for his w itch-finding. He defended himself in a pamphlet entitled The Discov ery of Witches. He claimed
nev er to hav e taken more than 20 shillings for his duties, w hich w as untrue. But the feeling w as grow ing that all these w itch-finders did w as
fleece the country of its money . Hopkins died in 1647 of the plague, though there are many stories that he met the fate that he inflicted on so
many others, and w as ‘sw um’ by an angry mob. A fter his death, S tearne feared law suits as v ictims’ families sought to ov erturn conv ictions
and others tried to recov er fees. Both men had been able to amass considerable fortunes from their w ork at a time of chaos and pov erty for
ev ery one else, w hen returning soldiers spread plague and the upheav als of the w ar had disrupted the usual w orkings of the country .
S adly the death of Hopkins did not bring an end to w itch persecutions in England. These continued, though not to the same extent. The
approach of the European A ge of Enlightenment saw certain rulers start to oppose the practice of drow ning and burning w itches. The Duke of
Brunsw ick saw the dangers of these ty pes of questioning and trial, and how suspects could be led into making the ‘right’ confession. He
demonstrated this in front of tw o Jesuits w ho had been great w itch-hunters. The Enlightenment also encouraged an opposition to organized
religion, rejecting it as intellectually flaw ed and socially manipulativ e. S o, w itch-hunting continued at a much low er lev el, no longer supported in
the same w ay by the authorities. In Leicestershire in 1760, a quarrel broke out betw een tw o old w omen w ho accused each other of w itchcraft.
They w ere sw um simultaneously . O ne sank, the other managed to stay afloat for a short time and w as pulled out by the mob, w ho
demanded that she name and turn in her fellow ev ildoers. But in the end the mob grew w eary of this persecution and turned on their leaders,
w ho found themselv es on trial. The public w as gradually starting to see reason and tire of this folly . A s C harles M ackay famously w rote, ‘M en,
it has been w ell said, think in herds; it w ill be seen that they go mad in herds, w hile they only recov er their senses slow ly , and one by one.’
In A merica it w as a different story . The migration across the A tlantic had coincided w ith the w itch craze of the early sev enteenth century ,
and so the madness crossed ov er too. It is possible that many of those w ho left for a new life w ere those w ho w ere seen as different, and
thus suspected or persecuted as w itches (there are stories of w itches being hung during the crossing, as Jonahs bringing ill fortune to the ship
and its crew ). It could be argued that the U nited S tates w as founded in some w ay on these potential scapegoats w ho left for a better life, free
to liv e in the w ay that they w anted.
A t any rate, they continued the pursuit of w itches but in their ow n w ay . The 1650s w as a v ery activ e period of w itch-hunting in N ew
England. Katherine Harrison, a C onnecticut mother and practising fortune-teller, w as accused of a v ariety of sins including breaking the
S abbath, ly ing and, best of all, being ‘one w ho follow ed the army in England’ – w hich, in other w ords, means a prostitute. S he w as subjected
to numerous law suits and three trials for w itchcraft. The G ilbert w itchcraft case saw G oodw ife G ilbert hung for hav ing caused the death of
to numerous law suits and three trials for w itchcraft. The G ilbert w itchcraft case saw G oodw ife G ilbert hung for hav ing caused the death of

Henry S tiles. Despite the obv ious fact that he w as shot accidentally by another man, she w as deemed to hav e been behind this misfortune.
Henry S tiles had ow ed money to the G ilberts and these debts w ere settled after his effects w ere sold posthumously . But the sense that
something w as w rong continued to linger. This death couldn’t hav e happened solely through misadv enture.
The S alem w itch trials some decades later w ere the definitiv e and most aw ful example of transatlantic w itch-hunting. They had their origins
in 1691 w ith tw o local girls behav ing strangely . They w ere joined by tw o more, the group all suffering from strange fits, and it became clear to
the tow nsfolk that they had been bew itched. V arious people w ere questioned as the processes of w itch-finding began. The men questioned
w ere inv ariably the husbands of the accused. In the end the community w as torn apart. Tw enty people w ere executed, ov er a hundred
imprisoned and many more fell under suspicion. F our fifths of these w ere w omen and half the men w ere husbands or sons of w itches. The
conv iction rate w as much low er than it had been in Europe, how ev er. Ironically , as the madness receded, there w as an ov erw helming sense
that it w as the trial and persecution that w ere S atan’s handiw ork, not the suspected w itchcraft. He tore apart their community , looking for
ev idence of his ow n w rongdoing, and seeking to uncov er and punish his acoly tes (it does seem that a considerable amount of mental and moral
agility w ould be needed to believ e this). A lternativ ely , the w itch trials w ere seen as G od’s punishment for man’s sins. Elaine S how alter w rites,
‘Historically , w itch-hunts hav e tended to be short. C ommunities decided that the trials w ere w orse than the alleged crimes; they ran out of
marginal v ictims and discov ered malice or fraud in accusers.’
The notoriety of the S alem w itch trials is in part due to A rthur M iller’s play , The C rucible, and how it echoes the anti-C ommunist w itch-hunt
of the M cC arthy y ears. In his notes to the play , M iller w rote that for some it w as a ‘long-ov erdue opportunity for ev ery one so inclined to
express publicly his guilt and sins, under the cov er of accusations against the v ictims.’ P eople w ere able to express ‘long-held hatreds.’ The
w itch-hunt’s roots w ere political, social and economic, but it grew because ‘these people had no ritual for the w ashing-aw ay of sins.’
THE LITERAL SCAPEGOAT
S eldom has human intelligence been so w asted as w hen animals hav e been put on trial. A nimals hav e commonly featured in sacrifices, and
w ere used in v arious w ay s to carry aw ay blame, in rituals such as that on the Jew ish Day of A tonement and w ith Ty ndale’s scapegoat. But
there w ere also occasions w hen the creatures w ere themselv es blamed for the disaster, being promoted from expiatory v ictim to nominal
culprit. A nd so they found themselv es in the dock, charged w ith crimes entirely bey ond their comprehension, in trials that resembled more a
chimps’ tea party than any serious judicial process.
There w ere tw o principal kinds of trial. The first w as more like our ow n criminal trial, w here an indiv idual beast w as accused of a specific
offence – these hav e alw ay s been around and still happen today in one form or another. A nimals in the serv ice of man could be put on trial as
if they w ere any other member of the household – horses, dogs, any domestic liv estock, all could find themselv es in the dock. In this respect
they w ere giv en the same legal status as a human. There w as an old G erman law that stipulated that all domestic animals should be treated
as accessories to any crime committed in the house. This w as at a time w hen superstition sometimes led people to bury a dead thief’s fingers
under a new ly built house to protect it from theft. There are also stories of animals being put on the rack to extort confessions, though this does
seem unlikely , ev en by the standards of the day . It w ould hav e been done to observ e the proper letter of the law rather than in any actual
expectation of obtaining testimony .
A n animal charged w ith homicide w ould be executed just like any human. 39 In F alaise, N ormandy , in 1386 a sow w as charged w ith killing
an infant, hav ing torn its face and arms. The pig w as sentenced to be ‘mangled and maimed in the head and forelegs,’ echoing the w ounds it
had inflicted on its v ictim, after w hich it w as dressed in men’s clothing and executed in the tow n square. There used to be a painting of this
scene in the tow n church there, but it w as w hitew ashed ov er in 1820; w e only hav e an engrav ing of it now to remind us of this landmark in
human justice. There are other cases of pigs put on trial and sentenced to be buried aliv e for hav ing eaten small children – in A miens in 1463
and in S aint-Q uentin in 1557 – or burned in public, as happened in P aris in 1266.
This grotesque theatre w as in some w ay supposed to slake the public’s thirst for justice. But there w as also the extraordinary idea that
animals might be deterred from v iolence by seeing one of their ow n kind put to death and its corpse placed on v iew . This w as believ ed by
Hierony mus Rosarius, env oy to P ope C lement V II, w ho described how in A frica lions w ere crucified and placed near tow ns. There w ere also
instances of w olv es being hung from gallow s in G ermany , and, much later, an A merican farmer might hang a dead haw k to protect his
chickens – just as modern farmers do now w ith crow s and other birds of carrion.
This all took place at a time w hen animals w ere often seen as incarnations of demons, and so the trials might feature accusations of
w itchcraft. In Bâle in 1474 an old cock w as put in the dock, accused of lay ing an egg. The prosecution alleged that S atan employ ed w itches
and demons to hatch these eggs and that the creatures that emerged, usually basilisks, w ould torment the human race (a cock’s egg w as
supposed to hav e great magical properties; a w itch w ould fav our it ov er ev en the philosopher’s stone). The defence counsel did not try to deny
the fact of the egg-lay ing. Instead, he pleaded that no ev il deed had been intended. The lay ing of an egg w as an inv oluntary act and, as such,
not punishable by law . He challenged the prosecution to name a single instance of the Dev il hav ing made a pact w ith an animal. They cited
the case of the G adarene sw ine, referred to in M ark’s gospel, and that sw ung it for them. The cock w as found guilty and sentenced to death as
a sorcerer w ho’d assumed the shape of a bird. He and the egg w ere burned together at the stake.
A s if this w as not enough, animals could also be punished for hav ing a crime committed against them. O ften, if a man w as successfully
prosecuted for bestiality , then both he and the object of his affections w ould be burned. There w as a case of this in P aris, liv ing up its
reputation as the city of lov ers, in 1546, inv olv ing a man and a cow w ho w ere hanged and then burned. The same tribunal had conv icted a
man and a sow 80 y ears prev iously . In 1662 in N ew Hav en, a 60-y ear-old man w as executed for bestiality along w ith his cow , tw o heifers,
tw o sow s and three sheep – a story that is cry ing out to be immortalized in a nursery rhy me, along the lines of ‘The Tw elv e Day s of
C hristmas’. This man w as also a great lov er of dogs and began w ith them aged 10, allegedly , before mov ing on to pastures new . But no
amount of human guilt could sav e the animals from sharing the fate of their tormentor. A fter these trials it w as standard procedure for the
guilty party to compensate the ow ner of the animal for their loss; in fact it w as law , one that came from the Bible, from the Books of Exodus
and Lev iticus. Incidentally , w hen burning the bodies, the man’s w ould be placed under those of the beasts.
F ortunately , it seems that reason gradually returned, to F rance at least. In 1750, w hen a man named Jacques F erron w as caught in
flagrante w ith a she-ass, he w as sentenced to death, but the she-ass w alked free. S he w as acquitted as a v ictim of v iolence and an unw illing
participant, and many came forw ard to testify to her prev iously good character, including the prior of the local conv ent.
It w as not just the F rench w ho put unw itting perpetrators on trial. O ther countries had similar practices, including charging corpses for crimes
they had committed in life. In S hanghai in 1888, a C hinese salt smuggler w as conv icted and beheaded, hav ing already died some time before.
