What does scapegoat mean

Politicians have used the financial sector as a scapegoat for the global economic crisis. They scapegoated environmental laws as the problem of the economy , instead of looking for real problems. Examples of scapegoat. In both cases, certain victims, heroes, enemies and scapegoats were at the heart of the interpretation. From the Cambridge English Corpus. No matter how perceptions of the environment are parsed, scapegoat theory receives precious little support from these data.

We must acknowledge at the outset that our test of scapegoat theory is incomplete. One implication of this sort of 'diversion' is that potential scapegoats might employ strategic behaviour to avoid becoming a diversionary target. To make sense of the crisis, the authorities looked for scapegoats. It is at this point that anxious and threatened citizens often identify a scapegoat for societal problems. Because monsters are always the constitutive outside of normativity, the scapegoats constructed of society's devouring anxieties, they can never safely be tucked away.

Political entrepreneurs seek political capital by mobilizing support for repressive and punitive actions against scapegoats. The offering of feigned opposition can give moderates a welcome scapegoat and pretext for moderation. Finding a scapegoat when times go bad is often a task of utmost importance, for political leaders and ordinary citizens alike.

Just like the goat for Azazel, Jewish people throughout the ages have indeed encountered the phenomenon of scapegoating on many occasions. Today, the rituals of Yom Kippur have changed hugely since it was first described in the Torah, but the habit of blaming others for things that we ourselves have done has not changed so much since Tyndale first described it. We wish you a meaningful day of self-reflection, and a year of health and prosperity — a year in which we take responsibility for our own actions, and find peace with our neighbours and our friends.

Sorry, we are closed. According to the Old Testament , on the Day of Atonement , a priest would confess all the sins of the Israelites over the head of a goat and then drive it into the wilderness, symbolically bearing their sins away.

New Word List Word List. Save This Word! Chiefly Biblical. Leviticus ,10, We could talk until we're blue in the face about this quiz on words for the color "blue," but we think you should take the quiz and find out if you're a whiz at these colorful terms.

All rights reserved. Filters 0. Words form: scapegoated scapegoating scapegoats. See word origin. The definition of a scapegoat is someone who is assigned the blame or made to take the fall for something. The goat, symbolically bearing their sins, was then sent into the wilderness.