Girard’s insight was that communities resolve internal conflict through scapegoating: the selection of a victim to bear collective guilt, whose expulsion or destruction restores social cohesion. The scapegoat need not be guilty of the crime attributed to it; it need only be acceptable as a target.

Some dangerous individuals, however, institutionalize such ritualistic practices into what I call Casus Belli Engineering: the use of perceived failure as pretext to replace established systems with one’s preferred worldview. The broken feature is the crisis that demands resolution. The foundation becomes the scapegoat, selected not for its actual guilt but for its vulnerability and the convenience of its replacement. And in most cases, this unfolds organically, driven by genuine belief in the narrative.

The danger is not the scapegoating itself; humans will scapegoat. The danger lies in those who have learned to trigger the mechanism strategically, who can reliably convert any failure into an opportunity to destroy what exists and build what they prefer.

The linked article title is “Casus Belli Engineering: The Sacrificial Architecture”, which I didn’t find particularly descriptive. I used the second headline, “The Scapegoat Mechanism”. It doesn’t include the architecture or strategy aspects, but serves well as a descriptor and entry point in my eyes.