True Patriot Love - Is Victimhood Tearing Society Apart？ ft. Mark Milke

00:00:00.000 Asian Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Korean Americans, others. If you look

00:00:05.260 at the discrimination in American society in the 1920s in particular, where basically Asian

00:00:10.240 immigration is just shut down completely. And then you look at the taking of land and property

00:00:15.540 during the World War II in both the United States and Canada. What was interesting, I found in those 0.97

00:00:20.860 two chapters of the research, is that Asian Americans were actually by the 1920s, their kids

00:00:26.200 We're graduating at rates from high school higher than whites, graduating from college at rates higher than whites in places like California and nationally.

00:00:38.040 Mark Milkey, thank you so much for joining us today and spending some time about The Victim Cult, a book that I think that you're making some waves with.

00:00:48.620 Let me ask you right out of the gate, if I may, Mark, what do you mean by The Victim Cult?

00:00:54.680 Well, the two words, of course, take victim, take cult, put them together. Maybe the origin of the

00:01:03.800 book is the best way to describe it. I've done a lot of work on Aboriginal policy over the years,

00:01:08.600 and I noticed, especially growing up in Kelowna, British Columbia, there are some First Nations,

00:01:12.520 like the West Bank one near Kelowna, that have done incredibly well. There's others, in fact,

00:01:18.680 the fellow who wrote the foreword, Ellis Ross, from the Highs of the First Nation on the coast

00:01:23.000 dc now an mp uh but when he wrote the forward of the victim cult um he had taken that first

00:01:28.920 nation from poverty to prosperity put it you know quickly and so i noticed kind of the victim mindset

00:01:36.600 there um perhaps understandably given some of what's happening to native people in the country

00:01:41.640 over the ages but um but as i go into in some detail in the victim cult it's a bit dangerous

00:01:47.240 to get stuck there whether it's a person but especially you know um you know a town a country

00:01:54.760 an empire and i give examples in the book of all of that but the victim cult is almost what it

00:01:59.640 sounds like you've got victims that are so possessed by the idea that they're victims and

00:02:04.760 they may have been or they may not have been and it almost doesn't matter but they're so possessed

00:02:09.160 by the idea that they've been victimized and it defines them so deeply that it's it's impossible

00:02:14.600 for them to move forward which is dangerous and also when this when this metastasizes for the

00:02:19.160 society around them it can pull others down and it can pull entire societies down so i give examples

00:02:24.280 in the book but a victim cult is um it's almost biblical in the sense of if um you know the old

00:02:30.280 uh it's either old testament new new testament saying about uh um you know uh what um i think

00:02:36.840 there was a you know it was about bills above it's about the devil roaming to and fro throughout the

00:02:41.000 earth well if victim kind of cults roam to and fro throughout the earth they um they really

00:02:46.760 are quite dangerous in history and potentially now uh i think that we talk a lot about uh

00:02:52.520 generational trauma now um which i think and certainly in the indigenous community

00:02:58.600 uh is worth noting um but is what you're saying that that this isn't that it's fake

00:03:06.760 it's just that it's cumbersome and it's to live within the cult of being a victim

00:03:13.800 doesn't allow you a lot of options and that's kind of the the vibe that i got here

00:03:19.000 exactly and i would never downplay anyone's um suffering anyone's real victimization

00:03:24.680 because um first of all it's not a kind of a therapy book it's it's and it's not even about

00:03:29.400 individuals for the most part um except famous individuals in history like adolf hitler and

00:03:34.520 yasser arafat both ironically for all the damage they did claim to be victims

00:03:39.480 but uh claimed their society is victimized and that's worth exploring but um for for sure i

00:03:45.720 would never downplay true victimization but the the thing is okay are we sure because we hear

00:03:52.840 today a lot of a lot of chatter about you know the past and history and how it impacts today

00:03:57.960 and for sure there's generational trauma i assume and you can see it in people uh given who their

00:04:03.800 parents were or what happened to them but again this book is really about yes okay um but you

00:04:10.920 know um carefully and thoughtfully there have been people in history who have been victimized

00:04:16.840 or their tribe has been victimized right i mean jewish people for example um but in the holocaust

00:04:23.400 obviously but somehow were able to move on not perfectly um you know i'm not sure anybody can

00:04:30.120 do that um given the scope of sometimes what happens to people in entire societies and countries

00:04:35.560 entire groups but nonetheless they they found a way to move on and so in the victim call they give

00:04:39.960 a positive example actually near the end of the book jumping ahead a little bit to asian americans

00:04:45.080 and asian canadians who were horribly discriminated against for a century about you know a lot of

00:04:50.440 their ancestors anyway asian you know um you know asian immigration from china from other places

00:04:57.560 started mid 19th century for both canada united states uh initially welcomed when the numbers

00:05:03.160 became larger it appears there was a turn in public opinion in places like california

00:05:08.360 and against immigration from from china and elsewhere and asia and so asian americans and

00:05:15.560 the same was true here in canada began to push back though and in i give two chapters at the

00:05:20.280 end of the book to show how they push back as they were right to do asian americans said look

00:05:24.520 especially the ones that were born there um we have all the rights other native-born citizens

00:05:28.920 do of the united states they wrote letters they politicked they went to court sometimes succeeded

00:05:34.200 sometimes did not but it took about a century for the for them to really gain full legal status and

00:05:39.880 for the end of any discrimination uh domestically but also against immigrants from east asia to to

00:05:45.160 end around 19 just after world war ii but what they did is they focused on things like education

00:05:50.280 And what was telling, again, you know, spoiler alert

00:05:54.280 to the end of the book, Asian Americans, Chinese Americans,

00:05:57.880 Japanese Americans, Korean Americans, others,

00:06:00.480 if you look at the discrimination in American society

00:06:03.980 in the 1920s in particular,

00:06:05.480 where basically Asian immigration was just shut down completely. 0.93

00:06:08.080 And then you look at the, you know, the taking of land

00:06:11.280 and property during World War II in both the United States

00:06:13.880 and Canada, what was interesting I found in those two chapters,

00:06:17.680 research is that asian americans were actually by the 1920s their kids were graduating at rates

00:06:23.920 from high school higher than whites graduating from college at rates higher than whites in

00:06:28.160 places like california and nationally and what that spoke to was an ethos of no matter how badly

