KMT 2017 nr 2 Download PDF

Piotr Jakubowski

The Refugees as a „Scapegoat” ver. 2.0. On the Figures and Schemas of Online Hate Speech around the Migrant Crisis.

Cite: Piotr Jakubowski, Uchodźcy jako kozioł ofiarny ver. 2.0. Figury i schematy internetowej mowy nienawiści wokół tzw. kryzysu migracyjnego, "Kultura - Media - Teologia", 2017( 29) nr 2, s. 86-111.

DOI: 10.21697/kmt.29.7

The main goal of my essay is to depict and analyze some specific imaginative figures of what Réne Girard called a ‘scapegoat mechanism’, as they appear in contemporary context of social reaction to so called refugee crisis. I focus on Internet users’ commentaries posted below the images showing a few refugees caught while trying to drive through English Channel hidden in truck trailer. Those photos has been uploaded by Mariusz ‘Pudzian’ Pudzianowski (Polish strongman and MMA fighter) on his and his shipping company’s Facebook fanpages, and caused a tremendous overflow of Internet hate speech. Here I present it not as a brand new phenomena of digitalized world, but rather as a subsequent version of a primeval persecutive mechanism. By referring to both Girard’s analyses and Judith Butler’s considerations on the “politics of the performative”, I try to set out some ways of possible answers to harmful effects of Internet hate aimed at migrants, that is – a project of “refugee gospels”.

About authors

dr Piotr Jakubowski

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