VICTIMS AND VICTIMHOOD

Victimhood abounds. But victims can readily become victimizers. Where to draw the line in proclaiming grievances and demanding redress is difficult and can aggravate our fraught political condition.

This is the age of the victim.Victimhood has become salient in our times, times which are charged, fraught, and filled with acrimony. Being a victim is a complex phenomenon that can be understood as a function of individual psychology as well as a status possessed by groups of people who feel themselves unfairly treated. When the claim to victimhood is asserted by groups and made public, it quickly becomes politicized.

I want to proffer some reflections on being a victim, with the caveat that they are fragmentary and tentative. The concept is capacious and controversial and I don't claim final answers.

In the first instance, we can understand victimhood as an individual psychological condition. There are persons who chronically feel themselves to be the victims of others who are out to do them harm. They may ruminate and be gripped by negative thoughts and emotions. We all want to be treated fairly, and when we feel that we are the objects of unfair treatment by others, the sense that we are victims can instill a claim of moral rectitude.

But victimhood is not a virtue; it is a condition. What one does with a sense of being a victim is the issue of greater moment. It is the political, not the personal that primarily interests me here. 

Our existential reality is such that power inequities are ubiquitous, and concentration of power almost inevitably leads to its abuse, to unfairness, and injustice. The universal and deeply entrenched desire for fairness makes the reality of victims and their victimizers inevitable. It is the dialectical axis on which much of contemporary politics is played out.

While some people may feign victimhood for the attention it brings, it need not be emphasized that victims, victimization, and victimhood are real and compelling phenomena within the range of human experience.

The human rights field, in which I work, is centered on the reality, plight, and protection of victims. In my work, I have engaged in conversation people who have been the object of unspeakable torture. Such persons are victims without doubt, and it is a premise of human rights that victims need to be accorded the privilege of a primary hearing and requisite concern. Their voices need to be heard first of all.

The emergence of identity politics has given salience to the claim of victimhood. The universal and centrifugal vectors characteristic of political movements centered on egalitarianism and economic justice have shaded into identity politics in which people band together on the basis of parochial interests centered on ethnicity, race, religion, gender, and cultural values. A problem with identity politics is that it downplays universal interests and goals for the sake of the particular; it lacks an overarching unifying ideal. As such, groups compete with each other in struggles for power in the furtherance of their own separate interests at the expense of others. Such groups often evoke long histories of abuse to strengthen their cause. Larger visions and attendant struggles for the overarching common good are eclipsed or become secondary. Grievances emerge to the forefront and resound with a loud voice.

While the politics or grievance has held sway for decades, it has been greatly exacerbated by the emergence of Donald Trump. Trump is the “victim-in-chief,” who is viscerally masterful in appealing to, and politically mobilizing, feelings of victimhood among the minions who comprise his following.

Those in the Trump camp have become bewitched by the notion that they have been victimized by “Democrats,” “liberals,” “big government” and the educated “elite.” Their sense of victimization propels an inward turn and the move toward parochialism and tribalism centered around a defined cluster of political positions. I conclude that the reinforcement of such parochial groups feeds on itself and aids in the erosion of reasoned thought, leading to belief in baseless conspiracy theories devoid of countervailing corrective input. Needless to say, it has formed the basis of the stark and ominous divisions that characterize contemporary American society, the “us and them” reality that places our democracy on a precipice.

One cannot undervalue the power of resentment in exacerbating the felt experiences of the victim. It propels grievance and can stoke feelings of vindictiveness and vengeance, justified by the norm of fairness. I have long believed that the power of resentment has been underappreciated in understanding both personal antagonistic behavior and as a political response to repression, extending from protest movements to the perpetration of genocide. But the role of resentment requires a separate and extensive essay.

While victimhood is a major factor in right-wing movements, included in the rallying cry of extremist, hate-filled, and seditious movements, it is readily apparent on the Left as well.

We live in a time of growing consciousness of the historical and continual prejudice - discrimination against minorities and minority groups of all types -- racial, ethnic, gender, foreign, the disabled, and all others who are or feel marginalized.

