Rebel News Podcast - Victim culture by the numbers： Let's talk about the history of the grievance industry

00:00:00.000 Hello Rebels, I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my

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00:01:32.900 Is grievance culture a new thing? My guest tonight argues it is as old as time. I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed,

00:01:40.780 and you're watching The Gunn Show. I want to read you an excerpt of a book I've recently finished.

00:02:04.180 Are you ready? I'm ready. By the 1980s black married couples with college education,

00:02:10.780 already earned slightly more than white college-educated married couples in the United States.

00:02:18.320 In 1981, in Canada, earnings for those with Japanese ancestry were 13% higher than those

00:02:25.380 of European ancestry. By the late 2000s, Americans had elected a president who was half black and half

00:02:33.080 white. As the author writes, that's progress. Now, if you submerged yourself in left-wing media,

00:02:40.760 or even just regular mainstream media, you would never know the statistics I read to you just now.

00:02:46.640 So why is society so invested in this hierarchy of victimhood, and offering reasons why people

00:02:52.760 can't accomplish things, when we know accomplishments and progress are taking place all around us,

00:02:58.980 every single day? And aren't we really setting up entire generations of people to fail,

00:03:04.200 when we feed them into a victimhood mentality? The book I just read those statistics to you from

00:03:10.760 is called The Victim Cult, How the Culture of Blame Hurts Everyone and Wrecks Civilizations. Now,

00:03:17.920 it is full of statistics and history, and it is meticulously footnoted. It's an examination of

00:03:24.620 worldwide grievance culture, past and present. And the author of this amazing book,

00:03:30.180 Mark Mielke, joins me in an interview we recorded earlier.

00:03:49.660 Joining me now is the author of that book, The Victim Cult, How the Culture of Blame Hurts Everyone

00:03:55.400 and Wrecks Civilizations. Hey, Mark, thanks for joining me. I guess my first question for you is,

00:04:04.600 what exactly is The Victim Cult? Well, think about people who have had something awful happen to

00:04:11.680 them, or people who merely think that, and then, right or wrong, you know, they may have been harmed,

00:04:18.720 they may not have been harmed, but they obsess over it. And we know in our personal lives,

00:04:22.140 when I was writing the book, I'd ask people, have you ever met...

00:04:25.400 ...who thinks like a victim, and people would go, yeah, you know, I should tell you about my family,

00:04:28.820 or my friend, or someone at work. Well, multiply that by millions, and literally, you get what I

00:04:34.700 describe as victim cult. So, kind of an obsession over a real harm, or, you know, sometimes, you know,

00:04:41.800 people make this stuff up in their heads, or they link to the wrong effect, the wrong cause. So,

00:04:48.560 the victim cult is really about people we meet every day, but multiplied by millions, and how that

00:04:54.480 affects our societies, our country, and even international relations.

00:04:58.640 So, I think this is probably the first book of its kind that is sort of through a Canadian lens.

00:05:04.560 What prompted you to write this book? Because I think it's sort of apropos for the time that we're

00:05:09.440 in right now. And I don't know if that's, you know, after reading the book, I was, you know,

00:05:14.720 maybe it's just because of the 24-hour news cycle and social media, but you often feel like, boy,

00:05:22.640 things are sure awful out there, and everybody thinks they're a victim, but you look at this

00:05:27.540 through both a Canadian lens and a historical lens, and it's sort of always been this way,

00:05:32.540 hasn't it? It has, but the Canadians sort of spur for this, I mean, the spur for the book really was,

00:05:38.620 I've done a lot of policy work over the years on aboriginal issues, and what I found continually

00:05:43.860 was some, and I emphasize some, not all, but some First Nations leaders in Canada, relentlessly

00:05:49.420 portray themselves as victims. Now, historically, in some cases, select cases, many cases, they were,

00:05:56.880 or their ancestors were, and that's an important distinction. We are not our ancestors.

