René Girard, who died in 2015, was the great expert on the scapegoating mechanism. According to him, it is the basis of human order. He found traces of this phenomenon in all kinds of ancient texts from all over the world. Apparently, we humans need scapegoating: in order to keep things right with each other, we need to place the evil outside the group, on the head of an outsider. We were, and still are, less rational than we think.

Girard influenced both conservative and liberal thinkers, yet few have been as sharp in dissecting the violent tendencies in each of us.