Victimhood is powerful. Victims don't have to accept blame for anything, as their victimhood provides a potent excuse for every kind of failure. And they have carte blanche to wallow in contemporary society's most sought after emotional state -- moral outrage.
So when Canberra academic, media election forecaster, and monarchist Malcolm Mackerras was unsuccessful in his bid to win an ACT seat for the Constitutional Convention he quickly put his finger on the reason. He was just another victim.
As a male in his fifties, and with a "Britishness" that went back for five generations, he obviously had no hope against his successful republican counterpart, who was a young woman of "Asian look". But it is a sure bet that somewhere in an Australian university there is a young Asian female who believes that her failure to become an election-forecasting media star makes her a victim of not being a middle-aged male of "British look".
The production and counselling of victims is one of the growth industries of our times, going hand-in-hand with both the expansion of the welfare state and the escalating number of lawyers. Welfare states love victims because they are dependent, they justify flourishing bureaucracies, and they are very predictable. Lawyers love victims because they are very profitable.
Even people who attack the victimhood of others are often keen to be victims themselves. Pauline Hanson, for instance, seems to have cultivated the perfect victim's whine. And the video she made last year showed that she has embraced the ultimate fantasy of victimhood -- martyrdom through assassination.
Certainly, there have always been genuine victims. Even today, there are victims of crime, racial discrimination and sexual harassment. But there are two important differences between traditional victimhood and its present day versions.
Firstly, in the past, victimhood was confined to a relatively restricted section of the population. But with our contemporary commitment to equality and social justice, it has been democratised, and is now available to everyone.
Actually, more than everyone. A few years ago the American political scientist Aaron Wildavsky calculated that the sum total of all the groups who consider themselves to be oppressed victims adds up to 374 per cent of the population.
This figure was for the United States, of course. But now, even for Australia, this figure would be hopelessly low. Battalions of victim-makers are labouring tirelessly to extend the bases of victimhood. Social workers, sociologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, ethicists, clerics, judges; all contribute their compassion and entrepreneurial flair. And the truly talented join one of the specialist victim-making organisations, such as the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission.
Of course, the traditional bases for victimhood -- race, gender, class and physical disability -- still have a privileged role to play, and professional victim-makers fondly refer to them as "the grand old quartet". These are the stalwarts, the axes of oppression that first got the industry off the ground. But in the last fortnight alone, researchers in Britain have announced two new grounds for victimhood.
A group of psychiatrists in Wales discovered what may become a foundation stone of victimhood, a "bad luck gene" which makes born losers out of those who inherit it. And a London psychiatrist identified a group of victims who are addicted to assisting other people. He is assisting them with expensive government-funded counselling, and he gleefully suggested that up to 10 per cent of the population could suffer from this "compulsive helping disorder". One unfortunate case involved a housewife who was hospitalised with exhaustion after she pushed a 115 kg woman in a wheelchair up hill and down dale for a week during a pilgrimage to Lourdes in France, even though the wheelchair-bound woman begged to be left alone.
The second big difference between the past and today is that traditional victimhood was a disagreeable status. It offered no particular benefits or pleasures, and people tried hard to escape from it. But now, quite apart from the financial rewards that flow from victimhood, it can also be lots of fun.
Victim lobby groups provide great opportunities for meeting exciting people with similar grievances to whom you can pour out all your misfortunes. And victims have no problems with their self-esteem. Anything bad or unpleasant about them is the direct result of the affliction that has made them a victim. Indeed, only an insensitive and judgmental person would suggest that there might be something bad about a victim in the first place.
Nevertheless, there is a difficult group of well qualified people who stubbornly reject all the incentives of victimhood. John Hyde is a typical example. A right-handed man, he lost his right arm in a dreadful tractor accident when he was in his twenties. But, as a victim of character peculiarities stemming from his upbringing, he refuses to take advantage of his disability, or allow it to interfere with his life.
In fact, John belongs to one of the saddest victim categories of all: "Victims who don't want to be victims". But his days of refusal may be numbered. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission is soon to become the Human Rights and Responsibilities Commission, and John and his kind could well be among its first targets. After all, it is their responsibility to act like proper victims, because otherwise they could end up spoiling things for everyone else.
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