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.
This phenomenon is very prevalent in Australia - and we have an extremely broad threshold for Aboriginal identity. Effectively self-id, and this has resulted in indigeneity becoming the fastest growing demographic.
I've heard that Australia is having a serious problem with false claims. I published a poem many years ago whose final couplet is "In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written/all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts."
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.
In every day life -- I know several Indians and have a few as relatives -- Indians are just ordinary people. They tend to distance themselves from the professional Victims and just want to be treated normally and so they are.
Speaking of fake Indians, do you remember the "Native American" woman who many years ago was sent by Marlon Brando to take his Oscar on his behalf, and she chastised the white audience? A few years ago, at her death, her relatives published an article in which they disclosed that she didn't have a drop of native blood. She was all fake. She "became a Native American" when her career took a dive and she realized she could be reborn as a Native American--which she did. Whenever I see "BIPOC" (what a cringe way of referring to humans, by the way!) chastise white people in the name of "social justice," these are the kinds of frauds that come to mind.
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.
I believe you are probably in good faith, Pat, but you seem to be unaware that you are making exactly the sort of claim that leads people to feel defensive and to double down on their indifference to others’ suffering. Your comments are fueled by outrage, and I get it, but you lack nuance. If you want to read a more balanced account of the war and of Israel’s actions, read the left-wing newspaper Haaretz. Several of its reporters are Arabs, although its most left-leaning commentators are probably Jewish Israelis. Please avoid painting all Jews like myself as celebrating the destruction of Gazan lives. This is to make light of the suffering of those who care. Fascists are currently in control of the Israeli government, and many of the far-right are in the IDF, and some of them are full of hatred and a desire for revenge. They are 18 year men with guns - basically invited there by Hamas, in an IDF that has lost its moorings because its political masters have other goals than upholding moral standards in the army. This is all predictable. But so is the result of giving guns to those who follow the most murderous ideologies that many in the Palestinian community have followed for the past hundred years. I personally have not seen or heard of anyone celebrating the bombs falling on Gazans. I am sure they exist, but they are beside the point. In order to get people to care, you need to get them to listen, and I believe that your exclusive focus on Palestinian victimhood is not going to achieve that.
I do subscribe to Haaretz and have for some time. I have never painted all Jewish people as celebrating the destruction of Palestine; I am a supporter of Jewish Voice for Peace so I am well aware that Jewish Americans do not all agree on this issue. It is in the pages of Haaretz that the fact of Israeli celebration of the mass deaths in Gaza have been reported, as well as the gratuitous destruction of homes and infrastructure by the IDF soldiers.
When faced with my own government's complicity in a genocide I think outrage is in order.
OK, thanks for clarifying. I see your point, but then mine stands - one sometimes has to decide whether to be performative or persuasive. I also think that fundamentally you are not giving sufficient weight to the sheer emotion brought on by being in a state of continual anxiety nor to the existential concerns of the Israeli state. I am influenced by the outrage expressed in Haaretz, but obviously not just the government but most Israelis remained unmoved or unpersuaded, because, as Haaretz makes clear, most have continuously watched horrific content produced by Hamas on October 7th (which in the rest of the world people have not gone out of their way to witness), and are ignoring or simply not confronted by suffering in Gaza via their news media. On the other hand, neither you nor I, nor our children (here I am presuming) are putting their lives on the line by being at war. For those in safe parts of the world it is difficult to imagine living in the emotional states brought on by this type of conflict. Perhaps more importantly, I think people are generally desperate to trust someone, anyone in a position of power (this can lead to either naivety or fascism), and Israelis are deeply conditioned to support and trust their armed forces. Armies need to make pragmatic decisions based on protection of the population of their countries and their own soldiers: enemy civilians always come second for an army (if you can think of a counter-example, please give it). All of this points back to the tragedy of a government which seems to care only about its own survival and the messianic agenda of a small but forceful minority. If there were a responsible government in place, there would exist counterweights, and much more critical scrutiny would be brought to bear on the police, IDF internal investigations, humanitarian efforts (or lack thereof), etc.
It is of little concern to me the feelings and world view of the Israeli people, I'm sorry, just as it was of little concern to me the feelings and world view of the people of South Africa during the apartheid period.
