United by our national scapegoat

We did let our mob-like fervour get the better of us. Even as we are in a national crisis due to a virus which is unrelenting this should not cloud our judgment about a tennis player whose pursuit of x number of grand slams borders on the extreme. How many times have we applauded his feats on the tennis court and analysed his every brilliant win? Now he has proven his weakness the only remedy is to throw him out of the country. We are living up to our standard of heartlessness when our borders (and perceptions) are threatened.

A fine article indeed that gives much food for thought, and hopefully will generate more reflection on the worth of Girard's insights to help us in this day and age to interpret human life. The concept of scapegoat can be equally applied to the asylum seekers in the Melbourne Hotel, and indeed, asylum seekers in general. As in Djokovic's case, there has been wide and deep use of the situation for political gain. Each of the criteria for the scapegoat identified by Joel Hodge are evident in the asylum seeker saga. The long-stand crisis of fear of foreigners in Australia, manipulated in this case regarding who comes here and how; the misplaced accusation of "illegal" which wrongly suggests that laws have been broken; the depiction of "boat people" particularly as suspicious Muslim queue jumpers, and then the violence of years of detention, even of proven refugees.

René Girard's extensive work provides our world with valuable tools to help us understand why we do what we do. Scapegoating is an age-old human way of coping, and each of us is very capable of it. The recognition of the phenomenon is a result of the Gospel, and the fact that we can see it is testimony to a gradual leap in human consciousness.

I'm not sure Djokovic is a scapegoat so much as a victim of utilitarian punishment. As the original judge said, what more could the tennis super star have done? To compare Djokovic to the victims of serious and wrongful criminal convictions such as Lindy Chamberlain and George Pell is way off the mark with respect. Spreading anti-vax sentiment with heinous crime is off the mark and off the chart. And making Djokovic the bad guy or the fall guy is just plain wrong. The error is that of the government - and judges are the judicial arm of government. Australia is once mere seen as an international pariah, this time for our dazed and confused immigration detention policy. These days we regard slavery as always wrong and a blight on humanity. Indefinite detention of refugees in the Melbourne Park Hotel will one day be judged as no less heinous than slavery. Australia will again be found on the wrong side of human rights history. No surprise to me that Djokovic is likely to sue Australia for damages of $6 million leaving taxpayers to pick up the tab.

"Though he may be in the wrong, did we really treat Djokovic fairly?"
He was in the wrong - in SO many ways - and it was right to deport him. But he was not treated fairly, because he should not have been allowed in. Having got here he could not have been allowed to stay without giving the impression that there's one rule for us and another for them. If news reports are to be believed the problem can be sheeted home to Tennis Australia which ignored advice from health authorities and issued a self-serving exemption from the need to be vaccinated. "Did we let our mob-like fervour get the better of us?" No. Djokovic had it coming. His demonstrable contempt for the common good is on a par with Lance Armstrong and Boris Johnson. Australians were right to vent their contempt for him. But if he gets vaccinated he will be welcomed at the AO in 2023, with, in true Aussie style, no hard feelings. It's his call.

Joel he was a pawn in a game played between Tennis Australia (who lured him here on the promise of an exemption) and Immigration's Alex Hawke who is obviously pork barrelling for re election.
In an age where elections are won and lost on border control and public fear of the consequences of vaccinations and variants, Novak became the meat in the sandwich. Grist for the Liberal mill.
Many people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 will probably make antibodies against the virus for most of their lives. So suggest researchers who have identified long-lived antibody-producing cells in the bone marrow of people who have recovered from COVID-191.

The study provides evidence that immunity triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection will be extraordinarily long-lasting. Adding to the good news, “the implications are that vaccines will have the same durable effect”, says Menno van Zelm, an immunologist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. (Nature 26/5/21).
Novak has recovered from Covid twice and in theory at least have far more antibodies than those vaccinated.
So are the medical authorities applying the correct test?
Antibody testing, also known as serology testing, is usually done after full recovery from COVID-19. That could arguably be a better test. In any event since he tested negative on arrival and again in captivity what was the fuss all about? Spreading anti vaccine sentiment is just a political smokescreen and I hope Novak wins his damages claim of $6m in court.