00:06:00.480 But the problem with that is for some First Nations leaders to continue to blame everything

00:06:05.500 on 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 150 years ago, there's a two-fold problem with that. One,

00:06:11.100 by looking back, you don't look forward, and that's a problem, because how do you succeed if

00:06:15.220 you're always looking in the rearview mirror, right? You end up in a collision, you end up in

00:06:18.300 an accident, so to speak. The other problem with it is you really link the wrong cause to modern-day

00:06:24.740 effects. So let me give you a clear example. We often hear today that the problem

00:06:29.820 with aboriginal Canadians' incomes or social economic indicators has everything to do 0.98

00:06:36.180 with perhaps what happened 50 years ago, or 100 years ago, in some cases, residential schools.

00:06:42.740 And without downplaying the effect of, say, sexual and physical abuse on reserves, which I don't think

00:06:47.160 we should, to blame everything in residential schools or to blame everything on reserves is

00:06:52.060 actually a mistake. Except in this way, which some First Nations leaders don't get or are not honest

00:06:59.020 about, many First Nations reserves are in the middle of nowhere. If you want to look for a modern-day

00:07:04.200 reason why some aboriginals, especially, specifically First Nations, right, what used to be called Treaty

00:07:10.060 Indians, you know, for federal purposes, are not succeeding, it's because they're on a reserve in the 1.00

00:07:16.480 middle of nowhere. And geography explains a lot more than, you know, allegations of racism or colonialism

00:07:22.020 or allegations that somehow Canada was a genocidal state akin to Nazi Germany, which actually a report

00:07:29.340 earlier this year came out and alleged just that, right? So I take that apart. And to give you a clear

00:07:34.880 example of where aboriginals can succeed in this country, I looked at census data from the last census.

00:07:40.520 And very simply, if you look at young aboriginals ages 25 to 34, with a university education,

00:07:47.920 they have the exact same incomes, in fact, slightly higher than other Canadians. And why is that?

00:07:53.260 Because they are more likely to be in cities. They're not stuck in a reserve in the middle of

00:07:56.900 nowhere. And so their incomes are equal to those of other Canadians. And if you have a PhD as an

00:08:02.800 aboriginal between 25 and 34, you earn about 3,000 more every year than other Canadians. So the problem

00:08:10.240 really is, and the good thing about this is what that points to is the problem is geography and

00:08:16.220 education, and both those are correctable. But to make links, as people do, to 50 or 100 years ago,

00:08:22.400 when First Nations leaders do that, that's the problem. They're actually not, you know,

00:08:27.860 linking up the right cause to the effect. And that's unfortunate because it can hold people back.

00:08:32.640 And so that's kind of where the book started, was this observation that First Nations leaders

00:08:36.980 often make these mistakes, as do others. And that harms Aboriginal Canadians more than anybody else.

00:08:43.660 You know, I finished your book finally last night. I sort of jumped around all over the place when I

00:08:50.560 was reading the book, leafing back and forth, as, you know, things became timely, sort of in the news

00:08:56.060 cycle and in the culture war. And now that you're talking about Indigenous issues, you actually

00:09:01.960 dig quite deep into how well-intentioned laws designed to help Indigenous people can actually

00:09:13.180 harm them. And you pointed to two instances of Indigenous children, Baby Serenity and Baby 1.00

00:09:21.900 Veronica, who, because of policies designed to undo colonialism, it actually ended up harming these

00:09:29.980 children and shifting the blame off the adults involved in their stories onto colonialism. And

00:09:37.080 it didn't really address the real injustice happening to these little girls at hand.

00:09:42.240 Right. So in that part of the victim cult, I went into this notion of, okay, if there's a problem in

00:09:49.640 my life or, you know, in the tribe that I belong to, and by tribe, I mean, whatever collective you

00:09:54.540 belong to, right? We all have some tribe. We may play golf with friends. We may have, you know,

00:09:59.080 be part of a nation that we're proud of, whatever, whatever your tribe happens to be. I mean that in

00:10:03.720 very, you know, in a wide sense in the book. Right. But I went into the notion of culture in

00:10:08.520 the victim cult, because people often think, okay, especially if they've been harmed or, you know,

00:10:12.420 their society's been harmed, what we need to do is restore pure culture. For reasons that I go into

00:10:18.360 in other chapters, Germans thought this in the early 19th century, and that was a mistake.