00:06:34.080 some of our fellow americans not all of them treated them badly but no matter how some fellow

00:06:37.840 americans treat us asian americans took the view that they were going to persevere push back where

00:06:44.240 they could but also educate their kids and they were very entrepreneurial in some cases because

00:06:48.240 they had to be because the professions were shut but that led to what we now know is is almost a

00:06:53.280 cliche asian americans asian canadians are at the top of the income and wealth heaps in both

00:06:57.440 countries and that's a good thing what was interesting was that even the most discriminatory

00:07:01.520 period in american history that asian americans um succeeded on education scale anyway and they

00:07:08.640 succeeded in the country that was discriminating so hard against them in such a a quick and vicious

00:07:14.080 manner as you think about it it's it's a it's a dark spot in history really isn't it for

00:07:19.520 canadians and americans that it went down that way you know let me ask you so i i'm fascinated

00:07:25.880 by the history element of this and and that you went down the road of history to provide some

00:07:32.300 examples and i guess a little bit of a societal overview of how victim cult has been destructive

00:07:42.680 Can you give me a couple more of these?

00:07:44.640 You give me a couple of examples of, you know, how, you know, people have overcome.

00:07:49.680 And I think that that is that's the winning end of this, as you point out, you know, spoiler alert, you know, this is possible.

00:07:57.040 But where else in history have we seen this go off the rails?

00:08:01.440 Almost everywhere. Right.

00:08:03.320 It's almost a permanent human condition and or temptation.

00:08:07.820 And so a couple of clear examples from the book, though.

00:08:10.820 Germany so most people are familiar with the claim which many people agree with I don't as

00:08:17.880 I point out in the book the Germans were victimized by the Versailles Treaty and this led to the

00:08:21.840 second world war at least the justification for it in the minds of Germans and the Nazi leader

00:08:27.000 Adolf Hitler actually and there was a permanent sense of victimization though in Germany by that

00:08:33.220 time by the time the Versailles Treaty came along so I actually went back and did research I'm kind

00:08:37.980 of, okay, why would Germans feel that they're victimized?

00:08:40.420 And before Versailles, the Versailles Treaty

00:08:42.500 at the end of World War I.

00:08:44.020 Well, because Germans actually were victimized.

00:08:46.520 If you go back to the end of the 18th century,

00:08:48.480 into the early 19th century,

00:08:49.780 the French were occupying parts

00:08:51.300 of Southern and Western Germany.

00:08:53.300 And indeed, the Germans were victimized

00:08:55.320 as often happens in occupations and wars. 1.00

00:08:59.480 And you had all the nasty, tragic evil

00:09:04.720 that goes on in wars. 0.67

00:09:06.220 And it happened to Germans under the French.

00:09:08.280 Now the Germans were able to expel the French

00:09:11.080 by the early 19th century.

00:09:13.760 And what happens when people have been victimized

00:09:15.940 either individually or corporately,

00:09:18.200 they kind of try and go, okay, who am I now?

00:09:21.200 Or, you know, yeah, you know,

00:09:23.040 and so how do you recreate an identity, especially nationally? 0.98

00:09:26.160 What the Germans did is they kind of look to philosophers

00:09:28.880 who they ignored in the century previous 0.64

00:09:30.700 when they were kind of one with the French

00:09:32.140 in terms of the enlightenment eras and ideas.

00:09:35.760 And so what the Germans did though, 0.75

00:09:36.940 is they retreated into thinking

00:09:38.280 that was pretty nationalistic in a bad way.

00:09:41.440 Some nationalism can be good, some can be very destructive.

00:09:44.840 So they went towards what was considered

00:09:47.240 kind of blood and soil. 0.72

00:09:49.000 You're born here, then you're a German.

00:09:51.480 You know, and this combination of, you know,

00:09:54.700 this is what it means to be a German,

00:09:56.060 the soil element of it.

00:09:57.760 And, but there were exceptions. 0.88

00:09:59.280 You couldn't be Jewish and even convert to Christianity,

00:10:01.560 Protestant Christianity, and be accepted as a true German. 0.91

00:10:05.020 There was nothing you could do.

00:10:06.620 You were still seen suspiciously.

00:10:08.920 Later in the century,

00:10:10.300 classical liberalism really took off in Great Britain.

00:10:13.200 The Germans were very suspicious of outside ideas,

00:10:15.660 including classical liberalism,

00:10:16.960 like the ideas of John Stuart Mill,

00:10:18.620 the idea that actually the government serves the people,

00:10:21.420 which had been a pretty long standing belief

00:10:23.520 in English circles, right?

00:10:24.820 Since the glorious revolution or since the Magna Carta. 0.56

00:10:27.620 And the Germans rejected this, right? 0.69

00:10:29.960 Very collectivist mindset from the top down

00:10:32.780 that the state represents us um and that's how we find our identity very different than the anglosphere

00:10:39.020 right england in particular at the time and the countries that sprang from england such as canada

00:10:44.140 united states and so forth so with the germans so you're saying refrain so i'm so sorry

00:10:51.740 reframing for identity that's the challenge in that right there right right so because

00:10:59.740 so what you're saying at that point it becomes a nationalistic effort as opposed to something that

00:11:05.020 is meant to be a national effort or a nationalism in the worst sense of the word and again you know

00:11:11.260 there's good ideas and bad ideas and the bad idea was um you know we're not going to accept ideas

00:11:16.780 elsewhere this is what it means to be a true german defined by blood uh and birth and um yeah

00:11:23.100 rejection of of outsiders to the extreme it's kind of a cultural national nationalism which we hear

00:11:27.500 hear again today, by the way, including in native circles and others that, you know, what people

00:11:32.720 really need is just a restoration of their culture. You know, those nasty colonialists have injured our

00:11:36.740 culture. When in fact, the truth in human history is if you want to succeed, beg, borrow, and steal 0.94

00:11:41.640 from other people's cultures, right? See what works out there and steal it. And you have to be open to

00:11:46.660 that. But the Germans went down this road and they had this very deep sense of victimization

00:11:50.600 long before Versailles, long before the end of World War I. And in fact, they had victimized 0.81

00:11:55.320 others in their own history they victimized the french in the late 19th century so it goes back 0.58

