Hoaxtead and victimhood culture

In the 1950s and early 1960s, one of the most enduringly popular television game shows was called “Queen for a Day”. The premise of the show was simple: as with most game shows, several contestants would vie with one another for big-ticket prizes, such as vacations, kitchen appliances, or an array of fashionable clothing. All the contestants had to do was tell the studio audience their particular tale of woe—financial hardships, marital difficulties, emotional problems—in the most heart-wrenching terms possible. Winners were gauged by an applause meter, which measured the enthusiasm of the audience. All it took to become “Queen for a Day” was to have suffered.

We’re reminded of this when we look at the narratives spun by some of the more vocal alleged MK Ultra survivors and victims of cult sexual abuse: it seems that the more they can convince their YouTube audiences that they’ve suffered the tortures of the damned, the more likely they are to cash in on their own—or their children’s—alleged pain.

The problem, of course, is that there are a great many people who really have suffered from some pretty terrible things in their lives. They have suffered genuine pain, and they need our support and kindness.

But we’re not talking about those people right now: we’re talking about the professional victims, the ones who want to be Queen for a Day, preferably forever. The ones who lay claim to any and all forms of abuse, so long as it offers them sufficient excuse for their often vile behaviour.

The professional victim (Angela Power-Disney, David Shortass, and Sabine McNeill, we’re looking at you) characteristically fails to take even the slightest responsibility for their own behaviour. Anyone who’s managed to get through even one of Angie’s videos will remark on the astonishing litany of misfortune that consistently befalls her…and none of it is ever her own fault. People betray her horribly…because they are bad people, not because of her manipulative and controlling behaviour. Her video and tech equipment is lost or damaged because of mysterious outside forces…not because she can’t be arsed to look after her own belongings.

Another sign of professional victimhood is a tendency not just to hang onto grudges, but to nurse and nurture them, feeding them with a steady drip of resentment and entitlement. They have no sense of limits or boundaries: what’s theirs is theirs, and what’s yours is theirs too. They are (as Angie has admitted) “blurters”: they see nothing wrong with vomiting forth other people’s secrets, told in confidence. And they are never lacking in self-pity: if they cannot wring sympathy out of others (and most often they can’t, as others quickly grow fatigued with their demands), they will damn well throw themselves a never-ending pity party. Bring your own bottle, they won’t feel like sharing.

What has this to do with Hoaxtead?

The cult of victimhood—what sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning describe in an article in The Atlantic as “victimhood culture”, is the soil in which SRA hoaxes can easily take root. Campbell and Manning state that victimhood cultures form in settings

…that increasingly lack the intimacy and cultural homogeneity that once characterized towns and suburbs, but in which organized authority and public opinion remain as powerful sanctions…. “Under such conditions complaint to third parties has supplanted both toleration and negotiation. People increasingly demand help from others, and advertise their oppression as evidence that they deserve respect and assistance. Thus we might call this moral culture a culture of victimhood … the moral status of the victim, at its nadir in honor cultures, has risen to new heights.”

We think that last bit is critically important: “the moral status of the victim”, which in other settings might be considered low, “has risen to new heights”.

Think for example, about the online phenomenon which was once known as “the blogosphere”.

(T)he emergence of “the blogosphere” in the early aughts…was rife with examples of conservative, progressive, and libertarian bloggers calling attention to minor slights against their respective ideological groups by mainstream media outlets. In “Fisking” the MSM, the aggrieved seized on these slights, often exaggerating them in the process; tried to garner the support of third parties (an ombudsman, the public at large); cast themselves as victims of unfair treatment; and demonized adversaries.

They did so in hopes of making the case that the small slight that they’d seized upon was actually evidence of a larger, significant injustice to a whole class of people.

This is the environment in which the Hoaxtead narrative has been able to gain, and retain, such a foothold in the conspirasheep community: if one cares to browse through the YouTube channels, Facebook pages, blogs, and Twitter feeds of those who strongly believe in, support, and promote Hoaxtead, the sense of perpetual, deep-seated victimhood is difficult to miss.

This is why the videos of RD’s children struck such a strong chord with so many who were already predisposed to believe in vast conspiracies of shadowy people doing unspeakable things: those two beautiful, blonde, blue-eyed children were the ultimate victim-gods…until they renounced their own victimhood in their third police interviews, and stated that they’d been forced to lie.

This is why it’s been so difficult for the conspirasheep to accept the truth told in those particular videos: suddenly, instead of believing that the children had suffered, and survived, the most horrendous possible tortures, viewers were now asked to accept that the children weren’t über-victims after all, but merely small children being used as unwilling pawns in an ugly game.

It was a terrible let-down for many, one from which some have never been able to recover.