I had a brief acquaintance with a white South African woman in the early 1990s, and the view of the colonizers (Afrikaners) as she described it at the time was quite similar. Of course they felt imperiled and surrounded by enemies who wished their destruction; they were imperiled and surrounded by people who wished for their destruction. And I had full sympathy with the Black South Africans and Rhodesians and all the African countries that wished for that western colony to simply disappear.
Colonialism is a bad idea. It is a oppressive and destructive thing. That was the eventual consensus of the world, if you recall.
Israel is the last European colony in the Middle East and it needs to go, and it will go, just as the Union of South Arica and all the other European colonies in Africa and the Middle East went.
It is the responsibility of the Israeli people to reimagine their country as a fully democratic, non-apartheid and non-Jewish-supremacist nation. It is my job to stop my government from supporting the current genocide meant to keep the colony and its repugnant apartheid policies in place.
Use of the I-phobia term is also a tell. Honestly there may well exist an authentic form of prejudice against Muslims, but the predominant cause of negative sentiment is simply the behaviour of portions of that community.
Do people not have right to engage in self preservation when a disruptive, challenging and sometimes threatening beliefs are imported into their cultures?
Murderous and racist colonialism is not "self-preservation." Invading someone else's lands and forcing them off those lands so that you can take it is just theft. Israel is nothing more than an anachronistic throw-back to a period when the west was forcing colonies onto Africa and the Middle East. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. The rest of the world sees all this quite clearly.
Blaming Muslims for the violence in the Middle East is blaming the victim; my sympathies are fully with the people resisting western aggression. The Zion colony must be dismantled and the EuroAmerican population encouraged to return to their European and American homelands. We can repurpose the billions in military aid to support their resettlement.
When referring to self-preservation I was referring to Muslims as minorities in Western countries. In this context "Islamophobia" is a rational position. By every measure this subset of immigration has been harmful to the host society.
Take a look at Syria, Libya, Lebanon etc... even if you take out Israel the underlying cultural structures cause constant conflict except when ruled by a hegemon like the Ottoman empire. The fact there is not a single truly democratic country with observation of real human rights in the region surely indicates fundamental shortcomings to the culture.
Israel is not going anywhere, they won in 48 and the Arabs simply have to accept it. The surest and fastest way for the Palestinians to have a state would be to surrender and assure Israel they will not be a threat.
We used to be told that the apartheid Union of South Africa wasn't going anywhere, but that racist colonial entity did finally fall and it fell because the world woke up to the injustice and turned against it. Assad's grip on Syria was considered by western leaders to be unbreakable, but he is now a permanent guest of Putin.
Things change, slowly at first, and then suddenly. The Palestinians can't give up, because to do so means their extinction. The world is inexorably taking their side in the struggle and will not give up either.
“Murderous and racist colonialism” aptly characterizes the policy of the Gaza government.
From the original Hamas Covenant (1988):
“the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up…
“This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement.”
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.
"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.
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.
What you want is for the Palestinians to meekly accept their ethnic cleansing from their lands, to quietly go elsewhere and give up. But they are determined to resist and for that you call them terrorists. Total war has been waged upon them by EuroAmerican colonists for almost a century, but they persist in defending themselves and their land, just as the people of Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Kenya, Uganda, Angola, Nigeria, Morocco, and South Africa did. Palestine will be free; whether you and I live to see it.
Unfortunately for you, Israel is not commiting a mass slaughter of thousands. The ratio of civilian to combatant victims in Gaza, 1:1, is much smaller than in any urban conflict in history. Read a expert take t.ly/5976O
Nearly 50,000 innocent Palestinians have been murdered by the IDF and the necessary facilities to maintain life have been destroyed. The people of Gaza are starving and dying from diseases of untreated waste, from the cold, and from random cold-blooded murder by Israeli troops. Your attempt to whitewash the slaughter is disgusting, but that sort of outrageous and even laughable attempts at disinformation is expected from defenders of Israel's campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Many college generations ago those kids would have been milking the Occupy movement for all it was worth with just as much stridency and black-and-white thinking as today's anti-Israel activists and wannabes.
What the generations have in common is a quest for admiration from and greater status within their peer group. If it leads to hookups, so much the better.