00:11:58.920 and forth but they have this deep belief in their victimization and then boom after world war one

00:12:04.440 and the rise of adolf hitler and adolf hitler and the nazis they capitalized on that they capitalized

00:12:09.880 on the sense of unfairness in the versailles treaty but i go into the book why they shouldn't

00:12:14.520 have been uh they shouldn't have seen that that treaty as a victimization but nonetheless that

00:12:19.080 was the popular notion and it led to a deeper sense of victimization which adolf hitler and

00:12:24.680 the nazis exploited in the land of beta beethoven and bach became the land of dachau and bergen

00:12:31.240 belson and of course as we all know that kind of um deep grievance was only extinguished with

00:12:38.680 the arrival of us and other allies in a six-year war that finally baited out of the german

00:12:43.640 population by 1945 to the tragedy of of everyone so i i guess i see the ladder would climb on this

00:12:52.520 you know from trauma or from this experience this original victimization we seem to ping-pong

00:13:01.640 higher and higher and higher up on the ladder until it becomes a mass issue it's a temptation

00:13:09.080 the same thing happened in a very different culture in rwanda most people are familiar

00:13:13.000 with the rwandan genocide of 1993. what they may not understand is the same sort of debates

00:13:19.160 the same sort of accusations went on in rwanda that you heard in other cultures that overdose

00:13:24.760 on victimization rhetoric so a brief history lesson rwanda was occupied by the um it was the

00:13:30.360 germans first and the belgians and there was some argument that the belgians favored the minority

00:13:35.720 tutsis who were depending on the year about five to ten percent five to fifteen percent of the

00:13:39.880 population and the majority hutus about 85 percent in the twa which were one percent but the hutus

00:13:45.560 the majority population were mainly farmers the tutsis were ranchers and there's some argument

00:13:51.000 that the reason the latter the tutsis um who were the subject of the attack and the genocide in 1993

00:13:57.000 the reason they were wealthier was not just because of maybe some favoritism by the colonials

00:14:01.720 the belgians and the germans before that but ranchers simply make more money in that uh in

00:14:07.000 that era and maybe today i'm not sure and so the argument is though from the hood from the

00:14:11.800 the Hutu, the majority population by independence that, okay, the colonialists favored the Belgians.

00:14:17.400 And by the way, now that we're in control of the Hutus, we're going to make life difficult 0.98

00:14:22.200 for you Tutsis because we're going to take revenge. We're going to even up the scales, 1.00

00:14:26.520 affirmative action programs, as we call them today, you know, racial identity. 0.78

00:14:29.880 Right. And the Tutsis were warned, do not engage in politics, in the army they were discriminated

00:14:36.920 against. They were considered too influential in the schools and universities, so there was a

00:14:41.800 CODA system. There were programs now and then after independence in 1960 that attacked the Tutsis,

00:14:48.760 kind of a foreshadowing of the eventual 1993 Rwandan genocide. And the language was really

00:14:54.280 destructive as well, Mike. You hear language about indigenous versus non-indigenous today.

00:14:59.240 It's not the first time in history you've heard this, and I'm not saying Canada's equivalent to

00:15:02.520 Rwanda in 1992 leading up to 1993. But the language I find is offensive because I'll get

00:15:10.240 there in a moment, but the Rwandan Hutus used the same language. They saw the Tutsis as interlopers,

00:15:16.080 you know, later arrivals, the same with the Twop. And Hutus said, we were here first, 1.00

00:15:21.020 you guys came later. And that was very dangerous and destructive. So there's very much an us versus

00:15:25.440 them, which by the way, is at the heart of one of the problems with victim thinking is you're not

00:15:30.100 looking at people as individuals who may have suffered for a whole bunch of reasons. Not the

00:15:34.920 way you or your tribe has suffered, but for their own reasons, for their own experiences, their own

00:15:39.340 histories. So people don't look at each other as individuals. They simply look at each other as

00:15:43.120 you're, you know, you're non-German and I'm German or you're Tutsi and I'm Kutu and so on and so

00:15:49.080 forth. It becomes very dangerous, especially when the rhetoric ramps up. It feels like human nature

00:15:54.900 almost doesn't it mark i mean i hate to say it but i think that in in any scenario where any of us

00:16:00.420 were in that in in the face of you know losing our identity in our own homes um it might be an easy

00:16:09.780 way to cope frankly you know we are a group they are a group this is you know almost how people

00:16:18.100 find solidarity in hard times and yet it sounds so destructive and obviously is um you know it

00:16:25.460 makes me wonder now uh i see the media and i see politicians out there and they tend to capitalize

00:16:32.500 on these moments do you did your book address that and i'm sorry do you let me have a a kick

00:16:38.900 at that can if you don't mind because that was one of the original um thoughts that popped to my mind

00:16:44.100 was wow this is really something that is a tool that is leveraged all too often and for the wrong

00:16:50.420 reasons for sure leaders matter and i point out in the victim cult some of the leaders who mattered

00:16:56.860 negatively and positively in human history so um because they can really lead a population

00:17:02.920 into the into the swamp so to speak uh toxic ideas hitler is a great example of that right

00:17:09.840 of the gate that you pointed out yeah right and so um and he's not the only one now what all this

00:17:16.720 misses let me answer the question by first mentioning the view of alexander solzhenitsyn

00:17:21.360 and the gulag archipelago right he had a very i thought poignant observation here's solzhenitsyn

00:17:27.040 who's tossed into the labor camp in the soviet union in the late 1940s because he made a joke

00:17:30.880 about joseph stalin and he sees people around him they're still involved in the blame game they look

00:17:35.840 at a group and say if only that group wasn't around if we got rid of them all would be fine

00:17:40.720 here in the soviet union this is what he's observing in the labor camp or maybe even among

00:17:45.120 you know groups in the labor camp right um they're fighting with each other and solzhenitsyn later

00:17:50.400 writes in the guy who like archipelago um this observation which is that you know paraphrasing

00:17:57.120 but from memory uh the dividing line between good and evil runs through every human heart

00:18:02.640 and um and so people who always think it's thinking group terms and make the mistake of

00:18:07.840 yeah if only that person or that group over there wasn't around we'd be fat and happy no

00:18:13.040 um you've got the potential for evil in yourself which is what soldier newsman was pointing out