00:10:22.180 Pure culture won't save you. In fact, learning from other cultures, integrating with other people

00:10:26.720 voluntarily can help your culture learn from others and succeed. But the problem with this

00:10:31.960 notion of pure culture, and some First Nations, again, are deep into this in Canada and the United

00:10:36.780 States, is you're trying to correct some wrongs that happened 50 years ago. So for example, people

00:10:43.460 have heard of the scoop where Aboriginal children in both Canada and the United States were taken out

00:10:48.820 of their parents' homes, sometimes for entirely legitimate reasons. They couldn't care for them

00:10:54.580 for whatever reason, and sometimes not. But we don't know whether that's 90 percent of the kids

00:10:59.520 or 10 percent. We really don't. At least I couldn't find the statistics, and a lot of the records have

00:11:03.720 disappeared because they were paper. The problem, though, with looking back and saying, okay, there were

00:11:09.100 some historic harms done to some Aboriginal children in Canada and the United States, and now what we need to

00:11:15.360 do to correct that? Sorry, let me back up. What was the problem back then? The problem is when this was

00:11:22.280 happening unjustly and kids weren't allowed to, like, be back with their parents, even if their parents

00:11:26.100 care for them again, and Aboriginal kids were too quickly adopted out, perhaps, right? That's the argument 1.00

00:11:31.660 that did happen in some cases. The problem back then was what? State agencies weren't looking at people as

00:11:37.900 individuals. They were treating them as part of some sort of collective. Well, we make the same mistake

00:11:43.760 today, 50 years later, when through well-intentioned legislation in the United States and well-intentioned

00:11:49.280 policy in Canada, the determining factor as an Aboriginal kid where you should be is if someone

00:11:55.140 shares your bloodline. Sorry, more than that. It's not just family. It's, you know, if someone shares

00:12:01.100 your community. So you come from a First Nation, and the preference really is to get you back to that 0.98

00:12:06.300 reserve. Now, that can be fine if you're going back to grandpa and grandma, if your parents can't care

00:12:13.100 for you. But that's a bit different than saying, wherever possible, we're going to make sure you

00:12:17.420 have a cultural connection to your reserve or your First Nation, and that's going to trump everything

00:12:22.960 else. Now, you know, day to day, bureaucrats and others will say, well, no, we would never put a

00:12:28.300 children in that situation. What I detail in the victim cult is, in fact, in Alberta, they did that

00:12:34.540 with a little girl called Serenity. They put her in that situation, despite warning signs all over the

00:12:39.460 place, that they shouldn't have been doing that. This little girl ended up being sexually and physically 1.00

00:12:45.380 abused and dying at age four years old, somewhere in central Alberta, the government never made clear

00:12:50.720 where. She was there with with grandparents, but they didn't know who were checked out. But the other

00:12:57.100 people in the home and, and were never checked out, for example, criminal records or, you know, a possible

00:13:02.040 past, you know, sexual abuse. So you have this little girl in this home that was abused, physically and

00:13:08.700 sexually at the end of it all, and had a concussion, which would send her to the hospital, and she

00:13:14.160 finally died from that. I mean, this is a tragedy, but she was there because of this preference for

00:13:18.840 kind of cultural kinship. Now, again, look, if we can understand that the first priority should always

00:13:25.640 be to get kids back with their parents, that's commonsensical. But there's this kind of romantic

00:13:30.980 notion that, well, you know, a village will raise a child. 100 people can't really raise a child.

