In Search of a Culprit: Conspiracy Theories, Hermetic Semiosis, and Scapegoating

Scapegoating—i.e. the practice of singling out a person or group for unmerited blame—is central to conspiracy thinking. In fact, conspiracy theories rely on “a specific kind of meaning making that does not perceive events as a coincidence of tragic contingencies, but instead as motivated by one and the same original cause: Evil” (Leone et al., Semiotic approaches to conspiracy theories. In M. Butter and P. Knight (eds.), Routledge. Handbook of conspiracy theories (p. 47). Routledge, 2020; cf. Madisson, The semiotic logic of signification of conspiracy theories. Semiotica, 202, 273–300, 2014; Stano, The internet and the spread of conspiracy content. In M. Butter and P. Knight (eds.), Routledge handbook of conspiracy theories (pp. 483–496). Routledge, 2020), based on a process of “hermetic semiosis” (cf. Eco, The limits of interpretation. Indiana University Press, 1990). In other words, as Imhoff and Bruder (Speaking (un-)truth to power: Conspiracy mentality as a generalized political attitude”. European Journal of Personality, 28, 25–43, 2014) remarked, conspiracy narratives tend to simplify complex issues by framing a target to blame (a “demonized enem[y]”, in Berlet and Lyons’ (Right-wing populism in America: Too close for comfort. Guilford Press, 2000) words), while celebrating the “scapegoater” as a “hero for sounding the alarm” (ibid., p. 9). Drawing on these considerations, we intend to investigate the main “mythologies” (cf. Barthes, 1957) of scapegoating in conspiracy discourses, combining a theoretical reflection based on pertinent literature (see, for instance, Becker, Escape from Evil. Free Press, 1969, 1975; Girard, Le Bouc émissaire. Grasset, 1982) with the analysis of particularly relevant case studies.