In the Native American world, the Dark Triad manifests itself most clearly in pretend Indians—pretendians. They exploit a non-existent/very distant Indian identity for professional and personal gain and, with the help of codependent real Indians, vilify anybody who questions them. The pretendians especially thrive in academia, where they present as a white leftist dream: the Indians who are the love children of Geronimo and Foucault.
Stiff penalties are starting to happen if you get caught. Lady up north got three years for passing her kids off as Inuit. I can identify as a dolphin but not as an Indian, nosir, no victimhood for me. Buffy St. Marie is Italian. I expect her career is over, but she avoided jail time.
Yup. People forget that Marco Rubio mocked Warren by taking his own DNA test and learned that his minuscule amount of Native DNA is larger than Warren's.
Very interesting. Seems to me that this kind of sadism explains much of the enthusiastic participation in the campus protests. It was a license to bully, persecute and celebrate violence with impunity. Notably 95% of the so-called “pro Palestinian” protesters had neither personal connection to the conflict nor basic knowledge about it. What they did share is joy in harming and gaslighting Jews on their campus.
I see it very differently. Too many people who support without reservation the "right of Israel to defend itself" have applauded Israel's genocide of the Palestinians, even reveling in the stories of mass slaughter and disappearances into the Israeli gulag. Thus they obscure their Islamophobic hate by a cover of victimhood, claiming any attempt to defend Palestinian's right to self-determination or even their right to live is somehow "anti-Semitic." Calling for the end of mass bombing of civilians is not anti-Semitic; it is anti-ethnic cleansing and anti-mass murder.
That makes no sense whatsoever. Your lapse into irrationality is a telling sign that you are running from the truth. Israel is committing a mass slaughter of thousands with no end in sight, bombing apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, refugee camps, telecommunication facilities, waste water plants, anything that supports life a community, and calling it "self-defense." It is intent on wiping out the Palestinian population of Gaza, as it forces Palestinians off their lands in the West Bank. To hide these crimes against humanity it has assassinated over a hundred journalists, claiming the killings were "inadvertent," just as the killing of hundreds of aid workers is always "accidental." We see the genocide, thanks to the courage of Middle Eastern journalists that risk their lives to document the truth.
Total war is total war. Gaza could have avoided all of this by not electing Hamas and supporting acts of war, kidnapping civilians, and using human shields.
"Courage of middle eastern journalists". Spoken like a true Qatari. An Al Jazeera journalist got caught holding one of the hostages at their house.
What Andrew said is right. The recent news was Hamas lied about death statistics bc they know how it plays to the west. The Islamists are not like us. Please don't pretend. If you can't understand it, it's bc it is easier to understand the western mindset as an Islamist, then vice versa.
Pile on claims that this is only on the left, while the right has embraced the notion that they are victims of the state/minorities/Hollywood/global cabals. Dark triad is not an ideology. It's a personality bundle looking for a niche. It's interesting to see the comments on your substack trying to similarly push out a diversity of views not unlike what we see on Twitter and Bluesky. We always, always think it's only "the other side" don't we? I guess human nature, especially online, is to demand a monoculture of thought.
Since the field of psychology and sociology do not allow studying Homo sapiens with the same sort of objective observation and data gathering tools we use to study other social species, we are locked into the same old partisan myopia that keeps us demonizing others instead of using logic and facts to examine the issues that divide us.
> We always, always think it's only "the other side" don't we?
It seems more like every group contains both those neurotic enough to fear some human failing exists only on their side and those confident enough to point out the same human failing existing on the other side, and never the twain shall meet.
I'm not sure I've ever encountered anyone who fits the first description, and I daresay any who do are vastly outnumbered by people who are far quicker to impute bad motives and unethical behavior to others whose political bent is at odds with their own than to find similar fault with anyone on their own side of the fence.
Damn the liberals every one of them. It’s just so unbearable that now the whole woke crowd’s out there everywhere on social media giving a bad name to the extreme focus on self-importance and the readiness to be highly manipulative and even deceitful and to be totally unbothered by even the most violent acts of aggression against others that made this country great before it wasn’t great anymore thanks to these damn liberals who’ve now also totally ruined the tradition of virtuous victimhood for the rest of us.
It's terribly unsurprising. Especially bc most of the far lefts victims are the center left a la Jesse Singal. Frankly, they're doing their best to turn me into a conservative and I hold almost no traditionally conservative values.
