scapegoat

Converse of object

• seek: As life become harder for everyone people began to seek scapegoats.
• become: Seals have become the scapegoats for the collapse of the cod stocks.
• make: She said: " He has been made a scapegoat for Charles Clarke's mess.
• find: They simply wanted to find a scapegoat to blame for the recycling blunder.
• create: To escape from the consequences of their actions it suits them fine to shift blame onto the victim - and to create the scapegoat.
• need: Hitler needed an immediate scapegoat; he ordered Keitel: Send for General Heim at once.

Preposition: for

• failure: A whole agency may be made a scapegoat for the failure of an inter-agency project.
• problem: And above all else, too often people have been willing to make Brussels the scapegoat for problems at home.
• society: Shooting the Messenger The internet is a convenient scapegoat for society 's ills.
• government: Often, indeed, the IMF is a useful scapegoat for governments having to force through unpopular reforms.
• ill: Black people become the scapegoats for the ills of capitalism.
• policy: But sanctions offer an easy scapegoat for ruinous economic policies: economic pain is simply blamed on hostile and ill-intentioned foreigners.

Adjective modifier

• convenient: You are blaming the supplier, a convenient scapegoat.
• easy: Whether or not it had played a part in inciting the boys to murder, the video provided an easy scapegoat.
• political: He is a good, decent man and does not deserve to be turned into a political scapegoat.
• late: Because the people in question are the latest scapegoats for Britain's ills -- civil servants.
• good: He made a good scapegoat for everything that had been going wrong lately.
• favorite: The driver for the backlash is that regulation seems to have become businesses ' favorite scapegoat for their own problems.

Modifies a noun

• asylum: In addition, they help fuel the rise in racism by attempting to scapegoat asylum seekers for all the government's shortcomings.
• seeker: In addition, they help fuel the rise in racism by attempting to scapegoat asylum seekers for all the government's shortcomings.