THE GUILTY PROPHET: MILOSEVIC AS PERSECUTOR AND SCAPEGOAT

            From the beginning of human history, sacrifice has been the most powerful means of resolving social conflict.  The roots of sacrificial ritual are deeply imbedded within the concept of creation and in passing “from abstraction to abstraction, it has become one of the fundamental themes of divine legend.” [1]   Though sacrifice itself is utterly complex and diverse in its form, as clearly articulated by Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, there exists “beneath the diverse forms it takes” a unity in its procedure and cultural function. [2]   This procedure consists “in establishing a means of communication between the sacred and the profane worlds through the mediation of a victim, that is, of a thing that in the course of the ceremony is destroyed.” [3]   Through the mode of complete annihilation, the victim, or scapegoat, becomes a means of achieving a desired end for the sacrificer, whether that is an individual or an entire community.  Beneath this self-verifying ritual activity is an agreed upon method of solving tension within a community.  As Gil Bailie candidly states in his book Violence Unveiled, our history “is the relentless chronicle of violence that it is because when cultures fall apart they fall into violence, and when they revive themselves they do so violently.” [4]  

However primitive it's origins, the sacrificial system has survived the test of time and thrives within modern day context.  The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate how this system functions within present day society masked by the contemporary face of myth at its highest level of abstraction.  In doing so it is first necessary to investigate the structure of sacrificial system, followed by a synthetic analysis of the theory within modern context.  To begin this investigation, the logical first objective is to seek a clear structural outline of the sacrificial mechanism, otherwise known as the scapegoat mechanism.  In accomplishing this objective, Rene Girard’s book The Scapegoat will be the authority.

Rene Girard: The Scapegoat Mechanism

Before deconstructing Girard’s scapegoat mechanism, one must first establish what exactly is meant by the term scapegoat and in doing so it seems necessary to utilize the Oxford English Dictionary as the starting point.  The OED states that the term scapegoat was first invented by Tindale in 1530 to convey what he thought to be the literal meaning of a Hebrew word that appears in Lev. xvi. 8,10,26. [5]   The word scapegoat in this context functioned as a means of describing a victim of sacrifice.  Through time, the word has also come to refer to “one who is blamed or punished for the sins of others,” [6] in essence a victim of displaced aggression.  Though the word itself contains its origins within a biblical context, the idea of the scapegoat predates the Judeo-Christian tradition having its foundations in the earliest sacrificial systems. 

Girard begins his investigation by deconstructing persecution texts intrinsic to common mythology, since it is through such narratives that the sacrificial system has been upheld since the beginning of human culture.  Throughout human history, myth has functioned as a paradigm of which societies are based upon.  It “establishes a truth that is absolute.” [7]   In other words, myth is sacred reality. [8]   Girard, in his quest to truly understand the meaning behind mythological narratives, redefines myth through a set of stereotypes.  These stereotypes reveal that the actual content of the story is not the key to understanding its truth.  In reality, myth can convey the exact opposite of what the subject matter intends to give to its audience.  The starting point of his methodology is concrete: texts of persecution are written from the standpoint of the persecutors and therefore the hermeneutic of suspicion must be applied.  Inherent in the very nature of myth is deception.  Persecution myths exist to justify and glorify the acts of the persecutor, and by doing so conceal the fact that there are real victims at the root of the story.  According to Girard this perspective “is inevitably deceptive since the persecutors are convinced that their violence is justified; they consider themselves judges, and therefore they must have guilty victims, yet their perspective is to some degree reliable, for the certainty of being right encourages them to hide nothing of their massacres.” [9]   In his effort to distinguish the credible elements of mythology from the misleading ones, Girard highlights three stereotypes common to most persecution myths.

