Scapegoating as a rite of passage

The way to sell something is to talk about the pain of the experience so others can relate, immediately gaining engagement and language for struggles they couldn’t previously articulate. Scapegoating an adult, whether in a family or a group, follows a familiar pattern. A group gradually turns on an individual, forcing them to exit the group, leaving the scapegoat feeling broken, betrayed, and bitter about what happened. We analyse the cruelty of the group and the trauma of the victim, and far less the individual as an agent within a predisposing ecosystem.

Very few are willing to disrupt this narrative. To suggest that scapegoating has a function, even a purpose, risks being accused of victim shaming or siding with workplace oppressors.

So I will.

Scapegoating in mission-driven groups — workplaces, professional networks, and other purpose-formed hierarchies — is more than an ousting of the individual posing a threat to the social order of the group. It can operate as a collective defence of authority (a figure and an institution), whether consciously coordinated or not, and act as a catalyst for the maturation of the scapegoat.

This is harder to accept for those who describe scapegoats as the seer or the truth-teller, particularly in conversations about family systems. More recently, the victim-turned-awakened-hero framing has appeared in workplace discourse. It preserves dignity after exclusion by suggesting the removal occurred because the individual perceived what others did not.

Sometimes that’s true. In many professional settings, however, scapegoating doesn’t require unusual insight or courage. Often the individual simply followed the stated rules in a culture governed by unstated ones. The reaction arises less from prophecy than from crossing an invisible boundary.

Scapegoating functions as an initiation process for the scapegoat while serving a protective function for authority — the group order. This argument concerns adult group settings, not family systems. Most people don’t recognise it as initiation while it’s happening because humiliation focuses attention on the injured self rather than on the mechanism unfolding.

What is an Initiation Rite?

Anthropologically, initiation rites mark a transition in status. Arnold van Gennep described them as involving separation from a prior role, a liminal period in which former protections are suspended, and eventual re-entry into the community in altered standing. Spiritually, initiation has been understood as a stripping away of illusion and a symbolic death of prior identity that cannot be reversed once seen clearly.

In the context I’m describing, there’s no return to the group that enforced the separation, you don’t re-enter in upgraded form, and there’s no ceremony that restores your standing. The titles and access that once carried weight disappear, and the legitimacy that came from affiliation goes with them. From that point forward, authority depends on your judgment and the standards you practice. Credibility comes from what you do and how you do it, not from institutions or affiliations attached to your name.

Phase I: Pre-Ritual Conditions

The workplace or group setting operates with mafia-like logic long before anyone is formally targeted, but you can’t really put your finger on what exactly feels off.

You notice how things that were discussed in a conversation are recorded with subtle reframes. Decisions are described as contextual, evolving, or sensitive rather than final. When you try to clarify expectations, you don’t get concrete answers, or you get a different answer from someone else. Things that were flagged as priorities in one instance no longer apply in the next within a short time frame, and shifting goalposts make it easy to catch you in an act of wrongdoing according to the overruling authority.

Meetings are performative time wasters where decisions appear already made, yet you still have to play along as an active contributor. Information circulates through relationships rather than established communication lines, and access becomes currency rather than a function of role. You pay attention to who gets access and who is stripped of it after they were invited to provide feedback. The actual rules of conduct appear quite different from the verbal agreements made in good faith.

You become more careful with your wording and, to compensate, soften what you say so it’s received gently, qualify what you mean, watch how others react before committing to a position, or remain silent altogether. Disagreement is rarely presented directly; it appears as humour, tentativeness, exclusions that accumulate over time, or gestures so subtle that no one could claim them as opposition.

Psychological warfare is embedded in ordinary operations, and enforcement of the unwritten rules remains collective and deniable. When someone later becomes inconvenient, no one needs instruction because the habits are already entrenched and the culture has trained its members how to respond.

It’s within this environment that the future scapegoat still takes the culture at face value and assumes that competence and effort guide standing rather than proximity to authority. Once the scapegoating mechanism activates, it looks administrative rather than ceremonial, and any ritual aspect is administered through bureaucracy rather than spectacle. The entire humiliation process is intended to strip the initiate of status, access, and authority.

The Scapegoating Playbook at work

Phase II: The Stripping

This process functions as a rite of passage because it forces a shift in how an adult relates to authority. In childhood and early adulthood, protection is tied to attachment to figures or systems presumed to be protective and fair. Scapegoating disrupts that arrangement by demonstrating, through experience rather than argument, that protection is conditional and that authority operates through incentives, fear, and self-interest when challenged.

This interruption marks the transition from dependency to adult responsibility. Alignment with authority no longer guarantees protection, and blind trust gives way to discernment.

The belief that doing the right thing, working hard, or adhering to shared values will be recognised under pressure is discarded. When situations become politically charged, leaders protect their standing and the version of events that secures their position. Integrity and effort still matter, but they no longer function as protection because judgment and survival can’t be delegated. The initiate realises that institutions and missions are directed by people who prioritise continuity and self-preservation over fairness, even while speaking in the language of principle.

What initiation does in traditional settings is dismantle prior assumptions about protection and remove the status that once shielded the individual. It marks entry into maturity by ending reliance on external sources of protection.

Scapegoating serves the same function. It strips prior status and dismantles the assumptions that once shielded the individual. Life can no longer be organised around naïve trust in authority or the belief that obedience or loyalty will guarantee protection.

Return to former standing within the group isn’t possible. There’s no restoration of a previous role and no repair of the relationships that were broken.

At this stage, the initiate relates to authority differently. Roles and titles no longer determine security, and goodwill or shared values aren’t assumed. Before agreeing to anything, they consider what’s at stake, what happens if it turns, and who bears the cost. They name terms explicitly rather than relying on implied loyalty or shared purpose.

This shift comes at a cost because the loss is irreversible. Adult life resumes with a different understanding of authority and its limits.

This is the stripping phase of the rite.