Scapegoating and the politics of fear is all to familiar these past 20 years, with innocent men, women and children targeted for vilification, branded as "illegal" and legislated by the now Prime Minister to indefinite immigration imprisonment simply because their refugee journey crossing our (man drawn) border was by boat.

I couldn't believe the stupidity of detaining a tall poppy, the male tennis legend, in the same lock up as 32 men, 25 of whom are refugees fully adjudicated as meeting the Refugee Convention criteria. The remaining 7, also brought to Australia from offshore hell holes for medical treatment, certainly have compassionate and compelling circumstances which would most likely make a Humanitarian visa appropriate. But alas, the legislation manipulated (ask former Senator Ricky Muir) through Parliament in December 2014 are a (man made) barrier to releasing them, and permanent residence.

It grieves me that flakey media hype mirrors and fosters populist (mob) public opinion, with its pictures and thousands of words about one sportsman and pays no , or only passing attention, to the lives of 32 damaged and broken victims in the same "alternative place of detention" - the human collateral damage of evil policies and practices which shame us all.
Joel, could you tell us why Australians allegedly support the scapegoating of asylum seekers who came by boat, to the point of driving some to suicide, to insanity and irrecoverable ill health, and corrupting their minders to maintain inhumane imprisonment which breaches decency and law. Refugees like the 25 in the Park Hotel Prison cannot be deported, like Djokovic. Will Australia scapegoat them indefinitely?
For God's sake, we have caught glimpses on TV of Mehdi and Adnan and others... we know of their suffering from their own lips and we know there are humane solutions promoted by advocates.How do we make freedom happen for them? And end this travesty of justice. And create a kinder Australia.

I really appreciate this article as I couldn’t understand why so many Australians were pleased when Djokovic was deported. To me the actions taken by Alex Hawke appeared grossly out of proportion, especially when some Australian official had granted Djokovic an apparent legal visa. I hardly ever follow social media so was only looking at things logically.

Execution never fully realises intention! It's the kind of world/cosmos we live in. With every deficit we rush to measure the unmeasurable, - the chaotic which denotes what happens entropically before we 'gifted' humans can anticipate it. That said, there have always been constructive novelties from the mass of 'negatives' which have brought us to where we are now. I found reading Andrew Hamilton's piece on Rutilio Grande in this issue of Eureka Street worthwhile.

Djokovic, like every other overseas player, knew the requirements for entering Australia months before the Australian Open was due to be played. He made two false statements (we used to call these lies) on his application for exemption - one concerning the date of his alleged infection with Covid (clearly not severe enough to stop him taking part in a number of public events) and the other claiming not to have travelled internationally in the month prior to his proposed entry into Australia. When found out in this deception, he pleaded innocence and implied that Tennis Australia (TA) advised him on filling in the forms (that was probably true). Effectively, TA wanted him here as a money generating drawcard and was prepared along with Djokovic to thumb noses at Australian law. We cannot afford in this lethal pandemic to allow any sentiment that might induce people to refuse vaccination. The real mistake here is that we haven't deported Tiley back to South Africa where he can thumb his nose at South Africa's laws all day long if he thinks he can make a buck out of it. And please let's stop trying to equate this pathetic side issue over what is a mere game with the plight of refugees - even though there are also amongst them those, who like Djokovic and TA have sought to exploit or thumb their noses at Australian law to their own advantage. And we are so terrible as a people that in spite of this disrespect for law we allow these con men access to our legal system to plead their cases and we pay for that!!! And some think Djokovic is a joke!!!

Thanks for your reflection, Joel. It was easy to scapegoat Djokovic and use him as a political football.
"children overboard" - again! - a new Liberal doctrine.

My simple response to this saga is that Novak was treated unfairly, but he wasn't treated unfairly, He was scapegoated,but he wasn't scapegoated, It's all just politics, but everything is about politics (Novak's politics VS Aust govt politics).
Novak could simply have gotten vaccinated - but he didn't need to be vaccinated (having been infected by Covid)
So there you go! My simple opinion.

