Is Victimhood Tearing Society Apart？ ft. Mark Milke
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Summary
Mark Milkey joins me to discuss his new book, The Victim Cult, a book that explores the phenomenon of victimization within the Asian-American community, and how it can be traced back to a group of people who have been victimized.
Transcript
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Asian Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Korean Americans, others. If you look
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at the discrimination in American society in the 1920s in particular, where basically Asian
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immigration is just shut down completely. And then you look at the taking of land and property
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during the World War II in both the United States and Canada. What was interesting, I found in those
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two chapters of the research, is that Asian Americans were actually by the 1920s, their kids
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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.
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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.
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Let me ask you right out of the gate, if I may, Mark, what do you mean by The Victim Cult?
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Well, the two words, of course, take victim, take cult, put them together. Maybe the origin of the
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book is the best way to describe it. I've done a lot of work on Aboriginal policy over the years,
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and I noticed, especially growing up in Kelowna, British Columbia, there are some First Nations,
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like the West Bank one near Kelowna, that have done incredibly well. There's others, in fact,
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the fellow who wrote the foreword, Ellis Ross, from the Highs of the First Nation on the coast
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dc now an mp uh but when he wrote the forward of the victim cult um he had taken that first
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nation from poverty to prosperity put it you know quickly and so i noticed kind of the victim mindset
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there um perhaps understandably given some of what's happening to native people in the country
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over the ages but um but as i go into in some detail in the victim cult it's a bit dangerous
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to get stuck there whether it's a person but especially you know um you know a town a country
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an empire and i give examples in the book of all of that but the victim cult is almost what it
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sounds like you've got victims that are so possessed by the idea that they're victims and
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they may have been or they may not have been and it almost doesn't matter but they're so possessed
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by the idea that they've been victimized and it defines them so deeply that it's it's impossible
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for them to move forward which is dangerous and also when this when this metastasizes for the
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society around them it can pull others down and it can pull entire societies down so i give examples
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in the book but a victim cult is um it's almost biblical in the sense of if um you know the old
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uh it's either old testament new new testament saying about uh um you know uh what um i think
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there was a you know it was about bills above it's about the devil roaming to and fro throughout the
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earth well if victim kind of cults roam to and fro throughout the earth they um they really
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are quite dangerous in history and potentially now uh i think that we talk a lot about uh
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generational trauma now um which i think and certainly in the indigenous community
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uh is worth noting um but is what you're saying that that this isn't that it's fake
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it's just that it's cumbersome and it's to live within the cult of being a victim
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doesn't allow you a lot of options and that's kind of the the vibe that i got here
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exactly and i would never downplay anyone's um suffering anyone's real victimization
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because um first of all it's not a kind of a therapy book it's it's and it's not even about
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individuals for the most part um except famous individuals in history like adolf hitler and
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yasser arafat both ironically for all the damage they did claim to be victims
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but uh claimed their society is victimized and that's worth exploring but um for for sure i
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would never downplay true victimization but the the thing is okay are we sure because we hear
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today a lot of a lot of chatter about you know the past and history and how it impacts today
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and for sure there's generational trauma i assume and you can see it in people uh given who their
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parents were or what happened to them but again this book is really about yes okay um but you
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know um carefully and thoughtfully there have been people in history who have been victimized
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or their tribe has been victimized right i mean jewish people for example um but in the holocaust
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obviously but somehow were able to move on not perfectly um you know i'm not sure anybody can
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do that um given the scope of sometimes what happens to people in entire societies and countries
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entire groups but nonetheless they they found a way to move on and so in the victim call they give
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a positive example actually near the end of the book jumping ahead a little bit to asian americans
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and asian canadians who were horribly discriminated against for a century about you know a lot of
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their ancestors anyway asian you know um you know asian immigration from china from other places
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started mid 19th century for both canada united states uh initially welcomed when the numbers
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became larger it appears there was a turn in public opinion in places like california
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and against immigration from from china and elsewhere and asia and so asian americans and
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the same was true here in canada began to push back though and in i give two chapters at the
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end of the book to show how they push back as they were right to do asian americans said look
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especially the ones that were born there um we have all the rights other native-born citizens
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do of the united states they wrote letters they politicked they went to court sometimes succeeded
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sometimes did not but it took about a century for the for them to really gain full legal status and
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for the end of any discrimination uh domestically but also against immigrants from east asia to to
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end around 19 just after world war ii but what they did is they focused on things like education
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And what was telling, again, you know, spoiler alert
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to the end of the book, Asian Americans, Chinese Americans,
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if you look at the discrimination in American society
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where basically Asian immigration was just shut down completely.