The trans extremists have managed to capture the left almost entirely, and it's a shame they have pretty much locked down Bluesky. But I noticed immediately that it was just another echo chamber with the same rabid mob of far-left ideologues. Strangely, I was banned from twitter for posting a gender critical message that essentially agreed with Musk's take on the trans phenomenon, so I can't say the left has been entirely driven from moderation jobs at X.
If you would change your opinions because stupid or bad people have (or pretend to share) your views, then you basically have no actual beliefs. How stupid.
This victim as status thing has been going on for a while. I don't recognize much change other than the increased stubbornness of those that believe they benefit from it to clutch it regardless of the clear global evidence that people have had enough and the effect is no longer positive. Bluesky is yet another safe space where they can live in a fantasy that their high social status based on certified victim identity still resonates.
It makes some sense if you think about it. People don't give up their status easily. The invest so much into it that remaking themselves into another perceived high status entity looks more costly than grouping together with others to live in a bubble of self acknowledgement.
Thank you, Yascha, for a wonderful article. It articulates and clarifies ideas and concepts that I - and likely others - only had vague, uncomfortable feelings about. And all of that "sine ira et studio."
What is interesting about the victimhood culture is that it works hand in hand with a push to turn every institution into an overbearing and meddling "Mommy" figure, so that the noble victim doesn't just get status, but material accomodations as well.
Unsure if this is connected with feminization of institutions demographically, or just the result of a decadent culture at large, but this gamesmanship is most acutely observed in places with high female participation, and almost entirely absent in places that are all male.
Not blaming women, but perhaps the feminist lens caused all of us to overlook this aspect of toxic femininity.
Sam Harris once noted that were we to hook up our brains to a loudspeaker, we’d be absolutely horrified: we’d sound like deranged, screeching lunatics. The cacophony of nonstop thoughts and impulses cycling through our monkey minds—our fears, worries, reactions, all the mental junk rattling around up there— broadcast for all the world to hear. This is the mind experiment we are choosing to live in now. We’ve plugged our collective brains into a giant loudspeaker and guess what? Our neuroses are showing. I think we may be finding that there is a very good reason we were taught (some of us, anyway) the difference between “inside voice” and “outside voice” and thinking before speaking. And basic etiquette. And civility. You know, the skills required to navigate the world as a responsible adult with some scrap of dignity.
Yes, we are all at the mercy of sadists. Simply put, that's why life sucks for so many of us. Whether it's political/cultural from the Right or Left, or from people in your city driving cars that intentionally backfire or trucks that spew massive diesel clouds, and all of the other inconsiderate trash culture behavior, all of us non-sadists are forced to suffer. We need a new movement, I think--the Anti-Sadist movement: new norms, new laws, all of it. Things are falling apart.
In all-fathers eternal grand expanse of creation, the darkness manifests itself most clearly in pretend divisions of Man after Man's own kind....lol. As if, Man is divisible & not indigenous with all unalienable blessings of life, liberty and property available to rightly pursue their happiness and this, throughout all-fathers eternal expanse, eternal forevermore.
But, what One has observed, certain people find living various social aberrations suitable most oft garners the wealth of those beguiled....lol
Our counsellorship?
Sta away from people selling words of art that only bring pain!
Such as "racism."
Why?
Because people who pander claims of "racism" are truly what has anciently be known as "E'RACISM". To hide their Program to Enslave those they caste to blame for their Victimhood or otherwise. It just seems with the constant "NEWSPEAK" constantly adjusted for your ease of social engineering, toward slave & more ryot-tenure idiocracy, people might wish to know better....lol.
Fascinating piece. And we'd be remiss, of course, if we didn't point out how central victimhood, or at least a sense of victimhood, is on the right wing. Ever has it been so.
But there's been something especially disappointing, not to mention dishonest, in the shabby treatment Jesse Singal has gotten on Bluesky. There's been nothing virtuous about that particular exercise in virtue signaling.
Postscript. Check out the Christmas song by Granny Harmers. "It'll be freezing this Christmas, without fuel at home, it'll be freezing this Christmas, while Keir Starmer is warm.” Protest does not have be violent.
In the Native American world, the Dark Triad manifests itself most clearly in pretend Indians—pretendians. They exploit a non-existent/very distant Indian identity for professional and personal gain and, with the help of codependent real Indians, vilify anybody who questions them. The pretendians especially thrive in academia, where they present as a white leftist dream: the Indians who are the love children of Geronimo and Foucault.
