In this episode of The Cory Morgan Show, I speak with Mark Mielke about his new book, The Victim Cult . Mark is a policy analyst and author who has been involved in a number of groups over the past year and a half. He has been a member of the First Nations, and has written on a variety of other subjects, including First Nations tax policy, and is a frequent guest on the West Bank Kelowna Public Radio show.
00:05:15.500They didn't deny the past, and there's no point in doing that.
00:05:18.540But the ones that have been successful, and I've done a lot of policy on First Nations over the last 25 years, and I discovered the same thing.
00:05:26.880So very simply, you know, without being flippant about it, you can acknowledge the past and whatever wrongs happen.
00:05:35.040What you cannot do or what you should not do is focus on the past in a way that sacrifices the future.
00:05:39.740And ironically enough, two years ago, when I was finishing up the victim cult, I met Ellis Ross,
00:05:45.260you probably know, now running for the BC Liberal Leadership, but became famous initially for
00:05:49.680turning around the highs of the First Nation on the coast of British Columbia. And look, you know,
00:05:54.720he says, look, our family history has warts as well. But if he and the rest of the highs of the
00:05:59.220First Nation hadn't looked forward, started to do deals with natural gas companies and so on and so
00:06:03.580forth, he said they'd still be stuck in poverty. And personally, he'd be stuck in a pretty awful
00:06:07.860position um and so when i met ellis ross two years ago and he wrote the forward for the victim culture
00:06:13.220agreed to write the forward uh we were just in simpatico on this that uh tragedies happen all
00:06:18.260the time uh israel victimization in history now but uh you you better find a way away from that
00:06:24.180and look forward and figure out how you're going to succeed so that was really inspiration for the
00:06:28.180book uh first nations that succeed in canada and look forward and those who um want to use the past
00:06:33.860almost as a weapon against the present. Yeah, Chief Louie out of a Soyuz very similarly was
00:06:39.620very much always on quit being hung up on the past and let's look forward because we have to
00:06:43.860improve things right now. Exactly. And what I appreciated too, so I mean right now we're
00:06:49.460seeing it predominantly in people in a position of minority or even an identity where they've
00:06:54.500turned themselves into a minority. You pointed out some examples where it was people in the majority
00:06:58.900who were using victimhood though as a means to a political ends. I mean it shows that
00:07:02.580this trend or this tactic can be harmful. And you went into great depth, for example,
00:07:07.620as Adolf Hitler played a victim of all people. Right. Of all people. I mean, nothing in the
00:07:13.200victim cult downplays actual tragedies or gain actual victimization in history or now, right?
00:07:17.980There's over 7 billion of us on the planet. Even accidentally, the tragedies happen, you know,
00:07:23.180you know, cars smashed into each other and that sort of thing. There's no shortage of real
00:07:26.960tragedies in history or now. But yeah, the most unbelievable part when you when you look at sort
00:07:31.920and maybe it's just a human thing, we tend to want to blame others rather than first look at maybe
00:07:37.780I've contributed to this bad outcome in some way. And so Adolf Hitler, as you mentioned,
00:07:41.880mentioned in the Germans are a good example. I mean, look, my last name is German origin,0.93
00:07:46.400obviously, but I don't have any sympathy for what happened between really 1800 and 1945.
00:07:52.260A lot of people are familiar with, for example, how Adolf Hitler used the Versailles Treaty and
00:07:56.960the claim that Germans were victimized by this post-World War I treaty imposed on them.