C loser to home, w hen S tephen V I became pope in 896 one of his first acts w as to hav e the body of his predecessor F ormosus exhumed and
put on trial for hav ing behav ed unlaw fully and disgracing the papacy . A ll legal formalities w ere used in the trial of this eight-month-old corpse,
w hich w as dressed up in full papal splendour. A deacon w as appointed to defend him, though a guilty v erdict w as alw ay s going to be brought
in. When the dead ex-pope w as found guilty his benedictory fingers w ere cut off and his body stripped, then dragged to and dumped in the
Tiber. M onths later, w hen S tephen himself had been strangled in prison, F ormosus’ mutilated, rotting remains w ere restored to his tomb.
This obsession w ith finding a culprit could extend to inanimate objects. In Russia, after a prince w as assassinated in the tow n of U glich in
1591, the bell sounded the signal of insurrection and, for this serious offence, it w as transported to S iberia along w ith the humans w ho had been
banished in the more traditional w ay . The bell w as not pardoned and restored to U glich until 1892.
The A ncient G reeks also prosecuted lifeless objects, should these hav e caused someone’s death. F or instance, a statue that fell and crushed
a man, or a sw ord used by a murderer w ould each be publicly condemned and remov ed and placed outside the city ’s boundaries. P lato drew
up a law to deal w ith such cases. If a beast killed a man it should be prosecuted and driv en outside the city ’s limits, and likew ise a lifeless
object, unless it w as a thunderbolt hurled by one of the gods. N one of this w as intended as a w ay of prev enting further tragedies (w hereas
torturing a pig in public w as clearly , in some demented w ay , supposed to do that by sending a clear message to its fellow creatures); rather it
w as a ceremony used to make sense of the tragedy . The G reeks and mediev al Europeans both suffered from the fear that they liv ed in a
law less w orld and these rituals w ere a w ay of coping w ith disaster and answ ering that eternally nagging question, ‘If there is a god, w hy does
he let these things happen to us?’ The G reeks believ ed that if a murder w as not properly atoned for, the F uries w ould be summoned and they
w ould bring pestilence to the land. This w as the case w hether the crime w as committed by man or beast.
A s w ell as seeking atonement, these trials tried to make sense of the univ erse by taking certain terrible, inexplicable ev ents and redefining
them as crimes. S ociety could cope w ith w ickedness, and had a sy stem in place for dealing w ith it, but struggled in the face of random
adv ersity .
The animal trials of indiv idual beasts tended to be secular affairs but w hen w hole groups of animals w ere responsible the C hurch w as
brought in. Insects and rodents w ere not seen as subject to human control in the same w ay as domestic animals and so they w ere designated
differently , requiring supernatural control, w hich meant priests. S o, farmers w hose crops w ere being rav aged by insects or other pests w ould
appeal to their local cleric for assistance in dealing w ith these public nuisances.
This assistance could come in a v ariety of forms. Initially the C hurch w ould prov ide ‘metaphy sical aid’, expelling the creatures w ith pray er,
processions and exorcisms, all helped along w ith gallons of holy w ater. In F üssen in Bav aria, the crosier of S t. M agnus w as kept. This w as
solemnly borne aloft as a w ay of dealing w ith infestations of mice, rats and insects. But many things could go w rong, and these interv entions
w ere not alw ay s successful. The priests w ould hav e to be w ord perfect w hen it came to reciting the incantations to driv e the insects aw ay .
O ne stumble or mistake and the w hole thing w ouldn’t w ork. Here w e see the importance of ritual. The need for precision w as a w ay of
explaining the instances w hen it didn’t w ork. S omething must hav e been w rong in the execution rather than the w hole concept of metaphy sical
aid being flaw ed. The spells might also not w ork if the local congregation had not paid their tithes promptly enough, and, as alw ay s, any
excessiv ely sinful behav iour could be the reason. It w ould alw ay s be the sins of the masses, rather than the élite, that caused the tragedy (I
hav e been searching in v ain for an instance of a leader claiming that a disaster w as v isited upon his people as punishment for his ow n sins).
M ore extreme methods of dealing w ith infestations could be resorted to. O ne of these w as instant excommunication. There are many stories
of holy men driv ing out pests. S t. Bernard w as said to hav e excommunicated a sw arm of flies that w as annoy ing the congregation of the
abbey church of F origny . The sw arm died the v ery next day , falling immediately to the floor and hav ing to be cleared out w ith shov els, ‘all
dead corpses’, according to the A bbot of S t. Theodore in Rheims. A more secular account show s a deplorable lack of imagination in mentioning
a v ery sharp ov ernight frost. S t. Eldrad had commanded snakes to leav e the v alley of Briançon, just as S t. P atrick is credited w ith hav ing
driv en them out of Ireland. M ay be the snake, alone of G od’s creatures, had no rights, after all it w as held responsible for man’s expulsion from
Eden. A nd in the sixteenth century giant sea creatures, know n as terones, w ere excommunicated after getting caught in fishermen’s nets,
destroy ing them in the process.
Excommunication tended to happen w ith more sev ere cases. In the Ty rol in 1338, a sw arm of locusts began to dev astate the crops, lay ing
eggs and show ing no signs of leav ing. U sually , locusts w ould depart once they ’d eaten ev ery bit of greenery and brought the inhabitants there
to the brink of starv ation. This time, a prosecution w as launched against them in the ecclesiastical court of Kaltern, a nearby tow n. The priest
there excommunicated the locusts ‘in the name of the Blessed Trinity , F ather, S on and Holy G host’. In the ninth century , the area around
Rome w as plagued w ith sw arms of locusts. A rew ard w as offered for their extermination but they surv iv ed the peasants’ efforts to w ipe them
out. P ope S tephen V I had great quantities of holy w ater prepared and the country side w as sprinkled w ith it, and, sure enough, that w orked.
There w ere other similar cases in M antua and Lombardy w ith locusts ‘as long as a man’s finger, w ith large heads and bellies filled w ith v ileness;
and w hen dead they infected the air and gav e forth a stench, w hich ev en carrion kites and carniv orous beasts could not endure.’ In a case in
Tartary the locusts w ere supposed to hav e blocked out the sun and cov ered the ground a cubit deep.
O n the w hole, it w as frow ned upon to expel animals w ithout due process. S o, if the pray ers and processions didn’t w ork (ow ing to human
failure, obv iously ), then there w ould in time be a court case. These w ould differ greatly from the trials of indiv idual animals. N ot only w ere
these trials of rodents and insects mostly dealt w ith by ecclesiastical courts, but they w ere civ il suits rather than penal prosecutions. They w ere
prosecuting the v ermin for the damage done to the possessions of others, usually the harv est and fruits of the field. Though in this they w ere
really technically incorrect, being prohibitiv e actions, rather than ones aimed at recov ering compensation for the v ictims. A fter all, insects don’t
hav e any material w ealth, and the C hurch w as not going to reach into its coffers to compensate the congregation.
The C hurch could not quite w ork out w hat stance to take on animals. The scholar O rigen asked if beasts w ere a species of man or man a
species of beast. Both ideas w ere incompatible w ith the teachings of C hristianity , he felt. The only w ay of making sense of it all w as to
propose the theory that animals w ere incarnations of ev il spirits. In the case of insects, some agreed w ith him and felt they w ere sent by
S atan, being demons w orking for him. O thers saw them as creatures of G od, w ho’d come to punish us on his orders. It w ould be sacrilegious
to impede his w ork.
Each case w as treated differently . If it w as felt that the pests w ere sent by S atan, they should be cast out, into the sea for example, w here
they w ould die. If they w ere sent by G od, then they should be driv en out somew here pleasant and set aside for them, so man and beast
could co-exist happily , w ithout damage to the former’s crops. O bv iously , it w as not alw ay s easy to distinguish betw een the tw o. A nother
factor for the court to consider w as the status of the animal on trial. S hould they be treated as a lay person or as a member of the clergy ? F or
instance, a clerus beetle might be seen as the latter, but most creatures w ere the former. Le Liv re du Roy M odus et de la Rey ne Racio (1486)
div ides animals into tw o categories – those of bestes doulces and bestes puantes. Dov es and deer fall into the former group; pigs, w olv es,
foxes and rav ens into the latter. This split is mirrored in many other cultures, betw een those creatures supposed to be noble and pure, and
those that are more susceptible to possession by ev il spirits. Insects w ere felt to be especially dangerous, being both easily possessed and more
easily sw allow ed by unw itting v ictims. A nd the majority of these court cases w ere against insects.
There w as a case in 1478 in S w itzerland inv olv ing an insect know n as the inger, w hich w as dev astating the local crops. The bishop of
Lausanne presided ov er the trial, as the may or and council of Berne sought to rid themselv es of this menace. The parish priest began by issuing
a pray er of w arning to the inger:
Thou irrational and imperfect creature, the inger, called imperfect because there w as none of thy species in N oah’s ark at the time of the
great bane and ruin of the deluge.
The insects w ere told
to depart w ithin the next six day s from all places w here y ou hav e secretly or openly done or might still do damage, also to depart from all
fields, meadow s, gardens, pastures, trees, herbs, and spots, w here things nutritious to men and to beasts spring up and grow , and to betake
y ourselv es to the spots and places, w here y ou and y our bands shall not be able to do any harm secretly or openly to the fruits and aliments
nourishing to men and beasts.
The inger w ere summoned to appear at a certain date in Wifflisburg to answ er for their conduct. There is no further record of this hav ing
taken place, and another trial took place the follow ing y ear. The commune proceeded to
charge and burden [the inger] w ith our curse, and command them to be obedient and anthematize them in the name of the F ather, the S on
and the Holy G host, that they turn aw ay from all fields, grounds, enclosures, seeds, fruits and produce, and depart. By the same sentence I
declare and affirm that y ou are banned and exorcised, and through the pow er of A lmighty G od shall be called accursed and shall daily decrease
w hithersoev er y ou may go, to the end that of y ou nothing shall remain sav e for the use and profit of man.
A nd that is how to excommunicate an insect. But it didn’t alw ay s go that far.
In 1545, the w ine-grow ers of S t Julien launched legal proceedings against an infestation of w eev ils that w as dev astating their v ines. Initially
the C hurch adv ocated a round of public pray ers, hav ing discussed the case and decided that G od put v egetation on earth for both man and
beast to enjoy . F or that reason it w ould be unseemly to take any hasty or extreme course of action against the w eev ils. The grow ers and the
rest of the population w ere asked to beg for forgiv eness for their sins and, most importantly , to pay their tithes on time. S ev eral masses w ere
held and the host w as carried w ith great solemnity around the v iney ards. A t least tw o members of each household w ere inv ited to participate
in this charade and, after a w hile, the insects disappeared. O nce again, the C hurch had demonstrated the breadth of its pow ers, as a sixteenth-
century forerunner of Rentokil.
Thirty y ears later the w eev ils returned and in time they w ere brought to trial. The prosecution sought to hav e the insects excommunicated.