The substance does matter. Previous generations of college protests in the United States did not target fellow students and faculty. Perhaps we need to loook and student movements less familiar to Americans: cultural revolution China and late Weimar Germany (where the students were the vanguard supporting the Nazis even before they took over the country)
The most completely preposterous aspect of your « claims » is your eliding the fact that ALL countries, but especially in the middle east, are products of colonialism. The Greeks and Romans colonized, and then it was the Arabs, the Turks, and then, much later, the English and French. Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon are far more the products of colonial powers than Israel, which has been fought and paid for many times over, mostly by those who had nowhere else to go, having been turned into refugees by countless waves of bigotry and violence. The fact that you don’t care about this is proof of your double - or triple standards.
This lecture Einat Wilf delivered to diplomats six years ago explains the current situation rather completely and somewhat chillingky foreshadowed what was to come: https://youtu.be/nKpKGCfPEaQ?si=m0d02OSdqAKsW0Hn
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.
It's a bit like the way we address other drivers in the semi-privacy of our own vehicles. "Go easy, there, sir," is much less common than "Clear out of the way there and slow down you (expletives deleted) Walmart driver"!
This is a peculiarly Sam Harris preoccupation. For all his rationality, Harris also believes in meditation as a way to quiet our "inner deranged, screeching lunatics" and "[t]he cacophony of nonstop thoughts and impulses cycling through our monkey minds." I am probably oversimplifying Harris's beliefs, but he seems to think that his form of meditation permits one to perceive a hidden reality in the intervals between one's thoughts. I wonder whether Sam Harris has ever run into a Sam-Harris like skeptic who has challenged him on his utterly unprovable beliefs.
Dan Dennett, Richard Dawkins, even Stephen Fry have questioned the value meditation on his podcast, sometimes multiple times. There are probably others but those are the ones I remember offhand.
I tracked down the psychology of victims who cancel others. Frist breakthrough was finding a book called "The Fragile Bully," which explained vulnerable narcissism as opposed to grandiose narcissism.
Then I found that (this is very compressed, but it points the way) the activist members of identity groups are generally low self-esteem “victims” who gain self-importance from their identity group. This phenomenon is known technically as “collective narcissism,” and like other forms of narcissism, it’s a danger to others. In particular, any disrespect to the group is taken as an offense by every group member with this type of narcissism. The result of this indirect offense is narcissistic rage, which is well known for being disproportionate, a primary characteristic of cancel culture. And, of course, the group nature of this form of narcissism assures the easy formation of a Twitter mob.
So Narcissism is the key part of the dark triad with regard to victims.
Thanks. That's a new one for me. It's quite descriptive, but what I'm really after is the psychology behind this phenomenon. The first step was learning that there's a non-grandiose type of narcissism, and the second that group identities could substitute for personal identity.
That’s new to me too Steve, but it certainly makes sense. So people who have not found comfort in their own skins find a group that will accept and absorb them. They can melt into it and feel more whole; and anyway, the group has a penchant for us and them and welcome’s new ‘us’.
The group as a whole is brittle. Non-alignment with the group’s mores by outsiders is justification for attacking them and those attacks bring higher standing in the group. There might be a combination of visceral ‘justified’ vengefulness in the individuals doing the attacking that doesn’t relate at all to the actual blasphemy, but everything to do with their earlier experiences of being victimised and now being allowed to retaliate. On top of that there might be further anger from a fear of the group being criticised or undermined by statements that cannot be allowed to stand.
Primitive stuff, powerful and all too human, agnostic of politics.
These low self-esteem narcissists are the foundation of the victim sympathizers in the science – technology – engineering – mathematics (STEM) fields. Having failed to excel in their chosen academic field, they invest their energy in canceling those more successful than they. Because these fields have historically been populated by men, the MeToo cancellation is the most effective tool in their toolbox. In contradiction to the statistics showing massive gains of women in STEM fields, they rage about “all of the women who leave science” because of men who have done things as innocuous as putting a supportive hand on a shoulder. This outrage, of course, is applied only to the most successful men, because then the cancellation will be a spectacle and they will be praised for their righteous anger and moral outrage that is protecting the innocent (and non-existent, for the most part) women who will never have a chance at a science career because a male professor has “harassed” them so badly that they must leave. Some of these victim-supporting women have been rewarded with much time in the limelight and even official awards from scientific societies and organizations. There is much for them to gain that appeases their narcissism in using these tactics.
