The Coming Victimhood Apocalypse

My YouTube Interview with Inimitable Narcissism Expert, Sam Vaknin

As a follow-up to my last piece, Victimhood Movements Hijacked by Narcissists and Psychopaths, which was a resounding hit, I interviewed my eminent teacher on narcissism, Prof. Sam Vaknin, to expound upon victimhood ideology as it relates to narcissism. Please view our interview above on YouTube or see the transcript below.

Vaknin, true to form, does not disappoint. He provides a framework for understanding the madness of victimhood ideology that we are facing in this world. While the subject matter is intense, if you are anything like me, you may find it comforting to understand the history and modern manifestations of narcissistic victimhood. If you spend time with this material, I imagine that it will make an impression on you and you will likely carry forward this knowledge to your own benefit and society’s.

-GC

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Overview

HISTORICAL ROOTS of VICTIMHOOD

Fatalism and determinism

Sacrifice vs. Victimhood: Chosen by God, Path to apotheosis (narcissism), Catholic martyrology, Protestantism

Jewish victimhood (slavery in Egypt, Roman exile, Holocaust)

Entitlement: calculus of rights and obligations

Overgeneration of grievances and rights (USA founding documents) 

Anti-Colonialism (Western narrative adopted by colonized)

Secular religions (Nazism, Communism, nationalism) reaction formation

MODERN VICTIMHOOD

Organizing principle that replaces gender, race, nation-state

Ahistorical

Mental illness 

Malignant egalitarianism

Planet as a victim, animals as victims

Victimhood pays: identity politics coupled with aggressive entitlement are hijacked by narcissists and psychopaths to further their pernicious and nefarious goals.

Two dozen studies prove that social justice and political movements have been hijacked by profit-maximizing narcissists, psychopaths, vindictive members, and grandiose ADHD patients. Learn more by reading Habermas, Fukuyama, and Foucault. 

All justice-seeking movements start with grievances (injustices). They decry and seek to remedy and reverse individual transgression (e.g., the narcissistic abuse online movement) or societal and cultural biases (implicit and explicit), discrimination, and suppression. 

The victims organize themselves around exclusionary identity politics and intersectionality and this orientation results in grandiosity and entitlement, in other words in growing narcissism. 

Increasingly more aggressive, these movements often become psychopathic (defiant and contumacious) and demonize the Other. Recent studies have revealed a "victim identity (Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood, TIV) and the fact that many activists have psychopathic traits. 

Left-leaning victimhood movements center around claims on the majority, on social institutions, and on history. Right-wing movements are conspiracy-minded and avoidant, but also more violent. 

Narcissists and psychopaths gravitate to such movements in order to obtain narcissistic supply, money, power, and sex. They become the public faces and the media darlings on these hapless victims, having hijacked their legitimate complaints and demands.

Sam Vaknin

Transcript

Coy: Hello, everyone! My name is Ginger Coy, and I'm the writer behind Concerning Narcissism on Substack. It's an honor to be sitting with you today, Sam. You're such an influential thinker in my lifetime, and I deeply respect you. For our viewers, I created Concerning Narcissism on Substack as an homage to your work, Sam, because you've helped me understand the chaos that is narcissistic abuse of which I have suffered mightily in my lifetime.

So, it gives me great pleasure to introduce my viewers to Professor Vaknin today, if you don't know him already, he is a foremost expert in narcissism and all things Cluster B. I've been listening to Prof. Vaknin on his YouTube channel for years now, and I've realized profound insights about narcissism and life in general.

So, Sam, I'm going to ask that you introduce yourself, please. 

Vaknin: I'm the author of Malignant Self Love, Narcissism Revisited, which was the first book ever to describe narcissistic abuse. I also coined the phrase narcissistic abuse and the overwhelming majority of the language in use today. I then proceeded to serve as a visiting professor of psychology in two or three universities, and now I'm on the faculty of CIAPS, Commonwealth for International Advanced Professional Studies in Toronto, Canada, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and an Outreach Campus in Lagos, Nigeria. I'm legally obligated to repeat this phrase, so my apologies. 