00:13:39.160 And we need to be a little less naive, that, you know, there are some not great people in all

00:13:46.620 societies, and you want to protect kids from that. So I went into this example, because it's a good

00:13:51.280 example of, you know, and the American example, it's a good example of where, because you've got,

00:13:57.500 you know, a certain bloodline, you should forever be attached to that collective. And in the case of

00:14:03.900 the United States, the example I gave from Oklahoma was a little girl given up for adoption, Veronica.

00:14:10.680 The father didn't want anything to do with her when his ex-girlfriend was pregnant. He made that 0.72

00:14:15.740 clear. She gives birth, gives away the child, the daughter, to a couple from another state. And then

00:14:23.000 the father decides he wants to be involved. And this leads to basically three years, four years of

00:14:28.900 court fights. She's with her adopted parents for two years, then she's with her father who had never

00:14:34.780 seen her before. The problem with this is she's like 1.2% Cherokee. She's 50% Hispanic. But think 0.99

00:14:42.620 about the absurdity of this. We're starting to debate whether a child who the father initially didn't

00:14:48.240 want should be what? Given to a certain collective, or the preference of that collective should matter

00:14:55.580 over her 50% bloodline versus her 1.2% bloodline. Like, how do we get started with this is the

00:15:04.340 problem, right? Part of it is this fascination, romanticization of culture. Yeah. And I mean,

00:15:10.340 in the end, when you put this, like you say, the victim cult and this romanticization of culture

00:15:15.620 over and above the welfare of children, it's the children who pay. And I guess society as a whole,

00:15:22.940 when we are refusing to care for the needs of our most vulnerable, because their health and safety

00:15:32.100 is somewhere down on the totem pole underneath a culture and this blood quantum that we use to

00:15:40.500 appoint caregivers for children. And it's truly bizarre. You've actually used-

00:15:45.460 The problem really, and this is what I show in the victim cult, is that, again, we treat people

00:15:49.760 not as individuals, but as part of some collectives. And collectives, there's no other way to put it,

00:15:54.880 collectives eventually demand a sacrifice. And my view is that individuals should always trump in

00:16:00.020 law and policy. Why? Because look, if a parent wants to give their child to whomever, I mean,

00:16:06.140 since when does race and blood come into it, right? Ethnicity. I mean, this is how we've developed in

00:16:12.700 the last two centuries in Western societies. And the only exception is when it comes to indigenous 0.98

00:16:19.280 children. But in essence, what we're saying is, it doesn't matter what you as a parent want for

00:16:23.560 your child. And in both Veronica's case, in both Serenity's case, the parents wanted something

00:16:28.700 different than the First Nations collective. And they were told by the bureaucracy and by the courts,

00:16:33.460 no, you can't have that. How do we get to this point where the parents are not the primary deciders

00:16:38.400 of where a child should go? And so it is this fascination with culture and the collective,

00:16:43.620 which is very dangerous. And it's one of the reasons into the book, I go into the sort of the

00:16:47.020 German notion of collectivism and culture, and how that became very, very dangerous long before kind 0.99

00:16:53.020 of race consciousness and race, you know, purity became evident in Germany in the early 1900s.

00:16:59.440 Now, we sort of talked about the indigenous cultures and how this collectivist notion of

00:17:09.560 culture is harming indigenous cultures. But let's talk about the flip side of this. You actually 0.98

00:17:15.360 talk about the Pacific class. So immigrants to North America who were largely Asian, Chinese and

00:17:24.160 Japanese, who are doing much better than the, I guess, the immigrant class around them. And that's 1.00

00:17:33.680 being exhibited in college rates. And now that you mentioned it, you pointed out how, you know,

00:17:40.540 if you are indigenous and you get a college degree, that's your way out. That's really been the way out 1.00

00:17:46.020 for this Pacific class of immigrants. Right. So both for Canadians and Americans, I mean, one of the

00:17:54.840 things I wanted to do in the victim cult was show also how you would escape the victim cult personally

00:17:58.880 or as a society. And, you know, there are examples of First Nations in Canada that do very well,

00:18:04.720 because they were tuned to the economy. These take advantage of their location. I grew up in Kelowna.

