The Rise of Privileged Victimhood. The Privelictims have spoken.

In recent decades, we have seen the emergence of a new class of people.  A class which transcends the old working/middle/upper class divisions.  This new class consists of those who have actually had a very good deal from life, but who now consider themselves some kind of victim of oppression.  A new demographic who have become, for want of a better word, spoiled.  A demographic who were given everything they ever could desire, but who never stop complaining!

A new class of people, people who come from all walks of life, has emerged.  A class which is the equivalent of the wrapped-in-cotton-wool child – in receipt of considerable social and material advantage, considerable political and media representation, yet constantly complaining that the world is biased against them.

These are the Privileged Victims, Privelictims – collectively, the Privelictorate.  This new class transcends the old systems.  A Privelictim can come from the working, middle, or upper classes.

In listing these examples, I in no way intend to denigrate any class, merely the spoilt members present in each class – the Privelictims exist alongside another growing group of people who have genuinely been oppressed and marginalised.* 

In short, a Privelictim is the epitome of the grumpy old man or woman.  They have comfortable, spacious homes, have (or had, pre-retirement) well-paid, secure jobs, disposable incomes, new cars, freedom to move, socialise, vote and travel as they please. . . yet constantly complain that immigrants, refugees, the EU, hippies, luvvies, muslims etc.etc.etc are ruining their secure, pampered lives.

Working class Privelictim

A typical working class Privelictim is the sort of person who gets up in the morning, eats a fry up (bacon, sausages), goes to work, comes back, goes to the pub, goes clubbing, has a kebab, goes to sleep, wakes up, goes to the pub, goes to the football, goes to the pub again, then comes home and trolls the internet about how British culture is being undermined by Sharia law and the Islamic invasion!  He spends the whole day doing exactly what he wants, including drinking alcohol and consuming pork, then claims he is being oppressed and marginalised by Muslims?!  This type of Privelictim blame the closing of local churches on the opening of local mosques.  It never occurs to them that churches might be closing because pisshead nationalists like him are always too hungover on a Sunday morning to actually attend church!

Middle Class Privelictim

A middle class Privelictim is the sort who owns a nice home; big front garden, big back garden, several cars on the drive.  They live a life of quiet comfort, doing mostly whatever they please – eating out in nice restaurants, going on frequent holidays, stocking their cupboards full of the nicest organic quinoa. . . yet still believe the world is out to get them! 

This type of Privelictim will consider stagnating house prices an indication of the grossest ‘unfairness’.  That’s right, they will consider it supremely unjust that they ‘only’ gained £15,000 of real wealth last year for doing no work whatsoever! 

A middle class Privelictim may be urban, or, at the upper end, rural.  They have a nice, secure home, own two cars and a campervan outright, have a nice garden, read the Daily Mail – and bitch and complain non-stop about how awful life is!  If its not the refugees, it’s the EU, migrants, Muslims, lefties, luvvies, hippies, protesters etc.etc.etc. – the list of people they have to blame for the problems they don’t have never seems to end!

A middle-class Privelictim leads a life of comfort, growing rich off nothing more than the climbing price of their house, yet they never stop moaning!   A rural middle-class Privelictim may own a lovely cottage, rambling 50-foot back garden leading down to a river, SUV, hatchback and sports car (all in grey!) on the drive, and a sense of blissful peace and quiet noon till night.  They will then froth at the mouth in rage at scream oppression at even the suggestion that someone builds anything within fifty miles of their blissful isolation.  If the government or some evil corporation wants to build a wind- or solar farm (or, heaven forfend, houses for young people?!) within ten miles of their idyllic, isolated abode, they will consider it the ultimate indication of state-sponsored repression! 

“The squeezed middle” the Privelictim will cry, from one of their spare rooms as they quaff their second bottle of w(h)ine, throw away half a plateful of Waitrose’s finest, and recline into a sofa which cost more than most people’s rent, blissfully ignorant of the climbing levels of homelessness and debt amongst others.  These people will gripe and whinge endlessly about how a fortnightly, (rather than a weekly) bin collection is an unfair and obscene betrayal by ‘the government’.  They will complain about rubbish collections and recycling, bitching that the state is unable to hoover up the mountains of filth and waste they produce quick enough, whilst more and more less fortunate people are forced into food banks.

Upper Class Privelictim

The upper class Privelictim is perhaps harder to track down.  The clearest example, however, would be the stubborn foxhunter.  He may own half of Dorset, he may spend his weekends at banquets and gala dinners, he may enjoy an obscene level of largely inherited personal wealth, property and land – but the fact that he is no longer allowed to tear a terrified animal to shreds with a pack of slavering hounds is simply unfair!  Of course, he will continue to do so in a clandestine manner anyway – after all, laws are only for paupers!  There are other types of upper class Privelictim – permanently pissed-up golf club bores (farage), portfolio landlords, city bankers and arch-corporatists who prey on and exploit whoever they please with deceptive business deals, crappy employment contracts, and dodgy tenancy agreements – then complain about how “the country’s going to the dogs!”.  Ukip, despite their entirely false claims to speak to the common man, are actually the ultimate realisation of upper class victimhood – the Earl of Dartmouth is part of this party, a real ‘man of the people’.

Baby Boomer Privelictim

Perhaps the main source of Privelictims from all classes, however, is the baby-boomer generation.  Again, not all of them.  I do not blame this generation for taking the advantages offered to them.  I do not begrudge or envy the baby-boomer’s educations, homes, opportunities or jobs.  All I begrudge is those boomers who received these benefits, yet still somehow grew up to become bitter, paranoid, angry, and obsessed with how unfair the world is to them. 