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And then you look at the, you know, the taking of land
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and property during World War II in both the United States
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and Canada, what was interesting I found in those two chapters,
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research is that asian americans were actually by the 1920s their kids were graduating at rates
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from high school higher than whites graduating from college at rates higher than whites in
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places like california and nationally and what that spoke to was an ethos of no matter how badly
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some of our fellow americans not all of them treated them badly but no matter how some fellow
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americans treat us asian americans took the view that they were going to persevere push back where
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they could but also educate their kids and they were very entrepreneurial in some cases because
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they had to be because the professions were shut but that led to what we now know is is almost a
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cliche asian americans asian canadians are at the top of the income and wealth heaps in both
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countries and that's a good thing what was interesting was that even the most discriminatory
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period in american history that asian americans um succeeded on education scale anyway and they
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succeeded in the country that was discriminating so hard against them in such a a quick and vicious
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manner as you think about it it's it's a it's a dark spot in history really isn't it for
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canadians and americans that it went down that way you know let me ask you so i i'm fascinated
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by the history element of this and and that you went down the road of history to provide some
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examples and i guess a little bit of a societal overview of how victim cult has been destructive
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You give me a couple of examples of, you know, how, you know, people have overcome.
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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.
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But where else in history have we seen this go off the rails?
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It's almost a permanent human condition and or temptation.
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And so a couple of clear examples from the book, though.
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Germany so most people are familiar with the claim which many people agree with I don't as
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I point out in the book the Germans were victimized by the Versailles Treaty and this led to the
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second world war at least the justification for it in the minds of Germans and the Nazi leader
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Adolf Hitler actually and there was a permanent sense of victimization though in Germany by that
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time by the time the Versailles Treaty came along so I actually went back and did research I'm kind
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of, okay, why would Germans feel that they're victimized?
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Well, because Germans actually were victimized.
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And what happens when people have been victimized
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and so how do you recreate an identity, especially nationally?
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What the Germans did is they kind of look to philosophers
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Some nationalism can be good, some can be very destructive.
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You couldn't be Jewish and even convert to Christianity,
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Protestant Christianity, and be accepted as a true German.
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classical liberalism really took off in Great Britain.
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The Germans were very suspicious of outside ideas,
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the idea that actually the government serves the people,
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Since the glorious revolution or since the Magna Carta.
