Gods arise out of sacrifice: if no one was willing to sacrifice for a god, how would we know this god existed? A suicide-bombers blows himself, therefore giving rise to "Allah." Japanese kamikaze pilots flew into aircraft carriers proving the omnipotence of the Japanese Emperor.  

What is the mechanism? The sacrificial act—giving one’s life—functions as a testimony to the truth or reality of the entity in whose name human beings die.

This is THE LAW OF SACRIFICE. It's a law like any scientific law: People give their lives to prove the reality of the sacred object with which they identify.

This mechanism is the source of the historical process. Each society kills human beings to verify the fact that some "thing" exists other than concrete reality. "History" is a collective fantasy. Meanwhile, people go on eating and drinking and fucking and having children and raising families.

But for those attached to "history," this is not enough. They create "grand narratives." Actually, these historical narratives are nothing but grand, requiring the murder of hundreds of millions of people.

This, however, is what scholars write about in their "history books." Mass-murder and the ideas and ideologies that people murder for. Then leaders "live on" (go down on history) through the mass-murders they have performed.