Coy: No worries. I wanted to start off right off the bat, that Concerning Narcissism's most viewed piece is my most recent piece about victimhood ideology, and it's called “Victimhood Movements Hijacked by Narcissists and Psychopaths.”

Where did victimhood come from? What is the historical background of this movement? 

HISTORICAL ROOTS of VICTIMHOOD

Vaknin: Pretty amazingly, very few people are asking this question. They take victimhood for granted, the same way you take oxygen, I assume, for granted. But victimhood is a very, very interesting development in human history. 

Initially, there was fatalism or determinism. We just accepted things as they were. No one regarded himself or herself as a victim. Things just happened, and history, or God, or both, were inexorable and non-negotiable, and that was it. Life was a take it or leave it proposition. No one felt victimized, and so first we should make a distinction between sacrifice and victimhood because they're often conflated and confused.

There are spiritual traditions centered around sacrifice. The most famous of which is obviously Christianity, where Jesus chose to sacrifice himself. And so, sacrifice entails two elements. One is being chosen somehow. There's an element of choice, usually choice by God, but not necessarily. Being chosen by an ideology, by God, by non-individual collectivist forces, and so on.

There's an element of choice. And the second element in sacrifice is a kind of apotheosis. In other words, becoming one with God, or becoming closer to God, or enjoying the benefit of God's proximity or God's grace in the case of a religious tradition. Similarly, merging with a state, or enjoying the benefits of the state, or sacrificing oneself in order to uphold the state.

So, in sacrifice traditions, there's an element of choice, an element of somehow merging, or fusing, or getting enmeshed with a bigger whole, with a bigger entity than yourself. And of course, we have examples, Catholic martyrs, yes, martyrology, in Catholicism, in Protestantism you're chosen by God, and the proof that you're chosen by God is that you're successful and rich.

That's the proof, the Protestant work ethic. That's the proof that God has chosen you and so and so forth. These are all sacrifice traditions. They have nothing to do with victimhood. Jesus was never a victim. The Catholic martyrs were never victims. The Shahid (martyr), the suicide bomber in Islamic tradition is never a victim.

These are not victims. They have made choices. This is all voluntary. Victimhood is a Jewish tradition, and actually, it's an exclusively Jewish tradition. There is no other spiritual tradition in the world which upholds victimhood as a central tenet. It's a Jewish tradition. Recall Jewish history, slavery in Egypt, the Jews were victims in Egypt. The Roman Exile, the Jews were the victims of Roman aggression. Of course, recently, more recently, the Holocaust, where the Jews were victims, victims of Nazi Germany. Victimhood defines the worldview of the Jewish people throughout their history. Actually, the first act of Abraham was to sacrifice or attempt to sacrifice his son, Isaac, to render his son a victim in effect.

So, victimhood is a Jewish thing, and victimhood is very distinct; it is not the same as sacrifice. Sacrifice entails being chosen and a greater entity to which you get submerged or subsumed once you have sacrificed yourself. Victimhood involves entitlement; that means victims have rights, and because victims have rights, other people have commensurate obligations.

There's a rights/obligations calculus in victimhood that does not exist in sacrifice. Jesus didn't say, listen, guys, I'm going to sacrifice myself, and that gives me a lot of rights, you know, and that, that endows you, puts upon you obligations towards me. No one is saying this in the sacrificial traditions, but in victimhood traditions, absolutely, yes.

“I've been a victim of the Holocaust. You owe me money.” “I've been a victim of the Roman Exile. You owe me a state.” “I've been a victim. I've been a slave in Egypt. I have a right to conquer someone else's land”– rights and obligations. And I know what I'm saying is very controversial. May I remind the viewers that I'm a Jew, so dispense with the antisemitic tropes and tripe.

