Scapegoaters Scapegoated: the hidden link between Thatcher, Gaddafi and Mintoff

The death of Margaret Thatcher has provoked intense and polarized reactions. Some on the left have been openly celebrating her death, while others have argued that the nil nisi bonum rule should apply even in this case. I find it really interesting that some of the most dedicated supporters of her policies have openly allowed/encouraged her opponents to celebrate her death. An example would be the supporters who urged the BBC to play the so-called Thatcher "death song", echoed locally by Daphne Caruana Galizia. While I am not questioning the commitment of these supporters to freedom or democracy, I suspect that other factors may also have played a role in shaping their apparently quixotic stances. This has to do with what could be called, following the French anthropologist Rene Girard, the politics of scapegoating and Margaret Thatcher's own role in making such politics popular. I would argue that Thatcherism mainly evolved through a series of scapegoating rituals, starting off from the war against Argentina, the attack on the Belgrano, continuing with the needless closure of the mines and the concomitant demonisation of Arthur Scargill (and with him the entire Northern working Classes), the labelling of her own moderate mps as "Wets" and culminating in the attack on the Universities and what used to be called, before her time, the intelligentsia. 

According to Girard an interesting aspect of the political sorcery involved in such scapegoating is that the victim rapidly acquires mythic properties, eventually turning into a Monster and with time may even eventually be remembered as a God (due to the social unity and reconciliation which occurred through his sacrifice, whether voluntary or not). Thus we should not be surprised that Thatcher's own devices are now being employed against her. This is part of the process by which she is becoming a god. 

Apotheosis of Claudius:
A Previous Ruler of the British who was raised to Divine status

Meanwhile her supporters, who are precisely those persons who were most willing to support her political scapegoating of others, are naturally unable to find good reasons to oppose the process, even when turned against their political idol. Moreover they sense obscurely that the scapegoating of Thatcher's memory by her opponents will  only increase her mythic stature and with it the pervasiveness of scapegoating and the conservative politics it underwrites.

Something similar happened with the deaths of Gaddafi and Mintoff, simultaneously mourned, reviled and celebrated as heroes, criminals, demi-gods and monsters, as this article by anthropologist Mark Anspach makes clear:

LYNCHING QADDAFI

The Libyans didn’t get it.

With everyone agreeing Qaddafi was a monster, the outcry over the way he died caught the rebels by surprise. A member of the National Transitional Council shrugged off criticism. “They beat him very harshly and then they killed him,” he said. “This is a war.”¹

When videos showed rebels brutalizing their dazed and bloody prey, Libya’s new rulers bowed to demands for an investigation, but the impression remained that they didn’t really grasp what all the fuss was about.

Call it a cultural misunderstanding. Is it the Libyans’ fault if they don’t see what’s wrong with an old-fashioned lynching? Maybe we should turn the question around and ask why the images of Qaddafi’s final moments makeus so uneasy.

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