The defence cited v erses from G enesis as a reason for not doing so. The prosecution countered that though animals w ere created before man it
w as intended by G od that they should be subordinate to him and for this reason they w ere created first. The defence argued that being
subordinate did not automatically entail being excommunicated, and debate raged on. In the end a piece of land w as set aside for the w eev ils
to occupy . It w as decided that the inhabitants of S t Julien w ere entitled to pass through this land and use the w ater there. A ny mining rights
w ere also theirs. O therw ise the w eev ils should be free to do as they w ished w ith it. This, how ev er, did not mean an end to the litigation. The
prosecution had made it clear that they regarded this as an extremely generous offer and that the w eev ils should forthw ith cease their
destructiv e w ay s and leav e the v iney ards, nev er to return, on pain of excommunication.
The w eev ils blithely continued their existence, unaw are of these goings-on. A nd so the prosecution and defence found themselv es in court
again. The latter stood up and claimed that the specified land w as not suitable for his clients, not being fertile enough for their needs. The
prosecution shrieked that it w as admirably suited for them, hav ing plenty of trees and shrubs of v arious kinds. The court decided that an expert
should examine the site and submit a w ritten report of its suitability as a refuge for the insects. F or this the expert w as paid 3 florins, w hile 16
w ent tow ards clerical w ork. The v icar receiv ed 3. I w ould lov e to relate how this nonsense all ended but history has dealt w ith it in a much
more appropriate w ay , the final page of the court records hav ing been destroy ed by insects of some kind – perhaps ev en the defendants
themselv es.
This trial lasted eight months, though that w as in part due to the military activ ity of the time, w hich kept delay ing proceedings, as the Duke
of S av oy readied his army for an inv asion. Tw o things emerge from this trial – that it w as believ ed that the insects had a right to sustenance,
and that the C hurch had the pow er to make them stop their rav ages, ev en force them to mov e elsew here. There w as total faith in the
C hurch’s pow er to do this; otherw ise, of course, the trial w ould hav e been a farce. A third factor emerges from this case – the length of time
ov er w hich it unfolded. The more the C hurch could spin out proceedings, the more likely that M other Earth w ould play its part and bring about
a natural end to ev ery thing. The insects might die from a change in climate, or just mov e on – and the C hurch w ould take credit.
But let us look at precisely how these sorts of proceedings w ere spun out. Bartholomew C hassenée w as a v ery distinguished F rench jurist
of the sixteenth century . He made his name defending some rats accused of destroy ing a barley crop. The day of the trial came and there w as
no sign of his clients. He successfully argued that since they w ere scattered all ov er the place, a single summons w ould not serv e to gather
them all. A nd so a second summons w as published from the pulpits of places that w ere know n to be infested w ith rats. A fter that, and w hen
they still did not appear, he claimed that the absence of his clients w as really due to the length and difficulty of the journey that faced them.
A fter all, they w ould hav e been at great risk from their ev er-v igilant enemy , the cats. S ince it w as impossible to guarantee their safety , they
could not attend to face the charges against them. A nother similar case happened in S telv io, in Western Ty rol, w hen the commune launched
legal proceedings against some field mice. The counsel for the defence requested formal protection for his clients from cats and dogs, to ensure
their safe passage.
These trials w ould proceed w ith great formality and ingenuity , and an extraordinary range of literary references and allusions. F irst w ould
come the requeste des habitans, follow ed by the plaidoy er des habitans, then the réplique du défendeur, the conclusions du procureur Episcopal
and finally the sentence du juge d’église. Q uotations w ould be scattered liberally from an extraordinary range of w orks, many in Latin and few
of any relev ance at all, w ith plenty of classical allusions too – w hat M ilton called a ‘horseload of citations’. A ll of this in a desperate attempt to
lend grav itas to the absurd theatre of it all.
F or instance, in one trial, the prosecution quoted the likes of P liny , P aul, M oses and O v id in his reply , citing numerous precedents of holy
men excommunicating animals. In A ix, S t. Hugon, the bishop of G renoble, excommunicated the serpents w ho infested the w arm baths there.
A fterw ards, it is said, the snakes did not kill w ith their bite, their v enom hav ing been draw n by the interv ention. The Bible, and G enesis in
particular, w as consulted frequently in an attempt to make sense of it all. The follow ing lines w ere usually quoted as the official line on the
rights of animals: ‘A nd to ev ery beast of the earth, and to ev ery fow l of the air, and to ev ery thing that creepeth upon the earth, w herein there
is life, I hav e giv en ev ery green herb for meat: and it w as so’ (G enesis 1:30). A lso, ‘I w ill also send w ild beasts among y ou, w hich shall rob
y ou of y our children, and destroy y our cattle, and make y ou few in number; and y our high w ay s shall be desolate’ (Lev iticus 26:22).
But the follow ing questions w ere left unansw ered, being in fact unansw erable. Did animals hav e rights, just as man does, to the fruits of
nature? Do they hav e souls and free w ill? C ould they be excommunicated? A ll these conundrums w ere leapt on by skilful defence counsels,
along w ith the smallest inconsistency of procedure, to acquit their clients.
A nimals w ere tried by ecclesiastical courts w hich could only impose canonical sentences. A nd, as w ith w itches and heretics, so it w as for
beetles and bunnies – once it had been decreed that they should die, it w as left to a secular court to make the formal condemnation, w hile the
C hurch made a hollow plea for mercy (ev en in its dirtiest moments, the C hurch liked to pretend its hands w ere clean).
Ironically , animal interaction does not appear so different from our ow n blaming behav iour. There are hierarchies ev ery w here in nature,
from bumble bees to chickens. The N orw egian zoologist Thorleif S chjelderup-Ebbe noticed this first in hens. Ev en w hen starv ing, hens w ould
let the dominant bird in the flock eat before them, w aiting until it had finished before feeding themselv es. This process w ould continue all the
w ay dow n the pecking order, until y ou reached the hens right at the bottom. These obv iously got less to eat, had few er offspring and suffered
from sev ere stress and phy sical ailments. O ften, in times of extreme need and chaos – caused by famine and ov erpopulation – these birds
w ould be attacked and scapegoated. They paid the price for the stability of the group, and this structure ensured less fighting and increased the
production of eggs. These same attributes hav e been observ ed in other creatures (including ourselv es, obv iously ).
A t the end of E.P . Ev ans’ book, The C riminal P rosecution and C apital P unishment of A nimals, he includes a list of animals that w ere
prosecuted and excommunicated. Ev en at half the length, the list w ould be a fine testimony to human credulity , stupidity and cruelty . It
includes moles, locusts, snakes, field mice, caterpillars, flies, eels, pigs, bulls, horses, rats, cow s, w eev ils, cocks, snails, w orms, beetles, dogs,
asses, grasshoppers, sheep, dolphins, turtle dov es, termites, w olv es, and, fittingly enough, a he-goat, w ho w as banished to S iberia.
THE COMMUNIST SCAPEGOAT
‘The w hole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it w ith an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them
imaginary . C riminals, immigrants, certain states, all used to conceal the failure of the sy stem to look after its people.’
H. L. M encken
The tw entieth century brought a new dimension to the practice of scapegoating. Totalitarian regimes mov ed it up a gear; the self-sty led
perfect form of gov ernment could not be seen to brook any form of failure, and so it apportioned blame w ith extraordinary ferocity . They used
propaganda to create an enemy , demonizing them in the w ay the C atholic C hurch had its foes centuries before, creating the idea of this
shadow y force responsible for ev ery mishap. The first major example of this happened as a result of the Russian Rev olution. Lenin w as
conv inced that the enemy should be destroy ed, not just defeated. Enemies of the S tate should be put on trial, indiv iduals should be found and
blamed for the people’s misfortunes. S capegoating w as the most effectiv e w ay of discrediting the enemy completely , of eliminating any
challenge to authority . This strategy w ould endure in C ommunist thinking.
By 1937 the S ov iet U nion w as in terrible shape after w ar, civ il w ar and immense social change, w hich had been brought about w ith
brutality . The peasants had been forcibly collectiv ized, millions had been dispersed and millions had starv ed. This great social experiment had
propelled to pow er many w ho had no real experience of leadership, and the effects w ere truly aw ful. But someone else needed to be blamed
for all this misery . It couldn’t be seen to be the totalitarian impulse to perfect and remodel humanity that had caused this – rather there had to
be a giant conspiracy to blame.
The M oscow show trials of the late 1930s w ere designed to driv e this message home publicly w hile also remov ing any potential challenges
to S talin’s rule. O n 23 January 1937, 17 high-ranking members of the C ommunist P arty confessed to hav ing plotted w ith S ov iet enemies (in
this instance, the N azi P arty ) to undermine the S ov iet state on Leon Trotsky ’s orders, committing numerous acts of sabotage. There had been
trials the y ear before, and more follow ed. By the time they ended, almost ev ery surv iv ing member of Lenin’s P olitburo had been put on trial.
In these trials Trotsky found himself blamed for most S ov iet ills. He and S talin had plotted against each other for y ears, but it w as not until
Trotsky denounced S talin as the grav edigger of the Rev olution that he w as doomed. He w as exiled a y ear afterw ards, and from that moment
on w as the scapegoat for all S ov iet problems, although oddly he w as driv en out before being blamed (this is echoed in G eorge O rw ell’s
A nimal F arm , w here the former leader S now ball is driv en out from the community and subsequently held responsible for all that goes w rong).
In July 1936, the C entral C ommittee had issued the follow ing proclamation:
The indelible mark of ev ery Bolshev ik in the current situation ought to be his ability to recognize and identify enemies of the party no matter
how w ell they may hav e camouflaged their identity .
A s in the w itch crazes hundreds of y ears prev iously , it w as prudent to see ev ery accident and example of incompetence as a malign act.
A nd as w ith the w itch trials, the accused often collaborated w ith their accusers, ev en confessing to more than they w ere accused of. Why
w ould they do this? It w as not just a reaction to the brutality of their treatment and the threats against their families, but in some cases it w as
a final act of loy alty from old Bolshev iks. Through their confessions they could continue the pretence that the ev il affecting Russia w as not
endemic in the sy stem, but rather w as something external.
The M oscow show trials had been preceded by ‘w arm-up’ trials, w hich had resulted from a series of industrial accidents. In 1928 ov er 50
Russian and foreign engineers w ere put in the dock, accused of hav ing blow n up mines near S hakhty . Elev en of them w ere sentenced to
death, fiv e actually being executed. Tw o y ears later the Industrial P arty trial took place. It maintained that a secret organization existed,
supported by foreign elements and that its aim w as the ov erthrow of C ommunism. But it w as only after the assassination of Kirov in 1934 that
the former Bolshev ik leadership found itself linked to this plot and held to account. Kirov ’s assassin, N ikolay ev , claimed that Trotsky had in part
financed the conspiracy .
The question of w hether the leadership really w as as paranoid as these cases w ould suggest needs to be asked. O r w ere these trials cy nical
measures to assuage the misery of the masses and remov e any challenges to S talin’s authority ? A s w ith all scapegoating, these trials
encouraged the positiv e belief that the great problems affecting society could be solv ed by ridding it of the ev il-doers. It w as easier to think this
w ay than to believ e the w orst. The idea that the authorities did not know w hat they w ere doing w as too terrible to bear for those w ho’d
suffered so much.