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.
There are absolutely people on the far-right—including prominent politicians and writers—whose motivations are, similarly, some mix of grifting or indulging in sadism. I just think that the justification of cruelty and even violence, in particular, are less surprising since the ideology doesn’t rest on the claim that “we are the kind, gentle people who are extremely inclusive.”
Howard Schwartz at Oakland University has been writing about narcissism on the Left, from a psychoanalytic angle. http://www.sba.oakland.edu/faculty/schwartz/Political%20correctness%20and%20organizational%20-%20Final.htm He writes at the end of this essay, "We do well to recall that political correctness is built around a narcissistic premise. It does not acknowledge limitation and does not lend itself to the reasonable resolution of the grievances that it champions. On the contrary, the very notion of reasonableness, and even that of reason, comes under its attack. The concept of victimization that it validates is not relative and defined with regard to a just order. It is absolute, and defined with regard to an unattainable ideal. It thus legitimates a war against everything that exists and even everything that could exist, all of which will always fall intolerably short and deserve to be destroyed. This should give us cause to question the conviction of righteousness with which its aims are often pursued."
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for the wonderfully insightful comment and charitable reading.
I wrote explicitly that I do not hold traditional conservative values. My comment is more an understanding that my relative position on the political spectrum will not follow the left towards oblivion.
Additional point on politics: Conservativism is often the idea that this is the place to stop. I believe the left would say it is anti progress to stop at point x. Conservatives would say point x is the correct stopping point.
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."
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. They 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.
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.
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.
Bluesky’s nominally more open architecture offers new opportunities for both honest authoritarianism and for surreptitious bad faith gaming.
Take these Bluesky features.
Programmatic extraction of information about any account including: who the account follows and blocks and what account follow and or block the account
3rd PartyModeration Services that users may subscribe to filter and/or block accounts as defined by each Moderation Service’s publisher .
Third-party identity verification (but no such service of its own)
At first glance, this would seem to be the basis of a more social social network. But with a little developer ingenuity, they can be combined into an unaccountable 2nd-Party Blocking System.
For example, over 30 Moderation Services block any account that follows Jesse Singal’s account. Most of these services are published pseudonymously. Imagine the surprise a prominent journalist and advocate of LGTBQ+ rights had on Bluesky after he innocently followed Singal’s account while reporting on him.
Even worse, who watches the watchers? That is, how are the Moderation Services themselves kept honest?
Are you familiar with instrument training in aircraft? The cabin windows have a tint, and the student wears goggles with a complementary tint that obscures all exterior view - the instructor does not and hence can see outside. Bluesky sounds like a socmed version.
Imagine you could do this in everyday messaging - ie left vs right slogans/graffiti were written in different colours and had matching glasses that would filter out whichever viewpoints you wanted gone... Like the sunglasses in "They Live"!
Re moderation - there is a well known phenomenon on Reddit where highly interested persons seek redditor status explicitly to block contrary content, this has been very visible in the gender wars. Same will happen to BS (are the initials a coincidence?)
The rise of victimhood culture isn't driven by victims, but by their wannabe saviors' need to appear and feel heroic, which of course requires a ready supply of people they can portray as in need of rescue. For at least the last 50 years Progressivism has been all about looking good and much less about actually doing good.
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.
This phenomenon is very prevalent in Australia - and we have an extremely broad threshold for Aboriginal identity. Effectively self-id, and this has resulted in indigeneity becoming the fastest growing demographic.
I've heard that Australia is having a serious problem with false claims. I published a poem many years ago whose final couplet is "In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written/all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts."
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.
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.
In every day life -- I know several Indians and have a few as relatives -- Indians are just ordinary people. They tend to distance themselves from the professional Victims and just want to be treated normally and so they are.
I'm the only public figure Indian among all my Indian relatives. They love me and are highly aware that I'm the weird one.