Girard is a French intellectual. Perhaps, as an Anglo-Saxon not of the academic persuasion, I do not need his level of haute critique to see mob psychology and scapegoating at work. A very intelligent former high level employee of Immigration, when interviewd on the Today show, said, after considering all the facts, he would have let Novak stay. The Court made the correct decision. Australia is still one of the freest nations on earth and I love it, but I am becoming increasingly concerned at our political Sawdust Caesars whittling away these freedoms. We seem to have developed an interlocking tribe of moral dwarves who now dominate our politics, playing to the lowest level of populism. Sir Robert Menzies was never like this. When he lost the referendum - he actually held one - to ban the Communist Party, that was it. He accepted the decision. We are beginning to look like a nation of Les Patersons. I weep. BTW, I am triple vaccinated and think most anti-vaxxers daft. However, I thought we admired colourful eccentrics. We don't? OK, I now know. Dull, creeping conformity is the new radical. I weep again. Poor fella my country indeed.

Hard to respect the decision when the reasoning is so illogical. Bit of a stretch to claim that such an unloved elite athlete would sway public opinion about health policy. Wouldn't it be refreshing to find a leader with the courage to make swift, reasonable decisions even when unpopular. Sadly Morrison appears to believe in nothing beyond what market research says will buy votes. I'm ready to give my vote to anyone who shows some conviction, even if I don't agree with them. You can hear the advisers "People don't like Novax, we can score a few votes here by giving them a shot of schadenfreude!" If Girard and the government are right, and we get sucked into uniting (joining the lynch mob) against the common enemy (scapegoat), feeling such a buzz in our moral indignation as we cast him into the wilderness that we are inspired to vote Coalition (nice one ScoMo!), then perhaps we really do get the leaders we deserve.

I was brought up to believe that when one makes a contract, it is morally binding that it be kept, unless that contract is made with deception. However, for years our immigration people have not ascribed this attribute to people entering Australia, they have given people a visa and when the person arrives they have said " nah - we don't like you, our profiling says that you are not going to obey the law and sent them back. No doubt they have protected us from some miscreants, but there have also been innocent people put to needless inconvenience and cost because they seem to fit some unsatisfactory profile.

Djokovic's case is another case of this. Australia has the right to reject a persons entry, but the time to do that is when a person is allocated a visa.

In this case there was wrong on both sides. The Australian system of approval was faulty and Djokovic gave false information. I wouldn't be so concerned if the minister's reasoning had been the provision of false information by Djokovic but surely his attitude to vaccination was well known when he was first considered for a visa, and, as the court said he had every reason to believe that he had been granted entry to Australia.

Given the wrong on both sides the ministers best attitude would have been to explain the faults of both, make changes to the Australian system, and allow Djokovic to stay and play while making it clear to the world that the system has been changed.

Sometimes making the right decision will cause the one affected by that decision to be scapegoated in the public eye. Of itself that risk should not stop the decision maker making the right decision. What if Minister Hawkes had caved into the tennis lobby and allowed Djokovic to stay and play tennis, would he then have been pillaried for ignoring both the health risks and the ‘will of the people’?

Whether by error or intent Djokovic had been discovered in breach of visa requirements that apply to everyone else. It is the Minister’s responsibility at law to enforce those requirements, especially when the public good is potentially threatened by waiving those requirements.

So the right decision is seen to create a scapegoat.

In the quite different case of incarcerated refugees and asylum seekers a very wrong decision, enforced over up to 9 years in some cases, has also created scapegoats, not of a privileged millionaire supported by loud voices, wealth and power, but of the poorest and voiceless- woefully, illegally, harmfully and most shamefully.

By the way, we know that our refugees are scapegoats for our nation fear of those who are different, as Hodge and others of his respondents have noted; but for whom or what is Djokovic a scapegoat?

Joel, Thanks for introducing Girard, but your application may not be apposite. Where is the dyadic pattern? What about triangulation? And mediation, both internal and external? What of a crisis?