Stiff penalties are starting to happen if you get caught. Lady up north got three years for passing her kids off as Inuit. I can identify as a dolphin but not as an Indian, nosir, no victimhood for me. Buffy St. Marie is Italian. I expect her career is over, but she avoided jail time.
Buffy had a good run.
In academia or government or the arts, its advantageous to claim Indigenous roots, especially in Canada. In every day life, not so much.
Canada is taking it far more seriously than in the United States. Very few pretendians have lost their jobs here.
Elizabeth Warren is still a US Senator, for instance.
Yup. People forget that Marco Rubio mocked Warren by taking his own DNA test and learned that his minuscule amount of Native DNA is larger than Warren's.
Very interesting. Seems to me that this kind of sadism explains much of the enthusiastic participation in the campus protests. It was a license to bully, persecute and celebrate violence with impunity. Notably 95% of the so-called “pro Palestinian” protesters had neither personal connection to the conflict nor basic knowledge about it. What they did share is joy in harming and gaslighting Jews on their campus.
I see it very differently. Too many people who support without reservation the "right of Israel to defend itself" have applauded Israel's genocide of the Palestinians, even reveling in the stories of mass slaughter and disappearances into the Israeli gulag. Thus they obscure their Islamophobic hate by a cover of victimhood, claiming any attempt to defend Palestinian's right to self-determination or even their right to live is somehow "anti-Semitic." Calling for the end of mass bombing of civilians is not anti-Semitic; it is anti-ethnic cleansing and anti-mass murder.
Calling it a genocide is itself an indicator you’re probably on the sadists side as well
That makes no sense whatsoever. Your lapse into irrationality is a telling sign that you are running from the truth. Israel is committing a mass slaughter of thousands with no end in sight, bombing apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, refugee camps, telecommunication facilities, waste water plants, anything that supports life a community, and calling it "self-defense." It is intent on wiping out the Palestinian population of Gaza, as it forces Palestinians off their lands in the West Bank. To hide these crimes against humanity it has assassinated over a hundred journalists, claiming the killings were "inadvertent," just as the killing of hundreds of aid workers is always "accidental." We see the genocide, thanks to the courage of Middle Eastern journalists that risk their lives to document the truth.
Total war is total war. Gaza could have avoided all of this by not electing Hamas and supporting acts of war, kidnapping civilians, and using human shields.
"Courage of middle eastern journalists". Spoken like a true Qatari. An Al Jazeera journalist got caught holding one of the hostages at their house.
What Andrew said is right. The recent news was Hamas lied about death statistics bc they know how it plays to the west. The Islamists are not like us. Please don't pretend. If you can't understand it, it's bc it is easier to understand the western mindset as an Islamist, then vice versa.
Pile on claims that this is only on the left, while the right has embraced the notion that they are victims of the state/minorities/Hollywood/global cabals. Dark triad is not an ideology. It's a personality bundle looking for a niche. It's interesting to see the comments on your substack trying to similarly push out a diversity of views not unlike what we see on Twitter and Bluesky. We always, always think it's only "the other side" don't we? I guess human nature, especially online, is to demand a monoculture of thought.
Since the field of psychology and sociology do not allow studying Homo sapiens with the same sort of objective observation and data gathering tools we use to study other social species, we are locked into the same old partisan myopia that keeps us demonizing others instead of using logic and facts to examine the issues that divide us.
> We always, always think it's only "the other side" don't we?
It seems more like every group contains both those neurotic enough to fear some human failing exists only on their side and those confident enough to point out the same human failing existing on the other side, and never the twain shall meet.
I'm not sure I've ever encountered anyone who fits the first description, and I daresay any who do are vastly outnumbered by people who are far quicker to impute bad motives and unethical behavior to others whose political bent is at odds with their own than to find similar fault with anyone on their own side of the fence.
Damn the liberals every one of them. It’s just so unbearable that now the whole woke crowd’s out there everywhere on social media giving a bad name to the extreme focus on self-importance and the readiness to be highly manipulative and even deceitful and to be totally unbothered by even the most violent acts of aggression against others that made this country great before it wasn’t great anymore thanks to these damn liberals who’ve now also totally ruined the tradition of virtuous victimhood for the rest of us.
It's terribly unsurprising. Especially bc most of the far lefts victims are the center left a la Jesse Singal. Frankly, they're doing their best to turn me into a conservative and I hold almost no traditionally conservative values.