            It is important to note that when Girard speaks of persecutions, he is specifically referring to collective persecutions, or, in other words, “acts of violence committed directly by a mob of murderers.” [10]   Within this context he concludes, as the first stereotype of persecution, that circumstances of such tyranny arise out of either an internal or external social crisis situation. [11]   Conflict within a group has the effect of weakening social norms, thereby creating a favorable situation for mob formation. [12]   From this assertion, one can deduce that with the loss of social order comes the innate desire to immediately rebuild some sense of identity and social solidarity which produces, what one might refer to, mob mentality, or, in the modern political context, extreme nationalism.  With this stated, Girard’s second conclusion regarding stereotypical characteristics of persecution seems plausible.  Once the mob is mobilized it seeks an outlet to issue blame, rather than investigating the “natural causes” of the situation. [13]   It identifies an “enemy” and convinces itself that that particular group or individual “is extremely harmful to the whole of society.” [14]   In other words, the crowd “looks for an accessible cause that will appease its appetite for violence” by singling out a certain group or individual and accusing them of injuring society. [15]   Which leads us into Girard’s third stereotype: the marks of a victim.

            Individuals or groups that are universally the most susceptible victims of persecution are those who dwell on the margins of society.  Ethnic and religious minorities are often victimized, as well as those who are considered to host any sort of abnormality whether they are of a physical nature or not. [16]   In other words, the stereotypical victim of mythology is given the role of the outsider.  Girard clarifies this by using the mythological example of Oedipus.  At first glance, Oedipus would not seem to be what you might call your typical victim because of his regal status.  However, as Girard states, the “odds of a violent death at the hands of a frenzied crowd are statistically greater for the privileged than for any other category.” [17]   History is cluttered with such examples, the most obvious and commonly referred to example being the French Revolution.  Along with embodying the status of the marginalized insider, Oedipus represents the archetypal outsider.  He is portrayed as both a foreigner and a newcomer to society and bears a physical deformity in the form of a limp.  After being blamed with causing the Plague of Thebes, he marginalizes himself in his exile to a greater extent by blinding himself and living the life of a beggar.  In keeping with Girard’s analysis, it is no wonder that behind this myth lies the death of Oedipus by collective murder.  He represents the perfect scapegoat, the perfect means to achieving a calculated end.  Oedipus, as do all scapegoats, embodies the disease as well as the cure.  As a scapegoat he is the agent of societal misfortune as well as the instrument capable of deliquescing it.

            For Rene Girard, and subsequently for Gil Bailie, what lies at the heart of the scapegoat mechanism is mimetic desire.  Bailie, in his interpretation of Girard, uses this term as a substitute for the emotions and desires embodied in such terms as “adulation, envy, resentment” and rivalry. [18]   By scapegoating someone or some group this desire is satisfied by destroying the object of mimesis, and the only effective formula for doing so is: unanimity minus one.  The unanimous mob encircles the lonely victim, and for this mechanism to function in a successful manner, society has to have complete faith in the sacrificial myth, which functions to justify the violent act committed.  The fundamental question is whether or not myth still holds the same role, as a tool to camouflage ritual violence, within modern society.  In entertaining such a question we have finally arrived at the core of Girard and Bailie’s argument. It is their conviction that the sacrificial mechanism can and does no longer function in modern day society, because culture, with the influence of Christianity, has discredited primitive myth by deconstructing it and revealing the faces of the victims behind it.

            The New Testament, which is centered on the crucifixion, reveals the scapegoat mechanism not from the perspective of the persecutors, but from the perspective of the victim.  This is the fundamental reason why both Girard and Bailie feel that the Gospels have destroyed the credibility of myth, and in consequence the ability for the scapegoat mechanism to function as a medium for ultimately reconciling social tension.  The credibility of their convictions regarding the Bible and the crucial role it has played in rendering the sacrificial system dysfunctional is of little concern to us here.  What is of most concern to us is whether or not their assertion, that the scapegoat mechanism no longer functions properly within modern day context, is correct and how it has functioned in modern context with regards to the Kosovo crisis.

The Crisis in Kosovo

On April 12, 1999 an article by Elie Wiesel, the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner, entitled “The Question of Genocide” was printed in Newsweek.  The opening paragraph of the article reads:

PRESIDENT SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC IS A CRIMINAL.  Those who still believe that there are nonviolent ways to stop his inhuman actions against Albanians are naïve.  They forget the nature of the century we live in. [19]

Slobodan Milosevic, the first head of state ever to be indicted for war crimes, is on trial at the International Court of Justice in The Hague facing 66 charges “including crimes against humanity and genocide.” [20]   Though the charges he faces relate to the atrocities he carried out in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo between the years 1991 and 1999, we will specifically focus on the Kosovo situation, and how within its context the sacrificial system served its purpose by mobilizing the “mob” against a common scapegoat, the ethnic Albanians, and creating Serbian nationalism.

