A recent post of mine repeated an idea that I have returned to now and then: the idea that our folk should not indulge in the 'victimhood' temptation, or participate in one-upmanship regarding who was treated the worst in the Bad Old Days of America.
Every time there is another in the long series of articles advocating for slavery reparations, responses from our side include assertions that their immigrant forebears were treated 'worse than blacks.' That's one common example.
Another one: every now and then there are the stories about how Whites were slaves, too. If I comment on such stories when they appear, usually mine is the only comment saying that it's counterproductive to dredge up these stories. They result in much inter-group bashing among European-descended Americans.
And besides, isn't it widely known that all peoples (including Europeans) participated in enslaving other groups or peoples at some time or other? I learned about Irish slaves years ago, from my Irish-American history professor who told stories of Oliver Cromwell's depredations, and he told those stories with obvious relish. He had his biases, that professor.
And if the worst stories he told were factually correct down to the last detail, why dwell on these things, thus stirring up old grievances (or provoking new ones, for those who were previously unaware)? What purpose does it serve? Is it me-tooism in competition with minority victimhood? A desire to take one more swipe at the Anglo-Saxon, or the new villain, the Puritan?
A commenter on my recent blogpost about victimhood took issue with my viewpoint, and as best I could determine, seemed to suggest that we should, in fact, assume a victim pose and complain about discrimination against us and our folk.
Of course everyone is free to try that approach, if you think it's helpful. But in this age of talk about ''White privilege'', few people accept the idea of our being victims. Even pro-White people often have the belief, based on our past position of power, that we are invulnerable and not susceptible to being displaced or deposed. That complacency works against us.
Are we 'victims'? Is it all in our "paranoid" imaginations, as our opponents sometimes sneer? Or are we 'doing it to ourselves' as the suicide meme has it?
It seems we have to choose to join the "woe-is-me, it's unfair" chorus, which is the speciality of the left's victim mascots, or we have to stand accused of being 'paranoid'; conversely, we might really be under siege, but we "created our own problems" hence we must be 'suicidal' and masochistic.
Do I deny that we are victims in a sense? No. My eyes and my common sense tell me that we are beset on all sides by people who are hostile to our possessing any power, if not to our very existence and survival. Thanks to affirmative action, the 'diversity' tyranny, and a host of other anti-White measures, we are at a disadvantage. We are in fact being discriminated against.
But do we need to adopt a wailing victim pose as a response?
To me, this is anathema. Complaining about 'unfairness' in the fashion of the professional victim classes is not something to emulate. It is passive-aggressive. It is manipulative. It is the pose of the loser, to put it bluntly.
Are we, by virtue of being on the ropes now, officially 'losers'? I don't believe so.
But why shouldn't we adopt the ''successful'' tactics of the victim classes? Those tactics are successful only because they play on our innate desire to be 'fair', to be even-handed, to be dispassionate. They play on our sympathy for 'underdogs', and perhaps it is a misplaced noblesse oblige to want to be magnanimous to the 'losers', to try to offer consolation prizes to them, or to make some concession to make ourselves feel better. This, sadly, is a weakness that is being exploited to the max, though it might be an admirable quality if displayed toward an honorable opponent who was defeated fairly. However, that is not our situation.
What we see now, in our misplaced sympathy for the world's hard luck cases, is an exploitation of our vestigial Christian impulses, of the remnants of our European chivalry. But just because those ways have been perverted by Marxist influences, and just because they are now being used as weapons against us, does not mean that the impulses in their pure form are bad.
Our manipulative opponents feign powerlessness, while all the while exercising power that is manipulative and devious in nature. Do we want to resort to those kinds of tactics? If so, I think we risk becoming like our opponents. That would be a pyrrhic victory at best.
Our enemies rely on our basic decency to gain power; they rely on our benevolence and principles. If we try to play their game, and appeal to sympathy on their part, or on a non-existent sense of 'fair play' or justice, we will be sorely disappointed. For that reason alone, apart from the repugnance of adopting the victim pose, I say it won't work.
Our opponents and our foes have only the power we grant to them. We seem to have forgotten that our situation exists only because we originally freely chose to try to appease or placate our accusers. It has not worked -- except for them, of course.
Does that mean we are the 'authors of our own destruction' or that we are 'suicidal' as some of our enemies insist? No. It is not as simple as that. We've played a part, unwittingly, in it. But that by no means absolves others of the part they've played, and continue to play, ruthlessly.
But the 'victim' coalition still maintains the power they possess only because we allow it. If we withdraw our consent to this situation, if we refuse to yield power, and refuse to play the game as they've designed it, there could be a return to a more natural order of things. It might not reverse overnight, just as it didn't develop overnight. And it's true that time is wasting, but defeatism is not allowed.