These were a demographic who enjoyed quality, affordable housing, free university education, good quality training and apprenticeship schemes, secure, well-paid jobs for life, guaranteed generous and early pensions, a properly funded NHS, and who voted in favour of, and took advantage of, the EEC and the free movement it brought.  They then complain that the youth of today are overprivileged and the EU is taking away all their rights!

This is the demographic which voted for free university education – including support grants for living costs – for themselves, but voted for my generation to have to pay 50 grand

This is the demographic that voted for affordable housing for themselves, but voted for a cartel of greedy landlords for us.

This is the demographic which voted for secure jobs and early retirement for themselves, but voted for zero-hours contracts and retirement at 80 for us

And last of all, never forget, that this is the demographic which voted themselves into Europe, and have now voted us out of it!

How dare they try to imply that they have been marginalised and ignored by politicians and a “liberal, cosmopolitan media elite” – the opposite is true!  This country’s media is as conservative and parochial as it could possibly get!  The Bitching Privelictims have had politicians and newspapers waiting on their every word for decades!  Express, Sun, Mail, Star, Telegraph, Spectator – these newspapers have pandered to every gripe of these moaning middle agers and retirees for nigh-on forty years!  It is we, the disenfranchised, debt-ridden and downtrodden millennials who have been ignored and sidelined, we who have no voice and little political representation, and it is we who are now striving to support a pampered and unappreciative aging population, and we will have to strive even harder once they have ‘sent back’ all the immigrants who help us wait on maligned malcontents hand and foot! 

Scare-story generation, the mainstream Privelictorate, and the alt-Privelictorate.

But, deep down, the Privelictims know they don’t really have it so bad.  Which is why they need a constant stream of scare-stories and conspiracies theories from various media to justify and maintain their entirely imagined sense of persecution.  The ‘Mainstream Privelictorate’ get this bullshit from the Express, the Sun, the Star etc., however, a group which we could loosely call the ‘alt-privelictorate’, download their Persecution Complexes from a different source – any one of the numerous conspiracy theory websites out there.

These online idiots speak of things such as ‘white genocide’, whilst apparently ignorant of the fact that every leader of a political party in the entire uk is white.  Between them, the ‘alt’ and ‘mainstream’ Privlectorate media have created some ‘Narratives of Oppression’ which almost constitute works of creative genius.  Some of the stories the Privelictorate write to justify their sense of victimhood are truly imaginative masterpieces.  The ‘anti-vax’ movement is one – the basic premise of this horseshit is this: “We have the technology to cure disease but I, as an entirely untrained person, am going to instead claim, without evidence, that the government is trying to kill us” (ignoring the life expectancy and infant mortality improvements seen after every major inoculation program!).  Climate change denial is another of these mad narratives of phoney oppression.  Even if we go full tinfoil-bodysuit and say climate change is a myth, I still cannot see narrative of oppression – what is it that these people fear? “The evil government is trying to oppress me by encouraging me. . . but not forcing me. . . to save money by spending slightly less on fuel!  The monsters!  Is there no end to their tyranny?!  If we continue to be enslaved by these psychopaths, one day I may consider improving my loft insulation!  The humanity!”

The alt-right constantly talk about Political Correctness being the equivalent of fascism, yet, whilst they may sometimes be met with gasps and people telling them they ‘shouldn’t say that’, this very rarely translates into a censorship that actually prevents them speaking.  If you call someone a n****r on a facebook post, it doesn’t matter if I then say ‘you shouldn’t say that, you nasty person’ – your freedom of speech has not actually been curtailed unless I physically stop you speaking!  I could rant and rave all day about how you “shouldn’t be allowed to say x, y, z” but unless the cops are breaking down your door and stuffing a rag in your mouth, I haven’t actually stopped you saying anything!  This combined with the fact that facebook – and most other internet forums – are private enterprises and, thus, perfectly within their rights to decide who is and is not permitted to make use of its service.  Even if facebook systematically deleted every comment you ever made, this would not be censorship – facebook is a free service provided by a private company and no person has any automatic right to use it.  If you don’t like it, go elsewhere!

However, there is one single cause which unites these disparate groups, one rallying cry which unites the working, middle, upper class, mainstream, boomer and alt Privelictim – one thing they all agree on.

 UKIP

• Disclaimers!

In saying all this, I do not deny that there are genuine victims amongst the working class, middle class, baby-boomers and pensioners.  Unskilled manual labourers (such as yours truly!) have seen their wages stagnate and their opportunities for longer-term, meaningful employment fade.  There are also plenty of middle class couples desperate to get on the property ladder, who will never be able to afford a deposit (possibly because their Privelictim parents would rather go on another all-expenses holiday than lend them the money – “It’ll teach them to be self-sufficient, Margaret, just like we weren’t!”).   There is also the fact that many traditionally white-collar, middle class roles are actually paid less than many working class roles since the financial crash.  Many less well-off boomers have also been conned in regards to their pensions and, in deprived areas, genuinely seen their local communities and property values degraded.  However, the fact of the matter remains that the people (baby boomers, working class, and middle class) who are genuinely victims of the austerity agenda in this country are usually much more humble and kind than those who simply ascribe victimhood status to themselves without really warranting it.

In this entry, I attack specific members of the working, middle, and upper classes, and members of the baby-boomer generation.  There are individuals and communities from all these groups which genuinely have been screwed over by neoliberalism.  I do not attack any one of these demographics as a whole, merely those individuals from each, who have received Privilege, but express Victimhood.