In the topsy turvy world of identity politics, it seems that not a week goes by without a new class of victim being identified. This week it is the turn of left-handed people. Apparently, the world is structured for right-handed people who need to check their privilege, and now all employers and educational establishments must make action plans to ensure that, for example, there are more left-handed desks to combat the unconscious bias and discrimination perpetrated by the privileged right-handed majority.
Most people will rightly dismiss this as the rantings of a sadly misguided product of our once glorious Western education system, but similar ideology is trotted out almost routinely in the wake of real criminal and even terrorist attacks if the perpetrator has a so-called protected characteristic.
In the wake of the Westminster terrorist attack it wasn’t long before some media outlets were claiming that mass murderer and Islamist terrorist Khalid Masood was the real victim because he allegedly once suffered from having a conversation with ‘racial overtones’. This was not just a further injury to the families of those murdered, but an incomprehensible, unfeeling idiocy.
Many mainstream journalists together with vast sections of the establishment have unfortunately been trained on liberal arts courses where they have been infected with the notion of ‘intersectional victimhood’. This is a barmy theory where some people have ‘privilege’, and others are ‘victims’ based on what you look like, what reproductive anatomy you have and what you do with it. Essentially, if you are white, straight, able-bodied, Christian and male you are privileged in every way possible, and your privilege makes you an oppressor just by existing.
If you are black or an ethnic minority, LGBT, Muslim, disabled or female then you are a victim. If you are more than one of these things your lack of privilege intersects to make you even more of a victim. If you have all five victim characteristics, you are so oppressed by society that you are not responsible for anything you do – it’s all the fault of the evil straight white male patriarchy which controls society.
In the upside down thinking of politically correct intersectional theory, Khalid Masood was black and Muslim. Therefore, despite his terrible crime and act of terrorism against the nation, it wasn’t his fault; it was ultimately the fault of his oppressors, which in this case are the good people of Northiam, East Sussex, who didn’t want much to do with him after he stabbed someone in the face.
There is a principle in civilised countries that all are equal before the law. Yet in the new politics of political correctness, those who have victim status already receive lower sentencing on occasion, such as in the case of Karolina Szumko who was let off by a judge because she was a ‘lady’, or Adil Rashid who was spared jail for statutory rape of a minor because he was a Muslim who claimed he was unaware of British law.
On the other hand some media outlets and police services almost salivate over the possibility of charging people with privileged characteristics with a ‘hate crime’. A harsher sentence can be applied in some cases if an offence is committed against someone with a protected characteristic and deemed to be motivated by ‘hatred’. This can be true even if it is not true. The motivation for an offence may not actually be ‘hatred’ but a victim or anyone else only has to say they feel a crime was motivated by ‘hate’ and it is a ‘hate crime’. The law has become dangerously subjective.
New guidelines from the Crown Prosecution Service enforce this and encourage officials to pursue ‘hate crimes’ more vigorously. A person of privilege can now commit a hate crime simply if anyone feels offended even when no offence is intended, such as in the case where a Christian preacher was arrested and locked up as a ‘homophobic hate criminal’ for answering a question put to him by a member of the public who was gay. However, persons with multiple protected characteristics are unlikely to ever be accused or charged with a hate crime or receive a sentence uplift.
This is a dangerous development. We turn our back on the principle of equality under the law for a new paradigm of ‘Equalities’ at our peril. In this new system where some are more equal than others, it is not a privilege to be privileged.
(Image: Dying Regime)
