Hiding the Victim
Richard Koenigsberg

Girard believed that in order to be effective, the sacrificial mechanism had to be disguised or hidden. We avoid knowing what is going on by averting our eyes from the victim. S. Mark Heims states that the work of mythical sacrifice requires that people “know not what they do.”

The scapegoating mechanism is most virulent when it is "most invisible;” its effectiveness depends on “blindness to its workings.” To “avert one’s eyes from the sight of the real victims,” Heims says, is that “characteristically human act” that lies at the essence of scapegoating.

Warfare might be understood as a form of scapegoating where, strangely, the death of one's own soldiers works to unify a national community and works best when people are able to "avert their eyes" from the sight of victims; when we don’t look closely at what happens to the bodies of soldiers. People enjoy the idea of war but would prefer to participate at a distance. They don't want to see the maimed or mutilated bodies, the sight of which drains warfare of its glory.

The son of Douglas Haig, British Commander-in-Chief responsible for the disastrous Battle of the Somme, reports that the General felt that it was his duty to refrain from visiting the casualty stations because these visits "made him physically ill.”

The French Commander Joffre, after pinning a military decoration on a blinded soldier, said to his Staff: “I mustn’t be shown any more such spectacles. I would no longer have the courage to give the order to attack.”

In the First World War, the body of the soldier was given over to slaughter in the name of the sacred ideal. We want the “beautiful” ideal, but don’t want at what happens to the body of the soldier.

Hypocrisy lies at the heart of the institution of warfare. People plug into the spectacle, relishing the fantasy of their nation’s power and glory, and the "heroism" of the soldier. They embrace war as a righteous struggle between good and evil. However, most people do not wish to be put in harm’s way. War is enjoyable to the extent that killing, suffering and dying are delegated to someone else. 

George M. Cohan was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his World War I song, Over There. Even now it is difficult to resist this fervent appeal to our idealism.

Johnnie, get your gun, get your gun, get your gun,
Take it on the run, on the run, on the run,
Hear them calling you and me, ev’ry son of liberty.
Hurry right away, no delay, go today!
Over there, over there!
Send the word; send the word, over there!
That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,
And we won’t come back ‘til it’s over, Over There!

I sang this refrain at a conference once and in the audience sang along with me. Then I stunned the cheerful crowd with the following words:

What actually was happening “over there?” John Ellis writes about the sights that stretcher-bearers had to endure as they attempted to recover the bodies lying in “no man’s land.” Some soldiers might be found alive, even semi-conscious, with the lower half of their face sliced off or the top of their head and their brains clearly visible.

Men arrived still breathing at the regimental aid posts with holes the size of a football between their shoulder blades. Doctors might gently prise apart the hands of a man clutching his midriff and recoil, sickened, as his intestines spilled out over his trousers. Horrific events such as this occurred millions of times during the First World War.

Insofar as approximately 53,000 Americans were killed and 204,000 wounded in the First World War, we may assume that tens-of-thousands of American soldiers experienced horrors like the ones described above. What astonishing incongruity between the joyful, optimistic song that encouraged men to join the military--and the nauseating results of battle. How sad to realize that societies play upon the idealism and good will of young men to send them “over there,” where they may become slaughtered.