In 2016 I joined my father at a Stampede Party in Calgary. It was well attended by Conservative MPs and former federal cabinet ministers. Former, because a year earlier their government had been defeated by the Liberals, making Justin Trudeau the Prime Minister. As a result of the defeat the leader of the Conservatives had resigned and now the party was in the middle of a leadership campaign. Talking with a friend of my father, I was taken aback by the intensity of her scorn for the new PM. Her passion so deeply consumed her that common sense was choked by intransigence. I think she felt abandoned, that somehow the process had failed her. I wondered what lead to her state of rage and why she didn’t accept the outcome of the election. That conversation has been with me ever since.
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Our democratic institutions are designed not only to manage the power of the individual, but to order and contain debate, within non-violent boundaries, such that an outcome achieved can be accepted, if not agreed with, given due process.
In his January 1940 article “Radio, Censorship and Neutrality [in the United States]” in Foreign Affairs Magazine, César Saerchinger [3] refers to “our democratic generosity” that enables “freedom of speech even for those who would advocate the throttling of that very freedom of speech.”
My sense is that in the 80+ years since that observation, our generosity has extended beyond freedom of speech to allow the throttling of a broader range of democratic principles and the institutions that guide these into execution.
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Among the multiplicity of views, two seem to dominate the conversation. First is the one contemporarily called woke, usually aligned towards the left of the political spectrum, and the second I’ll refer to as the folk, typically aligned towards the right of the spectrum. While both see themselves as defenders of the same democratic principles, they arrive at this intersection from two different paths that conjure two different interpretations.
The folk express a need to protect our freedoms, such as freedom of speech, religion, culture / heritage; freedom from repression. They cite cancel culture — the de-secularization of our society, the removal of cultural markers, discrediting our past — as a source of the problem.
The woke on the other hand, seek to ensure that the freedoms enjoyed by many are equally available to marginalized groups within our society. Their mission is to de-colonize our institutions, to recognise past wrong-doings against others, to take steps to enable those disadvantaged by historical practices.
While both groups fervently support the cause of freedom, their perspectives differ. The woke have a community perspective, while the folk’s is more on an individual level. There is belief that granting freedoms to marginalized groups will take freedoms away from the folk.
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In her chapter, “Between Appropriation and Appropriateness. Instrumentalizing Dark Heritage in Populism and Memory”, Susannah Eckersley [1] explores the annual February 16 commemoration of the Dresden Bombings that occurred in February1945. Although situated in a specific German context, Eckersley positions her study of these events within the context of the victim-perpetrator dichotomy, and importantly, she lays out how these roles manifest themselves at a national level in our current left-right politics.
The model is easily understood in the context of a criminal proceeding, where someone is a victim of a crime, and the perpetrator is the one who committed the crime. Generally, the victim has experienced some form of loss; the perpetrator is the one causing the loss.
When victimization extends beyond an individual to a large group, community, or a nation, the impact felt by each individual is multiplied and becomes more consequential; a force to be reckoned with.
Those who view themselves as victims of contested events express some loss of agency or position in society; they might see themselves as being subjugated by some other, who traditionally were the “elites” such as academics, politicians, etc. In the current political climate, the other has expanded to include migrants, who might take their jobs or replace them in society.
Those who see themselves as the perpetrators of contested events express a range of emotions that vary from ambivalence, when they don’t see any issues in those events, to guilt over their role in the event. In the current political climate, guilt has manifest itself through recognition of past mistakes, resulting in more open attitudes towards migration, recognition of the concerns of those victimized, etc.
Interestingly, Eckersley observes that the difference between victim and perpetrator is based on differing perceptions and memories among individuals with shared past experiences and history (i.e., contested events).
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Victimization has been moulded into a political tool to amass political strength. In his December 18, 2019 article “The Victim President“, in Politico Magazine, Rich Lowry notes:
“We’ve never had a president in the modern era who has actively cultivated an image of victimhood, a posture that once would have been considered whiny and weak, but that Trump has, through his personal alchemy, made into a kind of political strength.”
Trump’s positioning of himself as a victim has endeared him to those in our communities who identify as victims. In Trump’s victimization they see their own. His complaints have coalesced many of those individuals who are legitimately victims of wrong-doings into a single, formidable mass and given them voice. Even though these people have suffered a wide range of wrong-doings, economic inequities, a sense of cultural erosion seem to stand out. Regardless, being a victim, and understanding what that means, is what they share. Trump has energized his followers and translated their sense of victimhood into fear; fear that if they don’t pushback, if they don’t stand strong, they will continue to lose their rights and freedoms and remain victims of a corrupt system.
Meanwhile, the perpetrators, Eckersley submits, seek to portray their actions in a meaningful and dispassionate format, often through monuments, commemorations of remembrance, and museums, as symbols of recognizing past failures, as signs that the victims are acknowledged. For example, while traditionally monuments have celebrated historical figures and events, their narrative has often been one-sided, promoting the virtues of the figure, but failing to recognize the short-comings and giving voice to those who were victimized. Contemporary monuments are beginning to deal with this imbalance by incorporating a 360-view of the figure or event; one that acknowledges the views of all stakeholders. Woke leaders have marshalled and coalesced a group through the politics of shame and guilt, and harnessed the instrument of virtue signalling to align those who believe and discredit those who do not as “deplorables“
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Both the woke and folk have expressed a problem, but a solution remains elusive.
In his book, “Not in my Family: German Memory and Responsibility after the Holocaust”, Roger Frie [2] explores the responsibility of the children of the perpetrators of the Nazi regime. Looking for actionable steps, he argues for the transformation of guilt into a sense of responsibility; a responsibility to prevent such events from recurring.
Eckersley arrives at a similar point: “They [perpetrators] fail, however, to work through the guilt and regret in order to achieve reconciliation between victims and perpetrators for past wrongs.”
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The folk and woke have been cast into roles of victim and perpetrator. If the woke are to seek a resolution of past inequities then that must be done without removing the freedoms enjoyed by the folk. Ensuring equality to all groups in society is something each group can accept. Yet, ensuring equal access to marginalized groups has been positioned, or misinterpreted, as a zero-sum game, and it is the folk who will lose; they will be victimized again.
Victims and perpetrators share a common responsibility to identify past wrongs, determine how the legacy of those wrongs persist today and seek constructive actions to resolve them. When political leaders champion a politics of fear they groom the sense of victimhood into an entitlement to persecute others, misdirecting the energies of the victimized to an effort that offers no solution to the problems they attempt to resolve. The perpetrators who wallow in guilt, and the politics of shame and pity, are similarly stuck in the mud, and thus are immoveable towards resolving the challenges.
Our due process is foundering. The failure to debate towards understanding so we can move away from intransigent positions, and the tactic of diverting the discussion from key issues, has limited our ability to solve problems in an agreeable manner. Does our generosity that allows the airing of the multiplicity of perspectives, also prevent us from delving deep, and questioning, in order to understand?
It’s time to move on.
- Eckersley, Susannah. “Between Appropriation and Appropriateness. Instrumentalizing Dark Heritage in Populism and Memory.” European Memory in Populism: Representations of Self and Other , 2019.
- Frie, Roger. “Not in My Family: German Memory and Responsibility After the Holocaust”. Oxford University Press. March 27, 2017 (https://www.amazon.ca/Not-My-Family-Responsibility-Holocaust/dp/0199372551#detailBullets_feature_div)
- Saerchinger, César. “Radio, Censorship and Neutrality.” Foreign Affairs Magazine, January 1940, Volume 18, Number 2 (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1940-01-01/radio-censorship-and-neutrality)
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