00:18:09.180 The West Bank First Nation is a great example of this, as is Assyrius, which has wineries and a hotel.

00:18:13.660 But to the specific example you mentioned in the victim cult from the United States,

00:18:19.280 there was some great data available, okay, on how did Asian Americans succeed despite the odds and

00:18:25.720 despite the notion, very popular kind of in victim, you know, circles, you know, in victim thinking

00:18:30.440 circles, I can't succeed because I was picked on and my ancestors were picked on in the past.

00:18:36.960 Well, that's not necessarily true. And we have a great example from early arrivals to the United

00:18:42.600 States to the West Coast and the rest of the country. So Chinese, you know, people who became 1.00

00:18:46.700 Chinese Americans, but who started to immigrate really in the late 1840s with the California gold

00:18:51.200 rush. 20 years later, 30 years later, the Japanese start to arrive in large numbers to the West Coast

00:18:56.600 of the United States, to San Francisco, for example, and other places. And both cohorts are heavily

00:19:03.160 discriminated against. I mean, there's no two ways about it. Initially kind of welcome in the early 1950s.

00:19:08.260 But then the public opinion turns and there's lots of racist laws, racist legislation, racist policy

00:19:15.560 against Chinese, the people who become Chinese Americans and their kids and grandkids. Same 0.99

00:19:20.440 thing with the Japanese arrivals. Okay, so what happened? How did they deal with this? Well, first 1.00

00:19:25.940 of all, they never wanted to stay in some sort of cultural ghettos, right? Because that's what the 0.97

00:19:32.680 racist wanted. So Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans, you see, starting pretty early on in the

00:19:38.220 1850s, for Chinese Americans in particular, say, we're going to fight back. I don't know if it was

00:19:42.900 conscious, but they simply thought this is supposed to be the land of opportunity. So there's a great

00:19:48.020 letter, for example, from a Chinese American in the late 1850s. He writes to the California governor,

00:19:53.580 John Engler, at the time. John Engler says, you know, America is only for white people. Well, this

00:19:58.460 newly arrived Chinese person in the United States, who's very eloquent, writes to the governor, says,

00:20:03.500 this proposition is false in the extreme, and you know it, and cites the Constitution and

00:20:08.300 basically stands up for himself. And you see this again and again in the relationship between Chinese 0.85

00:20:15.560 and Japanese Americans to the state. And also, that goes on for really a century, because

00:20:21.780 they're discriminated against between 1850 and 1950, roughly, institutionally.

00:20:27.180 You also see them make efforts to integrate in other ways. You see an emphasis in entrepreneurship,

00:20:34.300 in part because Japanese and Chinese Americans aren't allowed, in some cases, to be in the

00:20:38.660 professions. You also see the importance of education. And what I found in researching the

00:20:45.580 victim cult, some fascinating statistics from 1910, 1920, 1930. In 1910, Japanese Americans and Chinese

00:20:53.480 Americans, their children are attending and graduating from high school and college, as the

00:20:59.400 Americans call it, at rates lower than white Americans. By 1920, though, in 1930, their attendance

00:21:05.420 rates and their graduation rates are significantly higher than white Americans, right? The majority 0.94

00:21:10.600 population at this time in the United States. And what this shows is, and this sets the ground for

00:21:17.020 future success, but what this shows is, is they are starting to succeed despite the heavy

00:21:22.040 discrimination. And people enthralled by kind of victimization theory that you can never succeed

00:21:27.620 until every institutional wrong is corrected, including ones from 50 or 100 years ago, people

00:21:32.620 who think you can kind of correct for that in modern day. Well, this kind of, you know, rebuts

00:21:38.160 the notion that, you know, once a victim, forever a victim. Japanese and Chinese Americans never 0.99

00:21:42.660 thought of themselves that way. They emphasized education. And they did this, by the way, and they

00:21:47.900 started to succeed in the most discriminatory period in American history. Remember that in

00:21:52.380 1924, Washington, the federal government, enacts legislation to ban most immigration, right? It just

