Victimization glorification is a race to the bottom. From Brendan O’Neill at spiked-online.com:
The Jussie Smollett hoax is what happens when society valorises victimhood.
Here’s the thing about the Jussie Smollett case: it feels both strange and familiar. Strange because, as observers have pointed out, Smollett has a successful music and acting career, most notably in the Fox hip-hop soap opera Empire, and yet here he is risking it all by inventing a mad tale about having been semi-lynched by a couple of MAGA racists. And yet it also feels familiar, creepily familiar. After all, we live in a society in which it is positively cool to suffer from ‘structural oppression’. In which campaigners actively covet hatred, constantly trawling for evidence that their group, their identity, their tribe is more loathed and wronged than any other. Hell, we live in a society in which young people cut themselves with knives and boastfully post photos of their wounds on social media. In such a climate, Smollett’s possible self-administering of a cut to his cheek and his phoney claim that he was violently insulted by modern-day white supremacists starts to make sense as a snapshot of our sick society.
Smollett’s story has gripped the US media. He claimed that in January he was subjected to a racist and homophobic attack by two men (he is gay). He said the men jumped him, bombarded him with racist and anti-gay insults, poured some kind of chemical substance on him, tied a rope around his neck, and said: ‘This is MAGA country.’ Not only was his story instantly believed by much of the media and by many ‘progressive’ politicians and celebs – it was also weaved into a broader narrative about how horrific life has become for minority groups in Trump’s America. This is what happens, observers claimed, when a prejudiced oaf ascends to the White House, courtesy of the thoughtless voting habits of the redneck throng. This assault proves our theory, they insisted, that white supremacy still stalks the American Republic. Actress Ellen Page blubbed on TV and basically held VP Mike Pence responsible for Smollett’s near lynching: prejudiced speech triggers violent behaviour, she said.
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