Scapegoat beliefs can be internally rational given culturally granted premises

Evidence

Thus the perceived plausibility of a scapegoat ideology is influenced by cultural context. When Medieval Europe was decimated by plague, people blamed witches because witches were already believed to have the capability (via supernatural powers) and desire to cause such harm. Within the cultural context, blaming witches made “sense.” Even though blame was wholly (and horribly) misplaced, rational faculties were not abandoned. For example, the well-documented witchcraft claims made in Salem, Massachusetts, in the seventeenth century were subjected to rigorous and, if basic premises about witches are granted, arguably rational tests, as well as trials that adhered to the legal standards of the day (Karlsen, 1987). — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1593

Categorization

• DEFINE: Illustrates that the ideological model lets scapegoating be rational within its own cultural premises, not merely irrational superstition.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that witch trials were ‘arguably rational tests’ under their own premises is a genuinely paradigm-shifting reframe — the scapegoaters are not fools but rigorous reasoners with false premises.
• XREF: connects to: Under total mobilization even genocidal calculus becomes rational self-justification — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 237; Humans rationalize arbitrary customs as rational or biological after settling on them — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 117