The potent emerald-green blend of wormwood, green anise and fennel, known as “the Green Fairy,” was once celebrated by the French society, including artists from Baudelaire to Van Gogh. By the early 1900s, France consumed more absinthe than the rest of the world put together. Yet within decades, it was banned and deemed a “national poison.”
What happened? Our analysis (recently published in Organization Studies of historical archives, newspapers, medical publications, and propaganda materials spanning 1870 to 1915, reveals a systematic scapegoating process which unfolds throughout three escalating cycles.
How absinthe became France’s public enemy
The process began with genuine social concerns surrounding the beverage, against a backdrop of alarming alcoholism rates, military defeat against Prussia, and anxieties about national decline.
Scientists, though their research was inconclusive, coined “absinthism” as a distinct pathology, claiming absinthe caused unique symptoms, including epilepsy and madness.
Here is where the dynamics become fascinating. Faced with growing anti-alcohol sentiment, producers of similar beverages – aperitifs made from nearly identical ingredients, such as anis, pastis and anisette, strategically distanced themselves from absinthe.
Advertising posters from the 1880s explicitly contrasted “healthy” tonics with “deadly” absinthe, showing death lurking behind absinthe drinkers, while beautiful women accompanied those choosing competing products. Wine producers joined the attack for economic reasons. After a devastating vine disease – phylloxera – had destroyed French vineyards, they needed to reclaim market share. Framing their struggle as patriotic – wine as French heritage versus absinthe as foreign poison – they allied with temperance movements and politicians.
Finally, even absinthe producers turned on each other. Producers from Pontarlier, the traditional production region, attacked “bad absinthe” from Paris, hoping to save themselves by sacrificing others. This internal fracturing sealed absinthe’s fate. When World War I broke out, the ban came swiftly, presented as a victory for French civilisation.
Our research identifies a recurring pattern. First, genuine social anxieties emerge, about health, national identity, public security. Then, a convenient target is identified, one similar enough to the “acceptable” actors to bear their sins, yet different enough to be expelled.
Crucially, potential scapegoats actively reposition themselves, joining the accusers to escape blame. This creates escalating momentum as the target group shrinks and attacks intensify. We term the pattern “stigma opportunity structures” – conditions that open windows for further targeting. France’s military defeat, the vineyard disease, and, eventually, war each facilitated the process.
Recognising modern day scapegoating
While the prohibition of absinthe in France in 1915 seems to be a distant historical episode, these dynamics remain disturbingly active today. Scapegoating operates as a powerful social mechanism. It often turns uncertainty, fear or political conflict into social blaming directed at certain persons or groups, based on thin, selective or simply false stories being told or repeated as if they were true. First and foremost, the effectiveness of scapegoating lies in that evidence is often beside the point for pointing fingers, creating moral panic, and potentially producing social harm.
The Covid-19 pandemic provided a stark contemporary demonstration. Fears of infection led, in many cases, to verbal or physical attacks on people of Asian descent, whom some people came to fear as spreaders of the coronavirus. Rumours, fear and false beliefs about transmission fuelled discrimination against patients and marginalised groups, driven less by evidence than by anxiety and misinformation. Crucially, this stigmatisation was not corrected by subsequent scientific clarification or political authority about how the virus actually spread.
People of Asian descent continued to face hostility long after epidemiological consensus had been established. The absinthe case shows the same pattern: once a scapegoat is identified, the ongoing momentum shapes how evidence is perceived, rather than being corrected by it.
Unfounded rage against the social media machine?
An unfolding case in real time is instructive – the debate over social media and youth mental health.
Rates of anxiety, depression, and self-harm among adolescents have risen sharply in many Western countries since around 2012.
The question is: what caused this? An obvious answer is: social media. Among parents who are at least somewhat concerned about teenage mental health, 44% say social media have the biggest negative impact on teens today. The US Surgeon General has issued advisories warning of potential harms, and legislators have rushed to propose bans and restrictions. Jonathan Haidt’s bestselling book, The Anxious Generation, has become a manifesto for this view, arguing that the great rewiring of childhood through smartphones is causing an epidemic of mental illness. Yet the scientific picture is far murkier than the public consensus suggests.
Studies show social media use is associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal behaviour among teens, but side effects are often modest and scientists continue to debate how much of the youth mental health crisis can be directly attributed to social media.
This is not to say that social media is harmless. There are legitimate concerns about algorithmic amplification, sleep disruption, and the vulnerabilities of youth. But the rush to assign blame may have outpaced the evidence. What makes this case revealing is the gap between conviction and proof. The belief that social media is destroying a generation has taken on the quality of common sense, repeated so often that questioning it feels contrarian or even irresponsible.
Blaming social media allows us to avoid harder questions about economic precarity, educational pressure, the decline of community institutions, and the failures of mental health systems.
Blame as common sense?
The pattern is recognisable: genuine anxiety, a convenient target, actors distancing themselves from the most criticised ones, and political actors seeking visible solutions. This does not mean we should ignore concerns about technology’s effects on young people. But it does mean we should be suspicious of our own certainty and impulses.
When a society is anxious and looking for explanations, the most visible target tends to attract the most hostility, regardless of whether it deserves it.
The desire to identify clear culprits for complex problems is deeply human. But the absinthe case and its many contemporary echoes remind us that certainty about who is to blame often reflects the social dynamics of scapegoating rather than careful attention to evidence.
In a world awash with anxieties about health, immigration, identity, and inequality, caution is necessary now more than ever.
The Green Fairy’s fate reminds us that blaming feels righteous in the moment. A century later, absinthe is legal again in France, its dangers largely mythological.
What will we think, looking back, about today’s convenient culprits?
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