00:08:01.920and adolf hitler certainly used that to uh to disrupt germany and gain power what people
00:08:07.680probably don't know and it's a good historical example is that germans actually were victimized
00:08:13.120if you go back to the late 18th century france was occupying part of germany and as happens in
00:08:18.800all wars there were some pretty vicious things that went on towards the germans from the french
00:08:23.360now once the germans kicked out the french in the early 1800s the germans went on some search for you
00:08:27.920you know, what it means to be a pure German. How do we make Germany great again? Literally,
00:08:31.880that was the language. And they lapsed into, you know, kind of cultural purity. And to use the
00:08:37.640language of the present, you know, who's indigenous German and who's not? Like, it was crazy stuff.0.99
00:08:42.480And long before the Germans became enamored with the very harmful notion of race purity,0.86
00:08:48.500they got into this notion of cultural purity, because they were trying to assert their identity,
00:08:52.640right? They have been oppressed, they have been victimized by the French. But they made a couple
00:08:56.660fundamental errors to think that if you get some sort of pure German culture, pure indigenous
00:09:02.180culture, that's what it was, that somehow that would save them from, I don't know, future
00:09:06.020victimization. It wouldn't. It just made them narrow-minded. And so they began to be afraid
00:09:10.340of everyone, not just Jews in history, which they were, but English, liberals, anybody who wasn't,
00:09:18.100you know, say Protestant German of that era. And so the Germans had this notion of victimization0.84
00:09:22.260early on and adolf hitler picks it up literally a century later and we know what happened um i mean0.86
00:09:27.700that the subtitle of the victim cult is you know how how this can wreck civilizations well it wrecked
00:09:33.220german civilization and turned the land of germany which had been bach and beethoven into the land0.54
00:09:37.780known for dachau and of course uh you know german nazis almost destroyed english civilization um so
00:09:43.700that's kind of the subtext of the book that even when you're actually victimized as a person as a
00:09:48.580society, as a nation, even you've got to be really, really careful because if you get stuck there,
00:09:53.860watch out. Yeah. And you really go into how being victimized, even if it's genuine and legitimate,
00:10:00.420doesn't necessarily mean you have to have poorer outcomes later. You went into the example of
00:10:05.140Asian North Americans, for example, who were treated terribly in the early part of last century,
00:10:10.420but they've moved beyond that. And as far as a culture or an ethnic group, they're very
00:10:15.300successful in north america right now right um for those you know unfamiliar with it or may be
00:10:20.260familiar i mean the first probably asian um you know immigrants to to canada in the united states
00:10:25.940really came around 1850 on the west coast in particular california and and shortly after
00:10:31.140that time to british columbia and what i did in the victim call is i looked at this cohort because
00:10:36.020they were victimized they were discriminated against uh they were not allowed to vote they
00:10:40.420often they were they were discriminated against by labor unions by politicians and the rest of them
00:10:44.340But some interesting things happened over time. They fought back. I would never say just accept
00:10:49.660your victimization. They fought back in politics and the courts. Sometimes they won, sometimes they
00:10:54.820didn't. There are great stories of San Francisco and Chicago and New York merchants fighting back
00:10:59.300in the courts and sometimes winning against discriminatory local ordinances that basically
00:11:04.980tried to outlaw their businesses. And they won sometimes. But the interesting thing is they also
00:11:11.100took a very proud position in the best sense of that word. They refused to be permanent victims.
00:11:17.580For example, they also fought back consciously, unconsciously. There was a real emphasis on
00:11:22.700entrepreneurship and education. To give you an example, in 1910 in the United States,
00:11:27.820they found some terrific statistics where they showed attendance at high schools and universities.
00:11:33.660In 1910, white Americans were attending high school, graduating from college at rates higher
00:11:38.780than chinese and japanese americans by 1920 1930 it's actually chinese and japanese origin kids
00:11:45.740in the united states who are graduating from high school and college are much higher than white
00:11:50.940americans now what does this do well this sets the groundwork for the future success
00:11:55.740but the irony or the the yeah the the oddity of this is this is happening at a time in american
00:12:01.820history and canadian history that is the most discriminatory period against those of asian
00:12:06.940origin. And yet they refuse to permanently see themselves as victims. I should say, by the way,
00:12:12.140I don't dismiss, again, the tragedies of history or just kind of take a get-over-it approach in
00:12:16.560the victim cult. Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians were put into internment camps, as
00:12:20.840almost everybody knows. They deserve compensation for their private property. They only received1.00
00:12:25.380partial compensation after the war. But there's a big difference between, say, that, where you've
00:12:30.420been victimized five years ago or 20 years ago, and looking back maybe 100 years or 1,000 years.
00:12:36.280you know because there is some I mean we're conservatives we believe in private property
00:12:40.360there is something to compensation for what when governments do something wrong to you
00:12:44.260but it's an art not a science and you can't you know extrapolate back a thousand years
00:12:49.460and say your tribe hit my tribe therefore that's the reason I am the way I am today
00:12:54.760that's stretching it to put it mildly yeah one of your statements from the book was everyone's
00:13:00.300ancestor was a victim if we go far enough back everybody could find something but we there's
00:13:04.640no sense hanging up on it. I mean, we can acknowledge it without using it as a crutch
00:13:08.520or an excuse for not doing well today. Another denominator you spoke on in there was strong
00:13:13.960family units. I mean, people, cultures, groups that tended to prosper, that tended to be stable,
00:13:19.680did well, tended to have united families. And that's been touched upon in a number of other
00:13:25.400books. But it's one of those things, how could you change that trend? Because broken families
00:13:29.500are actually starting to become endemic in every culture right now.