#victimhood
Reading a report on the Guardian website of the death of the Argentine footballer Diego Maradona, I was much struck by two phrases: “addiction to cocaine took hold” and “his private life spiralled out of control”.
This way of putting it suggested that both his addiction and his private life had an existence independent of anything that he himself did: that addiction, for example, was like Parkinson’s Disease, an illness that could reasonably be said to “take hold” of someone. This is the official, but nonetheless false and simplified, view of addiction, as something that just happens to a person.
Why this strange way of putting things? I suspect it is because of the great fear that haunts all modern intellectuals, that of being considered censorious, at least about individuals who bring unhappiness on themselves (and often to others). There is, of course, a certain class of person about whom it is de rigueur to be censorious, even ultra-censorious, but Maradona, being an idol of the populace, and of humble origin, was not a member of that class.
He was a tragic figure, a man who did not put the fruits of his natural talent to a use that brought him much happiness. The tragedy was in the choices he made and in their consequences, by comparison with the choices that he might have made. The fact that they were his choices is what made his life tragic. If he had contributed nothing to his addiction or to his private life, he would no more be a tragic figure than is a broken vase or a punctured tire.
But we have no sense of the tragic, only of victimhood.
- Theodore Dalrymple
People who race bait and use racism for attention are the reason for situations like like this. People will continue to lie if they they think they can get victim points and attention.
Post link
via @vox: “I was a prominent Neo-Nazi; ignoring White Extremists is a MISTAKE”
Here’s the full transcript of Picciolini’s words in the above video (bold emphasis mine):
“In prior administrations, the [US] government has supported the fight against White extremism. They’ve recognized the threat within our own borders, but some of those policies might change.
Maybe we hear things about White extremism being removed from the Countering Violent Extremism focus, and I think that that’s a mistake.
From dozens of Jewish community centers receiving bomb threatstocemeteries and synagogues being desecrated to police officers in Las Vegas being targeted - specifically because they are law enforcement - by militiamen; we have a domestic terrorism issue that we hardly talk about because we’re so focused on the threat coming from overseas.
When Dylann Roof writes a manifesto proclaiming his hate for people and saying that he wants to murder people to progress his agenda - that, to me, is terrorism. That’s no different than an ISIS propaganda video.
The imagery of White Supremacy has changed over the last three decades. It’s gone from what-you-would-consider-your-normal-racist to something that’s more mainstream: suits and ties; fashionable haircuts; and clothes that would never identify them as Neo-Nazis until they open their mouths. And that was a concerted effort because we knew that we were turning more people away that we could eventually have on our side, if we just softened the message.
These days, with our political climate, we see a lot of coded language or dog whistles: the use of the Star of David when talking about politicians. We used to say that ‘The Jews control the media,’ and now they’ve just massaged the phrase to call it ‘Liberal Media’.
And ‘Make America Great Again’? Well, to them, that means ‘Make America WHITE Again’.
White nationalists, just like any other extremist group, promise paradise. They promise that the problems of crime and the problems of ‘White genocide’ are gonna go away. And that ‘You come from a very White, noble cause’. And that ‘your culture is worth protecting’. The problem is that nobody is trying to take that away from you.
The only problems that they have are the ones that they inflate with propaganda - with fake news - where they teach you that ‘Blacks commit more crimes against White people’ or that ‘the Jews control the media and finance system’. These are all conspiracy theories; there’s no basis in truth.
And I know this because I helped create those lies from the very beginning, and I helped spread them, and ultimately I believed them myself. And I infected that lie into other people that were innocent.
And even 20 years later, after I left the movement, I’m still pulling up the weeds from all those seeds of hate that I planted. Which is why I’ve dedicated the last 20 years of my life to help eradicate racism.”
–Christian Picciolini, former White Supremacist-turned-founder of the anti-discrimination group Life After Hate
