Friday, September 21, 2012

"Competitive Victimhood"

That's a phrase I read in a book review that appeared in the Times Literary Supplement. (I get them from my local library; if you want to read it online, there's a charge). In a review of Paul Preston's The Spanish Holocaust, Michael Seidman writes:
In its exposure of widespread and intense suffering, The Spanish Holocaust reflects a current in contemporary culture that is unhealthily preoccupied with competitive victimhood.
Isn't that the problem with--and the perfect way to characterize--our "human rights" mausoleum? It's an entity that has an "unhealthy" preoccupation with victimhood, as evidenced by, for example, its Mass Atrocity zone and the conflict it has engendered between victim groups (i.e. the rigmarole about the Holocaust versus the Holodomor)?

"Competitive victimhood"--I like it.

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