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that the state represents us um and that's how we find our identity very different than the anglosphere
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right england in particular at the time and the countries that sprang from england such as canada
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united states and so forth so with the germans so you're saying refrain so i'm so sorry
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reframing for identity that's the challenge in that right there right right so because
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so what you're saying at that point it becomes a nationalistic effort as opposed to something that
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is meant to be a national effort or a nationalism in the worst sense of the word and again you know
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there's good ideas and bad ideas and the bad idea was um you know we're not going to accept ideas
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elsewhere this is what it means to be a true german defined by blood uh and birth and um yeah
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rejection of of outsiders to the extreme it's kind of a cultural national nationalism which we hear
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hear again today, by the way, including in native circles and others that, you know, what people
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really need is just a restoration of their culture. You know, those nasty colonialists have injured our
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culture. When in fact, the truth in human history is if you want to succeed, beg, borrow, and steal
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from other people's cultures, right? See what works out there and steal it. And you have to be open to
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that. But the Germans went down this road and they had this very deep sense of victimization
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long before Versailles, long before the end of World War I. And in fact, they had victimized
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others in their own history they victimized the french in the late 19th century so it goes back
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and forth but they have this deep belief in their victimization and then boom after world war one
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and the rise of adolf hitler and adolf hitler and the nazis they capitalized on that they capitalized
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on the sense of unfairness in the versailles treaty but i go into the book why they shouldn't
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have been uh they shouldn't have seen that that treaty as a victimization but nonetheless that
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was the popular notion and it led to a deeper sense of victimization which adolf hitler and
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the nazis exploited in the land of beta beethoven and bach became the land of dachau and bergen
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belson and of course as we all know that kind of um deep grievance was only extinguished with
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the arrival of us and other allies in a six-year war that finally baited out of the german
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population by 1945 to the tragedy of of everyone so i i guess i see the ladder would climb on this
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you know from trauma or from this experience this original victimization we seem to ping-pong
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higher and higher and higher up on the ladder until it becomes a mass issue it's a temptation
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the same thing happened in a very different culture in rwanda most people are familiar
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with the rwandan genocide of 1993. what they may not understand is the same sort of debates
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the same sort of accusations went on in rwanda that you heard in other cultures that overdose
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on victimization rhetoric so a brief history lesson rwanda was occupied by the um it was the
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germans first and the belgians and there was some argument that the belgians favored the minority
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tutsis who were depending on the year about five to ten percent five to fifteen percent of the
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population and the majority hutus about 85 percent in the twa which were one percent but the hutus
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the majority population were mainly farmers the tutsis were ranchers and there's some argument
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that the reason the latter the tutsis um who were the subject of the attack and the genocide in 1993
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the reason they were wealthier was not just because of maybe some favoritism by the colonials
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the belgians and the germans before that but ranchers simply make more money in that uh in
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that era and maybe today i'm not sure and so the argument is though from the hood from the
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the Hutu, the majority population by independence that, okay, the colonialists favored the Belgians.
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And by the way, now that we're in control of the Hutus, we're going to make life difficult
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for you Tutsis because we're going to take revenge. We're going to even up the scales,
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affirmative action programs, as we call them today, you know, racial identity.
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Right. And the Tutsis were warned, do not engage in politics, in the army they were discriminated
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against. They were considered too influential in the schools and universities, so there was a
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CODA system. There were programs now and then after independence in 1960 that attacked the Tutsis,
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kind of a foreshadowing of the eventual 1993 Rwandan genocide. And the language was really
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destructive as well, Mike. You hear language about indigenous versus non-indigenous today.
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It's not the first time in history you've heard this, and I'm not saying Canada's equivalent to
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Rwanda in 1992 leading up to 1993. But the language I find is offensive because I'll get
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there in a moment, but the Rwandan Hutus used the same language. They saw the Tutsis as interlopers,
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you know, later arrivals, the same with the Twop. And Hutus said, we were here first,
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you guys came later. And that was very dangerous and destructive. So there's very much an us versus
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them, which by the way, is at the heart of one of the problems with victim thinking is you're not
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looking at people as individuals who may have suffered for a whole bunch of reasons. Not the
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way you or your tribe has suffered, but for their own reasons, for their own experiences, their own
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histories. So people don't look at each other as individuals. They simply look at each other as
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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
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forth. It becomes very dangerous, especially when the rhetoric ramps up. It feels like human nature
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almost doesn't it mark i mean i hate to say it but i think that in in any scenario where any of us
