The tragic fact about scapegoating is that once a community has chosen a scapegoat it is very hard for it to "regain its composure."
Who will be the first to defend the scapegoat? There are big disincentives. You risk being grouped with the scapegoat and suffering the same fate. You risk becoming the new scapegoat. You risk reprisals from the folks who are hiding in shadows while the spotlight follows the scapegoat.
And it probably won't even help. Once a person has chosen an opinion, they tend to defend it, and this applies tenfold to a group. (This plays out in social media every day.) Changing a mob's opinion is hard. Time doesn't necessarily help. There are scapegoats that are centuries old.
The social dynamics favor letting the scapegoat take the fall. That's why scapegoating is so common that we have an ancient name for the practice, even though almost everyone would agree that it's immoral.
Everything you say is politically true, but the reason we have judges and juries (in the US anyway, I don't know how Italy works) is that they are in a position to stop the BS.
the reason we have judges and juries (in the US anyway, I don't know how Italy works)
I assure you that Italy has judges and juries and a modern judicial system. This isn't some teeny tribe of Amazonian warriers here, this is a large country.
They have had ample time regain their composure, this happened in 2009.