"White people have come to see victimhood as a kind of currency — something you can accumulate, trade, and spend politically. When people of color gained traction by naming real structural harm, the response wasn’t repentance, it was appropriation. Scholars call this “victimhood discourse.” In “The Plausible Deniability Playbook,” sociologists show how white-victim claims circulate online to legitimize grievance under the veneer of free speech and cancel culture. A Journal of Experimental Social Psychology study found dominant-group members more likely to claim “digressive victimhood”: responding to accusations of bias by framing themselves as the real victims. Victimhood becomes moral capital, politicking fuel, and a way to block critique.
You hear it on talk radio: “We’re silenced now.” You see it in legal briefs: “I was discriminated against for being white.” You see it online: endless posts about “woke mobs” and “cancel culture.” This isn’t random whining. It’s victimhood reimagined as land grab.
It’s also not a new tactic. White racist hegemony has been selling the notion that they are the underdog rebels since concocting the pseudo-historical myth of the Confederate “Lost Cause” in the ashes of post-war Reconstruction.
That’s why the sanctification of Kirk matters. The memorials aren’t sentiment; they’re staging."
https://theintercept.com/2025/10/14/charlie-kirk-remembrance-mlk/
#USA #Trump #MAGA #Victimization #WhiteSupremacy #CharlieKirk #MLK
