10 ms·

The Joys of Victimhood (1989)

93 points by imartin2k 9y ago

shawndumas 9y ago
one page view http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/02/magazine/the-joys-of-victimhood.html?pagewanted=2&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/02/magazine/the-joys-of-victi...
- dang 9y ago
  We've changed to that from http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/02/magazine/the-joys-of-victimhood.html?pagewanted=1 http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/02/magazine/the-joys-of-victi.... Thanks!
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
I love how he thinks that Israel bulldozing Palestinian neighborhoods and killing civilians doesn't count as oppression because there's more Arabs than Israelis in the general area.
- shawndumas 9y ago
  "Arabs like to say that there are two conflicting narratives of the conflict. The facts are far simpler. It starts in the end of the 19th century. At the time millions of Jews were fleeing Russia and flooding Europe with refugees because of Czar Alexander III "Russia for Russians" program which sanctioned pogroms in order to evict the Jews from the country. This was only the latest in a long history of expulsions of Jews. The Jews, at the time were just beginning to be emancipated in a handful of countries, and both the Jews themselves and the affected countries had an interest in solving the Jewish Problem. What everyone recognized at the time was that the Jewish People started out in the "Holyland", from which they were expelled in the first century CE. A group of influential Jews organized a movement with the intention of solving the Jewish Problem by restoring the Jewish Homeland. That movement was called the Zionist Movement. However the Holyland was at the time a province of the Ottoman Empire, and the Ottomans had no intention of allowing a Jewish autonomous entity to be established in their land. Then came World War I. The Ottomans joined the war on the losing side and the British saw the opportunity to conquer the Ottomans and insert themselves as the influential power in the area. Lord Balfour, British foreign secretary and ex-Prime Minister was intrigued by the idea of creating a Jewish Home in Palestine and expressed in a letter to the British Zionist Organization that the British government would support the establishment of such an entity if Britain gained control of Palestine. In 1922 (5 years later) the League of Nations divided the former provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East into "Mandates" and instructed the British to execute the creation of a "Jewish National Home in Palestine". It also instructed the British to do so in a way that did not infringe upon the rights of the Arab population of Palestine. How that was to be achieved was unclear, and as it turned out, not possible. From an objective point of view the League of Nations and the British created an untenable situation, with Jews, on the one hand, having been given the internationally sanctioned green light to rebuild their home and thereby resolve the humanitarian disaster that defined the Jewish People in the diaspora, and with Arabs, on the other hand, looking forward to independence (whether as part of a greater Arab union or as individual States), with no interest whatsoever in the Jewish Problem or Jewish History or commitments made by other countries to people who don't even live there. 25 years and another World War later the problem had snowballed to the point where the British were unable and unwilling to continue to deal with it. A new international organization, the United Nations had been formed, and as its first project it took upon itself the task of resolving the Palestine problem. It sent a team called UNSCOP to present a solution to the UN members and UNSCOP returned with a carefully balanced plan to allow a small predominantly Jewish State to be formed, with the remainder of the country to become a predominantly Arab State, with the exception of Jerusalem which would be administered by the UN with access to both Jews and Arabs equally. This plan was voted on and ratified by the UN members on November 29, 1947. It was a compromise that the Jews were willing to accept. The Arabs however saw no reason they should have to compromise, and instead initiated a civil war. The Jews proceeded to put the Partition plan into effect despite the Arab rejection of the recommendation and the war that was being waged against them. Five months later the British withdrew and Israel was proclaimed. The combined forces of five neighboring countries invaded Palestine with the intention of conquering all of Palestine and establishing an Arab State in the entirety of what was the British Mandate for Palestine. Reportedly around 700,000 Arabs who were in the war zone created by the invading Arab armies fled. Israeli forces succeeded not only in defending the territory allocated to it in the Partition Plan but to push the invaders deep into the territories that would have been part of the Arab State had the Arabs accepted resolution 181. The UN negotiated a cease-fire and subsequently armistice treaties between Israel and the invading countries, and admitted Israel as a full member. The Armistice agreements put the area to the East of the Armistice demarkation line, including East Jerusalem (known as the West Bank) into Jordanian control, and the Gaza Strip into Egyptian control. From 1948 through 1974 the "Palestinians" were not considered a party in the conflict. The conflict was between Israel and the neighboring Arab countries who did not recognize Israel's proclamation of independence, and continued to proclaim their own intention to conquer Palestine and establish an Arab State in the entirety of Palestine. In 1967 the Arab States mobilized their forces and advanced towards their border with Israel, threatening to push Israel into the sea. Israel reacted with a preemptive strike that resulted not only in defending Israel's territory but in the withdrawal of the Syrians from the Golan Heights, Egypt from the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, and Jordan from the West Bank. The UN passed resolution 242 which called for the return of these territories to the countries that had withdrawn from them. Israel was willing to do so in exchange for Peace treaties and modifications to ensure Israel's defensibility. The members of the Arab League met in Khartoum to discuss their response and declared that no Arab nation would recognize, negotiate with, or make peace with Israel. As a result Israel had no alternative but to administer the territories, as their former occupiers were unwilling to reoccupy them. Seven years later the Arab League marched Yasser Arafat into the UN General Assembly and the UN proclaimed the "inalienable right of the Palestinian People to self-determination" and that the PLO is the Palestinians' sole legitimate representative. At that point the conflict ceased to be between Israel and the neighboring Arab countries, and the "Palestinians" became once again a party in the conflict. The UN supported the idea of a Palestinian State to be established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The PLO, who they considered the Palestinians' representative, rejected the idea and insisted upon the dismantling of Israel and its replacement with a Palestinian State in the enitre area of Palestine, and the return of all Palestinian refugees, resulting in a single predominantly Arab country. The Israeli public saw no prospect of a resolution and a group of Israelis began to insist upon being allowed to begin settle within the occupied territories. After a heated internal conflict the Israeli government relented and allowed settlements to be established. In 1978 Egypt's president Anwar Sadat and Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Accords returning the Sinai to Egypt and committing Israel to an Interim arrangement with the Palestinians granting them autonomy in the Occupied Territories. In 1993 Yasser Arafat signed the Declaration of Principles (Oslo Accords) accepting the principle of a two-State solution and interim Autonomy arrangement. In 1995 