The conservative victimization games have reached a new low this week in the wake of the attacks in Norway, as evidenced by, among other things, the ramblings of a couple of posters on this board who shall go unnamed.
Anyway Jon Stewart ran a pretty interesting bit about this last night. It starts off with Bill O’Reilly and other RW talkers whining about the media describing Anders Breivik as a Christian. That is followed by a montage of Fox News Douchebags TM complaining about how Christians are being marginalized, followed by a montage of said douchebags complaining about liberal victimhood, followed by another montage of said douchebags complaining of being persecuted by liberals.
The pièce de résistance is a clip of Sean Hannity saying liberal commentary is “so vicious, so mean, so cruel, I don’t hear that coming from conservatives about liberals” followed by yet another montage of conservatives hawking books with titles like “Ultimate Liberal Fascism” “Arguing with Idiots” and “The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.”
It’s not a “persecution complex.” It’s not a mental illness. It’s an intentional propaganda technique, and it has been quite successful over the years.
It’s a natural consequence of hyper-conservatism. Hell, it’s practically the defining characteristic. Extremely conservative people, especially social conservatives, have this one driving motivation: they are afraid. They are afraid of change. They are afraid of anything that is different. Every new day is the scariest day of their lives, because they are powerless to stop the change, and they naturally wax nostalgic about the “good old days” when everything was different and better; they reject any form of progress as scary and uncertain and alien.
Is this new? I’ve been hearing for decades about how the poor, abused Christians in this country are so marginalized and put upon by the non-Christians that they can hardly even practice their religion in peace. The only change I see is that the political right has adopted some of the same rhetoric that has worked so well for the religious right.
Ogre, what you got there is a “reactionary”, a term that has fallen out of use. Yustabe, a conservative was someone who would admit the necessity for change, but would insist on approaching change with a prudent and cautious viewpoint. You can argue fairly and reasonably with a conservative, as you have a rational basis for discussion.
Not much you can do with an out and out reactionary, their agenda to turn back the clock is simply not possible. Even if they had the power they crave, they cannot put everything back, they can only create an empty pretense by oppressing and denying change that has already occurred.
Personally, I think the persecution complex derives from a need to explain how it can be that conservatives represent the vast majority of Americans (“America is a center-right country”) as more and more Americans adopt views that are anathema to them. They don’t understand, so they dream up conspiracy and treachery to explain it. And whenever they do win something election wise, they go berserk, convinced that at last the true nature of American politics is revealed, and they empowered to demand every jot and tittle of their agenda, at once, immediately. Ain’t so.
This thread is mixing up Christian and conservative a bit. There ARE plenty of left wing Christians out there after all.
My hypothesis - a lot of today’s conservatives got organized in college back in the 80s. This was during the height of the [insertUniversityname] Review movement, started at Dartmouth. Conservative students started publishing their own papers on campus, and started becoming more organized. In many cases, those publications came under fire from university administration and from campus groups.
This created a feeling of persecution on campus, and I hypothesize that many of these conservatives carried that persecution complex into adulthood and into their continued political actions.
Via DeSmog Blog I noticed yet another element of conservative prosecution complex that they are attempting to make all others ignore.
I think this connection with typical conservative conspiracy theories needs to be mentioned as most of the “rambler posters” here are also climate change deniers or are willing to throw environmentalism under the bus when they have to dump on liberals. Pat Buchanan is also on the record of declaring that climate scientists are pushing a hoax and so are most of the FAUX news pundits and reporters.
Um, not according to the conservative right. As shown in the OP’s link, Jon Stewart had the right (huh) of it in his show. Love the montage. Apparently only republicans can be real Christians, and not every person who claims he is a Christian is actually a Christian, and Christians are soooooo persecuted they don’t even get to celebrate their own religious holidays.
Ever talk to the anti-abortion crowd about the lack of violence in the pro-choice crowd. “Oh, they are very violent and are always subjecting us to violence. But the pro-abortion media doesn’t report it.”
But they do have a point. Imagine if the massacre had been done by a Muslim immigrant. The conservatives would take extra precaution to make sure they described him simply as a lone operative, and keep his religion completely out of the discussion. Ann Coulter, for instance, would never mention the guy’s religion, and instead focus on the complex political problems surrounding the issue of violence in the world today.
Contrast that with the lame stream media, always looking to pounce on poor, innocent job creaters like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann.
For some reason, it is seems to be VERY easy to convince people they are victims of persecution, even when they are vast majority. Christians of course are the classic example, but I bet there’s core psychological explanation and this effect could be found in everybody.
As someone who subscribed to National Review in the late '60s and early '70s, and worked for the Conservative Party in New York, I can say that the reactionaries of back then are now the left wing of the Republican party. Given the mainstream of the Republican party today, anyone qualifying as a reactionary is foaming at the mouth loony. Or maybe not a Tea Partier.
At least for the US, it’s part of our heritage. We were taught that the original Americans were the Pilgrims and Puritans who came to escape religious persecution in their home land (ignoring, of course, the English colonies in Virginia). And we pride ourselves as welcoming the victims of persecution from other nations. Even within the country, Catholics and Jews weren’t always treated well. Likewise, the Mormons and other fringe religious groups were often targeted.
So, it’s not surprising that the no longer persecuted descendents of those people would fall back on a common American historical theme. “Never to forget” and all that.
That said, I’m not sure where the Norwegians are getting it, unless it’s an import from the US.
I think you are right. Each of us is beset by doubts and fears. Certain groups have found that there is a profit to be had, monetarily and politically, by accentuating those fears. It is becoming more and more common.
I would lump in drug ads (“Do you sometimes feel pain? You could have have a dreaded disease that only our new drug can fix. Tell your doctor now!”) and almost any ad that mentions terrorists. Here is what you should be deathly afraid of and here is the product, or candidate, that will make it all better.
This doesn’t surprise me. Persecution complexes in conservative wings (especially evangelicals) are nothing new, but mostly they had been only displayed to other people in their circles and not to the public at large.
When I was in fifth grade at a Christian elementary school, we were made to watch a gut-wrenching music video of a man who was jailed for being a Christian, and then executed. It was strongly implied that this could happen in our lifetime in the United States if we grew up to be passive and let our country descend in to “moral relativism”.
Even the Columbine massacre was used to further this complex. Cassie Bernall was shot after she said “yes” to the shooter asking “do you believe in God?”** This incident was used to further illustrate persecution against Christians in America and to raise questions about martyrdom.
So it doesn’t really suprise me at all that this has bled over in to politics. The same factors are driving this persecution complex: fear and a desire to persuade and galvanize the everyday conservatives.
**This was widely believed for a while after the shooting - heck there was even a Christian radio song made in her honor. However, later witness reports have concluded that the conversation either took place between a different girl and shooter or not at all.