            With the fall of the USSR most of the Eastern European Communist governments began to collapse, which weakened “the glue that had held together the diverse, mutually antagonistic ethnic groups of the former Soviet bloc.” [21]   The former Yugoslavia, being a multinational state, subsisted on a very fragile political balance that could easily be upset at any point in time. [22]   The country’s two largest national groups were the Croats and the Serbs.  Though no group, with the exception of the Slovenes, lived within a clearly marked ethnic territory, the different “ethnic nations” of Yugoslavia felt that their conceived borders were constantly being threatened by one ethnic nation or another. [23]   Marshal Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslavia’s communist ruler from 1945 until his death in 1980, was aware of the threat posed by individual ethnic nationalism and made every attempt to suppress it in his efforts to uphold the “global communist ideal”. [24]   For this reason Tito purposely divided Serbia, the country’s largest republic, into two provinces: Kosovo to the south and Vojvodina in the north.  The strategy behind Tito’s move is clear.  In dividing the Serbian republic into two autonomous provinces, Serbia could no longer, according to the 1974 constitution, be considered a “sovereign” negotiating party like the other republics.  This proved to be incredibly frustrating for the Serbs, because they felt that this “undermined Serbia’s territorial integrity.” [25]   By splitting their republic into the two provinces, Tito had caused them to lose their majority status in Kosovo to the ethnic Albanians who made up approximately 74 percent of the population, thereby inhibiting them from assuming any of the key positions of power in Kosovo’s ministry. [26]   In essence, Serbian authority in Yugoslavia was greatly diluted. [27]  

            Tito’s plan, however, backfired.  His efforts to curb the threat of Serbian nationalism only caused it to express itself in a more explosive manner and strengthen the Serbian desire to recreate a unified Serbia.  After Tito’s death in 1980 the power struggle escalated with the demise of the communist government.  The Serbian nationalist movement began to compile a list of grievances against the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo, subsequently creating their own mythological reality rather than seeking out the natural causes of Serbian discontent.  They accused the ethnic Albanians of coordinating various criminal acts against them such as “rape, murder, theft, desecration of Serbian graves,” [28] and above all “the forced expulsion of Serbs from Kosovo.” [29]   The structural similarities between this incident and Girard’s definition of the stereotypical persecution myth are becoming more obvious.   This is an archetypal example of how “mimetic passions” inspire the scapegoat mechanism.  By the end of the 1980’s a powerful “antidemocratic coalition was firmly in control of Serbia’s political scene” [30] , and at the forefront of this coalition stood Slobodan Milosevic.

            Milosevic used the resurgent sentiment of fear and nationalism that dwelled amongst the Serbian community to fuel his political career.  He “shaped the issues of alleged Albanian mistreatment of Serbs and a widespread sense of economic deprivation into concrete political goals.” [31]   Through the use of widespread media propaganda, the Serbian front united under the perception that their nation was being severely threatened and that the only way paralyzing such a threat was to reassert Serbian authority in Kosovo.  Milosevic, making the switch from communist to nationalist, encouraged Serbian uprisings and demonstrations. On April 24, 1987, Milosevic addressed a crowd of angry Serbs in Kosovo protesting their mistreatment by the ethnic Albanians.  In his address he managed to rally the mob by stating:

You should stay here.  This is your land.  These are your houses.  Your meadows and gardens.  Your memories.  You shouldn’t abandon your land just because it’s difficult to live, because you are pressured by injustice and degradations.  It was never part of the Serbian and Montenegrin character to give up in the face of obstacles, to demobilize when it’s time to fight . . . You should stay here for the sake of your ancestors and descendents.  Otherwise your ancestors would be defiled and descendants disappointed.  But I don’t suggest you stay, endure, and tolerate a situation you’re not satisfied with.  On the contrary, you should change it with the rest of the progressive people here, in Serbia and Yugoslavia. [32]

Throughout the next two years, “massive gatherings were held in Yugoslavia called the ‘Rallies of Truth’ in which Milosevic invoked Serb glory and demanded constitutional changes to revoke Kosovo’s autonomy.” [33]   On May 8, 1989 Milosevic was elected president of Serbia, and effectively drove out the constitutionally elected leaders of Vojvodina and Kosovo. 