00:18:17.200 but the leaders matter in this so um some examples in history let me take two terrorists

00:18:23.200 um so you're familiar with jerry adams you know uh who would part of the provisional ira i think

00:18:29.120 he denied that but certainly the political wing of the immigration fame and uh marty mcginnis compare

00:18:35.280 them to um to yasser arafat right leader of the palestinian authority but the palestinian

00:18:41.840 the plo before that and maybe concurrently um i have a chapter and ask for arafat where we point

00:18:47.520 out look with due respect um israel tried to do peace deals and did do peace deals with

00:18:52.800 egypt and jordan the late 1970s as we know more recently they've done peace deals with

00:18:56.720 Arab nations. They're Arab nations. So they've tried to do land for peace. But you need someone

00:19:03.480 on the other side you can work with. And Yasser Arafat was famously offered a peace deal in 2000

00:19:07.560 by Ehud Barak, the Israeli president or prime minister, I forget which he was, and Bill Clinton,

00:19:13.460 the American president. And he walked away. Arafat did. His aides couldn't believe it. Bill Clinton

00:19:19.200 couldn't believe it. Arafat walked away from the table. And I theorize in the victim cult that one

00:19:23.800 reasons for this is that Arafat was a permanent revolutionary. Plus he just wanted dead Jews 0.98

00:19:28.440 more than he wanted a peace deal with Israel. Now he could have chosen a different path and 0.88

00:19:34.760 he could have chosen to really enforce some discipline on his side to get there. And some

00:19:38.680 of his young aides wanted a peace treaty with Israel and he didn't. I think because he's a

00:19:43.720 permanent revolutionary in the way that ironically for all their dalliance with terror that Marty

00:19:51.320 McGuinness and the Sinn Féin leader, Jerry Adams were not. In this sense, you may remember the

00:19:59.240 Easter Accords and the provisional IRA and Sinn Féin negotiated in 1998, I believe it was,

00:20:07.720 when the Inc was signed. I was in high school at the time and I remember it was everywhere. It was

00:20:12.760 the news. Exactly. There's a famous book, I forget the name, but I mentioned it in the victim cult,

00:20:17.880 from an irish journalist who covered you know northern ireland and the uk and the terror and

00:20:23.320 the troubles as they called them for decades he wrote a wonderful book about northern ireland but

00:20:28.600 also the peace deal that came about in 1998 um the good friday accord and what he kept hinting at was

00:20:36.600 in in the run-up to that deal before it was signed before the inc was signed

00:20:41.400 that um sometimes the british were warned in advance of a possible attack on the positions

00:20:46.520 in Northern Ireland. Could have been a police station, could have been an army unit or so.

00:20:50.920 And he strongly hints that someone in the provisional IRA in Sinn Féin leaked information

00:20:55.960 that the British were about to be hit, about to be attacked. He didn't say who, but you can

00:21:00.920 almost read between the lines and you're like, is Martin McGuinness or is Jerry Adams or their

00:21:06.840 henchmen, are they alerting the British? Why did they do that? Well, because they perhaps come to

00:21:12.280 the conclusion finally that they were more interested in having a peace deal than having

00:21:15.640 more dead brits to put it bluntly um and that's what i suspect but that's where yasser arafat

00:21:21.560 never got to he was a permanent revolutionary and that's the danger and and you know uh where

00:21:27.320 he truly believed in victimization of the palestinians or not probably but certainly

00:21:31.480 he uh he was a permanent revolutionary notion of victimhood palestinians not just israel to this day

00:21:39.880 other leaders now in Gaza and West Bank, but for Palestinians and Israelis, but for Palestinians

00:21:47.480 themselves because of, you know, one of the many decisions to avoid peace.

00:21:52.000 That pullback was sort of at a point in time in our modern history where it could have made a

00:21:56.680 really big difference. So much in the Middle East, in that theater at large, I think we had a moment,

00:22:06.740 a slice in history to really make an accord work at that moment and i think you're right as you 0.99

00:22:13.220 look back it just felt like no we don't want peace we we want to continue with our mission of terror

00:22:22.500 based on being victimized it's an interesting perspective for sure well there's a famous

00:22:29.140 arab journalist who i quote from the victim cult in this chapter on yasser arafat

00:22:33.060 who shortly after, several years later, maybe after Arafat died in 2003, wrote a column saying,

00:22:38.820 look, the Palestinian leadership probably has to, and he was quite blunt, grow up,

00:22:43.140 and they have to get past this revolutionary stage. And he said, you know, and he made

00:22:47.380 reference to World War II and Bora Bora, Tora Tora, rather. Is it Tora Bora or Tora Tora?

00:22:52.740 The Japanese war cry. And I think it's Bora Bora. 0.90

00:22:58.420 I think you're right. We just we just took a look. Bora Bora. We'll go Bora Bora. Thank you.

00:23:03.940 Thanks, Mark. But he said, look, Palestinian leadership keeps this rallying cry up of constant

00:23:11.300 war and revolution as opposed to doing boring stuff, which is maybe why Yasser Arafat didn't

00:23:15.940 bite on boring stuff of running the city state, because look, I think Gaza and West Bank still

00:23:21.380 have the potential to be the Singapore of the region or, you know, akin to what's happening 0.91

00:23:25.860 over the United Arab Emirates and the leaders there that I think the Palestinians have been

00:23:30.200 ulcered by the leadership. It's not to say Israel has been perfect, but that's not the standard, 0.55

00:23:34.700 right? Any more than Great Britain or Canada, the United States was perfect in 1939 or in the case 0.60

00:23:38.860 of the U.S. in 1941. That's not what's happening. You're hit by an existential crisis in the case

00:23:45.060 of Israel and you have to do something and defend yourself. And so I put a lot of blame in the 0.95

00:23:49.940 Palestinian leadership over the decades, which were at the table, could have made a deal, 0.68

00:23:54.020 especially Yasser Arafat but even since and chose not to so that's another example though where

00:23:59.240 again and there's some truth I mean in in the chapter I note um the Palestinians some this is

00:24:06.640 not universally true some were chased out of Israel some left voluntarily some Arab nations

00:24:11.780 told Arab in Arab Arabs in what became Israel to leave on the other flip side Israelis or Jews

00:24:18.660 rather were expelled from Arab countries after 1948 so there was plenty of victimization

00:24:23.080 plenty of wrongs um nonetheless i would decide with the need for you know a mainly jewish state

00:24:29.160 now it's you know 21 arab and whatever it is 70 something percent uh jewish but you know without

00:24:35.140 getting too deeply into that modernity issue the point is the jews from arab states that were

00:24:40.660 expelled with a couple of suitcases and lost their property moved on to buenos aires to toronto to

00:24:44.980 new york to montreal made their lives was it a perfect was it a perfect um ending no hardly um

00:24:52.940 any more than for some Palestinians. But the difference is we refuse to make, and the Jewish 0.81

00:24:59.820 people refuse to be permanent victims, I would say, in the sense that they kind of knew they

00:25:04.220 had to get on with their lives. There was never going to be a return to Baghdad and Cairo for them.