the PLO took control of the Palestinian Autonomy which governs 97% of the Palestinian population of the Occupied Territories and 40% of the West Bank. In 2005 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew all Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and expelled all Israeli settlers, rendering the Gaza Strip entirely independent. The Hamas offshoot of the Moslem Brotherhood, an Islamic Jihadist organization, took control of the Gaza Strip and proclaimed itself not bound by any agreement signed between Israel and the PLO, and proclaimed its commitment to the destruction of Israel. Hamas proceeded to attempt to smuggle arms into the West Bank and to develop and manufacture rockets with which to attack Israel. Israel reacted by cutting off the routes by which arms and materials for their manufacture could be brought into the Gaza Strip. On at least three occasions Hamas initiated hostilities against Israel firing thousands of rockets indiscriminately into Israeli cities. Meanwhile at least two attempts were made to negotiate a Final Status agreement between Israel and the PLO. Both attempts failed to reach a settlement acceptable to both parties. This is the whole story in a nutshell. Every word is objective fact. Undoubtedly there will be a long stream of objections about omissions and recriminations meant to invoke sympathy for one side and to vilify the other. But moving forward will require focusing on the facts and not continuing to justify resistance to reconciliation." -------------------------------------- https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-neutral-explanation-of-the-Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian-conflict-How-can-the-conflict-be-described-without-trying-to-be-on-one-of-the-sides/answer/Chaim-Handler https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-neutral-explanation-o...
  - kakalukia 9y ago
    I don't see how this can be called the most neutral explanation when it mentions nothing about how the UN considers Israel's occupation illegal or mentions anything about illegal settlements. This is also not even the highest ranked answer from the question you linked from Quora.
    - shawndumas 9y ago
      Welcome to HN. I love seeing new members expressing passionate views. Couple of quick questions: Do you always agree with every dictate of the UN? Does objectivity always garner the most votes?
      - gech 9y ago
        Do you get paid by Israel to make posts? Because I've heard that people do get paid to make favorable posts.
        dang 9y ago
        Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. Another thing that will get you banned here is using HN primarily for political or ideological battle. That's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it turns out you've broken the guidelines so often and we've given you so many warnings that I've banned your account. If you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
      - totalZero 9y ago
        You don't gain any ground by pointing out how long or how short the other user's account has been around. > Do you always agree with every dictate of the UN? This is irrelevant, unless you are trying to say that one either agrees with everything the UN says, or nothing. Clearly that is not the case; plenty of UN member nations consent on some issues, and dissent from others. The same can thus obviously be said of individual people. They don't have to agree with every dictate to agree with some of the conclusions of the body. Like it or not, the UN reflects opinions from a substantial number of member nations, and it's hard to applaud any explanation that ignores the UN on an issue where they are, and have been, a centrally relevant party. > Does objectivity always garner the most votes? No, but you probably have to say more to justify a lower-approval response as the right answer to a question specifically seeking the most neutral explanation, than to simply say "this is the most objective one".
- nl 9y ago
  This was written in 1989. Settlements were much less of an issue then, and the demographics were dramatically different.
  - Avshalom 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_Heights#De_facto_annexation_by_Israel_and_civil_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_Heights#De_facto_annexat...
    - nl 9y ago
      Indeed. You'd be aware the the Palestinian state doesn't claim the Golan Heights? I think that Israel has lost a lot of moral authority in the years since the 1980s. But I think in 1981 annexing the Golan was a defensible choice: the Syrians had constantly used them as place to launch artillery barrages against Israeli towns like Tiberius. The 1980s (especially the early 80s) really were different: there were Arab states around Israel who would use their own armed forces to attack, and the PLO hadn't disavowed terrorism. Now of course times have changes, and Israel no longer can claim that those threats, and settlements have made their problems worse. But Hamas and Hezbollah have capitalized on that, so.. there is plenty of blame to go around.
dfsegoat 9y ago
The number of parallels between now and 1989 are striking: victimhood == top social currency, etc... It really is almost like we have these 20-30 year social cycles... Perhaps this is known to the sociological literature - but that's not my area. Just the same I find it fascinating.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- GarvielLoken 9y ago
  Doesn't cycle imply that it went down in between?
moneytide1 9y ago
Here in the South, there is this air of hospitality. But there is an irony because everyone always rejects each others volunteer assistance out of pride for their ability to take care of themselves. I see charity directed towards me almost as an insult, or subtle attempted ownership, and there is this competitive air about needing less than others. But I suppose in more densely populated areas, there is more victimhood at play. This is an education problem, because these people were never raised to take care of themselves. Instead, they want to be owed something. This "something" usually comes in the form of tax handouts, and when it is distributed, I'm certain it is quite mismanaged. Think of all the impulse-buy items near checkouts that are purchased with food stamps, when these people could be combining this resource to buy in bulk and get much more out of it. My mantra is to be a provider, not a consumer. It's not about how much you make, it's about what you choose to spend it on. It seems like these types of problems can only exist when there are too many people living in close-proximity.
- justAnotherNET 9y ago
  I suggest anyone interested in this google the “rat utopia” experiment.
- throwawaymnm9 9y ago
  > This "something" usually comes in the form of tax handouts, and when it is distributed, I'm certain it is quite mismanaged. Oh yes, corporations typically just hang onto it and use it to enrich executives, or they funnel it out of the country. But it should be well-known by this point that corporations get way too many tax breaks. > It seems like these types of problems can only exist when there are too many people living in close-proximity. Let me guess: you avoid cities because the black people scare you?
- matt4077 9y ago
  "The South" is neither morally superior, nor more independent/self-reliant, etc.. Guess which states get more than twice the taxes they pay to the federal government back? Alabama, Mississippi, New Mexico, and other rural southern states are taken the handouts from California and New York: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vby1dJlsXmM/VtkJnusdGXI/AAAAAAAAJqk/EQXnfNLOqT0/s1600/fed_spending_dollar.JPG https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vby1dJlsXmM/VtkJnusdGXI/AAAAAAAAJ... Guess which teenagers are incapable of not getting pregnant at 14? The southern, rural christians. Guess which states' citizen are dropping from Opiod addiction like flies? Again, the south (plus similarly rural Appalachia). Guess where food stamps are most used, where people are unable to control their eating and are morbidly obese, which people smoke more, where drunk driving is socially accepted, etc etc: the US South, and some rural northern states, are worse than the large cities in almost any measure you can think of.
