The outsider has a special place in the cosmology of the Accepted.
Within any community, there are always tensions, a friction of association that threatens to tear apart the social order.
Of all social rituals among the most important are those that deal with defusing these tensions.
In this respect, an outsider is an important part of the community by not being a part of it. Simply being ‘outside’ implicitly puts others ‘inside.’
The simple existence of an outsider puts the whole social world in perspective.
The shunning and persecution of the outsider, the other is the most powerful of all Rituals of Unity.
To carry out this ritual is to place in that one person all of those amassed woes of society.
And once this living effigy is constructed to symbolically burn it upon the altar of unity.
But it can’t just be any source of otherness, it has to be something sufficiently foreign, hate-able, and threatening. One has to earn it and be worthy of it.
After all, what has become of the United States without a Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia to inspire fear, drive everyone together, and resolve internal disputes for the good of all? The substitute sacrifices that have been offered up since then have been rejected by the Gods.
Without a fitting sacrifice for the Ritual, the society cannot be properly purified of its ills. The people must drift apart and squabble.
If you have often been that one person who just can’t seem to fit in, it behooves you to understand just who you are.
You are a demon, Ahriman, Satan, St. George’s dragon, that snarling little dwarf permanently lodged beneath Shiva’s foot, Orwell’s Emmanuel Goldstein… the embodiment of everything that tempts people away from their proper social roles and undermines the Correct order.
It is in part for this reason that I identify all Subtle things with shadow, darkness, the night, the moon, the underworld, chaos…
Once you understand your place, just who you are in their universe, there is a certain delicious delight to be taken in it.
And many things in our lives that seemed mysterious stand suddenly explained.
Kingdom of Introversion 
You’ve just put a new perspective on my childhood memories.
I read somewhere that for people to feel unity, they need a common fear.
Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, most people found themselves without a common thing to fear. It seems there are more things to fear now, but there is disagreement in how serious this fear is. Global warming and Islam/Terrorism are good examples of modern fears.
Thanks for this. Brought me back to center.
In the USA, beyond the foreign element beyond our borders, there is the internal scapegoat, which have been African Americans. I realized this at 7 years old, how it seemed that all the other races had an implicit agreement among themselves that African Americans would serve as their collective scapegoats. For every aspect that is negative in society or within a group, it is easy to use a commonly designated target when they are readily available. And I say, “African American” because it is not simply a matter of whether a person is black or not. There are plenty of people from Asia, India, Latin American and elsewhere who are significantly blacker than African Americans, many of whom have European blood, owing to a 400 year history on this continent. But what we hear from any number of people newly arriving as immigrants, often as not from radically impoverished backgrounds, is that “blacks” are inferior to them. That they are racially superior. What brings this out is the substantial fact that even the poorest African Americans are living a standard of living higher than the average person in most Third World countries. So they wind up envying the “black” man’s material existence, which brings them to scapegoating the “black” man; hoping to displace him in every way. This is why if you flee or your parents fled a civil war back home, or a violent drug war, and gave up the old farm stead, with the outdoor toilet, the first thing one does upon learning broken English, now that one is in the Land of Promise, is to point out how violent black people are, how backwards the culture is, and the terrible drug sales they engage in. Meanwhile, blacks aren’t cultivating marijuana, they are not cultivating cocaine, they are not manufacturing methamphetamine, the are not producing designer drugs, they are not smuggling these substances, nor heroin, into the country, but I’ll be damned if they aren’t filling the jails owing to selling the crumbs of these trades on the sidewalk. And thus, everyone can point to the physical evidence, the overwhelming presence of blacks in our jails, to prove the point that there is something inherently inferior and criminal about black people. Cough!