"The aggressor has always already been attacked. Why are relations of rivalry never seen as symmetrical? Because people always have the impression that the other is the first to attack, that they are never the ones who begin, though in a way they are always the ones. Individualism is a formidable lie. We make others understand that we recognize the signs of aggressiveness which they manifest, and they in turn interpret our posture as aggression."
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Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoit Chantre (Michigan State University Press, 2009), ch.1, §3.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard
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René Girard
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