mherdeg 9y ago
Epstein's powerful prose captures well the New York intellectual views of a certain culture and a certain generation. It's a fascinating perspective on what people were thinking then. I was equally fascinated by the deep view of the popular psyche shown in his September 1970 essay for Harper's Magazine, featured on its cover ( https://harpers.org/archive/1970/09/homohetero/ https://harpers.org/archive/1970/09/homohetero/ ): > Yet if heterosexual life has come to seem impossibly difficult, homosexual life still seems more nearly impossible. For to be a homosexual is to be hostage to a passion that automatically brings terrible pressures to bear on any man who lives with it: and these pressures, which only a few rare homosexuals are able to rise above with any success, can distort a man, can twist him, and always leave him defined by his sexual condition. The same, I think, cannot be said about heterosexuals. With the possible exception of prostitutes and heterosexuals driven by abnormal appetites, the general run of heterosexuals are not defined by their sexuality at all. Although the power of sex is never to be underrated, in the main for most heterosexuals sex beyond adolescence becomes a secondary matter, a pleasure most of the time, a problem only in its absence. Homosexuality, on the other hand, is a full-time matter, a human status—and that is the tyranny of it. > … > I am not about to go into a liberal homily here about the need for private acceptance of homosexuality, because, truth to tell, I have not privately accepted it myself—nor, I suspect am I soon likely to. In my liberal (or Liberal's) conscience, I prefer to believe that I have never done anything to harm any single homosexual, or in any way added to his pain; and it would be nice if I could get to my grave with this record intact. Yet I do not mistake my tolerance as complete. Although I have had pleasant dealings with homosexuals professionally, also unpleasant ones, I do not have any homosexuals among my close friends. If a close friend were to reveal himself to me as being a homosexual, I am very uncertain what my reaction would be—except to say that it would not be simple. I clearly do not consider a man's homosexuality, as certain ihomosexuals would argue, merely a matter of sexual preference on his part, something vestigial to him, but instead I think it goes deep within him, that it cannot but have affected him strenuously, making him either a stronger man or a weaker, a better man or a worse—whichever, at all events, an essentially different man than he would be if he were not a For this reason, and from an absolutely personal point of view, I consider it important o know whether a man I am dealing with is a homosexual or nut. Not long ago the BBC did a retrospective on the art of Sergei Diaghilev. Every aspect of Diaghilev's illustrious career was covered from every possible angle, when the last man to be interviewed for the show, an aged Russian homosexual who was a friend of Diaghilev's from the 1920s, said: "Ze ting you must remember about Servei vas dat he vas a very aggressive homosexual." I think anyone who would ignore a fact of this kind in intellectual criticism or in life, is a fool. > If I had the power to do so, I would wish homosexuality off the face of this earth. I would do so because I think that it brings infinitely more pain than pleasure to those who are forced to live with it; because I think there is no resolution for this pain in our lifetime, only, for the overwhelming majority of homosexuals, more pain and various degrees of exacerbating adjustment; and because, wholly selfishly, I find myself completely incapable of coming to turns with it. > … > They are different front the rest of us. Homosexuals are different, moreover, in a way that cuts deeper than other kinds of human differences—religious, class, racial—in a way that is, somehow, more fundamental. Cursed without clear cause, afflicted without apparent cure, they are an affront to our rationality, living evidence of our despair of ever finding a sensible, an explainable, design to the world. One can tolerate homosexuality, a small enough price to be asked to pay for someone else's pain, but accepting it, really accepting it, is another thing altogether. I find I can accept it least of all when I look at my children. There is much my four sons can do in their lives that might cause me anguish, that might outrage me, that might make me ashamed of them and of myself as their father. But nothing they could ever do would make me sadder than if any of them were to become homosexual. For then I should know them condemned to a state of permanent niggerdom among men, their lives, whatever adjustment they might make to their condition, to be lived out as part of the pain of the earth.
knieveltech 9y ago
Comment thread dumpster fire in 3....2....1...
- legostormtroopr 9y ago
  This comment isn't going to help with keeping people on a more positive discourse.
  - knieveltech 9y ago
    This implies it's possible to steer the HN community into positive discourse.
    - dang 9y ago
      Maybe not, but that doesn't mean it's ok for you to make it worse. Please don't post unsubstantive comments here. Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for political battle. That's an abuse of the site because it destroys the thing it's supposed to be for, and we ban accounts that do this, regardless of which politics they favor. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended if you want to keep commenting here. I wrote an explanation of why we ban accounts for this reason here, in case you or anyone wants more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16185062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16185062.
alexandercrohde 9y ago
> Such a situation could never have come about without certain fundamental confusions having been firmly established, and these begin with language itself. Victims have traditionally been minority groups, but in fact women, who in the United States are a slight majority, have been deemed victims, whereas the Jews and the Chinese in America, though clearly minorities (and vastly less numerous than blacks or Hispanic people), are not usually counted as victims and thus rarely get included in affirmative action or other quota favoritism programs. A victim, then, is someone who insistently declares himself a victim. I was just wondering about this last year. I still haven't had anybody explain it to me in a logically-consistent way. I think it's a fair ask.
- nl 9y ago
  Minority status does not define victims, and instead it is about power. There were a lot less British in India during the Raj than there were Indians. It is pretty clear who the victim was then.
  - alexandercrohde 9y ago
    I'm not sure that explains why Chinese immigrants would be portrayed as victims less than hispanic immigrants, as just one example off the top of my head.
    - tomcam 9y ago
      Plus there was no Hispanic Exclusion Act
      - nl 9y ago
        Yes, it was weird to completely ignore that. Almost like it didn't fit into his narrative or something!
    - nl 9y ago
      The article literally uses the British Raj as an example: Gandhi was the great teacher of the art of victimhood, of setting one's victimization on full public display. why Chinese immigrants would be portrayed as victims less than hispanic immigrants Because you can measure outcomes? But I think the word victim is completely wrong there (although perhaps it was correct in 1989).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Taniwha 9y ago
Bear in mind this was written in the very same year that the same guy traded on his own "victimhood" after being fired from his 20yr job for writing a homophobic rant.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  When these people complain about others being special snowflakes and expecting special treatment, what they really mean is that they deserve special treatment.
  - arionhardison 9y ago
