Victim Wars

 By Bob McEvoy - Posted at The Salty Scrivener:

Victim Wars- Victimhood and Intersectionality – A Biblical Response

Psalm 11

Have you noticed that nowadays it seems that victimhood is actually fashionable. Gone are the days of looking adversity in the face, determined to overcome it. We have great sympathy with those who have suffered, who are genuine victims, and there are many. But ‘fabricated victimhood’ is now a prevailing attitude in society. In this study, we will try to find out how this happened.

1. Critical Theories and the Roots of Victimhood.

You may have someone talking about “Critical Race Theories.” CRT states that modern society is by its institutions and structures, is inherently racist, discriminating against ‘people of colour.’ Critical Theories are not confined to race. The essence of Critical Theory is that everything considered to be institutional in society is to be questioned and deconstructed. It’s important to look at the roots of critical theories to understand how these influences have spread throughout society. The first major influence that we need to think about is:

• -Karl Marx. Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary.
• Marx was a materialist – Marx was an atheist, and he believed that outside this present world, nothing existed, so people had to have the best possible life now. In this life, this present world, Marx thought, everyone lived in a relationship with others and the nature of those relationships determined people’s own opinion about themselves, – their self-worth, their ‘identity.’ And for some, those relationships would lead to alienation, causing the individual distress and emotional discomfort. Marx saw disadvantage and alienation in the way that working people of his day were treated by their employers, and in how they could never hope for a better life.
• Marx was anti-religion. I suppose one of the most well known Marxist doctrines is encapsulated in the phrase: “Religion is the opium of the people.” In context, the statement is part of Marx’s argument that religion was constructed to calm the population’s uncertainty over their role in society. Marx saw religion of any kind as a tool, or perhaps even a weapon, used by the bourgeoisie, – the mill and factory owners, the business proprietors and middle class oppressors of the proletariate – the workers, to keep them in a state of submission. For Marx therefore the complete destruction of religion, and especially of Christianity, was essential in creating a society in which everyone was equal and no-one was alienated. (How’d that work out in the Soviet Union?)
• Marx was a strategist. He believed that every single part of society, every human social interaction was based on economic and political values. So, for Marx, every area of human interaction became a battleground, everything from the national parliament, down to the local meeting of the Women’s Institute.

Continue here.

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