Origins

• The story of the original scapegoat can be found in the Bible in the Book of Leviticus, chapter 16. The chief priest of the Jews took two goats, sacrificed one, and symbolically loaded the other with the sins of the Israelites. The second animal was then driven out into the desert, taking with it those sins.
  
  The word scapegoat was coined in 1530 by William Tyndale, who first translated the Bible into English. He took the idea of the goat escaping out into the desert and made the word scapegoat.
  
  

Scapegoating in a Family Setting

• Scapegoating can happen in the family, at school or in the workplace.school bus image by Lombok from Fotolia.com
  
  Scapegoating within a family can lead to one child in a group of siblings being unfairly chosen as the "bad" child. This can lead to emotional and physical abuse of that child, and lifelong emotional and psychological trauma. The same thing can happen at school or in the workplace, where such behaviour can lead to bullying of the person or persons unfairly chosen to be scapegoated, and turn other people against them. In both family and workplace situations, the person doing the scapegoating is often projecting his own guilty or hostile feelings onto the person being scapegoated.
  
  

How Scapegoating is Used

• The Israelites in the Bible story of the scapegoat were told that all their sins were now being borne by the goat which had been sent out into the desert, meaning that they were no longer responsible for them.
  
  Through history, people have used scapegoating in the same way, blaming other people for their own sins or wrongdoing. This has two results. Those who are doing the scapegoating often no longer feel any responsibility for what they have done wrong. They can also shift any outside focus on and blame for their own wrongdoing onto an individual or group.
  
  

Scapegoating in Nazi Germany

• Scapegoating led to Nazi concentration camps.gates of hell image by Sam Smith from Fotolia.com
  
  The most chilling example of scapegoating in modern times was in Nazi Germany. As Webster's Online Dictionary puts it: "For example, in Nazi Germany, the Jews were singled out as the cause of Germany's economic woes and political collapse." At that time, Jews were a large and identifiable group within German society, making it easy for Hitler to unfairly stigmatize them as the source of all of the country's ills. This pernicious philosophy led inexorably to concentration camps and the deaths of 6 million European Jews.
  
  

Expert Insight

• Scapegoating continues to be used by unscrupulous politicians who seek to divert attention from and lay blame regarding increased crime, rising unemployment and other problems on easily identifiable minority groups.
  
  As British politician Ernest Bevin put it: "Unintelligent people always look for a scapegoat."