    I have always thought this to be true. I find it ironic when whites complain about programs like affirmative action when through laws such as Jim Crow, Red Lineing, etc... they have been receiving affirmative action for hundreds of years. What whites are really saying when they speak out against programs like that is: "We deserve to be the only protected class of people".
    - Viliam1234 9y ago
      > I find it ironic when whites complain ... they have been receiving affirmative action for hundreds of years. There is a part in the article explaining how "they" who benefited from Jim Crow are not necessarily the same people as "they" who complain about being discriminated against. Not necessarily even descendants thereof. Instead, you often get ironic situations like Jewish people who barely escaped Nazism while the rest of their families died in concentration camps, only to get yelled at for being white and allegedly benefiting from Jim Crow.
stcredzero 9y ago
The pleasures of victim-hood include imbuing one's life with a sense of drama. The drama of daily life is greatly heightened if one feels that society is organized against one. This sounds very, very familiar! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcP0WmGB78A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcP0WmGB78A
owenversteeg 9y ago
Look, I see that it's a relevant article today. But I don't think it's saying much, and it has a weird homophobic/racist current running through it. For example, Epstein mocks the idea that the US government exacerbated the AIDS crisis (which it clearly did.) He says slavery ended "more than a century" ago - slavery effectively continued several decades after the Thirteenth Amendment was passed. Now, I don't like the idea of tearing down a good article just because the author is an asshole. But in this case, I think the article isn't very good, and the author also happens to be an asshole: this is the same guy that was "revolted" by the idea of "fags" (both his words, though he later switched to using "homosexuals".) The same guy that criticized people writing candidly about death, the same guy who constantly thought he was being hunted by "men with strange appetites, men whose minds were twisted". And the same guy who, upon learning an acquaintance was gay, was "angry at being victimized by his duplicity." Oh, and the same guy who thought it was better for a gay man to commit suicide than act upon his unrealized gay desires. It'd be very interesting to read a good article on victimization from someone who isn't so horrible, though: it is an important topic, and there are many interesting things, which are frequently left unsaid, to be said about it.
- dkural 9y ago
  He lost me when he lumped every non-Jewish group in the Middle East as "200 million Arabs" and equated it with the Palestinians; and tried to justify the mistreatment of Palestinian children. The organization Shovrim Shtika (Breaking the Silence), founded by veterans from the Israeli Defense Forces, have also corroborated these accounts - not just western academics, international observers, and journalists.
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  Forget all of that even, there's plenty of places where the opinion piece collapses under simple faulty logic. Here's one example: > Such a situation could never have come about without certain fundamental confusions having been firmly established, and these begin with language itself. Victims have traditionally been minority groups, but in fact women, who in the United States are a slight majority, have been deemed victims, whereas the Jews and the Chinese in America, though clearly minorities (and vastly less numerous than blacks or Hispanic people), are not usually counted as victims and thus rarely get included in affirmative action or other quota favoritism programs. A victim, then, is someone who insistently declares himself a victim. There have been times and places in the history of the world where the majority of the people in certain places were outright slaves, including in the United States and especially in the Caribbean. And yet are we to believe that these powerless, enslaved people weren't victims simply because slavery was such a vast institution that there were more people suffering under if than committing it?
mazelife 9y ago
When I hear someone (having, by their own description, a front-row seat for these events) reduce the civil-rights movement to this: “What I saw was a number of bad laws called into question and ultimately removed by acts of courage and wise restraint on the part of the victims of those laws.” …as though the white-supremacist, apartheid state that existed in the south at the time was nothing more than a few pesky laws that had all gotten cleared up by 1968, I have to seriously question that person’s powers of observation. It’s such an almost perverse misunderstanding of history that it has be deliberate, right? Any time someone starts out with a premise like, “the civil rights movement, like a spiritual oil spill, left a vast residue of guilt in its wake,” and then proceeds from there, you know it’s going to be a long read. Sure, there’s an attempt to graft some sort of philosophical backbone to the piece through this (nonsensical) distinction he makes between “appeal[s] to conscience” and ”appeal[s] to guilt,” but it’s confusingly handled and doesn’t go anywhere. Mainly what stands out for me is the relentless lack of empathy that runs throughout this article, which is really more in the way of a rant the a serious argument, anyway. I think there’s a philosophical and moral argument to be had about victimhood, and the problematic nature of it, but you need to argue honestly. One sentence after he glibly absolves the government of responsibility for the AIDS crisis, he says, “whereas once the idea was to shake off victimhood through courage and organization, nowadays the idea seems to be to enjoy it for its emotional effects,” as though ACT UP never existed. In other words, you can make an argument, but you don’t get to rewrite or erase history that’s inconvenient to your thesis, which he does consistently. It’s disappointing this made it to the front page of HN, it’s a pretty unpleasant, dishonest piece of writing.
- kadenshep 9y ago
  >It’s such an almost perverse misunderstanding of history that it has be deliberate, right? It is. I'd call it being disingenuous, but that seems too forgiving. It's fundamentally dishonest, it's lying.
- 7952 9y ago
  This anti-victim view seems to ignore the fact that the actions were actually malicious on the part of the government and various citizens. Homophobia was not not just a legal accident, it involved intentional acts of cruelty. As a society we are very reluctant to acknowledge that fact, perhaps because it goes against the authoritarian leanings that have become so prevalent. It makes people question why government's should have the right to control people in such intimate ways. Until we acknowledge this malice it is very difficult for people to really forgive the crimes committed against them. Especially when the perpetrators shrug of their acts in such a philosophical way. We will just commit the same crimes against other groups in the future because we haven't learned the lesson. When you hurt someone you must face your own failings head on and not just give excuses. Maybe then we can ask for forgiveness.
krrrh 9y ago
The same author on similar themes in 2015: http://www.weeklystandard.com/unassailable-virtue-victims/article/941011 http://www.weeklystandard.com/unassailable-virtue-victims/ar...
matt4077 9y ago
This is a hateful diatribe that only serves to show that today's mocking of calls for justice as "joyful victimhood" is not as new and creative as many seem to believe. the "victim"-narrative is lazy yet insidious: because anyone mentioning a perceived wrong can be painted with the same non-argument, mocked, and ignored. How are people like this author, bemoaning the loss of white male supremacy, never accused of playing the victim card? They are, after all, claim to somehow be personally harmed from the mere exposure to other people just mentioning poverty, discrimination, violence, etc.

