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Edited on Sun Jul-24-11 04:39 PM by HereSince1628
The perpetrators saw themselves as being on the side of right in avenging perceived injustices.
Victimhood on it’s face isn’t mental illness, it’s a system of sociological belief about a person’s or group’s position among events of wrong doing. Within a system of victimhood are three roles…the evil persecutor(s), the heroic rescuer(s), and the harmed victim(s). No one wants to be the evil persecutor or the harmed victim. We prefer to be rescuers.
Sometimes victims become heroes. Society is especially fond of victims who are transformed into rescuers. We frequently get these stories as the dose of Dr. Feelgood at the end of the evening network news. Usually this rescuing involved is overcoming a difficult problem (such as injury, illness or poverty). Unfortunately, sometimes the transition from victim to hero gets twisted. Victims don’t make much progress overcoming their problem but turn angry. We are all familiar with the phrase “I’m mad as hell and I’m not taking it anymore.” And people really may walk around with a chip on their shoulder searching for a fight. In the worst cases victims may become radicalized dark avenging forces who commit horrific acts of injustice themselves.
As happened in school bombing eighty years ago in Michigan and as summarized by Wiki…”the Bath School disaster is the name given to three bombings in Bath Township, Michigan, on May 18, 1927, which killed 38 elementary school children, two teachers, four other adults and the bomber himself; at least 58 people were injured. Most of the victims were children in the second to sixth grades (7–12 years of age) attending the Bath Consolidated School. Their deaths constitute the deadliest act of mass murder in a school in U.S. history. The perpetrator was school board member Andrew Kehoe, aged 55, who was ostensibly upset by a property tax levied to fund the construction of the school building. He blamed the additional tax for financial hardships which led to foreclosure proceedings against his farm. These events apparently provoked Kehoe to plan his attack. He died in the bombing.”
Kehoe saw himself as a victim of a system that ruined his life. He felt property tax ruined had ruined him, he worked within the system, got himself onto the school board to try to control the spending that drove the property tax, and found himself frustrated with what he saw as uncontrollable wastefulness. After using his handy-man skills to gain ready access to the school, Kehoe collected explosives for the better part of a year, and mined the community school. Based on comments he made to associates immediately before he went to bomb the school, he apparently fully realized the wrongness of his actions.
A similar avenging role within victimhood was reported from Timothy McVeigh who sensed that government was illegally punishing militia and religious groups such as the Branch Davidians. He spent months designing and making practice bombs and then planning and implementing the attack in Oklahoma City.
From the very early evidence, it seems that Brievik similarly saw himself as avenging wrongs and threats of wrongs by liberal government policies in Norway. He felt government tolerated the Islamic threats to what Brievik himself saw as the right and proper Norwegian way of life.
The British held a special commission following 7/7 to understand and prevent future attacks by Islamist militants. Although that report specifically was about Islamist radicals, the principle they saw working was that individuals become radicalized by perceived victimhood. Various policies put in place to protect Britain after 9/11 reinforced the sense of victimization. The report suggests that these radicalized persons become vulnerable to recruitment into plots that seek ways to right wrongs in violent ways.
None of this is new. National level democrats who understood the role of victimhood as motivation for things like the 9/11 attacks asked immediately after the attacks why do they hate us?’ The response from the Neocon enriched Cheney administration was they hate us because of our freedom. Unfortunately, it is not clear that as a nation we yet understand why they hate us. This undoubtedly impedes our transition away from the role persecutor.
Lastly, engaging victimhood is not necessarily indicative of mental illness or criminal behavior. It is a system of social interaction that helps to explain the insults and injustices of life (be they unfair by accident or purpose). We engage the system of victimhood here on DU. Consider if you will the time and passion of the past several months discussing our potential victimization at the hands of a federal level negotiators seeking to reduce government expenditures and the deficit. We express our anxieties and seek mutual reinforcement. This is how human society works. We look for solutions and drea of the emergence of heroes and hope that we each can be on the side of good. Everyone aligns against the evil persecutors. Only some, including people like Kehoe, McVeigh and very probably Breivik, this typical pattern way of structuring our understanding of our place in the world becomes radicalized and leads to spectacularly criminal wrong doing.
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