Thursday, October 2, 2008

Scapegoating

If you unfairly blame an unpopular person or group of people for a problem, then you are scapegoating. This is a kind of fallacy of appeal to emotions.

Example:

Augurs were official diviners of ancient Rome. During the pre-Christian period, when Christians were unpopular, an augur would make a prediction for the emperor about, say, whether a military attack would have a successful outcome. If the prediction failed to come true, the augur would not admit failure but instead would blame nearby Christians for their evil influence on his divining powers. The elimination of these Christians, the augur would claim, could restore his divining powers and help the emperor. By using this reasoning tactic, the augur was scapegoating the Christians.

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