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were in that in in the face of you know losing our identity in our own homes um it might be an easy
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way to cope frankly you know we are a group they are a group this is you know almost how people
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find solidarity in hard times and yet it sounds so destructive and obviously is um you know it
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makes me wonder now uh i see the media and i see politicians out there and they tend to capitalize
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on these moments do you did your book address that and i'm sorry do you let me have a a kick
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at that can if you don't mind because that was one of the original um thoughts that popped to my mind
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was wow this is really something that is a tool that is leveraged all too often and for the wrong
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reasons for sure leaders matter and i point out in the victim cult some of the leaders who mattered
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negatively and positively in human history so um because they can really lead a population
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into the into the swamp so to speak uh toxic ideas hitler is a great example of that right
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of the gate that you pointed out yeah right and so um and he's not the only one now what all this
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misses let me answer the question by first mentioning the view of alexander solzhenitsyn
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and the gulag archipelago right he had a very i thought poignant observation here's solzhenitsyn
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who's tossed into the labor camp in the soviet union in the late 1940s because he made a joke
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about joseph stalin and he sees people around him they're still involved in the blame game they look
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at a group and say if only that group wasn't around if we got rid of them all would be fine
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here in the soviet union this is what he's observing in the labor camp or maybe even among
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you know groups in the labor camp right um they're fighting with each other and solzhenitsyn later
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writes in the guy who like archipelago um this observation which is that you know paraphrasing
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but from memory uh the dividing line between good and evil runs through every human heart
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and um and so people who always think it's thinking group terms and make the mistake of
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yeah if only that person or that group over there wasn't around we'd be fat and happy no
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um you've got the potential for evil in yourself which is what soldier newsman was pointing out
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but the leaders matter in this so um some examples in history let me take two terrorists
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um so you're familiar with jerry adams you know uh who would part of the provisional ira i think
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he denied that but certainly the political wing of the immigration fame and uh marty mcginnis compare
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them to um to yasser arafat right leader of the palestinian authority but the palestinian
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the plo before that and maybe concurrently um i have a chapter and ask for arafat where we point
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out look with due respect um israel tried to do peace deals and did do peace deals with
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egypt and jordan the late 1970s as we know more recently they've done peace deals with
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Arab nations. They're Arab nations. So they've tried to do land for peace. But you need someone
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on the other side you can work with. And Yasser Arafat was famously offered a peace deal in 2000
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by Ehud Barak, the Israeli president or prime minister, I forget which he was, and Bill Clinton,
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the American president. And he walked away. Arafat did. His aides couldn't believe it. Bill Clinton
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couldn't believe it. Arafat walked away from the table. And I theorize in the victim cult that one
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reasons for this is that Arafat was a permanent revolutionary. Plus he just wanted dead Jews
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more than he wanted a peace deal with Israel. Now he could have chosen a different path and
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he could have chosen to really enforce some discipline on his side to get there. And some
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of his young aides wanted a peace treaty with Israel and he didn't. I think because he's a
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permanent revolutionary in the way that ironically for all their dalliance with terror that Marty
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McGuinness and the Sinn Féin leader, Jerry Adams were not. In this sense, you may remember the
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Easter Accords and the provisional IRA and Sinn Féin negotiated in 1998, I believe it was,
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when the Inc was signed. I was in high school at the time and I remember it was everywhere. It was
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the news. Exactly. There's a famous book, I forget the name, but I mentioned it in the victim cult,
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from an irish journalist who covered you know northern ireland and the uk and the terror and
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the troubles as they called them for decades he wrote a wonderful book about northern ireland but
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also the peace deal that came about in 1998 um the good friday accord and what he kept hinting at was
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in in the run-up to that deal before it was signed before the inc was signed
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that um sometimes the british were warned in advance of a possible attack on the positions
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in Northern Ireland. Could have been a police station, could have been an army unit or so.
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And he strongly hints that someone in the provisional IRA in Sinn Féin leaked information
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that the British were about to be hit, about to be attacked. He didn't say who, but you can
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almost read between the lines and you're like, is Martin McGuinness or is Jerry Adams or their
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henchmen, are they alerting the British? Why did they do that? Well, because they perhaps come to
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the conclusion finally that they were more interested in having a peace deal than having
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more dead brits to put it bluntly um and that's what i suspect but that's where yasser arafat
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never got to he was a permanent revolutionary and that's the danger and and you know uh where
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he truly believed in victimization of the palestinians or not probably but certainly
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he uh he was a permanent revolutionary notion of victimhood palestinians not just israel to this day
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other leaders now in Gaza and West Bank, but for Palestinians and Israelis, but for Palestinians
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themselves because of, you know, one of the many decisions to avoid peace.