00:25:09.020 So as tragic as it was, and as tragic as some Arabs, not all, again, not all, you know,

00:25:14.460 plenty left voluntarily, but Arabs that were expelled from what became Israel had to start

00:25:19.100 over, but that hasn't happened in the sense that we still call people today refugees that are

00:25:23.800 literally third or fourth generation, you know, people in towns and relocated, right? So there

00:25:30.580 needs to be kind of, I think, almost a mental psychological switch in the leadership of

00:25:35.060 the Palestinian leaders. And I'm sure there's some Palestinian, you know, people, and I know of some

00:25:40.980 who wish that they could get to a peace deal with Israel, but the victimization narrative

00:25:45.000 is not helping. Do you think schools, do you think educators are missing this

00:25:49.820 one slice of perspective on history and even modern day current events?

00:25:57.000 I think so. Look, I mean, history is tough in the sense that there's no,

00:26:03.340 I think, understanding the lessons from it and the lessons to draw from it are often more art

00:26:08.640 than exact science. So, for example, there is something to the case. I'm not dismissive in

00:26:13.240 victim cult or in my writing or at all that you just say oh get on with it you know get over it

00:26:20.120 i think that's the wrong way to approach it and insensitive to say to people um i do think you

00:26:25.960 have to carefully gently ask people if you're really if they're really sure that what they're

00:26:30.440 experiencing today as a result of something that happened 200 years ago let me give you some

00:26:34.280 concrete examples there or at least you know how you deal with wrongs in history um i think the

00:26:40.200 The closer you are to the wrong,

00:26:43.360 and if it's happened to you,

00:26:44.580 the greater claim there is for compensation, for example.

00:26:47.960 There's a modern day debate

00:26:48.840 over slavery in the United States.

00:26:50.080 Should they compensate slaves for slavery?

00:26:53.440 I think it's problematic when you go back

00:26:55.200 a century and a half now, or 170 years, whatever it is,

00:26:59.280 after slavery has been abolished to make that argument

00:27:01.800 for a bunch of reasons.

00:27:03.060 But the closer you are to that event,

00:27:05.820 the more justification there is,

00:27:07.160 the more call there should be for compensation. 0.62

00:27:09.180 Clear example, late 18th century, the Quakers held slaves when they released them in the

00:27:14.260 late 18th century because they were part of the evangelical Christian movement that said

00:27:17.680 this is wrong, right? 0.71

00:27:18.940 And others who were opposed to slavery, the Quakers compensated their freed slaves, knowing

00:27:23.900 they'd done a great egregious evil to black Americans who they held.

00:27:28.660 Now, 170 years later, or after the Quakers, 230 some years later, can you really make

00:27:36.440 a tight causal link between modern day black American incomes to slavery. Thomas Sowell,

00:27:44.160 the black American economist, has famously argued, no, you can't actually. And more

00:27:49.200 proximate causes in the last 70 years, Thomas Sowell has shown this, education levels were

00:27:56.360 increasing among the black community up until the 1950s, despite the egregious discrimination still

00:28:02.000 going on in the United States against black Americans.

00:28:05.120 The incomes were progressing. 0.99

00:28:07.600 You hit the 1950s in the welfare state or a bad education system,

00:28:10.960 bad ideas in the education system, 0.98

00:28:14.480 and the decline of the black American family.

00:28:17.520 And Thomas Sowell, among others, has argued

00:28:20.720 that's a more approximate cause for some of the problems

00:28:23.040 in today's black American communities.

00:28:25.440 And then he also teases out statistics, right?

00:28:27.440 If your ancestry is from the West Indies

00:28:30.320 and you weren't a slave or at least you know your family was not a direct slave in the united states

00:28:36.400 west west indy west indian black americans have much higher incomes than others and we even see

00:28:42.720 that in canada so it's interesting to delve into the statistics and find it okay look why are some

00:28:47.440 groups succeeding that look the same and others others not right and um it speaks again to blaming

00:28:53.760 everything on the past is a bit dangerous now again if i step in your toe yesterday mike and

00:28:58.560 break it or whatever a crash into your car i owe you right uh for sure but the further you go back

00:29:05.040 the weaker the link is between cause and effect and at some point i would argue it disappears

00:29:08.880 completely which is where the responsibility element comes in at some point we have to be

00:29:12.800 responsible for our own lives or try to at least in a liberal democracy right not in a tyranny

00:29:17.520 where you have very few choices perhaps but even there i guess you can still choose your attitude

00:29:22.480 but you know mark i i had a uh i had a try at this i had an attempt at this conversation with

00:29:29.920 my stepson about a year ago now where i thought that i had my ducks in a line when it came to

00:29:35.840 saying basically okay you have to put being a victim aside for the sake of accomplishing

00:29:44.320 making the change being the change and what was thrown back at me was a tough a tough hardball

00:29:50.640 And that was systemic racism is the reason that we must pay attention to this.

00:29:56.360 What do you say to that?

00:29:58.140 Well, I'll give the Thomas Sowell answer, but also the Matthew Lau answer.

00:30:01.480 Matthew Lau has done a lot of work for us on DEI,

00:30:03.760 the diversity, equity, and yeah, inclusiveness.

00:30:09.620 Inclusiveness, yeah.

00:30:11.700 And the United States, for example,

00:30:15.440 Thomas Sowell has analyzed this in depth over five decades.

