The “self-reinforcing victim/villain” cycle paradigm is framed around the notion there is a permanently fixed victim continuously being attacked by a villain and while resisting these attacks anything the victim does is justified.
This from frontpagemag.com.
This victim/villain cycle can be at the heart of any conflict or confrontation—international, national, communal, or interpersonal. But it does not have to be. Typically, we see this cycle being played out only when someone or some entity is being less than forthright.
NOTE: This cycle has long haunted liberal minds.
Extracting an instance of the victim/villain cycle from the Israel/Hamas conflict, we obtain the words of Ghazi Hammad, a Hamas official, who initially denied the atrocities of Oct 7, but then stated:
[T]he existence of Israel is what causes all that pain, blood, and tears. It is Israel, not us. We are the victims of the occupation. Period. Therefore, nobody should blame us for the things we do. On October 7, October 10, October 1,000,000—everything we do is justified.
Thank you, Ghazi Hammad for that most excellent example.
Now, let us ascribe these words to other “victims” in other places and other situations:
1) First, international opinion is held to apply only to Israel as the “occupier” while no one speaks of any harm emanating from the moslem terrorists who are “occupied” and who therefore have the right to “resist” by “invading Israel and burning Jewish families alive in their own homes.”
No crimes committed on Oct 7, nor any crimes that continue to be committed by Hamas are allowed to be seen as a deliberate choice.
The perpetrators cannot be asked not to rage, that’s ‘tone policing,’ not to hate, that’s ‘reverse racism,’ or even not to kill because that’s ‘dictating to oppressed people the forms of their resistance.’
Whatever they do is not a reflection on their own morality, but on the oppression they suffer.
The words “we are the victims,” “nobody should blame us,” and “everything we do is justified” are screamed loud and clear whether they are actually spoken or other, similar words are used.
2) Next, the westerners who have sided with Hamas have made use of the same cycle in their own lives and politics. They have been convinced Israel is an occupier, an aggressor, therefore they are the villain. Regardless of Hamas having been the aggressor on October 7, they were justified. And because Israel is the villain, Hamas the victim, all Jews are villains, all Palestinians are victims.
Westerners in western lands have repeatedly perpetrated violence against Jews while Palestinians are given a free pass.
Again, “we are the victims,” “nobody should blame us,” and “everything we do is justified.”
3) Similarly, racism has been redefined to mean “racial hatred practiced by those with power,” making one particular race the officially designated villains, while racial hatred from victims has been designated a justified response to the racism of the majority.
Yet again, we are being told, “we are the victims,” “nobody should blame us,” and “everything we do is justified.”
4) During the BLM riots, We the People were often treated to the MLK quote, “a riot is the voice of the unheard,” however, these words were never intended to be a blank check for urban violence. Sadly, the rioters were justified because they were pre-labeled victims. People were killed, people were hurt, property was destroyed, and no one was held accountable. This evil will be repeated, guaranteed.
Again, “we are the victims,” “nobody should blame us,” and “everything we do is justified.”
5) As Nazi Germany invaded Poland and began the process that would lead to the mass murder of millions of Jews, the poet W.H. Auden penned a hasty condemnation of Nazism. He included four lines that became the most-remembered part of the poem:
I and the public know,
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done.
Do evil in return.
Is Auden herein not condoning the violence, after all were the German people not the actual victims? Some may say Auden was foretelling of the Jewish retribution.
Still, again, “we are the victims,” “nobody should blame us,” and “everything we do is justified.”
In conclusion, the insistence that evil is not a choice, that victims rather than perpetrators could not do otherwise is an unlimited license for evil. But evil is not a cycle: it is a choice that each and every one of us makes.
What is the answer to the self-reinforcing victim/villain cycle’s endless “you made me do it?”
Anyone can be a victim, but no one should choose to continue being one unless it is a role they choose to play. And anyone from narcissists to aspiring tyrants finds this to be a useful role.