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That pullback was sort of at a point in time in our modern history where it could have made a
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really big difference. So much in the Middle East, in that theater at large, I think we had a moment,
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a slice in history to really make an accord work at that moment and i think you're right as you
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look back it just felt like no we don't want peace we we want to continue with our mission of terror
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based on being victimized it's an interesting perspective for sure well there's a famous
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arab journalist who i quote from the victim cult in this chapter on yasser arafat
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who shortly after, several years later, maybe after Arafat died in 2003, wrote a column saying,
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look, the Palestinian leadership probably has to, and he was quite blunt, grow up,
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and they have to get past this revolutionary stage. And he said, you know, and he made
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reference to World War II and Bora Bora, Tora Tora, rather. Is it Tora Bora or Tora Tora?
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The Japanese war cry. And I think it's Bora Bora.
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I think you're right. We just we just took a look. Bora Bora. We'll go Bora Bora. Thank you.
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Thanks, Mark. But he said, look, Palestinian leadership keeps this rallying cry up of constant
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war and revolution as opposed to doing boring stuff, which is maybe why Yasser Arafat didn't
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bite on boring stuff of running the city state, because look, I think Gaza and West Bank still
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have the potential to be the Singapore of the region or, you know, akin to what's happening
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over the United Arab Emirates and the leaders there that I think the Palestinians have been
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ulcered by the leadership. It's not to say Israel has been perfect, but that's not the standard,
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right? Any more than Great Britain or Canada, the United States was perfect in 1939 or in the case
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of the U.S. in 1941. That's not what's happening. You're hit by an existential crisis in the case
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of Israel and you have to do something and defend yourself. And so I put a lot of blame in the
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Palestinian leadership over the decades, which were at the table, could have made a deal,
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especially Yasser Arafat but even since and chose not to so that's another example though where
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again and there's some truth I mean in in the chapter I note um the Palestinians some this is
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not universally true some were chased out of Israel some left voluntarily some Arab nations
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told Arab in Arab Arabs in what became Israel to leave on the other flip side Israelis or Jews
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rather were expelled from Arab countries after 1948 so there was plenty of victimization
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plenty of wrongs um nonetheless i would decide with the need for you know a mainly jewish state
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now it's you know 21 arab and whatever it is 70 something percent uh jewish but you know without
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getting too deeply into that modernity issue the point is the jews from arab states that were
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expelled with a couple of suitcases and lost their property moved on to buenos aires to toronto to
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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
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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
00:26:44.580
the greater claim there is for compensation, for example.
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
00:27:07.160
the more call there should be for compensation.
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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
00:27:18.940
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.
00:28:07.600
You hit the 1950s in the welfare state or a bad education system,
00:28:20.720
that's a more approximate cause for some of the problems
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.
00:29:58.140
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.
00:30:15.440
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
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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?
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00:33:11.280
And I think, you know, the Israeli-Palestine example is the most glaring one on earth.
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00:33:18.020
I don't know that we can ever come together in that scenario,
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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.
00:34:32.140
Understand that people need to be held accountable for their choices.
00:34:35.740
You know, boring economic stuff that matters like property rights
00:34:39.820
Unite people around a set of good ideas and principles
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.
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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
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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,
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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,
00:38:02.400
where admittedly there's not much educational opportunity
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,
00:38:26.960
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,
00:38:40.760
It means there is a way out of the poverty trap
00:38:42.740
for native Canadians like other Canadians, right?
00:39:01.480
whether it's tribal, you know, or it's an empire,
00:39:09.180
Tribal is maybe, you know, you know, low tax,
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00:39:13.200
easy to organize if there's 10 of you or 100 of you
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,
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00:39:33.420
So should the British empire have been in India?
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
00:40:04.400
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,
00:40:22.440
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
00:42:13.600
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.
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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.
00:46:11.160
My parents lost everything in the 1980s in Kelowna when interest rates were 21%.
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.
00:47:06.560
So that's the problem with not looking at people as individuals, which is the great sin in human history.
00:47:19.280
I think defining it, labeling it, gave it too much power to have its own divisiveness.
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.