93 points by imartin2k 9y ago

one page view http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/02/magazine/the-joys-of-victimhood.html?pagewanted=2&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/02/magazine/the-joys-of-victi...

dang 9y ago
We've changed to that from http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/02/magazine/the-joys-of-victimhood.html?pagewanted=1 http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/02/magazine/the-joys-of-victi.... Thanks!

PhasmaFelis 9y ago

I love how he thinks that Israel bulldozing Palestinian neighborhoods and killing civilians doesn't count as oppression because there's more Arabs than Israelis in the general area.

shawndumas 9y ago
"Arabs like to say that there are two conflicting narratives of the conflict. The facts are far simpler. It starts in the end of the 19th century. At the time millions of Jews were fleeing Russia and flooding Europe with refugees because of Czar Alexander III "Russia for Russians" program which sanctioned pogroms in order to evict the Jews from the country. This was only the latest in a long history of expulsions of Jews. The Jews, at the time were just beginning to be emancipated in a handful of countries, and both the Jews themselves and the affected countries had an interest in solving the Jewish Problem. What everyone recognized at the time was that the Jewish People started out in the "Holyland", from which they were expelled in the first century CE. A group of influential Jews organized a movement with the intention of solving the Jewish Problem by restoring the Jewish Homeland. That movement was called the Zionist Movement. However the Holyland was at the time a province of the Ottoman Empire, and the Ottomans had no intention of allowing a Jewish autonomous entity to be established in their land. Then came World War I. The Ottomans joined the war on the losing side and the British saw the opportunity to conquer the Ottomans and insert themselves as the influential power in the area. Lord Balfour, British foreign secretary and ex-Prime Minister was intrigued by the idea of creating a Jewish Home in Palestine and expressed in a letter to the British Zionist Organization that the British government would support the establishment of such an entity if Britain gained control of Palestine. In 1922 (5 years later) the League of Nations divided the former provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East into "Mandates" and instructed the British to execute the creation of a "Jewish National Home in Palestine". It also instructed the British to do so in a way that did not infringe upon the rights of the Arab population of Palestine. How that was to be achieved was unclear, and as it turned out, not possible. From an objective point of view the League of Nations and the British created an untenable situation, with Jews, on the one hand, having been given the internationally sanctioned green light to rebuild their home and thereby resolve the humanitarian disaster that defined the Jewish People in the diaspora, and with Arabs, on the other hand, looking forward to independence (whether as part of a greater Arab union or as individual States), with no interest whatsoever in the Jewish Problem or Jewish History or commitments made by other countries to people who don't even live there. 25 years and another World War later the problem had snowballed to the point where the British were unable and unwilling to continue to deal with it. A new international organization, the United Nations had been formed, and as its first project it took upon itself the task of resolving the Palestine problem. It sent a team called UNSCOP to present a solution to the UN members and UNSCOP returned with a carefully balanced plan to allow a small predominantly Jewish State to be formed, with the remainder of the country to become a predominantly Arab State, with the exception of Jerusalem which would be administered by the UN with access to both Jews and Arabs equally. This plan was voted on and ratified by the UN members on November 29, 1947. It was a compromise that the Jews were willing to accept. The Arabs however saw no reason they should have to compromise, and instead initiated a civil war. The Jews proceeded to put the Partition plan into effect despite the Arab rejection of the recommendation and the war that was being waged against them. Five months later the British withdrew and Israel was proclaimed. The combined forces of five neighboring countries invaded Palestine with the intention of conquering all of Palestine and establishing an Arab State in the entirety of what was the British Mandate for Palestine. Reportedly around 700,000 Arabs who were in the war zone created by the invading Arab armies fled. Israeli forces succeeded not only in defending the territory allocated to it in the Partition Plan but to push the invaders deep into the territories that would have been part of the Arab State had the Arabs accepted resolution 181. The UN negotiated a cease-fire and subsequently armistice treaties between Israel and the invading countries, and admitted Israel as a full member. The Armistice agreements put the area to the East of the Armistice demarkation line, including East Jerusalem (known as the West Bank) into Jordanian control, and the Gaza Strip into Egyptian control. From 1948 through 1974 the "Palestinians" were not considered a party in the conflict. The conflict was between Israel and the neighboring Arab countries who did not recognize Israel's proclamation of independence, and continued to proclaim their own intention to conquer Palestine and establish an Arab State in the entirety of Palestine. In 1967 the Arab States mobilized their forces and advanced towards their border with Israel, threatening to push Israel into the sea. Israel reacted with a preemptive strike that resulted not only in defending Israel's territory but in the withdrawal of the Syrians from the Golan Heights, Egypt from the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, and Jordan from the West Bank. The UN passed resolution 242 which called for the return of these territories to the countries that had withdrawn from them. Israel was willing to do so in exchange for Peace treaties and modifications to ensure Israel's defensibility. The members of the Arab League met in Khartoum to discuss their response and declared that no Arab nation would recognize, negotiate with, or make peace with Israel. As a result Israel had no alternative but to administer the territories, as their former occupiers were unwilling to reoccupy them. Seven years later the Arab League marched Yasser Arafat into the UN General Assembly and the UN proclaimed the "inalienable right of the Palestinian People to self-determination" and that the PLO is the Palestinians' sole legitimate representative. At that point the conflict ceased to be between Israel and the neighboring Arab countries, and the "Palestinians" became once again a party in the conflict. The UN supported the idea of a Palestinian State to be established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The PLO, who they considered the Palestinians' representative, rejected the idea and insisted upon the dismantling of Israel and its replacement with a Palestinian State in the enitre area of Palestine, and the return of all Palestinian refugees, resulting in a single predominantly Arab country. The Israeli public saw no prospect of a resolution and a group of Israelis began to insist upon being allowed to begin settle within the occupied territories. After a heated internal conflict the Israeli government relented and allowed settlements to be established. In 1978 Egypt's president Anwar Sadat and Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Accords returning the Sinai to Egypt and committing Israel to an Interim arrangement with the Palestinians granting them autonomy in the Occupied Territories. In 1993 Yasser Arafat signed the Declaration of Principles (Oslo Accords) accepting the principle of a two-State solution and interim Autonomy arrangement. In 1995 the PLO took control of the Palestinian Autonomy which governs 97% of the Palestinian population of the Occupied Territories and 40% of the West Bank. In 2005 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew all Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and expelled all Israeli settlers, rendering the Gaza Strip entirely independent. The Hamas offshoot of the Moslem Brotherhood, an Islamic Jihadist organization, took control of the Gaza Strip and proclaimed itself not bound by any agreement signed between Israel and the PLO, and proclaimed its commitment to the destruction of Israel. Hamas proceeded to attempt to smuggle arms into the West Bank and to develop and manufacture rockets with which to attack Israel. Israel reacted by cutting off the routes by which arms and materials for their manufacture could be brought into the Gaza Strip. On at least three occasions Hamas initiated hostilities against Israel firing thousands of rockets indiscriminately into Israeli cities. Meanwhile at least two attempts were made to negotiate a Final Status agreement between Israel and the PLO. Both attempts failed to reach a settlement acceptable to both parties. This is the whole story in a nutshell. Every word is objective fact. Undoubtedly there will be a long stream of objections about omissions and recriminations meant to invoke sympathy for one side and to vilify the other. But moving forward will require focusing on the facts and not continuing to justify resistance to reconciliation." -------------------------------------- https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-neutral-explanation-of-the-Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian-conflict-How-can-the-conflict-be-described-without-trying-to-be-on-one-of-the-sides/answer/Chaim-Handler https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-neutral-explanation-o...
- kakalukia 9y ago
  I don't see how this can be called the most neutral explanation when it mentions nothing about how the UN considers Israel's occupation illegal or mentions anything about illegal settlements. This is also not even the highest ranked answer from the question you linked from Quora.
  - shawndumas 9y ago
    Welcome to HN. I love seeing new members expressing passionate views. Couple of quick questions: Do you always agree with every dictate of the UN? Does objectivity always garner the most votes?
    - gech 9y ago
      Do you get paid by Israel to make posts? Because I've heard that people do get paid to make favorable posts.
      - dang 9y ago
        Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. Another thing that will get you banned here is using HN primarily for political or ideological battle. That's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it turns out you've broken the guidelines so often and we've given you so many warnings that I've banned your account. If you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
    - totalZero 9y ago
      You don't gain any ground by pointing out how long or how short the other user's account has been around. > Do you always agree with every dictate of the UN? This is irrelevant, unless you are trying to say that one either agrees with everything the UN says, or nothing. Clearly that is not the case; plenty of UN member nations consent on some issues, and dissent from others. The same can thus obviously be said of individual people. They don't have to agree with every dictate to agree with some of the conclusions of the body. Like it or not, the UN reflects opinions from a substantial number of member nations, and it's hard to applaud any explanation that ignores the UN on an issue where they are, and have been, a centrally relevant party. > Does objectivity always garner the most votes? No, but you probably have to say more to justify a lower-approval response as the right answer to a question specifically seeking the most neutral explanation, than to simply say "this is the most objective one".
nl 9y ago
This was written in 1989. Settlements were much less of an issue then, and the demographics were dramatically different.
- Avshalom 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_Heights#De_facto_annexation_by_Israel_and_civil_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_Heights#De_facto_annexat...
  - nl 9y ago
    Indeed. You'd be aware the the Palestinian state doesn't claim the Golan Heights? I think that Israel has lost a lot of moral authority in the years since the 1980s. But I think in 1981 annexing the Golan was a defensible choice: the Syrians had constantly used them as place to launch artillery barrages against Israeli towns like Tiberius. The 1980s (especially the early 80s) really were different: there were Arab states around Israel who would use their own armed forces to attack, and the PLO hadn't disavowed terrorism. Now of course times have changes, and Israel no longer can claim that those threats, and settlements have made their problems worse. But Hamas and Hezbollah have capitalized on that, so.. there is plenty of blame to go around.