00:30:18.840 again this argument that yes systemic racism first of all let's unpack let's unpack racism

00:30:22.760 let's make a distinction because personal prejudice has not completely disappeared but

00:30:27.240 it's a lot better than it used to be if you look at some of the statistics you know you go back 50

00:30:31.400 years half the american population i don't know about the canadian stats probably similar half

00:30:35.800 the american population didn't favor interracial marriage right they were opposed to at least half

00:30:41.000 now almost everyone is fine with it thankfully so attitudes have changed over the past 70 years for 0.98

00:30:46.760 example since the 1950s um but and also institute so but distinguished between personal prejudice

00:30:53.560 which was always remnants of you probably will never really you you will probably never be able

00:30:58.360 to get rid of it completely uh for a bunch of reasons but now let's talk about institutional

00:31:03.640 discrimination because people conflate the two right they'll go online today find someone who's

00:31:07.640 a bigot and say you see prejudice exists yes yes i admit that but institutional discrimination is

00:31:13.560 different. A century ago, if you were Chinese in San Francisco, you were not allowed into White

00:31:17.920 Hospital. A century ago, your admissions to Harvard, I assume McGill, if you were Jewish, 0.76

00:31:24.020 were limited in terms of the numbers. Jews were considered too successful, so they were limited

00:31:29.280 in terms of some of the higher institutions of learning. And you can go on and on. Again,

00:31:34.880 as we talked about a moment ago, East Asian Americans and Canadians were discriminated

00:31:38.940 against across the board in both countries. So that was institutional. Native Canadians

00:31:46.140 didn't have the vote restored to them until 1960. That was actual institutional discrimination and

00:31:52.540 John Diefenbaker in the parliament of the day restored it as they rightly should have and it

00:31:56.700 never should have been taken away. So when people say systemic racism I'm like first of all understand

00:32:03.660 that it's changed and proved to me where systemic racism exists today um i you know i think it does

00:32:10.380 in the sense of we now discriminate against people you know with pale skin um which i think is

00:32:16.060 unfortunate because it's another way you know and people do this in the best of intentions mike and

00:32:19.980 it's observed you know they will say well we need to make up for the discrimination of the past

00:32:23.980 really because we're in the present what can we do about the pre this is one of the things that

00:32:29.500 i find and i i was excited to talk to you about this mark because one of the things that i don't

00:32:34.300 know if maybe it's just in my in my makeup i i haven't been especially discriminated against i

00:32:40.140 grew up in a very italian community as a mungie cake as i was called often uh which was fine i

00:32:46.540 was well fed and i loved the community i didn't really feel well i kind of did feel that

00:32:51.260 discrimination a little bit it didn't really affect my meals on a day-to-day basis or you

00:32:58.060 you know, how it was viewed in the church community or in my school community.

00:33:02.880 But one of the things that I've consistently thought to myself is,

00:33:07.160 if we're stuck in this, how can we ever come together? 0.65

00:33:11.280 And I think, you know, the Israeli-Palestine example is the most glaring one on earth. 0.99

00:33:18.020 I don't know that we can ever come together in that scenario, 0.97

00:33:21.360 but there is absolutely no way in the current scenario that it's possible.

00:33:26.200 right let me let me give you a closer example the danger is well there's a couple of dangers

00:33:31.600 and you pointed to one it's going to be hard to you know get people to be on the same page

00:33:36.080 if one group sees the other based on skin color ethnicity history whatever as the oppressors and

00:33:42.480 the other ones the victims which again simplifies human history beyond the absurd to go back far

00:33:48.480 enough in history we've all been you know or ancestors and victims of very unfair or worse

00:33:54.240 treatment. So, and you want to unite people around, you want people to be tribal, but around a good

00:33:59.960 set of ideas, right? See, I think you need to unite again in Canada around what I'd call classical

00:34:04.240 liberal ideas, which, you know, pre-1960s meant the rights of the individual to be treated as

00:34:09.940 an individual. That's where we were going for a century with the arguments of John Stuart Mill

00:34:13.680 and Mary Wollstonecraft and the rights of women and others, you know, and Martin Luther King Jr.

00:34:18.800 saying stop treating people as anything other than, you know, based on character and merit,

00:34:22.340 That's the kind of world he wanted for his children.

00:34:25.300 You know, content of the character type language.

00:34:27.620 So treat people as individuals.

00:34:30.740 Understand that people need to be free.

00:34:32.140 Understand that people need to be held accountable for their choices.

00:34:34.420 Be responsible.

00:34:35.740 You know, boring economic stuff that matters like property rights

00:34:38.380 all the way back to Magna Carta.

00:34:39.820 Unite people around a set of good ideas and principles

00:34:42.380 that help people be free and prosper.

00:34:44.940 And at the same time, remember that responsibility is part of

00:34:48.340 being in a rights based society, not just being selfish

00:34:50.940 because you can be so I'd like to see people united around that idea but also here's the

00:34:57.240 danger when people blame everything on past systemic racism which when it did exist existed

00:35:02.380 or other forces that I think have expired or irrelevant they actually might miss an actual

00:35:09.540 cause and effect vis-a-vis modern day incomes and wealth let me give you a clear example

00:35:14.040 native incomes indigenous incomes Matthew Lau has done some work for us on this and I'm not

00:35:18.880 surprised with the results because Thomas Sowell showed the same thing for black Americans.

00:35:23.080 When you do apple to apple comparisons, so let me back up. If you look at, if people just look at

00:35:27.860 averages, for sure, indigenous Canadians, their incomes are an average lower than other Canadians. 0.58

00:35:34.260 And you can't stop there though. That's an average. You have to look at what goes into the average. 1.00

00:35:39.540 And so when you equalize for age, for example, native Canadians on average are younger than say

00:35:45.400 japanese canadians right who are closer to the average age of something like 50 something

00:35:50.280 whereas canadians 30 something why does that matter because in your 50s you're at the top

00:35:55.000 of your income earning potential as opposed to a 20 year old or a 30 year old that matters

00:35:59.640 or education if you just look at the average you won't see that a lower portion of indigenous 0.99

00:36:05.560 canadians have higher education but when they do the positive thing is if you if you account for

00:36:10.200 all that with math which math did wow did in one of our aristotle foundation studies

00:36:15.000 you will see that apples to apples there's almost no difference between the median income

00:36:20.280 of a native canadian and other canadians if they have the same education level bachelor's or

00:36:25.080 master's or phd work full year full-time live in an urban environment so these things matter

00:36:32.760 and then all of a sudden you're you're forced i think should be forced to confront the question

00:36:36.680 of yeah okay show me the discrimination incomes because it's not existing and i think it was

00:36:41.000 master's level or higher that matthew found in stats can data for native canadians they're

00:36:46.760 actually slightly above other canadians and if you unpack this again you look at the education

00:36:50.760 rates you'll find east asians are absolute top of the income pack compared to every group why

00:36:55.800 because they have higher education levels and so the other thing that comes to mind is taxation on

00:37:01.800 that income. You know, so if you are achieving a higher income or an equal income at the base level

00:37:08.520 and you're not being taxed the same way, you are more successful financially.