The second element of victimhood is over generation of grievances. Victimhood generates grievances. It's a grievance generation machine/machinery, and of course, we have a perfect example in the founding documents of the United States of America. The founding documents of the USA, actually these documents are lists of grievances against the British King and the British realm.

It started with the Jews and with the Jewish traditions and so on and so forth. But then people discovered, around the 18th century with the French Revolution and the American Revolution, people discovered that victimhood pays, that grievances generate obligations in other people, which you can capitalize on, monetize, benefit from, and profit from.

Victimhood was discovered as a capitalist invention. It was a form of manufacturing. It became the equivalent of a factory, only this factory created grievances and brought in income based on the grievances, or territory based on the grievances. And so this led, of course, much later to anti-colonialist movements.

Anti-colonialist movements are Western grievance/victimhood narratives. They're not African narratives. They're not Asian narratives. They are Western narratives. Anti-colonialism started in the West, not in Africa. Actually, it started in the 19th century in the United Kingdom. Abolition started in the 19th century in the United Kingdom.

So, anti-colonialism, anti-slavery, and anti-mercantilism, which are victimhood movements based on grievances of the colonized, are actually Western exports to the colonies. That's the irony. So we have the next phase in victimhood movements, which is anti-colonialism. And then, gradually, we replaced traditions, spiritual traditions and religions, with secular religions, such as Nazism, Communism, and Nationalism.

These are all grievance-based victimhood movements. Nazism was founded on the belief that the German people have been victimized by the Versailles Treaty, and therefore, are fully entitled, they have a right to Lebensraum, to conquer territory within Europe, and to enslave people who are inferior. Nazism is a victimhood movement.

Communism is a victimhood movement, of course. The proletariat is victimized, abused, and manipulated by capitalists, fat cats, and robber barons. And so, the proletariat has a right to rebel and via the revolution to decimate - often literally - the capitalists. It was a victimhood movement.

Many national movements are victimhood movements to this very day. Look what's happening in Azerbaijan. These are victimhood movements. This is the news lately. This is the historical background of victimhood. It started with the Jews. And via their influential writings, for example, the Bible, it spread and became a global phenomenon displacing sacrifice traditions, actually, because today the biggest religion in the world is victimhood, not Christianity, not Islam, not Judaism, not Buddhism. The biggest religion in my view today is victimhood and its ally or its flip side narcissism, because victimhood entails narcissism. With your permission. I will mention a few more points. I'm sorry the answer is a bit long, but I hope I'm laying the foundation for the dialogue because then we can expand upon some of these points. Modern victimhood borrowed heavily from historical victims, so we have entitlement, and we have all these elements, grievances, and they all exist in modern victimhood.

Modern victimhood added narcissism to the mix. And now we have narcissistic victimhood, which is the modern form of victimhood, because everything is narcissized, not only victimhood. Politics, show business, social media, everything is imbued with narcissism. Victimhood became an organizing or hermeneutic principle.

Today we explain gender relations via victimhood. We explain sexual interactions, sexual scripts between men and women via victimhood. Politics, geopolitics, even environmentalism is a victimhood movement. Here, the victim is the planet. The planet is the victim. Of course, animal rights, you would be hard-pressed to find a nook and cranny and corner in human activity and existence nowadays that is not infused and immersed in victimhood.

It is the organizing principle, the principle that makes sense of the world and imbues our life with meaning. So it's an explanatory hermeneutic principle. It is ahistorical, while traditional victimhood movements were historical. Modern victimhood movements are ahistorical.

So ahistorical, in the sense, that they don't care about historical accuracy. They think it is perfectly legitimate to reframe history and create narratives that cater to the claims and grievances of the victimhood movement, even if they are not 100% in accordance with reality, even if they are counterfactual.

We see this, for example, in the recasting of the history of slavery, which is very far from accurate, and I'm putting this very gently and charitably. Next is malignant egalitarianism. Malignant egalitarianism is the idiotic claim, and I'm being again charitable, that everyone is equal to everyone in every way. Everyone is equal to everyone in every way. So everyone is an expert on everything. There's no hierarchy of expertise or learning or knowledge. Everyone has the same rights. Everyone is entitled to everything similarly and so on. But wait a minute. If everyone is the same as everyone else, everyone is automatically a victim because reality never treats everyone identically.