Speaking of fake Indians, do you remember the "Native American" woman who many years ago was sent by Marlon Brando to take his Oscar on his behalf, and she chastised the white audience? A few years ago, at her death, her relatives published an article in which they disclosed that she didn't have a drop of native blood. She was all fake. She "became a Native American" when her career took a dive and she realized she could be reborn as a Native American--which she did. Whenever I see "BIPOC" (what a cringe way of referring to humans, by the way!) chastise white people in the name of "social justice," these are the kinds of frauds that come to mind.
🚫🧢 SHERMAN ALEXIE 🤘🤘🤘🤘
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
I believe you are probably in good faith, Pat, but you seem to be unaware that you are making exactly the sort of claim that leads people to feel defensive and to double down on their indifference to others’ suffering. Your comments are fueled by outrage, and I get it, but you lack nuance. If you want to read a more balanced account of the war and of Israel’s actions, read the left-wing newspaper Haaretz. Several of its reporters are Arabs, although its most left-leaning commentators are probably Jewish Israelis. Please avoid painting all Jews like myself as celebrating the destruction of Gazan lives. This is to make light of the suffering of those who care. Fascists are currently in control of the Israeli government, and many of the far-right are in the IDF, and some of them are full of hatred and a desire for revenge. They are 18 year men with guns - basically invited there by Hamas, in an IDF that has lost its moorings because its political masters have other goals than upholding moral standards in the army. This is all predictable. But so is the result of giving guns to those who follow the most murderous ideologies that many in the Palestinian community have followed for the past hundred years. I personally have not seen or heard of anyone celebrating the bombs falling on Gazans. I am sure they exist, but they are beside the point. In order to get people to care, you need to get them to listen, and I believe that your exclusive focus on Palestinian victimhood is not going to achieve that.
I do subscribe to Haaretz and have for some time. I have never painted all Jewish people as celebrating the destruction of Palestine; I am a supporter of Jewish Voice for Peace so I am well aware that Jewish Americans do not all agree on this issue. It is in the pages of Haaretz that the fact of Israeli celebration of the mass deaths in Gaza have been reported, as well as the gratuitous destruction of homes and infrastructure by the IDF soldiers.
When faced with my own government's complicity in a genocide I think outrage is in order.
OK, thanks for clarifying. I see your point, but then mine stands - one sometimes has to decide whether to be performative or persuasive. I also think that fundamentally you are not giving sufficient weight to the sheer emotion brought on by being in a state of continual anxiety nor to the existential concerns of the Israeli state. I am influenced by the outrage expressed in Haaretz, but obviously not just the government but most Israelis remained unmoved or unpersuaded, because, as Haaretz makes clear, most have continuously watched horrific content produced by Hamas on October 7th (which in the rest of the world people have not gone out of their way to witness), and are ignoring or simply not confronted by suffering in Gaza via their news media. On the other hand, neither you nor I, nor our children (here I am presuming) are putting their lives on the line by being at war. For those in safe parts of the world it is difficult to imagine living in the emotional states brought on by this type of conflict. Perhaps more importantly, I think people are generally desperate to trust someone, anyone in a position of power (this can lead to either naivety or fascism), and Israelis are deeply conditioned to support and trust their armed forces. Armies need to make pragmatic decisions based on protection of the population of their countries and their own soldiers: enemy civilians always come second for an army (if you can think of a counter-example, please give it). All of this points back to the tragedy of a government which seems to care only about its own survival and the messianic agenda of a small but forceful minority. If there were a responsible government in place, there would exist counterweights, and much more critical scrutiny would be brought to bear on the police, IDF internal investigations, humanitarian efforts (or lack thereof), etc.
It is of little concern to me the feelings and world view of the Israeli people, I'm sorry, just as it was of little concern to me the feelings and world view of the people of South Africa during the apartheid period.
I had a brief acquaintance with a white South African woman in the early 1990s, and the view of the colonizers (Afrikaners) as she described it at the time was quite similar. Of course they felt imperiled and surrounded by enemies who wished their destruction; they were imperiled and surrounded by people who wished for their destruction. And I had full sympathy with the Black South Africans and Rhodesians and all the African countries that wished for that western colony to simply disappear.
Colonialism is a bad idea. It is a oppressive and destructive thing. That was the eventual consensus of the world, if you recall.