00:37:14.360 You are. I mean, this would be the argument about, you know, Indigenous Canadians on reserve. Anyway, 0.84

00:37:18.360 what used to be called Treaty Indians in the Constitutional or Indian Act language,

00:37:23.080 don't pay income tax on reserve or, you know, GST or HST. Nonetheless, but that's a bit of a more

00:37:31.000 difficult comparison the easiest one is to say okay off reserve show us where the discrimination

00:37:35.960 is if you're earning near the same income at a bachelor's level or potentially higher at the

00:37:39.720 masters or phd level as a native canadian reason the other canadians and again the difference is

00:37:44.760 pretty much disappear depending on the the education level you're looking at when you

00:37:48.680 do apple to apple comparisons now i think that's fundamentally positive what it shows is um if

00:37:55.240 If someone leaves a reserve in Northern Ontario,

00:37:58.740 Northern Quebec, Northern Manitoba,

00:38:00.300 someone in a rural area,

00:38:02.400 where admittedly there's not much educational opportunity

00:38:05.260 beyond high school,

00:38:08.060 you know, you don't have a university

00:38:09.880 on a reserve of 600 people in Northern Manitoba, for example.

00:38:13.480 So if you move to the city, you get an education,

00:38:16.940 chances are you're gonna do just fine.

00:38:18.880 And that's very positive.

00:38:20.440 It speaks to the problem.

00:38:21.360 So what I'm pointing at is the actual problem

00:38:23.440 is not institutional racism,

00:38:25.140 that's causing lower on average incomes.

00:38:26.960 First of all, look at the apple to apple comparison.

00:38:29.500 And then second, understand that people are succeeding

00:38:32.780 if they're not on the reserve for the most part,

00:38:34.620 unless the reserve is near an urban center.

00:38:36.660 And look at the education levels.

00:38:39.420 That's fundamentally positive.

00:38:40.760 It means there is a way out of the poverty trap

00:38:42.740 for native Canadians like other Canadians, right?

00:38:45.020 And we see this across ethnic groups.

00:38:46.900 So education levels matter.

00:38:48.400 So that's very positive.

00:38:49.500 So that also defeats the notion that,

00:38:51.580 well, it's really about the colonialists.

00:38:54.000 It's really about, which by the way, 0.94

00:38:56.780 is just a silly argument.

00:38:58.200 I mean, every society has, you know, 0.93

00:39:01.480 whether it's tribal, you know, or it's an empire,

00:39:05.120 there's good and bad in all sorts of forms

00:39:07.280 of human government.

00:39:09.180 Tribal is maybe, you know, you know, low tax, 0.94

00:39:13.200 easy to organize if there's 10 of you or 100 of you

00:39:16.380 in any society in Europe or in the Americas

00:39:18.520 in history or now.

00:39:19.900 On the other hand, lots of prejudices can stay

00:39:23.760 in very rudimentary tribal societies and often do.

00:39:28.260 It takes the British, for example, to pound out, 0.97

00:39:31.480 get rid of satay in India. 0.82

00:39:33.420 So should the British empire have been in India?

00:39:35.640 Alan Bloom, the 1980s philosopher

00:39:37.980 who wrote The Closing of the American Mind

00:39:39.500 used to ask a set of his students

00:39:41.160 and his students would dodge the answer,

00:39:43.280 which is not an answer.

00:39:44.680 He's like, look, the British were there,

00:39:46.000 should they have outlawed satay or not?

00:39:48.300 And should the British in North America

00:39:49.700 have outlawed slavery in British Columbia,

00:39:52.600 which was existing past when the British empire was trying to get rid of it in

00:39:56.160 1834. And it didn't disappear from Northern parts of British Columbia until the

00:40:00.120 late 19th century.

00:40:01.520 I did not know that.

00:40:02.840 Yeah. Oh yeah. It's,

00:40:04.400 and there's a famous book in California that talks about Aboriginal societies and

00:40:10.140 slavery in the Pacific Northwest published in 1997. I'm trying to remember the

00:40:14.280 name, but I also, I link it. I cite it in the victim cult,

00:40:18.640 but all this to say what, you know,

00:40:22.440 human societies and human governance is never perfect in any society. The question is, okay,

00:40:27.800 do you appreciate the fact that the British tried to get rid of sooty in India and slavery in the 0.99

00:40:31.780 Americas? And were they preferable to the Spanish? Were they preferable to some First Nations? 1.00

00:40:37.080 Probably. And so to simply say, look, all colonialism is bad. Okay. How did we arrive

00:40:46.560 in that holistic conclusion? Like you say, it's a wiffle ball swing. It's an easy one to

00:40:52.000 to knock out without a lot of opposition there's not there's not a lot of uh mark milkey's in a

00:40:58.540 in a dinner party that can say just one second because there's more to that story and i think

00:41:04.200 that you know we're in an era this is this kind of rounds up my questions and i think

00:41:08.780 you kind of see where i began and where i ended up on this is we're in an era now where social

00:41:16.740 media becomes the weapon of choice for victim cult, in my opinion. Am I wrong about this?

00:41:23.140 This is a dangerous era for this. Well, social media, but I think all

00:41:27.540 media, I think it's so deeply entrenched in academics as well, academia.

00:41:34.740 Part of this comes from philosophers like Foucault and others and Jack Derrida and

00:41:39.860 some of the people in the education stream, you know, French philosophers and others.