            Over the next few years Kosovo became a police state run by the Serbian militia and controlled by Milosevic’s regime in Belgrade [34] .  Ethnic Albanians protested constitutional changes and new laws that severely and purposely discriminated against them and jeopardized their rights.  In an attempt to reassert their autonomy, on July 2, 1990, “ethnic Albanian members of Kosovo’s politically gutted assembly declared Kosovo’s independence,” [35] and two months later reconvened in secret and adopted a new constitution.  Predictably, these efforts lay unrecognized by the Yugoslav government who proceeded to ratify the Serb constitution by formally revoking the autonomous status of Kosovo and Vojvodina.  By doing so Serbia acquired two more seats within the eight-member Yugoslav presidency. [36]

            Living under Serb military presence in Kosovo, “ethnic Albanians were arrested, detained, prosecuted, and imprisoned solely on the basis of their ethnicity, political beliefs, or membership in organizations or institutions that were banned or looked upon with disfavor by the Serbian government.” [37]   The militia justified such human rights abuses by asserting a need to fight Albanian secessionism. [38]   Though the West encouraged ethnic Albanians to pursue a non-violent means of protest against the injustice, by early 1996 the ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo was finally fed up.  By this point the fighting in Bosnia had stopped, and the Kosovar Albanians were awaiting international aid.  They were very aware of the fact that the “international community responded to the facts on the ground rather than high-minded principles of nonviolence-not the force of argument but the argument of force.” [39]   With this in mind, guerilla forces of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) began coordinating offenses against the Serbian police to stimulate them to retaliate in such a manner that would intensify the human rights abuses against Kosovar Albanians thereby catching the eye of the international community.

            Under the precedent that they were fighting a war against terrorism, Milosevic and his cohorts, escalated the abuse denying all charges of human rights violations.  Ethnic Albanians were subject to random beatings, and other acts of arbitrary violence.  After the Serbian police killed twenty-four women and children during an ambush on KLA strongholds in Drenica in 1998, the internal conflict escalated into a full-blown armed conflict. [40]    By this point, Milosevic had already won the presidency of Yugoslavia, and was the mastermind behind all government action.  His methods of indiscriminate violence developed into the systematic expulsion of approximately 860,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo in a matter of 12 weeks. [41]   During Milosevic’s “ethnic cleansing” campaign Kosovar Albanian civilians were stripped of all their documents of identification and subject to rape, torture, and in many cases execution. [42]

            The conclusions that can be drawn from this horrific event, in regards to Girard and Bailie’s structural outline of the scapegoat mechanism, are evident.  If one were to analyze the situation solely within the framework of Serbian nationalism, one could justifiably conclude that Milosevic was successful in scapegoating the ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo.  In order to clarify this assertion its necessary to look at the reasons why Milosevic’s campaign was successful in this context.

            If one refers back to the analysis on Girard’s scapegoat mechanism, one will recall that Girard begins his investigation into the scapegoat mechanism by deconstructing persecution texts intrinsic to common mythology.  In doing so he concludes that the key factor in upholding the functionality of the scapegoat mechanism in society is the unanimous belief in the justification of the sacrificial myth portrayed in such narratives.  Included within this analysis, he identifies three stereotypes of persecution stories.  When applied to the account in Kosovo, one will find that all three of the stereotypes structurally fit within the Kosovo context. 

Girard’s first stereotype, persecution myths arise out of situations of social crisis, easily fits within the Kosovo model.  The circumstances that produced the conflict in Kosovo, as outlined above, were caused by an internal crisis that took shape as a complete political meltdown.  In effect, social norms were drastically weakened resulting in a mimetic power struggle between two ethnic nations, the stronger of which being the Serbs.  Essentially what arose out of the initial social crisis was a fierce sentiment of Serbian nationalism and solidarity.  This sentiment grew in response to Serbia’s loss of authority within the region and the threat that they felt the ethnic Albanians posed on their territorial integrity.  In other words, the ethnic Albanians circumstantially became the perfect scapegoat to satisfy the Serbian desire to reunite their nation.  Once the ethnic Albanians were eliminated, their goal could finally be realized. 