Israel is the last European colony in the Middle East and it needs to go, and it will go, just as the Union of South Arica and all the other European colonies in Africa and the Middle East went.
It is the responsibility of the Israeli people to reimagine their country as a fully democratic, non-apartheid and non-Jewish-supremacist nation. It is my job to stop my government from supporting the current genocide meant to keep the colony and its repugnant apartheid policies in place.
Use of the I-phobia term is also a tell. Honestly there may well exist an authentic form of prejudice against Muslims, but the predominant cause of negative sentiment is simply the behaviour of portions of that community.
Do people not have right to engage in self preservation when a disruptive, challenging and sometimes threatening beliefs are imported into their cultures?
Murderous and racist colonialism is not "self-preservation." Invading someone else's lands and forcing them off those lands so that you can take it is just theft. Israel is nothing more than an anachronistic throw-back to a period when the west was forcing colonies onto Africa and the Middle East. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. The rest of the world sees all this quite clearly.
Blaming Muslims for the violence in the Middle East is blaming the victim; my sympathies are fully with the people resisting western aggression. The Zion colony must be dismantled and the EuroAmerican population encouraged to return to their European and American homelands. We can repurpose the billions in military aid to support their resettlement.
When referring to self-preservation I was referring to Muslims as minorities in Western countries. In this context "Islamophobia" is a rational position. By every measure this subset of immigration has been harmful to the host society.
Take a look at Syria, Libya, Lebanon etc... even if you take out Israel the underlying cultural structures cause constant conflict except when ruled by a hegemon like the Ottoman empire. The fact there is not a single truly democratic country with observation of real human rights in the region surely indicates fundamental shortcomings to the culture.
Israel is not going anywhere, they won in 48 and the Arabs simply have to accept it. The surest and fastest way for the Palestinians to have a state would be to surrender and assure Israel they will not be a threat.
We used to be told that the apartheid Union of South Africa wasn't going anywhere, but that racist colonial entity did finally fall and it fell because the world woke up to the injustice and turned against it. Assad's grip on Syria was considered by western leaders to be unbreakable, but he is now a permanent guest of Putin.
Things change, slowly at first, and then suddenly. The Palestinians can't give up, because to do so means their extinction. The world is inexorably taking their side in the struggle and will not give up either.
“Murderous and racist colonialism” aptly characterizes the policy of the Gaza government.
From the original Hamas Covenant (1988):
“the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up…
“This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement.”
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.
"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.
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.
What you want is for the Palestinians to meekly accept their ethnic cleansing from their lands, to quietly go elsewhere and give up. But they are determined to resist and for that you call them terrorists. Total war has been waged upon them by EuroAmerican colonists for almost a century, but they persist in defending themselves and their land, just as the people of Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Kenya, Uganda, Angola, Nigeria, Morocco, and South Africa did. Palestine will be free; whether you and I live to see it.
You know it was the Arabs who rejected the '48 partition plan, right?
Unfortunately for you, Israel is not commiting a mass slaughter of thousands. The ratio of civilian to combatant victims in Gaza, 1:1, is much smaller than in any urban conflict in history. Read a expert take t.ly/5976O
Nearly 50,000 innocent Palestinians have been murdered by the IDF and the necessary facilities to maintain life have been destroyed. The people of Gaza are starving and dying from diseases of untreated waste, from the cold, and from random cold-blooded murder by Israeli troops. Your attempt to whitewash the slaughter is disgusting, but that sort of outrageous and even laughable attempts at disinformation is expected from defenders of Israel's campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Do you think the IDF bombs these alleged civilian centers if Hamas isn't building tunnels and housing weapons and hostages in them?
Many college generations ago those kids would have been milking the Occupy movement for all it was worth with just as much stridency and black-and-white thinking as today's anti-Israel activists and wannabes.
What the generations have in common is a quest for admiration from and greater status within their peer group. If it leads to hookups, so much the better.
