The Oldest Trick in the Book

This book investigates the normalisation of blame-shifting within ideological discourse as a broad feature of history, working from Churchills truism that history is written by the victors. To that end, it explores historical episodes of political persecution carried out under cover of moral panic, highlighting the process of Othering common to each and theorising a historical model of panic-driven scapegoating from the results. Building this model from case studies in witch panic, communist panic and terrorist panic respectively, The Oldest Trick in the Book builds an argument that features common to each case study reflect broader historical patterning consistent with Churchills maxim. On this basis it argues that the periodic construction of bogeymen or folk demons is a useful device for enabling the kind of victim-playing and victim-blaming critical to protecting elite privilege during periods of crisis and that in being a recurring theme historically, panic-driven scapegoating retains great ongoing value to the privileged and powerful, and thus conspicuously remains an ongoing feature of world politics.