Similar to the situation of Oedipus, and parallel to Girard’s second stereotype, the ethnic Albanians assumed the role of the disease as well as the cure in the Serbian myth.  Instead of seeking out the real causes behind the conflict, the Serbs singled out the ethnic Albanians as the ultimate source of their discontent and accused of them of horrific criminal acts in order to politically and morally justify their displaced aggression.  Furthermore, the ethnic Albanians bore the universal mark of the victim.  Though they were the majority ethnic population in Kosovo, within in the region of greater Yugoslavia their population and overall might was dwarfed by that of the Serbs.         

            Some might call into question the role that the KLA played in egging on the armed conflict, and how it fits into the scapegoat model just described.  How can the ethnic Albanian population truly be classified as scapegoats if they initiated the fighting?  Essentially, the ethnic Albanian population had already been victimized by the time the KLA rebel forces decided to take action.  They were very aware of the actuality of their grim future and wanted the attention of the international community.  Furthermore, the KLA made up a very small part of the entire population scapegoated, the majority was composed of innocent civilians.

            Under the leadership of Milosevic, Serb nationalists realized their goal of basically getting rid of an entire population of people.  The reason why they were so successful in Kosovo, as well as in Bosnia and Croatia, was that at a certain level of abstraction they achieved the formula: unanimity minus one.  Milosevic and his regime successfully transformed reality into a “daily fabrication based on mutual name-calling and consciously crafted lies.” [43]   In other words, reality metamorphosed into a cogent myth that was upheld by the mob’s prevailing faith in Serb nationalism.

            Why Milosevic was ultimately unsuccessful in achieving his desired goal of a “greater Serbia” was that at the largest level of abstraction the scapegoat mechanism he employed failed?  Outside of Serb nationalism, the world was horrified with his actions and utterly unconvinced of his cause. In effect, Milosevic’s failure would seem to prove Girard and Bailie’s point, of the inability for the scapegoat mechanism to function within modern society, exactly.  Are Girard and Bailie correct in their assertion that the common moral principle has disabled the sacrificial system, or does the sacrificial system still exist just masked under new form?

Mythology in the Modern Context: The Scapegoat Mechanism at its Highest Level of Abstraction

In entertaining the question of whether or not the world today still upholds the sacrificial system, one has to examine myth at its highest level abstraction. Because the world has gotten exponentially smaller through time with the advent of modern conveniences such as televisions, airplanes and Internet, myth has evolved out of its primitive form and taken new shape within the modern context. As illustrated in Milosevic’s failure, the only way for the sacrificial system to function within society today is by achieving worldwide support for a common cause.  Myth has been redefined as a global paradigm of sacred reality.  It is a common principle that is endorsed and perpetuated by the world community as a whole.   Nothing better embodies this abstract concept than the notion of international justice. 

Though one could argue that the modern idea of international justice dates back to 1794 with the establishment of the Jay treaty between the United States and Britain, [44] the term itself is still relatively young since it was not until the late 1800’s early 1900’s, after the first International Conventions regarding international law of war and the establishment of a world court (Geneva Conventions of 1864 and 1906 and Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907) took place, that the first series of international treaties formulating the concept of international law and justice were contrived.   The creation of a world court as the centering place of international justice was first outlined by article 14 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, but didn’t really take shape until after World War II with the establishment of the United Nations. [45] The International Court of Justice, in its preliminary forms known as the Permanent Court of International Justice, “represented the culmination of a long development of methods for the pacific settlement of international disputes.” [46]   The primary purpose of the International Court of Justice “is to pass judgment upon disputes between sovereign states” [47] in accordance with agreed upon international law. 

 It is important to note that international law and justice are nothing more than theories upheld and developed by a common moral principle and faith sustained by the world community.  In other words, there is no concrete way of enforcing international law.  Historically, enforcement of the Court’s decisions have been made possible because they have been “viewed as legitimate by the international community.” [48]   What this reveals is that theoretically, for international law to be enforced the formula for the scapegoat mechanism would have to be achieved: unanimity minus one.  One can deduce from this that structurally speaking, the system of international justice parallels to Girard’s model of the sacrificial system at its highest degree of abstraction.  Essentially, international justice is the quintessence of myth in its modern context.  It justifies violence in the name of morality.