00:22:00.320 cuts it off at the knees. And Asian immigrants from East Asia, in particular, are discriminated against

00:22:06.120 heavily. They're pretty much banned for 30 years. So despite that, Japanese and Chinese Americans are 1.00

00:22:13.800 starting to succeed wherever they possibly can. It's because they're entrepreneurs, because they

00:22:17.900 value education, and they keep pushing ahead for integration and keep fighting back. So all of those

00:22:22.880 four factors are why East Asian immigrants in the United States were able to carve out some success

00:22:29.140 despite a highly prejudiced society institutionally and personally. But it's also why, you know, starting

00:22:35.040 in the 1970s, you know, it started to become evident that they were succeeding wildly, far better than the

00:22:40.880 average American. But the statistics I discover for the victim call show that they were starting to

00:22:46.360 succeed 50 years earlier than that because of their tenacity and their their strategy, whether that

00:22:51.200 strategy were conscious or not, they just kept barely on ahead. And frankly, they made America live up to

00:22:57.360 her ideals of equality and liberty for all. And so they actually helped renew civilization. And that's part of

00:23:02.620 the theme in the victim cult is, you know, the victim cults can wreck civilizations. But if you stop being

00:23:08.140 a victim and a victim and say, Okay, I'm gonna, I'm not going to, like, forego my rights as a citizen in this

00:23:13.040 Republic or in Canada and in our dominion, I'm going to push ahead. And this actually helps renew

00:23:20.780 civilizations and helps us live up to our ideals. And I think that's a terrific thing.

00:23:26.380 I have, I guess, probably the most important question I have for you today, since this is so now embedded in our

00:23:35.540 society, this hierarchy of victimhood. And it's involved in our schools in our education system from,

00:23:42.360 from, you know, from quite little, all the way up through university. How do we come back from this?

00:23:50.360 I guess, how do we convince this younger generation, especially who's been taught, you know, about

00:23:57.620 class hierarchies and privilege and power dynamics, as just a way of life? How do we sort of write the

00:24:06.340 ship? Hmm. I think part of it is just keep telling the truth, trying to introduce them to real history,

00:24:15.060 try and place some questions in their mind. So let me give you a good example is, I mean, I gave you

00:24:20.640 one statistic already, right? We know that on average, Aboriginal Canadians do worse on statistical outcomes, 1.00

00:24:26.260 economics, you know, income, education, the average, you know, but when you get into Apple, Apple comparisons,

00:24:33.040 the one I mentioned earlier, young adults, you see the same statistical outcomes on incomes and other

00:24:38.240 statistics. So that's terrific. So I think just pointing out that, you know, there may be more to

00:24:44.360 this than meets the eye when you just look at averages. You always have to dig down in the data.

00:24:49.000 I mean, that's a bit policy walkish, but let me put this another way. Let's introduce history,

00:24:52.240 real history as well. And let's ask some questions. So I quote Thomas Sowell in the book. Thomas Sowell

00:24:57.400 is a famous African-American economist who disagrees with this notion of victimization as well, or that

00:25:03.640 historic wrongs have as much effect upon incomes and success today as some people claim. So for example,

00:25:10.240 Thomas Sowell looks at black American families succeeding at Washington, D.C. schools in the 1890s,

00:25:15.960 20 years after the Civil War, right? So 30 years after the Civil War ends. And he goes to the 1930s

00:25:22.480 and says black American families are mostly together. You can't blame bad outcomes in the 1970s. And when

00:25:28.680 black American families start to come apart in large, large percentages, you can't blame that on

00:25:34.240 slavery since they were together in the 1930s, by and large. And so it's a matter of linking up the

00:25:40.420 right historical cause or present day cause to the observed effect. But I think as well, part of it

00:25:46.860 is, you know, maybe getting some modesty. I have a chapter in the book that I was initially going to

00:25:53.020 entitle, you know, All Our Ancestors Were Bastards. I instead toned it down a bit. But the basic gist of

