MESSAGING GUIDANCE: SCAPEGOATING FOR

POLITICAL ENDS

This guide is intended to educate leaders about what scapegoating is, and to equip them with tools for exposing and counteracting scapegoating when it occurs. For more extensive insights into LGBTQ scapegoating, see here. For more general guidance on counteracting misinformation, see here. For messaging guidance for additional scenarios, see our Scenario-Based Messaging Guidance: Full Series. 

Scapegoating is a political strategy where political actors construct a threatening “them” to blame for society’s problems—real or imagined—and a virtuous “us” in need of protection. The resulting “us vs them” frame can be used to generate public anger, outrage, or fear, and create a permission structure for violence and discriminatory actions. Political actors often make marginalized groups, such as LGBTQ, Muslim, Jewish, Black, and immigrant communities, the scapegoat. Sometimes multiple groups are scapegoated together to construct an even more threatening “them.”  

Scapegoating can be used to mobilize a political base, legitimize violence, and win elections. While leaders should always be aware of and prepared for the risk of scapegoating, it is especially important during election seasons, when tensions and stakes are high.

COMMUNICATION GOALS:

Generating public support for targeted communities; exposing scapegoating as an authoritarian threat and an intentional political strategy; de-escalating ongoing targeting; and asserting positive norms.

COMMUNICATION RISKS:

Inadvertently justifying further scapegoating or playing into the goals of scapegoating efforts by sowing further divide.

DOs:

1. Respect and connect. Acknowledge the impact that scapegoating has had on the targeted community. Always check with that community to ensure responses are respectful and address their priorities and needs. Center their voices in your response.
   

• Recognize the grievances and emotions that may be driving people to buy into the scapegoating without validating the scapegoating itself. If possible, redirect people’s emotions and grievances toward shared solutions.  

2. Highlight the political goal. Name how actors stand to gain from scapegoating, and create an opening for your audiences to think more critically about the nature of these attacks and to distinguish them from ideological or policy disagreements. Common goals of scapegoating include:

• Stigmatize and devalue: Censoring discussion or depiction of a marginalized group, or dehumanizing them, to  further stigmatize and cement their status as a scapegoat.
• Mobilize a base: Turning a scapegoated group into a common enemy to energize and organize a base.
• Win elections: Exploiting fears of the scapegoat to gain electoral support and secure victories in political contests.
• Polarize: Manufacturing a controversy to polarize society in a way that sparks division within political opposition groups and/or unifies an authoritarian movement.
• Distract: Shifting public focus away from critical issues, government failures, or unpopular goals by inflaming fear, disgust, and anger at a scapegoat.
• Normalize political violence: Targeting a scapegoat for intimidation, violence, and militia activity to desensitize the public to violence against the group specifically and society more broadly.
  

• Note that mobilizing a base and winning elections are legitimate political goals, but scapegoating is an illegitimate, dangerous, and authoritarian tactic for doing so.

3. Connect incidents of targeting to global authoritarian trends and tactics. Scapegoating vulnerable communities is one of the main tactics authoritarian actors use to chip away at the institutional, legal, and political constraints that defend our civil rights and freedoms. Connecting these incidents to global trends helps demonstrate that these attacks are neither random nor an expected backlash to rights advancements or ideological differences, but instead are part of a coordinated strategy to deepen divisions and erode democracy.
   

• Note: as always, consider your audience and whether using another country as a reference point would be compelling or alienating.
  

4. Provide additional information about the people in question beyond their group membership to acknowledge their full complexity, humanity, and individuality.

5. Build a sense of agency and reassert positive norms. Give people clear, constructive, and nonviolent ways to take action, whether through supporting impacted communities and revealing how they are being targeted, standing firmly against hatred, exposing how scapegoating violates our norms and values and doubling down on those values, voting, expressing grievances, and so on.
   

• Show how other groups have successfully pushed back on scapegoating. For instance, through challenging scapegoating narratives, building effective coalitions across lines of difference, exposing scapegoating as an affront to our values, and/or mobilizing nonviolent action in support of the targeted communities and against scapegoating and group-targeted violence more broadly. Reminding people of their agency helps inspire action, and undermine the political goals of scapegoating. For additional insights into how to make political and group-targeted violence backfire, see here.

6. Activate shared identities in service of the above goals. Shared identities can help people see themselves as part of a larger group standing against violence. This can be based on geography (e.g., “we in Durham”), a professional identity (e.g., “as veterans”), or other identities that transcend current dividing lines (e.g., “we moms/parents”). Highlight these identities—and positive actions people are taking under those identities—through messengers and language, as well as imagery in written communications.
   

• If possible, leverage these shared identities when redirecting people’s grievances and emotions toward shared solutions. For instance, “as moms, we all want as strong a community as possible. Some people are falsely claiming that [group] is to blame for any challenges we face. But we know that blaming [group] will not make the cost of living go down; it will not make our schools any better or safer. Distracting from the real problem will not make our community any stronger. That’s why we invite you to join [group/meeting] to, together, explore shared concerns and develop real solutions.”  

DON’Ts:

1. Don’t inadvertently use scapegoating linguistic devices. In addressing scapegoating, our own communications strategies should not play into or reinforce the linguistic devices of scapegoating, which can include:
   

• Labeling: Conflict peddlers seek to create an association between the group (“LGBTQ”) and malicious behaviors by applying and repeating labels (“Groomers” or “Pedophiles”). Be mindful of repeating the labels assigned to targeted groups–even to refute them–to avoid strengthening this association.
• Metaphors: Powerful rhetorical devices which support the threatening labels (e.g., “immigrant invasion,” “inundated by migrants”) and dispossess the group of its humanity in ways that attempt to suggest that violence against its members may be justified.
• Reversals: Attackers always claim to be the victim; this is important psychologically and very effective.
• Restating harmful labels, even in the service of rebuttal, can cause readers or listeners to form associations between the targeted group and what they are being labeled as, even if we are communicating that the labels are inaccurate.

2. Don’t use simplistic representations of those being targeted, instead use language that acknowledges their full complexity, individuality, and humanity.

3. Don’t make scapegoating seem more widespread or inevitable than it is, as this can lead to further normalization of scapegoating.

Example:

Below we provide a template for applying the above principles to communicating about scapegoating. Note: This example is designed to be a jumping off point. Messaging should always be tailored to specific events, contexts, and audiences.

[Appeal to your audience and affirm values and “who we are”]: As [moms, workers, veterans, faith leaders, etc.], we stand firmly in our values that all people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.

[Describe and denounce what is happening]: [Talk about the group being targeted and the political goals behind it.] For example: “Today, conflict peddlers and other opportunists are seeking to scapegoat [insert group being targeted] for all sorts of problems as a cheap way to divide our country for personal gain. We stand firmly against this type of hatred and manipulation.”

[Show the connection to global authoritarianism]: We’ve seen this before—it’s neither new nor random. Authoritarian governments around the world in Poland, Hungary, Russia are doing the same—stoking fears and painting the LGBTQ+ community as the enemy.

[Activate shared identities]: However, we in [our community] believe we are all entitled to live safe, free, and prosperous lives. We know that the challenges we face as a society can never be laid at the feet of a single group. We are not so easily fooled.

[Highlight successful responses]: [Example of ways in which groups have successfully pushed back on scapegoating.]

[Reinforce positive norms]: In [our community], we do not blame our neighbors for our shared problems or turn our backs on each other in the face of challenges. Instead, we work together, we grow together, and we solve problems together.

[Provide a clear source for updated info or action]: We invite you to join [group/meeting] to, together, explore shared concerns and develop real solutions.