A fter the S econd World War, the Russians brought the expertise they ’d acquired from their show trials to N uremberg. The impetus for these
postw ar trials came entirely from them; C hurchill and Roosev elt had w anted to shoot the N azi leadership instead. But the S ov iets w anted
formal retribution. War crimes trials such as those at N uremberg w ere a feature of the second half of the tw entieth century , from that of
S lobodan M ilosev ic to S addam Hussein. There w ere equiv alent trials after the S econd World War in Toky o, although Emperor Hirohito w as
spared this process, the A llies not being intent on the destruction of his regime.
This S ov iet sty le of prosecuting the N azis w as echoed in the West. In A merica the House U n-A merican A ctiv ities C ommittee w as formed in
M ay 1938, ostensibly to fight the N azi menace, but it soon decided that the C ommunists w ere more dangerous. M any organizations w ere
designated as suspicious, including 438 new spapers, 280 unions and the Boy S couts. During the S econd World War the anti-S ov iet focus
w aned, as the U S found itself supply ing the U S S R w ith arms and supplies. But after the w ar, the fear of the Red threat re-emerged. In
Holly w ood, directors, actors and producers w ere all questioned about possible C ommunist sy mpathies. C inema w as seen as such a pow erful
medium, much more so than other art forms, that the greatest v igilance w as required. When C hina became C ommunist in 1949 the panic grew .
O nly months earlier Russia had successfully tested an atom bomb. It w as now that S enator Joseph M cC arthy mounted his anti-C ommunist
crusade, seeing their malign influence ev ery w here. He and others believ ed that ev ery C ommunist pow er acted as one under the orders of the
Russian leadership. Barbara Tuchman w rote in The M arch of F olly :
The w itch-hunts of M cC arthy ism, of the House U n-A merican A ctiv ities C ommittee, the informers, the blacklists and the fire-eaters of the
Republican right and the C hina lobby , the trail of w recked careers, had plunged the country into a fit of moral cow ardice. Ev en Dulles
apparently trembled at the thought that the M cC arthy onslaught might one day turn on him.
The Rosenbergs w ere executed for passing nuclear secrets to the C ommunists, leav ing tw o children as orphans. But by 1954 the Red S care
started to die dow n and M cC arthy w as no longer heeded in quite the same w ay . The fact is that his theories did not hold w ater – A merica had
actually prospered and become much more pow erful during this time.
THE FINANCIAL SCAPEGOAT
There are a few catastrophes that affect almost ev ery one, and economic collapse is foremost among these. The more materialistic a society
is, the more economic trouble hurts. The triggers for these collapses are extraordinarily complex and hard to fathom, y et that does not deter the
blamemongers. Ev ery disaster must hav e its scapegoat, and the w orld of finance is no exception. O n the w hole, though, it blames those w ithin
its sy stem – either those w ho lost or spent all the money , or those w ho took it.
Economic disaster tends to be blamed on a rogue financier or tw o. N ick Leeson w as accused of bringing dow n Barings, incurring huge losses
through w ild, unauthorized trading; likew ise Jérôme Kerv iel w as accused of losing 4.9 billion Euros w hile w orking for S ociété G énérale. 40 M ore
recently , indiv iduals like F red G oodw in hav e been accused of causing the current recession. But really these w ere not the only bad apples –
rather the barrel w as rotten. A s w e hav e already seen by concentrating on the indiv idual, an ov erhaul of the corrupt sy stem is av oided.
The C ity has alw ay s been densely populated w ith likely candidates, financiers commanding little sy mpathy from the public, on the w hole.
F ew understand quite w hat they do and w hy they get paid so much for it. The central conceit of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the V anities is that
S herman M cC oy – ‘M aster of the U niv erse … salary like a telephone number’ – is unable to explain to his y oung daughter quite w hat he does
for a liv ing. P rotected behind a barrier of jargon, of hedges, deriv ativ es and other financial instruments, the C ity is not unlike the C atholic
C hurch of the M iddle A ges (though there is no pope and certainly no infallibility ).
These bankers might be essential to the economy , keeping the flow of money mov ing, but they are regarded by the public as being grossly
ov erpaid. A fter all, sew age w orkers and IT professionals perform essential roles in other areas of our liv es, y et are not remunerated in the
same w ay . But ultimately those w ho direct the flow of money around our economy are alw ay s going to ensure a large amount of it flow s
tow ards them. In any case, a backlash w as ov erdue.
History has seen this before. F irstly , there is the collapse of a bubble – w hen an asset has become v alued far higher than can be justified by
its future returns. P eople are buy ing these assets in the know ledge that someone else w ill immediately buy them for a higher price – the law of
the ‘greater fool’. There hav e been numerous examples of these bubbles. The S outh S ea Bubble in Britain saw a group of merchantmen buy up
£9 million of the British gov ernment’s debt, assured of an interest rate of 6 per cent annually . These merchants w ere know n as the S outh S ea
Trading C ompany and they had obtained exclusiv e trading rights to sev eral S outh A merican ports. F uelled by w ild rumours of the fortunes that
w ere to be made on that continent, stock in the S outh S ea Trading C ompany rose unprecedentedly in 1720 as ev ery one rushed to inv est.
O v ernight other trading companies w ere set up to take adv antage of this mania, most famously , ‘A company for carry ing on an undertaking of
great adv antage, but nobody to know w hat it is.’ The founder of this one saw his office besieged. A fter fiv e hours of trading he had made
2,000 liv res, w hereupon he packed up, left for the C ontinent and w as nev er heard of again. O ther riv al schemes mostly dealt w ith trading in
gold, but there w as one that focused on hair, and another on a w heel of perpetual motion. When these all collapsed, the gov ernment (hav ing
endorsed the w hole affair) w as sw ift to blame the w icked merchants, most of w hom had fled w ith their gains. But really , this w as a situation
w here all sides w ere to blame. F aced w ith the prospect of free money , ev ery one lost their w ay .
In F rance, similar hav oc occurred w ith the M ississippi C ompany . Louis XIV died in 1715, hav ing only ev er been praised during his lifetime.
A fter his death, he w as v ilified for his financial profligacy after leav ing F rance in economic chaos. A S cottish economist, John Law , w as
appointed the nation’s C ontroller G eneral of F inances and set up the M ississippi C ompany . This too w as a scheme for trading w ith the N ew
World (in this case Louisiana). Law had w ildly exaggerated the area’s w ealth, and the F rench public duly inv ested in his scheme, but it
foundered under the hy steria. In Extraordinary P opular Delusions and the M adness of C row ds, C harles M ackay describes how Law w as
blamed for the crow d’s folly – he w as the boatman dashed to pieces on the rocks as ‘the w aters maddened and turned to foam by the rough
descent, only boiled and bubbled for a time, and then flow ed on as smoothly as ev er.’ Law w as held accountable for the scheme’s demise and
dismissed from his post by the Regent w ho had appointed him in the first place. He fled from F rance, leav ing behind his w ealth, though he had
not personally enriched himself through his scheme, w hich w as dev ised as a w ay of rescuing F rance from its debt.
The most notorious bubble w as the Dutch tulip fev er. Here the Dutch rushed to inv est their money in tulip bulbs, conv inced that this w ould
lead to great w ealth. A s a result the bulbs became stupendously ov erv alued. M ackay claims that people w ere selling their houses and
inv esting the proceeds in bulbs. A Dutch sailor w as supposed to hav e eaten one, mistaking it for an onion, and for this he w as throw n in prison.
When the tulip market crashed, ‘the cry of distress resounded ev ery w here and each man accused his neighbour.’
These bubbles generally tended not to produce scapegoats in quite the w ay that other financial disasters did. Those w ho w ere seen to profit
from the collapse w ould be v ilified and targeted, as w e do w ith short sellers today , for instance. But on the w hole the crow d is dimly aw are at
some lev el of its stupidity , and most of those w ho profited tremendously from these bubbles had the good sense either not to stick around or to
conceal their gains. O ther financial crises differ in this respect.
The economic mismanagement that led to the dev aluation of G ermany ’s currency during the Weimar Republic, discussed later, w as crucial in
the rise of the N azi P arty . But the crisis of monetary dev aluation is not just a modern phenomenon. In 1404 an A ct of P arliament w as passed
banning the manufacture of gold and silv er. Ev en then they understood the dangers of dev aluing currency , and w hat disaster a mediev al
alchemist might cause should he successfully turn lead into gold. M any early crises w ere caused by rulers reducing the silv er or gold content in
their coinage to cope w ith budget deficits caused by the need to spend money on w ars. Diony sius of S y racuse in fourth-century BC G reece
w as one of the first monarchs in history to default on his debt. He had borrow ed from his subjects, giv ing them promissory notes in exchange.
He subsequently decreed that all money in circulation should be turned ov er to his gov ernment upon pain of death. Each one-drachma coin w as
subsequently restamped to make it into a tw o-drachma coin before he repaid his subjects, creating a 100 per cent rate of inflation in the
process.
Henry V III w as almost as profligate w ith his currency as he w as w ith his w iv es. He had inherited an enormous fortune from Henry V II,
confiscated much of the C hurch’s land and w ealth and y et still had to debase the currency by clipping coins. O v er the y ears from 1542 to the
end of his reign in 1547 the pound lost 83 per cent of its v alue. The creation of paper money made this kind of dev aluation ev en easier. In
This Time Is Different: Eight C enturies of F inancial F olly , C armen M . Reinhart and Kenneth S . Rogoff w onder if Latin A merica might not hav e
found financial stability easier to come by had the printing press not crossed the A tlantic.
Weimar G ermany saw the most famous case of the dev aluation of a currency after the F irst World War. The expression ‘w heelbarrow
inflation’ w as coined, as the gov ernment printed nev er-ending numbers of bank notes of spiralling v alue; famously , w heelbarrow fuls of the old
small-denomination notes w ere required just to buy a loaf of bread. By late 1923 the gov ernment w as issuing one-hundred-trillion-mark bank
notes, and the dollar w as w orth four trillion marks. S uddenly the nation’s money w as no longer its ow n, and each month brought new lev els of
difficulty to daily life. Theft, prostitution and corruption thriv ed as ev ery one tried to stav e off financial ruin. The prime minister of Bav aria ev en
submitted a bill aiming to make gluttony a criminal offence.
In this climate, ev ery one w as looking for someone to blame. G ermany had been made to pay reparations as penance for hav ing started the
F irst World War, and this w as held responsible in part for the financial difficulty the country found itself in. But there w as more to it than that.
G reat hatred began to be directed at those w ho w ere thought to hav e profited from both the w ar and the ensuing economic chaos. A nd this
sw ung tow ards financial speculators and the Jew s.
It is w ell documented how extreme Hitler’s v iew s first seemed, as he denounced ev ery one and ev ery thing. But as life became much
harder, people started to listen to him, ev en to think he might be right. He traded on a semi-dormant hatred of the Jew s; 18 centuries of
stereoty ping them in a negativ e w ay lent considerable w eight to his attempts to dehumanize them. A s he himself w rote, ‘The art of all truly
great national leaders consists among other things primarily in not div iding the attention of a people, but in concentrating it on a great foe.’ This
thinking w ould lead to the Holocaust. Hitler sought to create a perfect w orld, a w orld w ithout scapegoats – by purging it of them. In the utopia
he env isaged, there w ould be no need to blame.