00:41:44.420 and there's a brazilian one uh frere uh is his name you know um which i know in one of the

00:41:51.060 chapters how do we get here um and i think it even helps understand modernity issues people ask how

00:41:56.340 could gays for palestine uh side with basically islamic fundamentalists right who would throw

00:42:02.500 gays off the roof of a building uh in the palestinian territories at least in gaza

00:42:06.900 The answer is actually very simple. 1.00

00:42:10.600 They're united by victimization. 1.00

00:42:13.600 It's a bit naive of gays for Palestine and anyone else 1.00

00:42:16.800 to think that they could be, they could live their liberal ways

00:42:21.000 in a good sense that we know in the West, in a place 1.00

00:42:24.500 that doesn't tolerate homosexuals or lesbians, gays or lesbians

00:42:27.900 is the old fashioned term for whatever reason. 0.93

00:42:30.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:42:31.000 I don't use any alphabet, so gays or lesbians. 1.00

00:42:33.500 But I know what you're saying. That's almost a glaring example. It feels almost ridiculous when you see that. But it's almost legitimized by regular media and social media that this would be the case. And thank goodness they don't get on a plane and land themselves in Gaza and see the results of it. 1.00

00:42:59.560 I think that that would be a different scenario, but you're right in the sense that when we use social media, that almost legitimizes it.

00:43:09.040 Okay, we're out here doing, here's our opinion, and here's some horrible footage, and here's an emotional impact I've left on you.

00:43:17.060 No real education, no real history, no background, no current events associated with it.

00:43:23.000 Just pure emotion that often feels like virtue signaling to me.

00:43:30.120 It is. And virtue signaling in the wrong way. I mean, to first of all, I'm old fashioned. I think

00:43:35.700 if you've got virtues, you're doing something good. You know, I wouldn't shout it from the

00:43:39.060 rooftops, right? Let others speak for you or recognize your accomplishments. So I'm not a

00:43:45.640 big fan of virtue signaling as it's called to begin with. But insofar as someone wants to say

00:43:49.760 they're a good person or they've got the right ideas. Well, be careful about that. You know,

00:43:55.580 We're, again, back to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, that the line between good and evil runs through

00:43:59.440 every human heart. First of all, you may be overestimating our potential to get it right

00:44:03.820 100% of the time, ethically or in any other way. And then second, you know, if you're mistaken,

00:44:12.120 watch out. You may be favoring, you know, an idea that is pretty destructive. And again,

00:44:19.480 the victim cult was written in part to say watch out for this again I wouldn't downgrade or it

00:44:26.040 wouldn't um I wouldn't dismiss dismiss actual victimization in history or now but the danger is

00:44:31.840 is um you you have the wrong cause and effect link right ancient uh discrimination somehow is

00:44:39.260 responsible for my my income today maybe Mark Milkey and maybe Mike is uh maybe we're more

00:44:46.260 responsible, you know, for how we've ended up, you know, maybe that's 80% of it. Maybe 20%

00:44:51.360 is our parents or 19%, maybe 1% of us are grandparents. I don't know how you quantify

00:44:55.060 this. It's simply, like I said earlier, it's a great point. I mean, I don't know. I did not have

00:45:00.720 a silver slide, uh, you know, through life to this point. Uh, maybe you did. I, I, but I,

00:45:07.660 I gathered that that's not even the, that's not even the point. We both ended up here like many

00:45:12.700 others around us there's you know from every culture and every walk of life there's authors

00:45:17.740 there's way better podcasters around the world than the one you're sitting with right now but

00:45:22.540 the difference between being here and not being here had very little to do with me being or not

00:45:28.700 being a victim right well even even where people are i mean the danger again is you're not looking

00:45:33.260 at people's individuals and imagine i mean this is the example i give and i give it in the book

00:45:37.580 my grandparents who on my paternal side one came from uh germany sorry the german section of poland

00:45:43.340 1927 maybe 1928 my grandmother was a german from ukraine and they ended up they tried to leave in

00:45:49.180 1914 when she was three years old to end up in edmonton the war stopped them and they ended up

00:45:54.380 in back in central europe back in in siberia for a while back to central europe finally made it to

00:45:59.020 canada in her case i think it was 1927. my grandfather arrived in edmonton in 1928. they

00:46:04.220 They met, married, raised a family and grandkids eventually.

00:46:08.980 But they survived the Great Depression.

00:46:11.160 My parents lost everything in the 1980s in Kelowna when interest rates were 21%.

00:46:15.800 And my mother worked at Sears.

00:46:18.200 She never considered herself a victim, but that's what you had to do.

00:46:21.400 But imagine, or another example, imagine saying, a couple of years ago,

00:46:25.660 there was a position advertised at the University of Calgary for a certain color.

00:46:30.160 And I won't say which, because it's irrelevant.

00:46:32.020 but you had to be this color to get the position at the business school. As I tell people, 0.98

00:46:37.560 imagine you're Jewish and your parents or your grandparents survived the Holocaust.

00:46:43.140 And in essence, what the University of Calgary was saying in this job advertisement, and this

00:46:46.720 is the problem with DI, nice sounding words aside, the problem with that advertisement,

00:46:52.180 the problem with DI where we got to make up for the past by looking at people in groups,

00:46:55.720 not as individuals. Imagine saying to the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor,

00:46:59.720 You can't have this job because you're the wrong skin color.

00:47:02.120 You're privileged. 1.00

00:47:04.000 Her parents will get a whole cost.

00:47:06.280 Yeah.

00:47:06.560 So that's the problem with not looking at people as individuals, which is the great sin in human history.

00:47:11.140 I think inclusion is everything.

00:47:13.780 It's what we do as Canadians.

00:47:15.020 It's the nature of what we set out to do here.

00:47:19.280 I think defining it, labeling it, gave it too much power to have its own divisiveness.

00:47:26.360 And I think we've all seen that.

00:47:29.260 Look, Mark, this is fascinating. I'm so delighted we had a chance to do this. I'm going to recommend people check out the book, The Victim Cult. Mark Milkey is the author. And I hope as we make our way across Canada, we're going to find our way into your town and we can drag you out for a pint. We can talk some more about this. Thank you so much, Mark.

00:47:49.260 I'd be happy to do that. And you're welcome, Mike. Thank you.

True Patriot Love - May 24, 2026

Is Victimhood Tearing Society Apart？ ft. Mark Milke

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