00:26:00.620 that chapter is, if you look into history, you find out everybody's ancestors were victims. You know, it doesn't

00:26:07.740 matter whether you're, you know, Arab African, you know, or white European, or, you know, if you're

00:26:15.540 from East Asia, you know, all of our ancestors are pretty awful to each other. And when you really dive 1.00

00:26:21.680 down into that, you go, I have a lot more common with everybody else today. And it doesn't matter if

00:26:27.060 I was born in Dubai or Denver, or Paris, or Toronto, I have a lot more in common with other people around

00:26:33.860 the world today who are alive than my ancestors of 100 or 200 years ago. None of us really would

00:26:39.720 have cared to hang around them and what they did to each other, or approved of what they did to each

00:26:43.780 other. So I think a little sort of historical modesty about our own tribe, if I can put it that

00:26:48.680 way, is helpful. And then, yeah, just in historical awareness as well. I mean, look, everybody, victims are

00:26:56.440 created daily, and I don't deny that in the book. I think the danger, though, and the benefit of

00:27:02.320 getting a grasp on history is that you can then have a little bit of modesty about this, and you

00:27:08.640 can be a little more understanding of other people, and you can find commonalities. And I think that's

00:27:13.740 what's been lost. We've kind of retreated into, you know, the collective cult and the victim cult.

00:27:19.120 And that becomes really dangerous, because it basically says, you harmed my tribe 50 or 100 years

00:27:24.580 ago, or you harmed me yesterday, and I want to take revenge. Well, if you understand that almost

00:27:28.840 everybody's tribe was victimized or was doing the victimization in history, then you start to look

00:27:33.720 for solutions. I mean, one of the, the forwards of the book is written by Ellis Ross. Ellis Ross is a

00:27:39.960 former chief elected counselor for the Heisler First Nation on the coast of British Columbia.

00:27:44.040 I heard Ellis speak in Calgary earlier this spring, and I wanted to write the forward after I heard him

00:27:49.860 speak, because Ellis basically said, look, when I started to look into the archives for the Heisler First

00:27:53.940 Nation, he found awful things that were done to the Heisler, right? There's no two ways about it.

00:27:59.040 It was apartheid. But he said, look, I, I, my first impulse was revenge. And then my second impulse was,

00:28:05.060 that's not going to help anyone. How do we look ahead? How do we figure out, you know, how to change

00:28:09.580 this for, in his particular instance, for the Heisler people there? And so he looked for remedies,

00:28:15.160 and not chronic blame. So I think historical modesty, and then also thinking about how we're going to make

00:28:22.600 everyone succeed. I think that's how you get away. That's how you can solve the victim cult.

00:28:27.980 So teach people empathy, teach them about history, teach them to question their assumptions about the

00:28:33.040 wrong cause and effect links, and ask them to really think about what makes people succeed. Now,

00:28:38.020 maybe, maybe here's another way to look at it. It's really easy to blame the past. It's really easy,

00:28:43.060 for example, to look at colonialism in North America or anywhere, or, you know, nations that attack

00:28:48.420 other nations, and, and, you know, draw out a grievance narrative forever. And that's how we

00:28:53.040 continue problems around the world. I was in Hong Kong, though, six years ago. And without almost

00:28:58.900 without exception, I was there to do some research for think tank and talk to business people, to

00:29:03.160 politicians, to civil servants. And with almost without exception, what they said to me, and this

00:29:08.640 is in Hong Kong. This is not, you know, this is not London. It's not New York. It's Hong Kong,

00:29:14.900 which is what, you know, mainly Chinese origin. And they said to me, Mark, the three things we want

00:29:20.140 to keep, capitalism, the rule of law, including the British legal code, and our anti-corruption

00:29:26.140 efforts. And all this was vis-a-vis China proper Beijing. They were worried about losing this,

00:29:31.460 right, to the regime in Beijing, and for good reason. So, you know, so what that told me was

00:29:39.060 they grasped, and for very good reason, because they've been next door to China for 150 years,

