Scapegoating

An ancient fallacy that says whenever something goes wrong, there's always someone other than oneself to blame. Although this fallacy sometimes is a practical denial of randomness or chance itself, today it is more often a mere insurance-driven business decision.

Example:
"I don't care if it was an accident! Somebody with deep pockets is gonna pay for this!"

A particularly corrupt and cynical example of scapegoating is the fallacy of Blaming the Victim, in which one falsely casts the blame for one's own evil or questionable actions on those affected. In extreme cases, this can also be described as coercion or extortion.

Scapegoating is often no more than a cynical ploy to shield those truly responsible from blame, and it can be used to refer to the tactic of casting collective blame on marginalized or scorned "others".

Historically, entire groups of people have been scapegoated. In Nazi Germany, Hitler and his army scapegoated the Jewish people. The Nazis declared the Jews to be the reason for their societal ills and further believed that if they eliminated the Jewish people, then their problems would be solved.

Currently in America, there is scapegoating of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer people. Some heterosexuals, often with strong religious ties, blame those with different sexual orientation for the moral decay in America, when in fact, there may be no correlation at all.