THE MEDICAL SCAPEGOAT
Ev ery outbreak of a disease has a P atient Zero or index case – the first person to confirm the existence of the outbreak. U nsurprisingly , this
indiv idual can sometimes become the focus of blame for the plague, particularly in the modern era. The term P atient Zero w as coined after the
spread of HIV in N orth A merica and w as attached to a C anadian air stew ard, G aëtan Dugas. He had had a number of sexual partners w hom
he’d infected w ith the v irus, w hich spread further through them. F or this he w as v ilified, accused of passing on HIV know ingly to thousands of
partners. But he is just one person in a long tradition of blaming a complex frightening illness on an indiv idual or group.
In the ancient w orld hospitals w ere for the poor and orphaned, w here the sick and insane w ere looked after by w idow s and fallen w omen.
They w ere intended as quarantines as much as places of healing. Illness w as once seen as a punishment for sin, usually sent by the gods. This
belief originated w ith the A ssy rians and has been adopted by almost ev ery society since. Ev en in the West today , w e conv ince ourselv es that
by leading the right – ev en moral – life, w e can av oid illness. A nd so w hen a disease strikes, people can’t help but consider w hat sin brought it,
almost as naturally as they are looking for the cure.
When the Black Death hit Europe in the fourteenth century , in many instances it w as blamed on the Jew s, w ho w ere accused of spreading
the disease and poisoning the w ater sy stem. F rom 1348 to 1351 ov er 200 Jew ish communities w ere exterminated in G ermany . In Erfurt there
is ev idence of an uprising against the Jew s at the time that the plague struck, w hen betw een 100 and 1,000 people w ere killed. The Erfurt
Treasure (w hich is now in the Yeshiv a U niv ersity M useum in M anhattan) w as buried around 1349. A chest, containing hundreds of items of
gold jew ellery and thousands of silv er coins, w as hidden by its Jew ish ow ners w ho clearly fled the tow n hoping to return and collect their
treasure at a later date. But they nev er did, and it stay ed in the ground until 1998.
This w as part of a long history of general persecution of the Jew s. O ne theory as to w hy they w ere blamed for the plague at this time is
that it tended to spare them. The outbreak peaked in spring, around P assov er, w hen grain w ould hav e been remov ed from Jew ish households.
This w ould hav e led to few er rats there, so limiting the spread of the plague.
The plague w as not solely blamed on the Jew s, how ev er. The S ultan of C airo decreed that the plague w as a div ine judgement for the sin
of fornication, and therefore w omen w ere to blame. He banned them from going outside. In Britain the Bishop of Winchester blamed man’s
sensuality and organized thrice-w eekly barefoot processions. His diocese w as harder hit than any other, these processions no doubt hav ing
contributed to the spread of the disease. The F lagellants scourged themselv es ev en harder w ith w hips to av ert G od’s anger, but likew ise, their
trav elling w ay s w ould only hav e w orsened matters. S ome held cats responsible and killed them, again w orsening matters as rat numbers grew
and carried the disease further afield. A nd it could be argued that P ope Boniface w as in part responsible. His Bull of 1300 had banned the
mutilation of corpses, thus outlaw ing the anatomical dissection of bodies. M edicine suffered accordingly , and, w hen the plague struck, doctors
w ere helpless (the medical faculty of the U niv ersity of P aris declared the Black Death to be the result of the meeting of the influences of M ars,
S aturn and Jupiter).
It is not know n precisely how the plague arriv ed in Europe – w hether it w as brought by the M ongol hordes, or Indian or Egy ptian sailors,
w ho brought the black rats w ith them. M ost human diseases do come from animals. O ccasionally it makes sense to cull them, to prev ent the
further spread of the outbreak, but most often these creatures are punished needlessly . Killing them giv es the impression of action. But really ,
most outbreaks are so complex that there is rarely a single factor and this form of blame achiev es nothing.
The first outbreak of w hat became know n as the Black Death w as the P lague of Justinian, w hich hit the Roman Empire in the sixth century
A D and returned again some decades later. The estimated death toll w as 25 million. It w as named after the emperor of the time of its arriv al;
he himself contracted the plague, but surv iv ed it. P rev iously Rome had been struck by the A ntonine P lague, w hich killed millions of Roman
citizens betw een A D 165 and 180. A t its height, 5,000 w ere dy ing of it ev ery day . S oldiers returning from successful campaigns brought the
disease back, and the expansion of w orld trade routes in Roman times also contributed to its spread. A ntoninus w as one of tw o Emperors killed
by it, and so gav e his name to the outbreak.
The naming of diseases prov ides us w ith the most obv ious form of scapegoating. 41 S panish F lu is a prominent example of this, leading to an
indelible ethnic association and so a form of demonization. The 1918 outbreak of S panish F lu should really hav e been know n as the Kansas
F lu. The first identifiable cases hav e been traced there, though others hav e speculated that it began in A ustria or in the F ar East. A t any rate,
the outbreak did not originate in S pain; instead it crossed the A tlantic on troop ships and w as only reported in S pain w hich, not being at w ar,
did not censor reports of the disease.
The process of naming a disease after a place has sometimes been more deliberately malicious. S y philis, for example, has been know n by
names that serv ed to demonize another nation. S o it w ould be know n as the F rench disease in Italy and as the Italian disease in F rance.
THE CONSPIRACY THEORY
‘The Rosicrucians w ere ev ery w here, aided by
the fact they didn’t exist.’
U mberto Eco, F oucault’s P endulum
The idea that forces of ev il conspire against us has alw ay s had tremendous popular appeal. These conspiracy theories flourish more than
ev er in the age of the internet. They are a v ariation on the idea of scapegoating, but alw ay s inv olv e more than one figure of blame. There is
nev er just the lone gunman but alw ay s an organization behind him, orchestrating the chaos. There are no accidents, only ev il intent, and a
truly formidable enemy . It is a strangely comforting v iew for many . A s H. L. M encken w rote,
the central belief of ev ery moron is that he is the v ictim of a my sterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts … [He]
ascribes all his failures to get on in the w orld, all his congenital incapacity and damnfoolishness, to the machinations of w erew olv es assembled
in Wall S treet, or some other such den of infamy .
There are those w ho blame beings stranger than w erew olv es. Dav id Icke, a former professional footballer 42 turned author and lecturer, is
conv inced that the w orld is run by a secret cabal of giant shape-shifting extraterrestrial lizards know n as the Baby lonian Brotherhood (it is
unclear how these are related to their fellow reptile, the serpent in G enesis). These lizards practise ritual child sacrifice, drink blood, w orship
ow ls and number many former U S presidents in their ranks including both G eorge Bushes, as w ell as Kris Kristofferson and Boxcar Willie. The
British roy al family is also w ell represented – the late Q ueen M other w as one of these reptilian aliens, as is P rince P hilip, apparently . This
brotherhood is responsible for controlling many of the w orld’s institutions, from the U nited N ations and the Bilderberg G roup to the media and
the internet. Their goal is w orld domination and for us all to be microchipped.
Icke once proclaimed himself the S on of G od on the Wogan Show . He also predicted that the w orld w ould end in 1997. He does seem to
hav e been w rong about the latter at least, but another great conspiracy theory emerged that y ear, also w ith P rince P hilip at its centre (truly he
is the modern counterpart to the pharmakos). The death of P rincess Diana in a car crash in P aris saw an endless sw irl of rumours, w ith the
British Establishment at the centre of it. M ohamed A l F ay ed sought to establish a reason for the death of his son Dodi and the P rincess of
Wales that ignored the most likely explanations, w hich w ere that Henri P aul w as drink-driv ing and that no one w as w earing seat belts. A l
F ay ed has consistently maintained that the roy al family and M I6 conspired to assassinate Diana, and his outlandish ideas hav e garnered a
surprisingly large follow ing.
These are extreme instances of the conspiracy theory , and the majority shuns them, but they feed into more dangerous and mainstream
ideas of racial and religious hatred. Icke is one of many believ ers in the authenticity of The P rotocols of the Elders of Zion (although he denies
that the giant lizards in any w ay sy mbolize the Jew s). These w ere documents that purported to uncov er a global Jew ish conspiracy . They
w ere first published in Russia in 1903 and w ere seized on by anti-S emites the w orld ov er – including Henry F ord – as ev idence of Jew ish plans
for w orld domination. It emerged relativ ely quickly that The P rotocols w ere a clumsy forgery and partly deriv ed from a F rench satire from the
time of N apoleon III. Despite repeated debunkings (in The Times in 1921, and again and again afterw ards) their appeal remained strong. A fter
the F irst World War there w as obv iously a strong need to make sense of the horrors of 1914—18. F or some, it became only too easy to blame
the carnage entirely on the Jew s. Just as some thought the Illuminati had helped bring about the F rench Rev olution, so many preferred to
blame the Jew s than to recognize their ow n country ’s part in the w armongering. The re-emergence of The P rotocols in 1919 gav e this v iew to
contemporary ey es and ev en Kaiser Wilhelm II, in exile in Holland, w as recommending them to his guests. 43
A lthough the European establishment w as quick to heap scorn on The P rotocols, there w ere many w ho clung to a belief in their v eracity .
The N azis believ ed them to be true, as do sev eral modern-day regimes in the M iddle East. They fitted in w ith w hat people w anted to believ e,
and no amount of refutation could entirely dislodge these beliefs from the minds of some. Ev en w hen Henry F ord apologized publicly for ‘the
harm I hav e unintentionally committed’ in supporting and publishing The P rotocols in a new spaper he had specially set up, there w ere those
w ho thought that he had merely crossed sides and joined those he opposed. Those w ho deny a conspiracy are inev itably perceiv ed to be part
of it.
This is partly w hy these stories are so resilient. Decades on, controv ersy still surrounds the deaths of J.F .K., M arily n M onroe and Elv is
P resley . Endless, increasingly outlandish theories about them are aired. These are then recy cled in different forms, w ith different protagonists
and v ictims, but the message is alw ay s the same – that a sinister other is out there, pulling the strings, and w orking tow ards our dow nfall. A
scarcity of hard ev idence is not enough to stop millions believ ing these theories, how ev er. There are sev eral explanations for this w illingness to
believ e. Dav id A aronov itch sees these theories as a form of hy steria for men. Elaine S how alter agrees: ‘Hy steria has not died. It has simply
been relabelled for a new era … C ontemporary hy sterical patients blame external sources – a v irus, sexual molestation, chemical w arfare,
satanic conspiracy , alien infiltration – for psy chic problems.’