00:29:43.720 first under the British, and then the last 20 years, obviously, under Chinese rule,

00:29:47.580 they get what's at stake. And so they took the best from the British colonial period,

00:29:52.820 and left whatever perhaps they don't like. And this summer, students protesting against Beijing

00:29:57.900 raised a British flag. Why did they do that? Because they're not victims of colonialism,

00:30:03.400 but they valued capitalism, rule of law, and anti-corruption efforts. Meanwhile, in the West,

00:30:09.600 we've got people who are chronic victims of what happened 50 years ago, 150 years ago. To me,

00:30:14.560 it was incredibly encouraging that you've got a population that is mostly non-British, obviously, 1.00

00:30:19.520 in Hong Kong, saying, we get how you succeed. And to me, that was both a warning to the West,

00:30:26.240 but a positive possibility for everyone if they can get past their victim thinking.

00:30:30.480 Mark, thank you for being so generous with your time. I guess my last question for you is,

00:30:37.440 how do people get a copy of this really great book?

00:30:41.280 Start with your local bookstore. You can find it at Chapters. You can find it at Amazon.ca.

00:30:47.040 If all else fails, look at markmilkey.com. You can find it there as well.

00:30:50.740 Great. Mark, thank you so much. First, for writing this book. For me, as someone who grew up poor and

00:30:57.820 then had a baby at 19, it really resonated with me. It's one of those things where you realize that

00:31:04.020 the recipe to get out of historical wrongs, it's not complicated, but it might be hard.

00:31:15.780 Family, education, hard work. It works for everybody. And so I'm really glad to see that

00:31:22.120 finally there's a book like this written through a Canadian lens.

00:31:28.080 Thank you, Sheila. And it was great to chat. And you're right, the family experience matters.

00:31:32.920 I mean, very briefly, my grandmother and grandfather had a tough time as well. You know,

00:31:38.040 when I think back to they came from Ukraine, they came from Poland, the late 1920s.

00:31:41.720 They had some very tough times, as I recount in part of the book. But like your story,

00:31:46.980 they found a way to get past it. And I never remember them, even though they could have

00:31:50.580 thought of themselves as victims, I don't remember them ever getting stuck there.

00:31:54.140 Throughout their entire lives, they were thankful for Canada, what it offered.

00:31:57.360 And they just never thought like victims, even though I guess in reality they were.

00:32:01.540 But they looked around the world in Canada and thought, we're really fortunate to be here.

00:32:05.220 And that's part of the message of the victim cult. You really don't have to get stuck there

00:32:08.540 as an individual, a family or a society. So thank you, Sheila.

00:32:11.720 Yes. Thanks, Mark. We'll have you back on the show real soon.

00:32:14.680 Thank you.

00:32:15.420 Thanks.

00:32:25.680 We don't have to look very far to find recent Canadian examples of victims.

00:32:31.640 Perpetual victimhood mentality is the thing that spawned Jessica Jonathan Yaniv upon the world.

00:32:37.220 You'll recall that's the BC-based transgender activist who claims to need a mobility scooter,

00:32:42.780 yet was mobile enough to bash in the head of my colleague David Mendes when David dared ask that

00:32:48.840 individual about his vexatious human rights complaints. You see, Yaniv claimed that it was

00:32:54.940 his human right to force unwilling estheticians to wax his genitals. And when he was denied by

00:33:01.300 these women, he claimed to be a victim. You see, victim culture brought us manipulators who realize

00:33:07.520 that being a victim literally pays if they are able to convince the right human rights tribunal

00:33:12.640 of their victimhood status. Now, wouldn't the world just be a better place all around if all of us

00:33:18.640 appreciated that hard work, good choices, education, and family are a recipe for something

00:33:25.200 much better? Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight. Thank you so much for tuning in.

00:33:30.720 I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.

00:33:34.260 And remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.

00:33:55.200 Thank you.

Rebel News Podcast - November 28, 2019

Victim culture by the numbers： Let's talk about the history of the grievance industry

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