The understanding of this theory, and its functionality within the modern system, requires the perfect example and a degree of idealism in the most philosophic sense of the word.  In reviewing the brief history of International tribunals, one can not help but look to the Nuremberg Trials as the precedent.  The Nuremberg trials of 1945-1946, are an exemplary case because they signify the first time in world history that war criminals were brought to justice before an international court to be tried and indicted for violation of international law and crimes against humanity.  Essentially this is one of the first recognizable instances of world collaboration against an identified common enemy, and in this case the identified enemy was the former leaders of Nazi Germany.  In all, 24 nations came together and signed an agreement (The London Agreement of August 8, 1945) giving authority to the International Military Tribunal to “find any individual guilty of the commission of war crimes and to declare any group or organization criminal in character.” [49]     On October 1, 1946, after 216 court sessions the court acquitted 3 of the 22 defendants, sentenced four to terms of imprisonment ranging from 10 to 20 years, sentenced three to life in prison, and sentenced twelve to death by hanging. [50]  

The Nuremberg trials represent a perfect example how “vestiges of ritual sacrifice survive in even the most ideal criminal justice systems.” [51]   The word justice, as defined within the context of our legal system, implies an infliction of punishment on an identified subject in order to protect the “greater good” of society.  Such an interpretation of justice suggests that society has never really moved beyond the system of ritual sacrifice, it has simply changed the face of the victim from innocent to guilty.  Morally, such a myth is less difficult to subscribe to.  After the Holocaust virtually the entire world was in agreement that Hitler needed pay for his horrific actions against humanity, but unfortunately he never made it to the stand.  If he had, he would have been the quintessencial scapegoat of the 20^th century. 

If Hitler had been tried at Nuremberg, what would his sacrifice ultimately have achieved?  Idealistically and theoretically it would have completely cured the world of its tensions, at least temporarily, and provided an absolute sentiment of worldwide social solidarity.  Realistically, its hard to say what the residual effects would have been, because up until now, there has been no other circumstance to collate these assumptions with.  With this said, the inquiry has finally arrived at its present context: the international tribunal of Slobodan Milosevic.

Slobodan Milosevic: The Guilty Prophet

            Before entering into an investigation of Milosevic’s trial, first it is necessary to take a deeper look into the role of the guilty victim, and how the guilty victim functions as a scapegoat.  Accomplishing this necessitates finding a paragon to illustrate the function clearly. The model of reference that will be utilized here to better interpret this idea will be the biblical story of Susanna found in the book of Daniel, as outlined by Gil Bailie.  The Susanna story is one that completely illustrates how the scapegoat mechanism can be fueled by mimetic desires and passions.  It is a tale of two elders, who become slaves of their envy.  According to Bailie, the tale begins by describing the object of the elders’ envy, the wealthy and greatly respected Joakim and his beautiful wife Susanna. [52]   Though the elders themselves are prominent members of the community, they are plainly Joakim’s social inferiors. [53]   Driven by their jealously of Joakim, they each come to desire his beautiful wife Susanna.  This is where, according to Bailie, the notion of mimetic rivalry comes into to the tale.  Each elder “hides his desire from the other because he knows that, were he to flaunt it, it would only enflame the more his rival’s desire, thus making him into an even more formidable rival.” [54]   In resolving this tension between them, the scapegoat mechanism is utilized. 

The elders decide for the sake of their relationship they shall become, as Bailie puts it, co-conspirators and destroy the object of their mimetic desire, Susanna.  They accomplish this objective by raping her and then “accusing her of adultery, for which the penalty is death.” [55]   Up until this point, the story seems to be an ideal model of Girard’s scapegoat mechanism: the persecutors sacrifice the innocent victim for the sake of social solidarity, or in this case the solidarity of friendship.  However, as the nature of the Bible suggests, the story does not end in such a manner; the sacrifice of Susanna is never actualized.  As the crowd mobilizes around Susanna, while the elders formally accuse her, Daniel, guided by the “Holy Spirit” within shouts: “Are you so stupid, sons of Israel, as to condemn a daughter of Israel unheard, and without troubling to find out the truth?  Go back to the scene of the trial: these men have given false evidence against her.” [56]   With this said, Daniel assumes the role of the prosecutor, and leads the community in finding the guilty men and bringing them to justice. [57]   This story is clearly a biblical paradigm of our modern judicial system.  The “wildly unanimous mob killed two morally despicable old men in a fit of righteous indignation.” [58] Once the guilt of the elders is established, the crowd refocuses its vengeful aggression from Susanna to them.  Consequentially, the elders are executed, and justice is done.  Society restores itself sacrificially by collective murder in the name of justice. 