C onspiracy theories tend to first emerge from among the educated middle classes. These are people w ho w ould rather believ e that there is
some order in the w orld, ev en if it is an ev il one. The alternativ e – that the w orld is chaotic, w ith no dominant being or organization abov e us –
is too terrible to contemplate. C onspiracy theories allow us to think that w e are pow erful. The idea that all v ersions of a story are equally v alid
emerged w ith postmodernism, but in this case it’s a dangerous one. Robin Ramsey , editor of the conspiracist magazine The Lobster, maintains
that a good conspiracy theory blames the state, a bad one targets a minority . We should remember that ev ery conspiracy theory has a v ictim.
There are real conspiracies, of course. C uba is the totalitarian state w hose leaders w ere right about the enemy outside their borders. The
C IA really w as conspiring in colourful, outlandish w ay s to bring dow n their regime. The C IA most probably did play a key role in the Iran-
C ontra scheme but by throw ing O liv er N orth to the w olv es they av oided any of the fallout. N onetheless these conspiracies don’t legitimize the
dozens of more extreme allegations against the C IA and the other agencies responsible for national security – in particular those of attacking
their ow n country men. They hav e been accused of assassinating J.F .K., of bringing dow n the Tw in Tow ers w ith explosiv es in 2001 and of
organizing the O klahoma C ity bombing in 1995. But Timothy M cV eigh w as no scapegoat and nor w ere the 9/11 hijackers.
ALFRED DREYFUS
The F rench hav e prov ided the w orld w ith some of its leading scapegoats, most notably A lfred Drey fus. He w as entirely innocent of the
crime attributed to him y et his personality and Jew ishness set him apart and made him an attractiv e figure for blame. His case polarized
national opinion for decades and had far-reaching consequences for F rench politics in the tw entieth century . I cannot think of a more important
example of a scapegoat, or a truer one, in that Drey fus w as entirely innocent of the crime imputed to him.
In the 1880s national morale in F rance w as extraordinarily low . The F rench had lost A lsace to G ermany after their defeat in 1870 and the
era also suffered banking scandals, inv olv ing the failed attempt to build the P anama C anal. F rance w as also a hotbed of anti-S emitism.
Edouard Drumont had denounced the Jew s in his bestselling book La F rance Juiv e, as w ell as hav ing led an unsuccessful campaign against
Jew ish officers in the army , the F rench military being at the heart of the state. This w as the backdrop for a series of ev ents that w ould set
F rance at loggerheads w ith itself, w ith repercussions that lasted w ell into the mid-tw entieth century .
It all started in the G erman embassy in P aris w hen a cleaning w oman found a document in the w astepaper basket and brought it back to
her F rench masters. This bordereau contained military secrets that w ere being passed to the G ermans, including information about a new piece
of artillery that the F rench w ere dev eloping. There w as little ev idence, but suspicion fell on a y oung army officer on the general staff, A lfred
Drey fus.
Drey fus w as the y oungest son of a w ealthy Jew ish family from A lsace. His father spoke Yiddish and conducted his business in G erman.
Drey fus how ev er w as a great patriot, and F rance’s defeat and loss of A lsace w ere personal disasters for him w hich shaped his w hole career.
He had joined the army and rose fast, becoming captain at a y oung age and mov ing to the general staff. But his Jew ishness and w ealth w ere
alw ay s held against him and aroused resentment from those around him. A nd so he w as the outsider w ho w as the perfect suspect in this case.
The ev idence against him w as v ery flimsy , largely from handw riting experts (then, an ev en less exact science than it is now ), or it w as
declared too secret to be made public. He w as conv icted of spy ing for the G ermans in a closed court martial, hav ing been denied a public trial.
He w as subjected to a formal degradation ceremony at the École M ilitaire, w here he w as ritually stripped of his decorations and epaulettes,
and had his sw ord broken in front of him before being sent to Dev il’s Island. O n this remote outpost of the F rench empire, off the coast of
S outh A merica, special conditions w ere imposed on him. He w as imprisoned on his ow n, surrounded by a palisade high enough to block off the
v iew of the sea. His captors w ere forbidden to speak to him, so he had no communication w ith any one. A t night he w as chained to his bed.
He w as fed so badly that he w as permanently malnourished and lost his teeth. But he maintained his innocence, as he w ould throughout his
ordeal.
In F rance his family pursued his cause, despite a lack of ev idence to support his innocence. But they slow ly gained the support of many ,
most notably Émile Zola w ho w ould later w rite his famous letter, ‘J’accuse’, in Drey fus’ defence. 44 But behind the scenes, the authorities w ere
finding contradictory ev idence. C olonel P icquart recognized the handw riting on the bordereau as belonging to another officer, Esterhazy , and
reported this fact to his superiors, w ho paid no attention. P icquart w as himself both anti-S emitic and from A lsace, adding further lay ers to this
already complex situation. Yet he pursued the issue, setting himself against the army and the F rench establishment.
Rumours began to circulate that Drey fus w as not guilty and that another w as. Ev entually Esterhazy w as court-martialled, four y ears after
the original accusation against Drey fus. But he w as protected and coached by the intelligence serv ices throughout this process, and after tw o
day s the military judges exonerated Esterhazy in a procedure that can only be described as a w hitew ash. The army had no intention
w hatsoev er of punishing the true culprit, nor of clearing the name of the w rongly imprisoned man. They couldn’t afford to be w rong, hav ing
forged the documents that incriminated Drey fus.
It w as now that Zola entered the fray . His open letter to the president of the republic w as published in G eorges C lemenceau’s liberal
new spaper L’A urore. In it, he accused the establishment of hav ing punished the w rong man and of subsequently mounting a cov er-up to frame
him and protect the real traitor. This letter transformed the situation, w resting it from the grip of the handw riting experts and the anony mous
military judges and bringing it into the open. U p until now Drey fus had been seen as part of a Jew ish conspiracy , but Zola put forw ard his ow n
conspiracy theory , one that really existed. It w as a rev olutionary act but one for w hich Zola found himself on trial for defaming the army . He
w as conv icted, and fled to London to av oid imprisonment.
M any w ere happy to believ e in Drey fus’ guilt. A fter the publication of Zola’s letter, thousands took to the streets, rioting and smashing the
w indow s of Jew ish-ow ned shops and attempting to break into sy nagogues. A nti-S emitic mobs demonstrated outside the courtroom in w hich
Zola’s trial w as held. But the anti-Drey fusards w ere not just comprised of rabid anti-S emites. M any on the left did not support Drey fus, seeing
him as their enemy – a rich, capitalist Jew .
A nd so the debate raged on and Drey fus remained on Dev il’s Island. The president died in the arms of his mistress and in the elections that
follow ed no one w ho stood could ev en suggest that Drey fus might be innocent w ithout forfeiting hundreds of thousands of v otes. But the new
leader did order a retrial, for w hich Drey fus w as brought back to F rance. O nce more the military establishment triumphed and Drey fus w as
found guilty again, this time w ith extenuating circumstances. If he had been declared innocent then the army w ould hav e found itself in the
dock, and it w as feared that they might mount a coup if that happened.
But this second guilty v erdict shocked the w orld, for by now his case w as of global interest. Both Q ueen V ictoria and the Kaiser had
declared their support for Drey fus, V ictoria describing him as a marty r. Ev entually the pressure told. Drey fus w as offered a pardon, w hich,
being in terrible health, he accepted. It w as thought that he w ould not surv iv e much more imprisonment. His health improv ed, enough ev en
for him to fight in the F rench army in the F irst World War, w here he distinguished himself. It is extraordinary that he fought for a country – and
an institution – that had done so much to ruin him. But he nev er fully recov ered from his experiences and died in 1935.
The ramifications of the Drey fus affair w ere far-reaching. There w as an amnesty as far as the army w as concerned but the C atholic clergy
found themselv es punished instead by the gov ernment. In 1905 they w ere cut off from state support and the C hurch lost its role in state
education, beginning its decline as it separated from the state. The anti-Drey fus mov ement nev er w ent aw ay entirely , despite his pardon. It
formed A ction F rançaise and in 1940 w as able to mount a successful bid for pow er. It introduced more punitiv e statutes against the Jew s than
w ere required by the G ermans, barring them from many jobs. In this w ay , V ichy F rance gradually came into existence.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SCAPEGOATING
‘Nothing has paraly sed intelligence more than the
search for scapegoats.’
Theodore Zeldin, A n Intimate History of Humanity
There are many theories as to w hy w e hav e this urge to blame, and all w e can be certain about it is that it is an intrinsic part of our being.
We used to scapegoat out of fear of div ine retribution; now for the most part w e do it to liv e w ith ourselv es. A s indiv iduals, w e create a
narrativ e of our liv es that makes sense to us, and that fits in w ith our concept of ourselv es. O ften w e shape our memories accordingly .
C ertainly w e keep some and subconsciously discard those that do not fit, demonstrating w hat psy chologists call confirmation bias. We can find
ourselv es using our brains more to construct explanations and excuses once w e’v e done w hat our emotions dictated, so w e can pretend to
ourselv es that w e are rational beings. But w e aren’t w holly rational beings, as a succession of thinkers and experiments hav e show ed.
We possess a strong self-serv ing bias that makes us feel special. Through this w e can account for our failures and protect our sense of w orth.
We ov errate our abilities in all sorts of w ay s, from intelligence to honesty . Research has show n that w e all think ourselv es better driv ers than
the norm. Likew ise, w e are inclined to think that w e are more sensitiv e, loy al and in possession of a better sense of humour than others. This is
particularly prev alent among men, w ho see themselv es as 5 IQ points clev erer than they are, according to psy chologist A drian F urnham.
A ustralians suffer from the same misplaced confidence – 86 per cent of them rate themselv es as abov e av erage in their performance at w ork.
But w e cannot all be excellent driv ers, or else there w ould be no accidents. We can’t all be abov e av erage like in G arrison Keillor’s fictional Lake
Wobegon community ; the law s of maths and nature ensure that some of us are below av erage. But w e are inclined to believ e that w e are all
special, that w e’re somehow different and ‘it w on’t happen to us’, leading us to take risks.
With this capacity for self-delusion it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise that w e seek to blame others. The idea of A ttribution Theory states
that w e hav e an urgent need to find reasons for an ev ent, and this leads us to leap to conclusions and hold others responsible. A bad situation
couldn’t possibly be our fault, after all. When w e fail at things it is because of others; those w ho are below av erage bring us dow n. Whereas
w hen w e succeed it is due to our innate abilities (and w hen others succeed, w e often put it dow n to luck).
We dev elop this ability to blame v ery early on in life. Just as children naturally express their unhappiness through tears and sobbing –
designed to tell adults sw iftly that something is w rong – so they , faced w ith the possibility of adult sanction for their actions, are quick to pass
responsibility onto someone else, and quickly learn to use language to achiev e this. ‘He started it’ is a familiar refrain in domestic life. A s w e
mov e tow ards adulthood w e should shed this defence mechanism, but really w e only start to use it more.
