In his Autumn of the Middle Ages, the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga described the “exaggerated formality and romanticism of late medieval court society [as] a defense mechanism against the constantly increasing violence and brutality of general society.”

But whatabout the autumn of our late wokey court society? Whatabout the flaming colors on the trees, the emptying store shelves, the chill of the night in our post-COVID days?

And whatabout the ridiculous self-indulgence?  Back in the good old days, we used to call ruling-class courtiers “fops.” Do you think that applies to, say, Pete Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation who is celebrating the adoption of two infants with his husband and has been taking advantage of parental leave over the past two months? Or to well-born young women at our elite colleges strutting and fretting on the stage of privilege acting out the role of the helpless victim?

Whatabout the fact that our ruling class insists that the world is a suffering multitude of victims and that only virtuous Allies can bend the arc of history towards justice for the victims, the oppressed peoples of the world, and away from their tormentors, the all-powerful white oppressors.

Here is my History of the Victim, starting with the victims of Attila the Hun, connoisseur of “the lamentation of women.”

• Romans in 450 “driven before” Attila the Hun in northern Italy. Genuine victims.
• Serfs thrown off feudal estates starting in about 1400. Genuine victims.
• Workers in the early industrial revolution. Semi-victims: at least they weren’t starving to death. See “serfs” above.
• Plantation slaves. Genuine victims.
• Freed slaves in the Jim Crow era. Genuine victims.
• Well-born women suffragettes. Fake victims.
• Kulaks in Soviet Russia. Genuine victims.
• Jews in Europe 1933-45. Genuine victims.
• Blacks after the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Fake victims.
• “Capitalist roaders” in Mao’s China. Genuine victims.
• Today’s educated-class LGBT. Fake victims.
• Educated-class mostly peaceful protesters. Fake victims.

Fake victims? Hey, I wrote about this back in 2019.  What is going on here?

I will tell you. Back in the day, rulers ruled and the losers starved. William the Norman conquered Saxon England, too bad. Henry V marched across northern France: sorry about the Oriflamme. Napoleon and Wellington marched to and fro across Europe: too bad. The Allies blitzed the Jew-hunting Nazis into utter defeat and degradation: served ‘em right.

But, in recent years, the political formula of ruling classes has been less and less about conquering territory or teaching foreigners a lesson and more and more about saving the victims. Today’s elites are totally down as Allies of the Oppressed Peoples. Their political power is justified by their untiring support of and advocacy for The Victims.

What is going on here? I will tell you. Even back in the autumn of the Middle Ages the age of the fearless warrior was dimming. That’s why they were singing ditties about noble knights and King Arthur and Grails and Percival/Parzival/Parsifal, just so Miguel Cervantes could make fun of it all in Don Quixote.

So if defending our sacred borders from foreigners was going out of fashion, how about defending helpless victims from the oppressors?

It took a while, but now ruling classes all over the world are all-in on saving the victims. Of course they are; it’s how they justify their lust for political power.

But if Eric Hoffer is right about how movements end up as rackets, it makes complete sense that once our modern ruling class had saved the real victims -- workers and slaves -- it would make its movement into a racket: protecting fake victims from white oppressors who are nothing more than ordinary Americans gulled into joining fake insurrectionist movements run by FBI operatives.

It makes complete sense that powerful members of the ruling class would come to experience themselves as victims because victims are special people and the ruling class is even more special.

And when a ruling class is in the autumn of its years, its current generation, that literally knows nothing, is disconnected from its glorious history, how it fought for the helpless working class, how it fought a war to free the slaves, how it sent smart Jewish kids into the South to end Jim Crow. It only knows that “we” are the Allies, and we fight for the Oppressed Peoples against the White Oppressors. It knows that there must be Oppressed Peoples and there must be White Oppressors.

And so the narrative began to change. The workers weren’t victims anymore, just deplorables. Jews weren’t victims; now it was Palestinians. TERF feminists weren’t victims; now it was non-gender-binaries.

And so, the victims have slowly gotten faker and faker. Hey, it ain’t just “fake news;” it’s “fake victims” too. Maybe even “fake vaccines.”

For if our beloved ruling class should ever run out of victims… No, that could never happen.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Image: Pixabay

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