Captured
Scapegoating, Betrayal, and the Fragility of Empires
Good morning, my Lovies—
I wrote a few weeks ago about a conversation I had with my hairstylist, a lovely Iranian woman who shared the story of her life and her children immigrating here in the early 1980s.
“I have to tell myself that my country and my culture have been captured,” she said of Iran. “They met here,” she continued, “all of them at Camp David in 1978”—referring to the leaders from Egypt and Israel, brokered by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. The U.S. had backed the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and for many, the deal was perceived as part of a larger strategy to erase Iranian culture and religion.
A few months later, the Iranian Revolution exploded, and she fled to the United States—the very country she believed had helped orchestrate her homeland’s downfall.
I haven’t stopped thinking about her use of the word “captured,” and how it carries a deep sense of rage and sorrow—not only politically, but psychologically.
As our conversation continued, she expressed her grief—still raw decades later. “The Persian Empire was so wonderful, so rich. Why would anyone erase that?”
I nodded.
“Anyway,” she added, “we all know whose fault that was. And who benefited. It’s them. Those who invaded us.”
“Oh,” I said.
And thought: Here we are.
Scapegoats and the Machinery of Hate
Authoritarian regimes don’t just manufacture pain and exile: they feed off scapegoating.
“Look there, not here,” they say, shifting bitterness about powerful systems onto specific groups of people.
Instead of confronting the truth—that empires often fall due to internal erosion, greed, and the disconnect between rulers and the ruled—they find someone to blame. A scapegoat.
René Girard, the French literary theorist and philosopher, argued that human societies are shaped by mimetic desire: we don’t simply want things—we want what others want. This shared desire breeds rivalry, envy, and escalating conflict.
When a society reaches a boiling point, when the pressure becomes unbearable, it seeks a release. Normal human behaviors. But rather than confronting the roots of the crisis (inequality, corruption, failed leadership), it selects a scapegoat: someone to blame, isolate, and expel.
The scapegoat becomes a symbolic vessel for the community’s chaos. By uniting against them, the community restores temporary peace—but at a cost: the truth is buried, and the cycle repeats.
Girard argued that many myths, religious rituals, and political movements are built on this lie; that peace comes from punishment, not from justice or—dare I add—embedded mechanisms for reparation rather than repression.
In authoritarian regimes, scapegoating is a political weapon. But the danger isn’t only top-down. Scapegoating can infect friendships, activist circles, and even families. It offers a false sense of control when the real enemy feels unreachable. But in doing so, we replicate the very logic we claim to oppose.
I’ve seen that play in my own relationships. I’ve watched decades-long friendship fall apart as the powerful rose in glee, leaving us terrified and torn apart.
The Seduction of Otherness
It’s an old story: when the house is on fire, we blame anyone but the one holding the match.
The current rise in anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ2S+, and misogynistic rhetoric is not just about controlling bodies. It’s about erasing memory—rewriting the past to maintain power in the present.
It starts with erasing the presence of those who represent the ennemy from public view, and draining a country of its culture. Sound familiar?
During our talk, my new friend quoted Omar Khayyam:
“The flower that once has blown forever dies.”
She was speaking of herself, of the people and places she loved. But I couldn’t help but think of the others erased by that same deal made by a happy few.
Can the Cycle Be Broken?
It’s a timeless question: have people ever resisted the urge to scapegoat and instead chosen repair?
We have glimpses. Post-apartheid South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Germany’s long and imperfect reckoning after WWII. Restorative justice models in Rwanda and among Indigenous communities worldwide. These efforts are flawed, yes—but intentional.
Healing begins with naming harm—always—not simplifying it or redirecting it onto others.
The effort must be constant, or our reflex to scapegoat returns.
My friend and I stopped talking as she blew out my hair—giving me the best hairdo I’ve had in years.
“Thank you,” I said. “It was wonderful to talk with you.”
We hugged. In that embrace, I felt our shared grief for homelands lost from within—though shaped by different histories.
I have to believe that each of us carries the strength to dismantle the rule of those devoured by empire—the ones who always signal the beginning of the end. Otherwise, what remains for the generations to come?
A clear choice stands before us: What kind of world might bloom from a shared refusal to scapegoat?
As the empire around us fractures and falls, will we repeat the logic of blame—or choose, instead, to grieve, to remember, and to reimagine while the world burns?
I know where I stand.