O n an ev ery day lev el w e blame others to reduce cognitiv e dissonance – this is the state of tension that arises w hen w e hold tw o
contradictory ideas simultaneously (according to P lato, w hen desire conflicts w ith reason there is a disease of the soul, w hich is not so different
from the concept of cognitiv e dissonance). M ost of us hav e an innate sense of ourselv es as decent people, and ev ery bit of ev idence to the
contrary causes us pain and discomfort. We mitigate these feelings in a v ariety of w ay s. If w e admit to hav ing behav ed badly , w e might
excuse this behav iour by say ing ‘it w as the drink’. We might say ‘I w asn’t my self’. O r w e could straightforw ardly blame another. In a failing
relationship, couples often find themselv es blaming each other for their unhappiness. With infidelity , the w ronged person often finds her/himself
blaming the other w oman/man for their partner’s betray al, allow ing them to preserv e their relationship – on the surface at least. We like to
personify our pain, to find one person to embody it. A nd so w e can conv ince ourselv es that ev ery thing w ould be much better if they w ere in
our liv es (as w ith unrequited lov e) or out of our liv es (as w ith a scapegoat). But in reality it’s a lot more complex than that.
U ltimately , w e make scapegoats out of those w e hav e come to believ e are incapable of suffering – w e dehumanize them, making them
easier to hate. We create the idea that these other people are inferior to us. That dev elops into the idea that they therefore deserv e their
treatment. We deny them the same capacities for thought, emotion and v alues as us, and treat them accordingly . We can do this consciously or
unconsciously , but the results are the same.
To see how innate this instinct is to us w e can refer to Jungian psy chology . Jung may not be w idely follow ed these day s but his ideas are
interesting and relev ant to the concept of the scapegoat. He believ ed that w e all share the archety pe of the shadow – the innate psy chic
structure that personifies ev ery thing w e w ill not acknow ledge about ourselv es. It is the archety pe of the enemy and is w ith us from birth; as
infants w e w ill greet our mothers w ith joy , w hile w e recoil from strangers w ith fear and caution. We deny the existence of the shadow , and
instead project its characteristics onto others, allow ing us to preserv e our ow n sense of goodness. Jung believ ed that there are sev eral lay ers to
the shadow , the top ones being unique to the indiv idual, qualities that he or she repressed. But the bottom lay er is a collectiv e one. A nd it is
that that has been successfully exploited in instances of mass scapegoating. By recognizing our ow n shadow , w e make it less likely that w e w ill
project it onto others.
CONCLUSION
‘To see w hat is in front of one’s nose
needs a constant struggle.’
G eorge O rw ell
The only real conclusion that can be draw n from this long history is that scapegoating doesn’t w ork. A ll too often it cov ers up the problem,
rather than solv ing it; it focuses on rotten apples w hen really it is the barrel that is disintegrating around them, and it results in an incredibly
harsh treatment of a minority . The most it can ev er achiev e is a temporary lessening of the problem, but the real roots remain. M ay be w e do
need some form of purification ritual, some w ay of allow ing ourselv es to forgiv e ourselv es and mov e on after disaster, but this can’t be it. The
scapegoat is the sy mbol for the part of us that w e most w ish to remov e and that society fears most at that time (w itches represented lust,
Jew s greed and C athars religious freedom). But remov ing the person does not remov e that same flaw in the rest of us.
A lso, there is one glaring inconsistency in the w hole process. S urely if the scapegoats possessed such great pow ers to undermine society and
trigger disaster at any point, then they should be conciliated, courted ev en. A fter all, they are able to do things that a ruler cannot. P erhaps w e
should ev en select our leaders from the ranks of the scapegoats, unless they are to be considered intrinsically ev il. Ironically , perhaps the most
comparable figure to the scapegoat is the hero; both giv e themselv es up for the majority . The hero takes on risk and sacrifice, w ith no
immediate personal adv antage, and for the benefit of those around him. Is the scapegoat not just an unw illing v ersion of this? A figure required
and looked to by ‘normal’ society to rectify its problems?
S o w ho is to blame, if not the scapegoat? Well, w e are, of course, for most things. 45 N ot for ev ery thing, although the present Bishop of
C arlisle w ould hav e it otherw ise – he blamed the sev ere flooding in Britain in 2007 on our moral degradation and the gov ernment’s pro-gay
legislation. This tendency is mirrored in A merica by the pronouncements of the A merican telev angelist P at Robertson, w ho said after the
earthquake in Haiti in 2010 that the islanders had made a pact w ith the Dev il centuries before. While many rightly choose not to listen to this,
there are many w ho do, prov ing that it is after disaster that w e are w illing to listen to the truly lunatic, those w ho w ould rightly be ignored in
all other circumstances.
S o w e return to the idea of stupidity . The truth is that w e, w ho pride ourselv es on being the most intelligent life-form on earth, 46 are just not
quite clev er enough fully to understand ourselv es or the w orld around us. This is nev er more manifest than w hen w e blame others.
I shall close w ith the story of a particularly hapless scapegoat. In 1666 the G reat F ire of London sw ept through the city , burning ov er 13,000
houses, as w ell as S t P aul’s, 87 churches and many other prominent buildings. F amously the blaze started at Thomas F arriner’s bakery in
P udding Lane in the early hours of S unday , 2 S eptember. Later that day the Lord M ay or, S ir Thomas Bloodw orth, refused adv ice to demolish
buildings and create fire-breaks, commenting that ‘a w oman could piss it out’. F anned by high w inds, the fire spread, along w ith w ild rumours
of w ho w as to blame. S uspicion fell on the C atholics, and there w ere stories of an army of F rench and Dutch immigrants marching on London
to v isit further destruction upon the city .
Robert Hubert, a F rench apprentice w atchmaker in his mid-tw enties, w as arrested in Romford under suspicion of try ing to flee the country .
He w as just one of many foreigners subjected to rough treatment in the aftermath of the fire, but he rapidly confessed to arson. Initially he
claimed to hav e throw n a fireball near the king’s palace in Westminster, but he later changed this story and confessed to a litany of sins – from
plotting w ith F renchmen for a y ear to being an agent of the pope and putting a fireball through the bakery w indow , all for less than £5. Despite
many inconsistencies and doubts ov er his story and sanity , Hubert w as conv icted and hanged at Ty burn in the middle of O ctober. He w as
born a Huguenot y et died a C atholic and receiv ed the last rites. Lord C larendon w rote afterw ards that ‘neither the judges nor any present at
the trial did believ e him guilty , but that he w as a poor distracted w retch w eary of his life, and chose to part w ith it in this w ay .’ In fact, it soon
turned out that Hubert hadn’t ev en been in London w hen the fire broke out, hav ing landed in England on 4 S eptember. The captain of the ship
testified to his complete innocence.
A monument to the fire w as built near P udding Lane, and in 1668 the follow ing w ords w ere added to the inscription:
Here by permission of heav en, hell broke loose upon this P rotestant city … the most dreadful Burning of this C ity ; begun and carried on by
the treachery and malice of the P opish faction … P opish frenzy w hich w rought such horrors, is not y et quenched …
They remained there until 1830.
NOTES
1. Lady G range spent eight y ears on the island, hav ing been exiled there by her husband, the lord adv ocate of S cotland, after she spread
rumours that he w as a Jacobite sy mpathizer. S he spent her time mournfully entrusting sealed letters to the sea, hoping they w ould reach a
potential rescuer.
2. There is a superstition that relates slightly to this story – in some S cottish islands, if a fisherman drow ns, the boat in w hich he w as sailing
is beached and left to rot and fall apart, being regarded as cursed. It is judged guilty of manslaughter and so must not be permitted to put to
sea again, to mix w ith other innocent v essels. A nother account of the death of the G reat A uk states that the bird w as w ashed up on the beach
and found by three islanders (or tw o, by another account). They held it responsible for the storm, but did not put it on trial; instead they
strangled it there and then. This story of the G reat A uk has echoes of the Hartlepool M onkey incident. F olklore has it that a F rench w arship
w as w recked off the coast of Hartlepool during the N apoleonic Wars. The only surv iv or w as a monkey , dressed in F rench uniform (presumably
in its role as a mascot for the crew ). The unfortunate animal w as duly put on trial for being a F rench spy , and hanged from the mast of a
fishing boat.
3. S ince 1957, the British A rmy has had an outpost on S t Kilda, and tourists frequently v isit. But there are no permanent residents.
4. Ronald Wright – A Short History of P rogress, p.63.
5. Really F reud thought our problems stemmed from our dependence on our mothers and the resulting hostility to our fathers. O f all animals,
w e remain longest at the breast of our mothers, being born too soon, unready for the w orld.
6. F or a long time, the C atholic C hurch shared Dr A tkins’ hostility to the potato, since it w as not a foodstuff that is mentioned in the Bible.
7. A nother analogy is that the scapegoat is like an electrical fuse. The circuit ov erloads and the fuse melts, prev enting a fire or other damage
to the sy stem. The fuse is replaced, and the current can continue to flow as before. The sy stem stay s as it is, and goes unrepaired. A nd so the
situation w ill nev er resolv e itself. Which is fine for ev ery one except for the scapegoat, w ho w ill be called upon again.
8. A n example of this is the Daily M ail, Britain’s most financially successful midmarket new spaper, w ith its cocktail of fear and blame. Its
ow ners and editor hav e realized that blame sells, more than sex and celebrity . A nd so their pages are filled w ith v illains, as w ell as stories
nominally rooted in the science of cancer, and foods that may cause or cure it. U nderly ing ev ery thing is the belief that if y ou liv e the right life,
bad things w ill not happen to y ou – unless someone else is to blame.
9. Here the cabinet minister is held accountable for mistakes in his/her department, w hether or not he/she actually knew about them.
U ltimately C arrington w as responsible for employ ing and continuing to employ his subordinates, and thus w as responsible for their actions.
Though this is not enshrined in law , it is part of the Westminster sy stem of gov ernment. M inisters do not alw ay s take this hit, and C arrington
can be seen as a more honourable example of a politician.
10. Ty ndale’s ‘scapegoat’ w as a translation of the Hebrew w ord azazel, A zazel also being the standard-bearer of the rebel angels in M ilton’s
P aradise Lost as w ell as a w ilderness demon, associated w ith ev il. The w ord is also deriv ed from ‘escape’, meaning that Jade G oody w as not
so w rong w hen accusing her Big Brother housemates of try ing to make an escape goat of her.
11. It is w orth remembering that the first documents printed by G utenberg on mov able ty pe w ere indulgences; these clearly took
precedence ov er his edition of the Bible, w hich came second.
12. The C hurch’s opposition to the translation of the Bible w ould later be echoed by A merican slav e-ow ners w ho sought to deny their slav es
access to scripture. It w as made an offence to teach them to read or w rite.
13. I C orinthians, 3:13
14. The w ord tragedy comes from the G reek for ‘goat song’, though the deriv ation is not exactly clear.
15. Barbara Tuchman – The M arch of F olly , p.476.
16. Edw ard II and P iers G av eston w ere also despised for their shared hobbies, w hich w ere not deemed aristocratic. They w ere both
enormously fond of sw imming and row ing, and Edw ard w as also interested in blacksmithing.