Djokovic is a scapegoat, but how, in terms proportionate to Christ's (whom Girard cites) does your example compare? Where indeed are the violence and apocalyptic vision in Djokovic's mean treatment?

Acknowledging Morrison's political gain, how precisely is Djokovic a victim? Where, precisely, is the 'mimetic pattern' or ritual in this that features so prominently in Girard's theorising and James Alison's research? What is the 'myth' being created?

Scapegoating is rampant and essential to any Jesuit deconstruction of injustice and the insidious ways in which it insinuates itself into our unseen but deeply collaborative behaviours and practices. Among the many passionate responses that you have earned, Noel McMaster's reference to Andy's article in this edition perfectly reflects the argument you make. Two others point to asylum-seekers, who, unlike Djokovic, have little or no agency, except our humanity, to rely upon for respite and who are victims of a violence far more brutal than his.

Another essay from you, please, on breaking the cycle of violence embedded deeply in redemptive theology. Thanks,

And the depressing (if not distressing) thing about this creation and demonising of people into scapegoats for naked political self-aggrandisement , is that it is a dark art form perfected enthusiastically by a Prime Minister who flaunts his Christian faith (albeit very superficially) more than most. The hypocrisy is not lost on my atheist friends and is further proof to them that we Christians are just a bunch of hypocrites.

Being a disciple of Jesus is a little more than waving one's arms around on Sunday morning in church. It is supposed to manifest in who we are and in the way we live out our everyday lives and vocations, including being the PM. But maybe Matt 25:31ff and Luke 10:25ff have been air-brushed out of Scott Morrison's Bible.

“Girard, who is a former Stanford professor and member of the Académie française, provides four markers or criteria that manifest when a scapegoating occurs “… etc.

Whichever way you look at it, Djokevik signed a false statement, then tried to pin responsibility on some flunkey. If the Government let him get away with that, it would open the biggest can of legal worms in all history.
Hawke made the right call. So I suggest a fifth bullet point for Girard’s list: Some goats get what they deserve.

‘Baying for blood’ is another way of describing mob psychology. It may have been, since the Fall, that not only have some of the genes of man’s best friend mutated (or degenerated) to enable this behavioural characteristic to occur, but some of man’s genes may also have mutated (or degenerated) to keep company with those of his best friend.

Nevertheless, ‘scapegoatism’, ‘moral outrage’ or whatever else you want to call the sharing of a rage by many being impelled by anger, it can’t be from the Holy Spirit --- unless the angry upwelling is to drive moneychangers out of the temple.

The paradox is that there must be a licit place for the emotion of rage, by virtue of imitation of Christ, who, unlike Moses, did not club anyone with the jawbone of an ass, but only for a situation which fundamentally resembles the situation of the moneychangers. But it is only the coolness of licit reasoning, probably built over many episodes of observation and discernment, that can determine if a situation resembles in its fundamentals that of the moneychangers and when the rage may be released in compliance with subsidiarity.

There is an aspect of 'scapegoating' that seems, to me, to have been largely ignored in this discussion. Scapegoating, as I understand it, is not just about blaming, condemning, or even 'demonising', but rather it's about shifting the blame, responsibility, and consequential punishment from oneself to someone (or something) else/other. So in the case of Djokovic, it makes no sense to suggest that he has been 'scapegoated' for something for which he might himself have been responsible. If he was indeed 'scapegoated', then he was being blamed, condemned and 'demonised for something that someone else did. And this where I think Peter Schulz focuses on the real matter of concern. There is little doubt in my mind that, whatever Djokovic did or failed to do, the Commonwealth government either deliberately, or more probably through incompetence, really stuffed up the decision-making around his entry, and that Morrison, eager to shift the blame from his own area, tried initially to scapegoat the Victorian government, and then when caught out, shifted to scapegoating someone who was already unpopular with at least part of the population. If this was the only example of Morrison and his Ministers trying to shift blame, then it might not be all that significant, but, as Peter says, it's yet another example of a dark art form perfected enthusiastically by [the] Prime Minister' for blatant 'political self-aggrandisement'.