The preference that cultures grant to themselves, in other words, must be perpetuated at any cost. This preference is inseparably bound up with the i… - René Girard

MSB: What difference, if any, do you think there is between a power such as katéchon, which postpones the end of time, and the scapegoat mechanism by which Satan casts out Satan? RG: Whereas the Satan who casts out Satan well and truly represents order, katéchon is situated in a Christian world, in a world freed from Satan's rule, a world that wants no part of it. At the same time, katéchon still retains a little of the old order, without which nothing would stand in the way of absolute violence. Katéchon holds back violence, which is to say what is left once Satan has been cheated, duped. It must be admitted that, in order to prevent violence, we cannot do without a certain amount of violence. We are therefore obliged to think in terms of least possible violence. But, as a practical matter, it's difficult to say how little the least violence would have to be. MSB

Moralists advise us all to avoid violence, of course, but only insofar as this is possible. They authorize us, at least tacitly, to reply to obvious provocations by the measured counterviolence that I described earlier, and which seems to us always justified.

The children repeat the crimes of their fathers precisely because they believe they are morally superior to them. This false difference is already the mimetic illusion of modern individualism, which represents the greatest resistance to the mimetic truth that is re-enacted again and again in human relations. The paradox is that the resistance itself brings about the reenactment. PILATE