dfsegoat 9y ago

The number of parallels between now and 1989 are striking: victimhood == top social currency, etc... It really is almost like we have these 20-30 year social cycles... Perhaps this is known to the sociological literature - but that's not my area. Just the same I find it fascinating.

deleted 9y ago
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GarvielLoken 9y ago
Doesn't cycle imply that it went down in between?

moneytide1 9y ago

Here in the South, there is this air of hospitality. But there is an irony because everyone always rejects each others volunteer assistance out of pride for their ability to take care of themselves. I see charity directed towards me almost as an insult, or subtle attempted ownership, and there is this competitive air about needing less than others. But I suppose in more densely populated areas, there is more victimhood at play. This is an education problem, because these people were never raised to take care of themselves. Instead, they want to be owed something. This "something" usually comes in the form of tax handouts, and when it is distributed, I'm certain it is quite mismanaged. Think of all the impulse-buy items near checkouts that are purchased with food stamps, when these people could be combining this resource to buy in bulk and get much more out of it. My mantra is to be a provider, not a consumer. It's not about how much you make, it's about what you choose to spend it on. It seems like these types of problems can only exist when there are too many people living in close-proximity.

justAnotherNET 9y ago
I suggest anyone interested in this google the “rat utopia” experiment.
throwawaymnm9 9y ago
> This "something" usually comes in the form of tax handouts, and when it is distributed, I'm certain it is quite mismanaged. Oh yes, corporations typically just hang onto it and use it to enrich executives, or they funnel it out of the country. But it should be well-known by this point that corporations get way too many tax breaks. > It seems like these types of problems can only exist when there are too many people living in close-proximity. Let me guess: you avoid cities because the black people scare you?
matt4077 9y ago
"The South" is neither morally superior, nor more independent/self-reliant, etc.. Guess which states get more than twice the taxes they pay to the federal government back? Alabama, Mississippi, New Mexico, and other rural southern states are taken the handouts from California and New York: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vby1dJlsXmM/VtkJnusdGXI/AAAAAAAAJqk/EQXnfNLOqT0/s1600/fed_spending_dollar.JPG https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vby1dJlsXmM/VtkJnusdGXI/AAAAAAAAJ... Guess which teenagers are incapable of not getting pregnant at 14? The southern, rural christians. Guess which states' citizen are dropping from Opiod addiction like flies? Again, the south (plus similarly rural Appalachia). Guess where food stamps are most used, where people are unable to control their eating and are morbidly obese, which people smoke more, where drunk driving is socially accepted, etc etc: the US South, and some rural northern states, are worse than the large cities in almost any measure you can think of.

