Certain People Never Learn From Their Mistakes And These Well-Known Scapegoats In History Are Proof Of It
Making mistakes is an inevitable aspect of being a flawed person. But rather than owning up to our faults and trying to improve, we have an inbuilt tendency to find fault with other people and that is not good.
Scapegoating has been one of the best strategies employed by leaders for centuries to unify people behind a false cause and consolidate power. There's no better way to divert attention from the current issues than to invoke and assign blame to a malevolent race of boogeymen from a far-off place.
The history of humanity is the history of blame, whether the goal is to give a familiar face to an abstract problem or to reduce the problem to a simple solution dwelling in a single accountable repository. Even in recent times, people would rather find scapegoats than owe up to their wrongdoings.
We have a habit of assigning blame to innocent people. Sometimes, we do it with malice in our hearts and other times, we do it just out of an evolutionary reaction to an overwhelming sense of obligation and social pressure.
Sadly, finger-pointing like this has resulted in a great deal of needless wars, murders, and genocides. Below are a few of history's most notorious scapegoats.
1. Leon Trotsky
Two possible candidates for Lenin's position as head of the Soviet Union were Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. By employing propaganda tactics to portray the former head of the Red Army as a Zionist and secret capitalist, Stalin ultimately defeated Trotsky.
He was killed in Mexico in 1925 by agents of Stalin.
Wikipedia2. Marie Antoinette
While it is true that the French Revolution aimed to topple the monarchy, a significant portion of the opposition to Louis XVI's reign was focused more on getting rid of Marie Antoinette than on political concerns. The idea that a young lady from Vienna had become the queen of their country infuriated the French.
She was charged with promiscuity and having connections with France's adversaries by the populace. They even held her responsible for the weak economy, arguing that the nation's extravagant spending was driving it toward insolvency.
Ultimately, in 1793, she was executed by hanging with her husband, the monarch.
Wikipedia3. Rudolf Hess
Hess had been the second in line for the position of Fuhrer of the Third Reich at one point, but when he made the decision to travel alone to Scotland in 1941 to negotiate peace with Britain, the British caught him and imprisoned him for the remainder of his life. Hess served as a scapegoat for both sides of the Second World War in certain respects.
He tried to broker a peace agreement, and the allies wanted him quiet. Hitler denounced him as a traitor.
Wikipedia4. The jews
Over the years, Jews have been the victims of various scapegoats. The Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Babylonians, Romans, Russians, Spanish, English, and Germans have all been persecuted and banished.
All of these crimes were motivated by the widely held notion that they were the cause of their nations' downfall.
Wikipedia5. Sacco and Vanzetti
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists, were taken into custody in Boston in the 1920s on charges of armed robbery and murder. As the trials progressed, it became increasingly evident that the attempts to imprison these two individuals were motivated by anti-Italian feelings in the community and that they were innocent.
Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis didn't acknowledge that they had been wrongly tried until 1977, fifty years following the two men's execution.
Wikipedia6. Catherine O’Leary’s Cow
When milking her cow, Catherine O'Leary allegedly knocked over a light, setting off the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Catherine O'Leary was ridiculed for her risky milking for the remainder of her life, despite the Chicago Tribune's admission that they had made up the story.
This scapegoating incident was probably intended as a jab at Irish immigrants, including O'Leary, who were thought to be reckless inebriants who were prone to incidents like this.
WikipediaThe human race has often pointed the finger of blame for their countries' problems at the enigmatic "other." International leaders never seem to learn from their mistakes, and this blame game will likely go on forever, even if history books record this conduct.
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