In investigating the “deeper meaning” of the term prophet in relation to this story, Bailie concludes that word in this context comes to signify one who is “misunderstood, persecuted, victimized, and recognized as an agent of biblical revelation only in retrospect.” [59]   In determining the prophets of this story, he asserts that one must search outside the “moral paragons”, since no innocent blood was shed.  Hence, he resolves, the true prophets of this story were the two guilty elders, for it was their violent deaths that “revived the social consensus of the people who killed them.” [60]   Essentially, the two elders, though guilty, became the scapegoats. 

            The story of Susanna is a perfect example of how the scapegoat mechanism can be masked by the theory of justice.  In essence, the idea of justice is the embodiment of contemporary myth.  If myth, by definition, represents the perfect model of how to conduct one’s life, than justice, as defined by the universal moral principal of proper conduct, is structurally nothing other than a myth.  Within such a paradigm, the guilty become the scapegoats, for it is with their sacrifice that social order is restored.  Having the role of the guilty scapegoat clearly defined, one can now apply it to a larger frame of reference: Milosevic’s international tribunal at The Hague. 

   On June 28, 2001 the former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, was extradited from his country and handed over to officials from the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, where he is currently facing 66 charges.  Filed in three separate indictments, the charges against Milosevic include the following: genocide, crimes against humanity, violations of the Geneva Conventions, and breaches of the laws of war. [61]   The charges against Milosevic relate to the horrific acts he carried out in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo between the years 1991 and 1999, the most severe charge being genocide.  This trial is viewed as one of the most important trials of the century; because it is the first time in history that a head of state has ever been indicted and internationally tried for war crimes.  In other words, Milosevic’s trial is setting a precedent for how heads of state, indicted with similar charges, are going to be tried and brought to justice in the future.

As clearly illustrated in the prior discussion regarding the Kosovo conflict, Milosevic is unquestionably guilty as charged.  The purpose of this investigation is to show that though Milosevic is guilty of carrying out the most atrocious crimes against humanity imaginable, structurally he is functioning as a scapegoat of the international of the community.  Affirming this assertion requires an analysis how Milosevic’s case fits within the framework of Girard’s scapegoat mechanism 

If one refers back to the section outlining Girard’s scapegoat theory, one will recall that Girard essentially defines the scapegoat mechanism through three stereotypes found common among persecution texts.  Though myth in contemporary culture has acquired a new face, these stereotypes are still found within the modern sacrificial system.  The circumstances under which the international community came to mobilize against Milosevic parallel to Girard’s first stereotype identifying that situations of social crisis provide favorable conditions for scapegoating.  Universal moral principle did not allow the world to standby and watch Milosevic ruthlessly murder and uproot an entire population.  The situation in the former Yugoslavia presented itself to the international community as a humanitarian crisis that needed to be dealt with.  Secondly, though Milosevic is guilty of the war crimes he is accused of, in a sense by standing trial up against the entire world community he is subliminally being accused of a lot more.  Parallel to the situation of the two elders in the Susanna story, the crowd, or world in this case, has dehumanized Milosevic into an object to bestow aggression.  In accordance to Girard’s second stereotype, Milosevic, by being put on trial, has essentially been accused of plaguing society by putting into jeopardy the contemporary myth of justice. 

Lastly, through his present state of social isolation Milosevic clearly bears the mark of the victim.  He is the archetype of the marginal insider, who has been literally seized by the “hands of a frenzied crowd,” [62] by being ousted out of power and extradited from his own country.  Like the two elders, if sacrificed, Milosevic could structurally be labeled as a contemporary prophet for it will be his blood that will theoretically revive the “social consensus” of the world’s population. [63]