mherdeg 9y ago

Epstein's powerful prose captures well the New York intellectual views of a certain culture and a certain generation. It's a fascinating perspective on what people were thinking then. I was equally fascinated by the deep view of the popular psyche shown in his September 1970 essay for Harper's Magazine, featured on its cover ( https://harpers.org/archive/1970/09/homohetero/ https://harpers.org/archive/1970/09/homohetero/ ): > Yet if heterosexual life has come to seem impossibly difficult, homosexual life still seems more nearly impossible. For to be a homosexual is to be hostage to a passion that automatically brings terrible pressures to bear on any man who lives with it: and these pressures, which only a few rare homosexuals are able to rise above with any success, can distort a man, can twist him, and always leave him defined by his sexual condition. The same, I think, cannot be said about heterosexuals. With the possible exception of prostitutes and heterosexuals driven by abnormal appetites, the general run of heterosexuals are not defined by their sexuality at all. Although the power of sex is never to be underrated, in the main for most heterosexuals sex beyond adolescence becomes a secondary matter, a pleasure most of the time, a problem only in its absence. Homosexuality, on the other hand, is a full-time matter, a human status—and that is the tyranny of it. > … > I am not about to go into a liberal homily here about the need for private acceptance of homosexuality, because, truth to tell, I have not privately accepted it myself—nor, I suspect am I soon likely to. In my liberal (or Liberal's) conscience, I prefer to believe that I have never done anything to harm any single homosexual, or in any way added to his pain; and it would be nice if I could get to my grave with this record intact. Yet I do not mistake my tolerance as complete. Although I have had pleasant dealings with homosexuals professionally, also unpleasant ones, I do not have any homosexuals among my close friends. If a close friend were to reveal himself to me as being a homosexual, I am very uncertain what my reaction would be—except to say that it would not be simple. I clearly do not consider a man's homosexuality, as certain ihomosexuals would argue, merely a matter of sexual preference on his part, something vestigial to him, but instead I think it goes deep within him, that it cannot but have affected him strenuously, making him either a stronger man or a weaker, a better man or a worse—whichever, at all events, an essentially different man than he would be if he were not a For this reason, and from an absolutely personal point of view, I consider it important o know whether a man I am dealing with is a homosexual or nut. Not long ago the BBC did a retrospective on the art of Sergei Diaghilev. Every aspect of Diaghilev's illustrious career was covered from every possible angle, when the last man to be interviewed for the show, an aged Russian homosexual who was a friend of Diaghilev's from the 1920s, said: "Ze ting you must remember about Servei vas dat he vas a very aggressive homosexual." I think anyone who would ignore a fact of this kind in intellectual criticism or in life, is a fool. > If I had the power to do so, I would wish homosexuality off the face of this earth. I would do so because I think that it brings infinitely more pain than pleasure to those who are forced to live with it; because I think there is no resolution for this pain in our lifetime, only, for the overwhelming majority of homosexuals, more pain and various degrees of exacerbating adjustment; and because, wholly selfishly, I find myself completely incapable of coming to turns with it. > … > They are different front the rest of us. Homosexuals are different, moreover, in a way that cuts deeper than other kinds of human differences—religious, class, racial—in a way that is, somehow, more fundamental. Cursed without clear cause, afflicted without apparent cure, they are an affront to our rationality, living evidence of our despair of ever finding a sensible, an explainable, design to the world. One can tolerate homosexuality, a small enough price to be asked to pay for someone else's pain, but accepting it, really accepting it, is another thing altogether. I find I can accept it least of all when I look at my children. There is much my four sons can do in their lives that might cause me anguish, that might outrage me, that might make me ashamed of them and of myself as their father. But nothing they could ever do would make me sadder than if any of them were to become homosexual. For then I should know them condemned to a state of permanent niggerdom among men, their lives, whatever adjustment they might make to their condition, to be lived out as part of the pain of the earth.

knieveltech 9y ago

Comment thread dumpster fire in 3....2....1...

legostormtroopr 9y ago
This comment isn't going to help with keeping people on a more positive discourse.
- knieveltech 9y ago
  This implies it's possible to steer the HN community into positive discourse.
  - dang 9y ago
    Maybe not, but that doesn't mean it's ok for you to make it worse. Please don't post unsubstantive comments here. Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for political battle. That's an abuse of the site because it destroys the thing it's supposed to be for, and we ban accounts that do this, regardless of which politics they favor. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended if you want to keep commenting here. I wrote an explanation of why we ban accounts for this reason here, in case you or anyone wants more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16185062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16185062.

alexandercrohde 9y ago

> Such a situation could never have come about without certain fundamental confusions having been firmly established, and these begin with language itself. Victims have traditionally been minority groups, but in fact women, who in the United States are a slight majority, have been deemed victims, whereas the Jews and the Chinese in America, though clearly minorities (and vastly less numerous than blacks or Hispanic people), are not usually counted as victims and thus rarely get included in affirmative action or other quota favoritism programs. A victim, then, is someone who insistently declares himself a victim. I was just wondering about this last year. I still haven't had anybody explain it to me in a logically-consistent way. I think it's a fair ask.

nl 9y ago
Minority status does not define victims, and instead it is about power. There were a lot less British in India during the Raj than there were Indians. It is pretty clear who the victim was then.
- alexandercrohde 9y ago
  I'm not sure that explains why Chinese immigrants would be portrayed as victims less than hispanic immigrants, as just one example off the top of my head.
  - tomcam 9y ago
    Plus there was no Hispanic Exclusion Act
    - nl 9y ago
      Yes, it was weird to completely ignore that. Almost like it didn't fit into his narrative or something!
  - nl 9y ago
    The article literally uses the British Raj as an example: Gandhi was the great teacher of the art of victimhood, of setting one's victimization on full public display. why Chinese immigrants would be portrayed as victims less than hispanic immigrants Because you can measure outcomes? But I think the word victim is completely wrong there (although perhaps it was correct in 1989).

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Taniwha 9y ago

Bear in mind this was written in the very same year that the same guy traded on his own "victimhood" after being fired from his 20yr job for writing a homophobic rant.