The substance does matter. Previous generations of college protests in the United States did not target fellow students and faculty. Perhaps we need to loook and student movements less familiar to Americans: cultural revolution China and late Weimar Germany (where the students were the vanguard supporting the Nazis even before they took over the country)
The most completely preposterous aspect of your « claims » is your eliding the fact that ALL countries, but especially in the middle east, are products of colonialism. The Greeks and Romans colonized, and then it was the Arabs, the Turks, and then, much later, the English and French. Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon are far more the products of colonial powers than Israel, which has been fought and paid for many times over, mostly by those who had nowhere else to go, having been turned into refugees by countless waves of bigotry and violence. The fact that you don’t care about this is proof of your double - or triple standards.
This lecture Einat Wilf delivered to diplomats six years ago explains the current situation rather completely and somewhat chillingky foreshadowed what was to come: https://youtu.be/nKpKGCfPEaQ?si=m0d02OSdqAKsW0Hn
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.
It's a bit like the way we address other drivers in the semi-privacy of our own vehicles. "Go easy, there, sir," is much less common than "Clear out of the way there and slow down you (expletives deleted) Walmart driver"!
Yes, the George Carlin dictum is true: “Everyone driving slower than you is an idiot and everyone driving faster than you is a maniac.” ;)
This is a peculiarly Sam Harris preoccupation. For all his rationality, Harris also believes in meditation as a way to quiet our "inner deranged, screeching lunatics" and "[t]he cacophony of nonstop thoughts and impulses cycling through our monkey minds." I am probably oversimplifying Harris's beliefs, but he seems to think that his form of meditation permits one to perceive a hidden reality in the intervals between one's thoughts. I wonder whether Sam Harris has ever run into a Sam-Harris like skeptic who has challenged him on his utterly unprovable beliefs.
Dan Dennett, Richard Dawkins, even Stephen Fry have questioned the value meditation on his podcast, sometimes multiple times. There are probably others but those are the ones I remember offhand.
I tracked down the psychology of victims who cancel others. Frist breakthrough was finding a book called "The Fragile Bully," which explained vulnerable narcissism as opposed to grandiose narcissism.
Then I found that (this is very compressed, but it points the way) the activist members of identity groups are generally low self-esteem “victims” who gain self-importance from their identity group. This phenomenon is known technically as “collective narcissism,” and like other forms of narcissism, it’s a danger to others. In particular, any disrespect to the group is taken as an offense by every group member with this type of narcissism. The result of this indirect offense is narcissistic rage, which is well known for being disproportionate, a primary characteristic of cancel culture. And, of course, the group nature of this form of narcissism assures the easy formation of a Twitter mob.
So Narcissism is the key part of the dark triad with regard to victims.
Interesting!
The term "crybully" is one I've encountered for the phenomena you describe.
Thanks. That's a new one for me. It's quite descriptive, but what I'm really after is the psychology behind this phenomenon. The first step was learning that there's a non-grandiose type of narcissism, and the second that group identities could substitute for personal identity.
That’s new to me too Steve, but it certainly makes sense. So people who have not found comfort in their own skins find a group that will accept and absorb them. They can melt into it and feel more whole; and anyway, the group has a penchant for us and them and welcome’s new ‘us’.
The group as a whole is brittle. Non-alignment with the group’s mores by outsiders is justification for attacking them and those attacks bring higher standing in the group. There might be a combination of visceral ‘justified’ vengefulness in the individuals doing the attacking that doesn’t relate at all to the actual blasphemy, but everything to do with their earlier experiences of being victimised and now being allowed to retaliate. On top of that there might be further anger from a fear of the group being criticised or undermined by statements that cannot be allowed to stand.
Primitive stuff, powerful and all too human, agnostic of politics.
These low self-esteem narcissists are the foundation of the victim sympathizers in the science – technology – engineering – mathematics (STEM) fields. Having failed to excel in their chosen academic field, they invest their energy in canceling those more successful than they. Because these fields have historically been populated by men, the MeToo cancellation is the most effective tool in their toolbox. In contradiction to the statistics showing massive gains of women in STEM fields, they rage about “all of the women who leave science” because of men who have done things as innocuous as putting a supportive hand on a shoulder. This outrage, of course, is applied only to the most successful men, because then the cancellation will be a spectacle and they will be praised for their righteous anger and moral outrage that is protecting the innocent (and non-existent, for the most part) women who will never have a chance at a science career because a male professor has “harassed” them so badly that they must leave. Some of these victim-supporting women have been rewarded with much time in the limelight and even official awards from scientific societies and organizations. There is much for them to gain that appeases their narcissism in using these tactics.
