Scapegoating: religious to secular

Transferring blame to animals, inanimate objects and people

Can serve to re-establish stability when suddenly faced with increased hardship and uncertainty

Scapegoating During a Time of Crisis: A Critique of Post ‘Celtic Tiger’ Ireland

Presented (with Lee Monaghan) March 28th 2014, Conference of the School of Applied Social Studies, University College Cork.

…the process of scapegoating observed in post-crash Ireland serves a dual-purpose: on the one hand it deflects blame from the government and the relatively enduring class interests that it is prioritising; on the other hand it serves to rationalise and normalise attacks on those that it has decided must bear the costs.

Among the Targets

Individual Bankers/Politicians

Population

Public Sector Workers

Welfare Recipients

Banker Bashing“callous attitude” “disgusting”

• Impression of a few ‘rotten worms in an otherwise healthy green apple’. • Practice is individualising and de-

politicising - no accident that it is indulged by those prioritising the interests of finance capital.

• Merkel - apparently shocked by the Anglo tapes, by the ‘callous attitude toward the European taxpayer.’ Merkel simultaneously presided over the bailout of private European banks at enormous public expense.

• Gilmore - indignant at the ‘arrogance’ and ‘sheer greed’ apparent in the tapes. Yet Gilmore expressed relief that the tapes had not emerged earlier - since they might have jeopardised the Irish government’s debt-deal negotiations with European authorities (in which he helped ensure that private lenders and bondholders would be made whole at enormous public expense).

Democratising Blame‘We all partied’

‘went a bit mad with borrowing’

‘irrationality’‘cult of property’

• Brian Lenihan - ‘we all partied’ • Martin Mansergh - 'I think there's

maybe been some imprudence, with the benefit of hindsight, on the part of us all’

• Enda Kenny – ‘ we all went a bit mad with borrowing’

• David McWilliams - ‘cult of property’, ‘mass delusion’, ‘property mania’

Frauds, Skivers & Queens

‘dole cheats’ ‘lifestyle choice’

• TV3 – purporting to uncover ‘rampant’ social welfare fraud

• Government – suggesting that 600 million euro saving possible by tackling social welfare fraud (the real figure attributable to fraud is 21-27 million)

• Eamon Gilmore – claiming that cuts to welfare for young people were to ensure they are not stuck watching "flat-screen televisions" seven days a week

• Joan Burton – claiming that school leavers were choosing welfare as a “lifestyle choice” – suggesting that those refusing job or training opportunities have their payments cut

• Fine Gael TD Derek Keating – complaining that young women are ‘caring, not for one child or two, but for three and four children by multiple fathers … with the consequences picked up by the taxpayer’

• Idea of ‘lifestyle choice’ created at a time when there is a ratio of 29 jobseekers for every new job

• Issue of payments to single mothers was raised when the number of claimants had dropped from 92,326 in 2010 to 87,735 in 2012 – notwithstanding the fact that ‘60% (of claimants) have only one child, 28% have two children and the remaining circa 12% come in the category of having three or more children — with many of these families comprising women who are divorced or separated’.

• The above concerns do not arise in consequence of changed conditions, but as rationalisations for impending attacks. Much of this heightened moral indignation around welfare (and attention given by an attendant media) found expression in the lead up Social Welfare Bill of December 2012.

Public/Private Frame‘unpatriotic, privileged, inefficient’

‘taxpaying, hard-pressed, efficient’

• Process of transferring blame to public sector workers - to give licence to cuts; serving to justify a moratorium on recruitment; serving to rationalise attacks on the pay and conditions of both public and private sector workers.

• Public sector becomes a target wherever the opportunity arises. Naturally enough - it has greater union density; effective attacks on the public sector amount to effective attacks on the trade union movement.

• Also a gendered dimension here - jobs and services are disproportionately held and supported by women.

Reflections Task of the social sciences

in a time of crisis, austerity and scapegoating?

Austerity/Scapegoating - two sides to same coin

Process in Ireland - a lens on a global class project