PhasmaFelis 9y ago
When these people complain about others being special snowflakes and expecting special treatment, what they really mean is that they deserve special treatment.
- arionhardison 9y ago
  I have always thought this to be true. I find it ironic when whites complain about programs like affirmative action when through laws such as Jim Crow, Red Lineing, etc... they have been receiving affirmative action for hundreds of years. What whites are really saying when they speak out against programs like that is: "We deserve to be the only protected class of people".
  - Viliam1234 9y ago
    > I find it ironic when whites complain ... they have been receiving affirmative action for hundreds of years. There is a part in the article explaining how "they" who benefited from Jim Crow are not necessarily the same people as "they" who complain about being discriminated against. Not necessarily even descendants thereof. Instead, you often get ironic situations like Jewish people who barely escaped Nazism while the rest of their families died in concentration camps, only to get yelled at for being white and allegedly benefiting from Jim Crow.

stcredzero 9y ago

The pleasures of victim-hood include imbuing one's life with a sense of drama. The drama of daily life is greatly heightened if one feels that society is organized against one. This sounds very, very familiar! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcP0WmGB78A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcP0WmGB78A

owenversteeg 9y ago

Look, I see that it's a relevant article today. But I don't think it's saying much, and it has a weird homophobic/racist current running through it. For example, Epstein mocks the idea that the US government exacerbated the AIDS crisis (which it clearly did.) He says slavery ended "more than a century" ago - slavery effectively continued several decades after the Thirteenth Amendment was passed. Now, I don't like the idea of tearing down a good article just because the author is an asshole. But in this case, I think the article isn't very good, and the author also happens to be an asshole: this is the same guy that was "revolted" by the idea of "fags" (both his words, though he later switched to using "homosexuals".) The same guy that criticized people writing candidly about death, the same guy who constantly thought he was being hunted by "men with strange appetites, men whose minds were twisted". And the same guy who, upon learning an acquaintance was gay, was "angry at being victimized by his duplicity." Oh, and the same guy who thought it was better for a gay man to commit suicide than act upon his unrealized gay desires. It'd be very interesting to read a good article on victimization from someone who isn't so horrible, though: it is an important topic, and there are many interesting things, which are frequently left unsaid, to be said about it.

dkural 9y ago
He lost me when he lumped every non-Jewish group in the Middle East as "200 million Arabs" and equated it with the Palestinians; and tried to justify the mistreatment of Palestinian children. The organization Shovrim Shtika (Breaking the Silence), founded by veterans from the Israeli Defense Forces, have also corroborated these accounts - not just western academics, international observers, and journalists.
CydeWeys 9y ago
Forget all of that even, there's plenty of places where the opinion piece collapses under simple faulty logic. Here's one example: > Such a situation could never have come about without certain fundamental confusions having been firmly established, and these begin with language itself. Victims have traditionally been minority groups, but in fact women, who in the United States are a slight majority, have been deemed victims, whereas the Jews and the Chinese in America, though clearly minorities (and vastly less numerous than blacks or Hispanic people), are not usually counted as victims and thus rarely get included in affirmative action or other quota favoritism programs. A victim, then, is someone who insistently declares himself a victim. There have been times and places in the history of the world where the majority of the people in certain places were outright slaves, including in the United States and especially in the Caribbean. And yet are we to believe that these powerless, enslaved people weren't victims simply because slavery was such a vast institution that there were more people suffering under if than committing it?

mazelife 9y ago

When I hear someone (having, by their own description, a front-row seat for these events) reduce the civil-rights movement to this: “What I saw was a number of bad laws called into question and ultimately removed by acts of courage and wise restraint on the part of the victims of those laws.” …as though the white-supremacist, apartheid state that existed in the south at the time was nothing more than a few pesky laws that had all gotten cleared up by 1968, I have to seriously question that person’s powers of observation. It’s such an almost perverse misunderstanding of history that it has be deliberate, right? Any time someone starts out with a premise like, “the civil rights movement, like a spiritual oil spill, left a vast residue of guilt in its wake,” and then proceeds from there, you know it’s going to be a long read. Sure, there’s an attempt to graft some sort of philosophical backbone to the piece through this (nonsensical) distinction he makes between “appeal[s] to conscience” and ”appeal[s] to guilt,” but it’s confusingly handled and doesn’t go anywhere. Mainly what stands out for me is the relentless lack of empathy that runs throughout this article, which is really more in the way of a rant the a serious argument, anyway. I think there’s a philosophical and moral argument to be had about victimhood, and the problematic nature of it, but you need to argue honestly. One sentence after he glibly absolves the government of responsibility for the AIDS crisis, he says, “whereas once the idea was to shake off victimhood through courage and organization, nowadays the idea seems to be to enjoy it for its emotional effects,” as though ACT UP never existed. In other words, you can make an argument, but you don’t get to rewrite or erase history that’s inconvenient to your thesis, which he does consistently. It’s disappointing this made it to the front page of HN, it’s a pretty unpleasant, dishonest piece of writing.

kadenshep 9y ago
>It’s such an almost perverse misunderstanding of history that it has be deliberate, right? It is. I'd call it being disingenuous, but that seems too forgiving. It's fundamentally dishonest, it's lying.
7952 9y ago
This anti-victim view seems to ignore the fact that the actions were actually malicious on the part of the government and various citizens. Homophobia was not not just a legal accident, it involved intentional acts of cruelty. As a society we are very reluctant to acknowledge that fact, perhaps because it goes against the authoritarian leanings that have become so prevalent. It makes people question why government's should have the right to control people in such intimate ways. Until we acknowledge this malice it is very difficult for people to really forgive the crimes committed against them. Especially when the perpetrators shrug of their acts in such a philosophical way. We will just commit the same crimes against other groups in the future because we haven't learned the lesson. When you hurt someone you must face your own failings head on and not just give excuses. Maybe then we can ask for forgiveness.

krrrh 9y ago

The same author on similar themes in 2015: http://www.weeklystandard.com/unassailable-virtue-victims/article/941011 http://www.weeklystandard.com/unassailable-virtue-victims/ar...

matt4077 9y ago

This is a hateful diatribe that only serves to show that today's mocking of calls for justice as "joyful victimhood" is not as new and creative as many seem to believe. the "victim"-narrative is lazy yet insidious: because anyone mentioning a perceived wrong can be painted with the same non-argument, mocked, and ignored. How are people like this author, bemoaning the loss of white male supremacy, never accused of playing the victim card? They are, after all, claim to somehow be personally harmed from the mere exposure to other people just mentioning poverty, discrimination, violence, etc.