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.
There are absolutely people on the far-right—including prominent politicians and writers—whose motivations are, similarly, some mix of grifting or indulging in sadism. I just think that the justification of cruelty and even violence, in particular, are less surprising since the ideology doesn’t rest on the claim that “we are the kind, gentle people who are extremely inclusive.”
Like Mary Wollstonecraft wrote, “No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.”
Howard Schwartz at Oakland University has been writing about narcissism on the Left, from a psychoanalytic angle. http://www.sba.oakland.edu/faculty/schwartz/Political%20correctness%20and%20organizational%20-%20Final.htm He writes at the end of this essay, "We do well to recall that political correctness is built around a narcissistic premise. It does not acknowledge limitation and does not lend itself to the reasonable resolution of the grievances that it champions. On the contrary, the very notion of reasonableness, and even that of reason, comes under its attack. The concept of victimization that it validates is not relative and defined with regard to a just order. It is absolute, and defined with regard to an unattainable ideal. It thus legitimates a war against everything that exists and even everything that could exist, all of which will always fall intolerably short and deserve to be destroyed. This should give us cause to question the conviction of righteousness with which its aims are often pursued."
The people on the right all claim to be good Christians.
Ah, the old Right Wing - invented by Marx to explain why people did not start a revolt when he instructed them. He claimed to be "of the Left".
The Left comprises -isms. Communism, Socialism. Mind-numbing ideologies.
There is no Right Wing -ism. There is no Right Wing. There are free-thinking people who want to get rid of the Socialist cancer
> 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.
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.
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.
Agreed on both counts!
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.
Thanks for the wonderfully insightful comment and charitable reading.
I wrote explicitly that I do not hold traditional conservative values. My comment is more an understanding that my relative position on the political spectrum will not follow the left towards oblivion.
Additional point on politics: Conservativism is often the idea that this is the place to stop. I believe the left would say it is anti progress to stop at point x. Conservatives would say point x is the correct stopping point.
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."
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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. They 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.
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.
What a great article. Right on point.
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Excellent article
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Bluesky is deeply toxic place. On Bluesky, you will be called 'intolerant' if you state obvious facts.
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.
Anti-Sadism. Here finally is an -ism I can get behind.
Bluesky’s nominally more open architecture offers new opportunities for both honest authoritarianism and for surreptitious bad faith gaming.
Take these Bluesky features.
Programmatic extraction of information about any account including: who the account follows and blocks and what account follow and or block the account
3rd PartyModeration Services that users may subscribe to filter and/or block accounts as defined by each Moderation Service’s publisher .
Third-party identity verification (but no such service of its own)
At first glance, this would seem to be the basis of a more social social network. But with a little developer ingenuity, they can be combined into an unaccountable 2nd-Party Blocking System.
For example, over 30 Moderation Services block any account that follows Jesse Singal’s account. Most of these services are published pseudonymously. Imagine the surprise a prominent journalist and advocate of LGTBQ+ rights had on Bluesky after he innocently followed Singal’s account while reporting on him.
Even worse, who watches the watchers? That is, how are the Moderation Services themselves kept honest?
Yes, great point about how these architectural features can be abused.
Are you familiar with instrument training in aircraft? The cabin windows have a tint, and the student wears goggles with a complementary tint that obscures all exterior view - the instructor does not and hence can see outside. Bluesky sounds like a socmed version.
Imagine you could do this in everyday messaging - ie left vs right slogans/graffiti were written in different colours and had matching glasses that would filter out whichever viewpoints you wanted gone... Like the sunglasses in "They Live"!
Re moderation - there is a well known phenomenon on Reddit where highly interested persons seek redditor status explicitly to block contrary content, this has been very visible in the gender wars. Same will happen to BS (are the initials a coincidence?)
The rise of victimhood culture isn't driven by victims, but by their wannabe saviors' need to appear and feel heroic, which of course requires a ready supply of people they can portray as in need of rescue. For at least the last 50 years Progressivism has been all about looking good and much less about actually doing good.