Asserting oneself as a victim is a powerful political tool, and it is here that the phenomenon becomes very sensitive. It is complex and nuanced. It is also a precarious issue to comment on without escaping the charges of insensitivity or colluding with the oppressors. But I have always felt that truth as one sees it must have the last word, however difficult or treacherous.

When a group claims to have been a victim of historical and continuous oppression or society at large, there is little doubt that their complaints are rooted in empirical realities. No one can or should doubt that Native Americans have experienced genocide; Blacks slavery and ongoing racist discrimination, both institutionalized and interpersonal. Women have been victims of misogyny manifest in a long spectrum extending from demeaning values and attitudes to social marginalization, discrimination, rape, and physical violence. Gays, transgendered people, the disabled, and multiple other sectors of humanity have experienced abuse and humiliation of myriad kinds. And I will concede that economically distressed older, white Americans, who comprise the bulk of Trump's followers, can claim with legitimacy, to varying extent, that they have been under the thumb of the bi-coastal owners of American enterprises placing residents of the rural South and Midwest at a structural and economic disadvantage. The wealth gap in America, generated by neoliberal economics, has never been greater. And we have allowed to be created a cohort of the super-wealthy who deploy their private interests at the expense of others, those at the bottom of the economic and social ladder, most of all.

There should also be no doubt that those so aggrieved have every right to express their grievances in pursuit of fairness, justice, equality, legitimate redress, and the dignity and respect that all persons, by virtue of their humanity, deserve.

Yet with the expression of one's victimhood, we enter a complex zone. There is a vague line separating the legitimate expression of one's victimhood from its excesses.

It is not an unknown reality that the victim can readily become a victimizer. One can use one's status as a victim as a vehicle to first gain attention, then garner public sympathy, and beyond employ one's victimhood to leverage political advantage. No doubt much is appropriately expressed in the service of one's just due. But there is also the danger that if one's outcries and demands are felt by others to be excessive, and exploited for undue or disproportionate advantage, the result can set off secondary resentments and political blowback, thus strengthening the divisions that ominously threaten society.

Fairness is a universal and unqualified standard that also requires proportionality in its application. As Americans, we are all legatees of a constitutional and legal order explicitly grounded in equality and equal rights. When struggles against oppression are waged in the name of such equality, and those expressing their grievances strive to attain equality among the community of their fellow citizens, then those engaged in the struggle to so redress their victimhood are appropriately seeking their just due. By contrast, when it is sensed by others that the aims of victims extend beyond the norm of equality, then the possibility of blowback, vitriol, and strife is exacerbated.

Clearly, there is a great deal of subjective feeling inherent in this moral framework. It is difficult, if not impossible to know where to draw the lines. From the standpoint of those waging the struggle – and only they can know their degree of oppression from the inside – proper redress may look very different than it does in the eyes of others, who may need to make accommodations of their own to ensure that justice is achieved.

My sense is that social division can greatly be mitigated through the progressive achievement of economic equality. Resentment, tribalism, irrationalism, and extremism, I aver, are exacerbated when people feel that the doors of economic security and advancement are closed. Whatever one's opinion of Joe Biden, I believe that he is widely on track to level the economic playing field through attempting to reclaim the welfare state, inaugurated by the New Deal, and then reversed through Reaganism with astonishingly destructive effect. 

My hope is that these efforts will be ever more generous and successful. The stridency that comes with a culture of victimization will only be overcome when we abolish the conditions that give rise to it. It is imperative if democracy is to be saved, and society healed, that Democrats hold on to both Congressional houses. And the achievement of economic justice, as espoused by the Democratic Party provides the strongest and most promising foundation.

America's salvation cannot come from the top alone. There needs to be grassroots organization and the expansion of progressive coalitions. But in the final analysis, we can only get beyond the walls that divide Americans into mutually antagonist groups when we are able to speak across lines of difference. The final stage in eliminating feelings of victimhood is a recognition of the humanity that we hold in common despite our differences. We need to put aside our grievances under the inspiration of grander visions. We need to replace rancor with respect, and anger with kindness. Americans need to relearn the arts of empathy and engaged, respectful, conversation with others.

The answer to division is dialogue. The best route to overcoming a sense of victimhood is by welcoming opportunity to be heard, be understood, and then appreciated for what we hold in common while recognizing that differences inevitably remain.