17. I. A . A . Thompson – The Institutional Background to the Rise of the M inister-F av ourite, p.19.
18. It is tempting to see this as a strong case for ‘small religion’ (just as there is one for small, localized gov ernment), instead of these great
spiritual behemoths. But that w ould be to forget that small religions either become big ones, or implode spectacularly and bloodily .
19. The theory of original sin held that a dev il took hold of each child w hen born and so had to be exorcized through baptism. The C hurch
believ ed v ery strongly in the practice of exorcism. A rite of exorcism should be read ov er the body or w ritten dow n and held against the
afflicted part. C atholic priests w ould go to w ork w ith a bell, book and candle, and there is still an official belief in the pow er of exorcism to this
day , though the V atican does not adv ertise it too w idely .
20. O rigen w as by no means the only man to hav e castrated himself in C hristian history . The peasant leader Kondratii S eliv anor led a sect
in eighteenth-century Russia w hich sought to purge mankind of its lust. In a misreading of key parts of the N ew Testament, he interpreted the
w ord Redeemer as C astrator, and also believ ed that genitals w ere the result of A dam and Ev e hav ing grafted the halv es of the forbidden fruit
to their bodies. S o he and his follow ers castrated themselv es to achiev e a state of purity . He also proclaimed himself the S on of G od. This w as
a surprisingly popular and long-lasting mov ement, w hich ev entually died out in the tw entieth century . A nother story told about O rigen is that
he once w anted to run into the street and proclaim himself a C hristian, at a time of persecution of that faith. But his mother had hidden his
clothes, and so his modesty forbade him to do it.
21. O r like those in G enesis, w here A braham prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac, to obey G od, but G od prov ided a substitute, a lamb, to
take the place of the boy . This w as seen as progress – man mov ing from human to animal sacrifice. Human sacrifice w as common in pagan
times. The first child w as often thought to hav e been fathered by a god, w ho w ould hav e lost some of his pow er to his offspring. That child
w ould be offered up to him, as a w ay of returning his strength to him.
22. The fire that burnt much of Rome in A D 64 w as thought to hav e been the result of arson. A t one point it w as blamed on the Emperor
N ero, but (as Tacitus w rote) he focused blame on the C hristian community and so commenced his persecution of them. It is said that it took his
w ife’s interv ention to prev ent him from first targeting the Jew s. M any others came to believ e that C hristians w ere responsible for disasters,
particularly natural ones. V iolence against them rose. In A D 166 a bishop w as murdered in S my rna. Elev en y ears later in Ly ons, C hristians
w ere persecuted, arrested and put on trial. A fter torture, many confessed to all manner of sins. They w ere made to fight w ith w ild beasts and
mauled by lions.
23. C atholics hav e often been similarly persecuted; in Britain they w ere denied the right to v ote from 1728 to 1793, for instance, or the right
to sit in P arliament until 1829.
24. In 1260, F rance introduced new penalties for homosexuality . P enance w as no longer sufficient; instead, after the first offence, the
culprit’s testicles w ere amputated. A fter the second, it w as the penis, and after the third, he w ould be burned.
25. F ruit makes a few appearances in these stories of blame: here, in the G arden of Eden, the pomegranate seeds that P ersephone ate,
creating the changeable seasons. M ay be w e should hav e been blaming fruit rather than the human or animal scapegoat all along.
26. A s w ith C hristianity , Islam w as hijacked by men w ho interpreted the sacred texts in a w ay that suited them, and reduced their
w omenfolk in status. The Koran does not prescribe v eiling all w omen – only M uhammad’s w iv es, to denote their rank.
27. If this garden w as any w here, it w as in w hat is now southern Iraq, and formed part of the S umerian civ ilization. By 5500 BC these
N eolithic sites had been largely abandoned. O v ergrazing by goats is thought to be one of the possible reasons.
28. The C athars had also protested against the w ealth and excesses of the C hurch’s leadership, and sought to lead a simpler life, truer to the
teachings of C hrist. O rators w ere sent to w in them round, but in v ain, and a C rusade w as launched on fellow C hristians. The C rusaders
stormed Beziers, killing 15,000 of its citizens. The soldiers asked, ‘How shall w e know w ho are the heretics?’ The papal legate replied, ‘Kill them
all, the Lord w ill know his ow n.’
29. A t this time, magic – fortune-telling, potions and charms – w as w idely believ ed in, as w as sorcery , the use of supernatural means to
commit harmful acts. There w as plenty of ov erlap betw een this and the C hristian faith so the C hurch sought to suppress these superstitions and
replace them w ith its ow n. P riests performed exorcisms and cured ill patients and animals. This w as not alw ay s a complicated matter. S ay a
priest w as called to deal w ith a stricken herd of cattle. These w ere usually kept in such cramped conditions that sickness w as inev itable, but in
day s of relativ e scientific ignorance it w as assumed that the beasts w ere bew itched. A ll a successful exorcist w ould need to do w ould be to
allow air in and freshen things up, and recov ery w ould begin.
30. What starts as satire is so often reborn as propaganda, as w ith The P rotocols of the Elders of Zion. Equally , w hat w as w ritten as
allegory – i.e. much of the Bible – gets read literally , something that should be read as poetry being treated as a legal document. But as
Diarmaid M acC ulloch say s, ‘The Bible speaks w ith many v oices, including shouts of anger against G od.’ It can be interpreted in so many
different w ay s.
31. Diarmaid M acC ullough – A History of C hristianity . John Demos say s 50,000—100,000 in The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-
Hunting in the Western World.
32. Harry Lime w as w rong in The Third M an about the dullness of the S w iss; behind the cuckoo-clock facade lurks a great capacity for
v iolence. F iv e hundred suspected w itches w ere burned in G enev a in 1515–6.
33. C harles M ackay – Extraordinary P opular Delusions and the M adness of C row ds, p.503–4.
34. A n example of the range of v ictims can be seen from the trials that happened in Würzburg from 1627–9. O ne hundred and fifty -sev en
people w ere burned; the list included 3 actors, 4 innkeepers, 3 councilmen, 14 v icars of the cathedral, the burgomaster’s lady , the apothecary ’s
w ife and daughter, tw o choristers and G öbel Babelin, the city ’s prettiest girl. Rich and poor suffered alike, and 32 v agrants w ere burned.
35. These confessions and the w itness statements w ere published barely a month after the trials took place (a shock to any one w ho thought
that the modern age had a monopoly on grisly , v oy euristic publishing). The pamphlet sold w ell, needless to say , under the title, ‘A true and
exact Relation of the sev erall Informations, Examinations, and C onfessions of the late Witches’.
36. There w ere prominent v oices w ho denied the existence of w itchcraft, notably Johann Wey er, P ietro d’A pone and Reginald S cot, in
G ermany , Italy and England respectiv ely . But they w ere denounced by the likes of James I for their heresy . To deny the existence of
w itchcraft w as nothing but w itchcraft itself.
37. The S cots, how ev er, w ere not so frugal, and burning w as their preferred method of execution.
38. There is an ancient precedent for sw imming suspected w itches. The C ode of Hammurabi, from the eighteenth century BC , states that:
‘If a man has put a spell upon another man and it is not justified, he upon w hom the spell is laid shall go to the holy riv er; into the holy riv er
shall he plunge. If the holy riv er ov ercome him and he is drow ned, the man w ho put the spell upon him shall take possession of his house. If
the holy riv er declares him innocent and he remains unharmed the man w ho laid the spell shall be put to death. He that plunged into the riv er
shall take possession of the house of him w ho laid the spell upon him.’ Riv ers w ere often used as a w ay of ritually purify ing people, but usually
by w ashing them rather than drow ning them.
39. There is some scriptural justification for this. Exodus 21:28 states: ‘If an ox gore a man or a w oman, that they die: then the ox shall be
surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten; but the ow ner of the ox shall be quit.’
40. In June 2010 Kerv iel w as put on trial for defrauding the bank he w orked for. His trades lost them an unprecedented amount of money
and he w as accused of cov ering his tracks, as w ell as recklessness. His defence w as that he did w hat w as standard practice among his
colleagues on the trading floor, that his superiors w ere aw are of w hat he did, nicknaming him ‘the cash machine’, and that it w as the bank’s
haste in unw inding his positions (unloading his inv estments) that meant so much w as lost, ev en causing a market crash. The F rench financial
sy stem w as ranged against him, and later that y ear he w as sentenced to fiv e y ears in prison (w ith tw o suspended) and to repay the entire
sum of his losses.
41. M ary M allon found herself named after a disease, becoming know n as Ty phoid M ary . S he w as thought to hav e been the first healthy
carrier of ty phoid, and to hav e infected 47 people w ith the disease. S he w as a cook and there w ere outbreaks in almost ev ery kitchen she
w orked in. Despite being identified by a sanitary officer as the source, she v ehemently denied hav ing ty phoid and resisted all attempts to
quarantine her or prev ent her from w orking in kitchens. S he died in 1969, of pneumonia.
42. Like his fellow thinker, A lbert C amus, Icke play ed in goal, though that is perhaps the only thing they hav e in common. Icke w as
inv olv ed w ith the G reen P arty in the 1990s before resigning and beginning his ‘Turquoise period’ w hen he w ore only turquoise, so as better to
conduct positiv e energy .
43. In his excellent book on conspiracy theories, V oodoo Histories, Dav id A aronov itch points out w hat a relief it must hav e been to the
Kaiser to find that he w asn’t responsible for starting the F irst World War after all.
44. Zola had a huge reputation at the time, not just as a nov elist. He had prev iously defended the Impressionists w hen the establishment
w as determined to deride them.
45. S ometimes w e are responsible for the disasters that befall us. This is illustrated by w hat is called the progress trap, w here w e adv ance
 45. S ometimes w e are responsible for the disasters that befall us. This is illustrated by w hat is called the progress trap, w here w e adv ance

too much, too quickly , and perish in the process. A n example of this is how man mov ed from killing a single mammoth at a time, to driv ing the
w hole herd ov er the cliff. The former is sustainable; w ith the latter y ou hav e destroy ed y our food source. The atom bomb could be described
as a progress trap, as could some forms of biological w arfare. They hav e giv en man the pow er to destroy life on earth.
46. A lthough Ronald Wright points out that w e are running tw enty -first century softw are on hardw are that w as last upgraded 5,000 y ears
ago.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I w ould like to thank my family , most of all my parents; my agent N icola Barr for her tireless w ork, along w ith Hellie O gden, C hris
Wellbelov e and C laudia Young; and ev ery one at Duckw orth and the O v erlook P ress, in particular Jon Jackson, S uzannah Rich, Tracy C arns
and P eter M ay er.
I w ould also like to thank the follow ing for their ideas, encouragement and support at v arious points in the w riting of this book: Lisa Baker,
Low dy Braby n, Tom Bromley , A lex Burghart, Helen C oy le, Hermione Ey re, Thomas Hodgkinson, Louisa Joy ner, Thomas M ogford, M ary
M orris, M aggie P hillips, Damian P itman, Henry P orter, Rebecca Rose, C harlie S mith, Laura S usijn and Roly Walter.