The trans extremists have managed to capture the left almost entirely, and it's a shame they have pretty much locked down Bluesky. But I noticed immediately that it was just another echo chamber with the same rabid mob of far-left ideologues. Strangely, I was banned from twitter for posting a gender critical message that essentially agreed with Musk's take on the trans phenomenon, so I can't say the left has been entirely driven from moderation jobs at X.
If you would change your opinions because stupid or bad people have (or pretend to share) your views, then you basically have no actual beliefs. How stupid.
This victim as status thing has been going on for a while. I don't recognize much change other than the increased stubbornness of those that believe they benefit from it to clutch it regardless of the clear global evidence that people have had enough and the effect is no longer positive. Bluesky is yet another safe space where they can live in a fantasy that their high social status based on certified victim identity still resonates.
It makes some sense if you think about it. People don't give up their status easily. The invest so much into it that remaking themselves into another perceived high status entity looks more costly than grouping together with others to live in a bubble of self acknowledgement.
Bluesky is deeply toxic place. On Bluesky, you will be called 'intolerant' if you state obvious facts.
What a great article. Right on point.
Excellent article
Thank you, Yascha, for a wonderful article. It articulates and clarifies ideas and concepts that I - and likely others - only had vague, uncomfortable feelings about. And all of that "sine ira et studio."
Great article.
What is interesting about the victimhood culture is that it works hand in hand with a push to turn every institution into an overbearing and meddling "Mommy" figure, so that the noble victim doesn't just get status, but material accomodations as well.
Unsure if this is connected with feminization of institutions demographically, or just the result of a decadent culture at large, but this gamesmanship is most acutely observed in places with high female participation, and almost entirely absent in places that are all male.
Not blaming women, but perhaps the feminist lens caused all of us to overlook this aspect of toxic femininity.
Sam Harris once noted that were we to hook up our brains to a loudspeaker, we’d be absolutely horrified: we’d sound like deranged, screeching lunatics. The cacophony of nonstop thoughts and impulses cycling through our monkey minds—our fears, worries, reactions, all the mental junk rattling around up there— broadcast for all the world to hear. This is the mind experiment we are choosing to live in now. We’ve plugged our collective brains into a giant loudspeaker and guess what? Our neuroses are showing. I think we may be finding that there is a very good reason we were taught (some of us, anyway) the difference between “inside voice” and “outside voice” and thinking before speaking. And basic etiquette. And civility. You know, the skills required to navigate the world as a responsible adult with some scrap of dignity.
Yes, we are all at the mercy of sadists. Simply put, that's why life sucks for so many of us. Whether it's political/cultural from the Right or Left, or from people in your city driving cars that intentionally backfire or trucks that spew massive diesel clouds, and all of the other inconsiderate trash culture behavior, all of us non-sadists are forced to suffer. We need a new movement, I think--the Anti-Sadist movement: new norms, new laws, all of it. Things are falling apart.
I am not surprised in the least. The single defining trait of every one of those self professed liberals is hypocrisy.
I think you’ve just proved Mr. Mounk’s point.
In all-fathers eternal grand expanse of creation, the darkness manifests itself most clearly in pretend divisions of Man after Man's own kind....lol. As if, Man is divisible & not indigenous with all unalienable blessings of life, liberty and property available to rightly pursue their happiness and this, throughout all-fathers eternal expanse, eternal forevermore.
But, what One has observed, certain people find living various social aberrations suitable most oft garners the wealth of those beguiled....lol
Our counsellorship?
Sta away from people selling words of art that only bring pain!
Such as "racism."
Why?
Because people who pander claims of "racism" are truly what has anciently be known as "E'RACISM". To hide their Program to Enslave those they caste to blame for their Victimhood or otherwise. It just seems with the constant "NEWSPEAK" constantly adjusted for your ease of social engineering, toward slave & more ryot-tenure idiocracy, people might wish to know better....lol.
Fascinating piece. And we'd be remiss, of course, if we didn't point out how central victimhood, or at least a sense of victimhood, is on the right wing. Ever has it been so.
But there's been something especially disappointing, not to mention dishonest, in the shabby treatment Jesse Singal has gotten on Bluesky. There's been nothing virtuous about that particular exercise in virtue signaling.
Postscript. Check out the Christmas song by Granny Harmers. "It'll be freezing this Christmas, without fuel at home, it'll be freezing this Christmas, while Keir Starmer is warm.” Protest does not have be violent.