CONCLUSIONS

            The main conclusion that can be drawn from this inquiry is that the world still operates within the scapegoat mechanism.  This conclusion is proved by the existence of international law and justice, being defined as contemporary myth.  Using Eliade’s definition, myth represents the paradigmatic model of life to base all reality upon. [64]   Hence the reason why culture would not exist without mythological framework.  Without a foundation in mythological structure, societal order would diminish into chaos because no unifying principle would exist to uphold it.  Inherent in the very definition of myth is the power to conceal.  In Bailie’s definition of myth he states that he uses myth “to refer to a special combination of fact and fantasy, one that tells of an actual violent event, but that tells of it from the perspective of the society which benefited from the violence and that therefore veils and vindicates the actual violence.” [65]   This definition reveals the very function of justice.  The term justice camouflages contemporary ritual sacrifice, by using it as a system to uphold the common moral principle.  The real question now to ponder is whether social order could exist in contemporary society without the scapegoat mechanism.

            For Bailie, the answer is simple.  The line distinguishing between good violence and bad violence has become too blurred for the scapegoat mechanism to operate.  In reference to the present world situation, he states:

When cultures lose their ability to generate lasting forms of camaraderie at the expense of their victims and enemies, they are soon overtaken by the social tensions and factional rivalries their sacrificial mechanisms can no longer reconcile.  Unless one of these factions can convincingly declare its violence to be metaphysically distinct from that is physically indistinguishable from it, no resolution is possible, and the society teeters on the brink of “apocalyptic” violence. [66]

Basically, Bailie affirms that unless the world absolves itself from resorting to the scapegoat mechanism as a means of resolving violence with violence, the present state of affairs will spiral into a chaotic battlefield of apocalyptic violence.  His reasoning for this conclusion is clear: the world today no longer buys into primitive myth. 

            Though there’s merit to Bailie’s judgement, this essay essentially proves the opposite point that the scapegoat mechanism serves a necessary purpose in preventing anarchy, or, in Bailie’s own words, apocalyptic violence.  If there were no distinction between good and bad violence, as Bailie suggests, someone like Milosevic would never be on trial.  The distinction between good and bad violence within international law is clear and indisputable because of its ability to be enforced, as exemplified by the Nuremberg trials and Milosevic’s trial.  As already discussed, international law cannot be enforced unless it is viewed as legitimate by the entire world community, and more importantly would not exist unless there existed a common moral principle.  Therefore when it is enforced the end result is powerful and in theory harmonizes with common moral vocabulary.  Essentially, the distinguishing factor between good violence and bad violence is that bad violence jeopardizes social order by its disregard for universal moral standards.  So does this mean that humanity is forever bound within the cycle of ritual violence?

 Those who believe that there are nonviolent methods of stopping the Hitlers and Milosevics of the world are, as Elie Wiesel would say, naïve.  Though some may fiercely disagree with this distinct note of pessimism, history proves that the only way of effectively stopping violence is with violence.  Without ritual sacrifice, the entire world would deteriorate into a war zone.  Human nature and the inherent mimetic passions it embodies cannot be changed.  Violence will always exist.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS:

1.     Bailie, Gil.  Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads.  New York: The

Crossroad Publishing Company, 1995.

2.     Eliade, Mircea.  The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion.  New York:

Harper and Row Publishers, 1957

3.     Girard, Rene.  The Scapegoat.  Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986

4.     Hubert, Henri and Marcel Mauss.  Sacrifice: Its Nature and Functions.  Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1964.

5.     Pesnic, Vesna.  Serbian Nationalism and the Origins of the Yugoslav Crisis.  No.8. 

Washington: United States Institute of Peace, 1996.

ARTICLES:

1.     “CBC News: Milosevic’s history-making trial opens in The Hague.”  12 Feb. 2002

http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2002/02/12/lobodan020211

2.     “CNN Newsmaker Profiles: Slobodan Milosevic.”  27 Feb. 2002

http://www.cnn.com/resources/newsmakers/world/europe/milosevic.html

3.     “The Legal Battle Ahead.”  BBC NEWS.  8 Feb. 2002

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newid_1414000/1414322.stm

4.     “Under Orders: War Crimes in Kosovo.”

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/kosovo/undword-01.htm

5.     “Under Orders: War Crimes in Kosovo.”

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/kosovo/undword-03.htm

6.     Wiesel, Elie.  “The Question of Genocide.”  Newsweek.  12 April, 1999.

REFERENCES:

1.     The Encyclopedia Britannica Online

2.  The Oxford English Dictionary Online