You are not likely to be dealt the same hand as everyone else. So this gives rise to universal victimhood. The minute everyone is equal to everyone, everyone is discriminated against, everyone experiences injustice, everyone has a grievance, because If I'm equal to the President of the United States and I don't have a limousine, something's wrong with it. I'm a victim. 

Finally, there's the most worrisome phenomenon in my eyes, and the one I'm possibly the best qualified to discuss in the context of this dialogue, and that is the coalescence of mental illness with victimhood. Now, I'm relying on dozens of studies, all of them recent, all of them in the last two, three years.

I'll mention a few names, Qian and Akino, Weissmal-Manor and Kaplan, Gabai and Hamehiri, Gollwitzer and others. These studies have demonstrated conclusively that psychopaths, narcissists, people with other mental health disorders, such as ADHD, have taken over victimhood movements, such as MeToo, Black Lives Matter, and movements on the right, of course, not only on the left.

They've taken grievance-based movements and taken over, and they are leveraging these movements and abusing these movements, and they've infiltrated these movements. And these movements are utterly compromised. This is an exceedingly dangerous phenomenon. I see it online. 

I am actually the father of a major victimhood movement, victims of narcissistic abuse. I created it single-handedly. First ten years, it was only me. I created this movement, which today numbers tens of millions of people, and I don't think I'm exaggerating. And I see this within this victimhood movement, this trend where narcissists and psychopaths have taken over, hijacked this movement.

And today when you go online and you come across an empath, which is a nonsensical non-clinical term, you are likely dealing with a covert narcissist. So it's really bad out there. And we can discuss later, if you wish, the modern manifestations of victimhood. That's the historical background. 

Coy: Well, it sounds as though we're trapped amongst a bunch of narcissists, or at least those on the spectrum of narcissistic traits because then you’re making a distinction that these movements are ultimately hijacked by narcissists and psychopaths. Yet it sounds as though we're all in the midst of victimhood ideology and therefore narcissistic already, so it just gets heightened to your point, it seems. 

Vaknin: Well, we're all, we're all human to varying degrees. We're all human, and so we react to human incentives. Start with the fact that victimhood pays. It pays to be a victim. People are making money off victimhood. They monetize victimhood in a variety of ways on YouTube, off YouTube, with social welfare schemes, with welfare states.

It's all based on victimhood. Some people ended up having a country owing to victimhood claims and grievances. The United States, Israel–these are victimhood-based countries. These are proof positives that victimhood pays. The second thing is deceptive signaling. Deceptive signaling is the ability to signal victimhood, deceptively, when you're not a victim, in order to motivate other people to indulge you, to share with you their resources, to behave in ways that are conducive to your goals, to secure beneficial outcomes, to render you more self-efficacious. When you say “I'm a victim”, it's a kind of manipulative tactic, because you can modify other people's behaviors. And there are, as I said, expectations. As a victim, you have rights and other people have commensurate obligations. 

There's also the issue of competitive victimhood. You compete with other victims. “I'm much more of a victim than you are.” There's a hierarchy of victims. “My abuser was much worse than your abuser.” Reminds me of children, you know, “My Dad is stronger than your Dad!” and this kind of thing.

We have this visibly, especially online. If you put the three together, victimhood pays, deceptive signaling and competitive victimhood, you realize it's a capitalist endeavor. And I'm not deprecating capitalism. What I mean to say, it's a money-spinning proposition. It's a scam. It's simply a scam.

Now, am I disputing the fact that there are victims? Of course not. Victims exist. There are many victims. Real ones. Ironically, the real ones are likely to stay at home and shut up. We know that real victims are full of shame, they feel helpless, they're depressed, they're anxious, they're dysfunctional, and the last thing they want to do is interact with other people.

They isolate themselves; they become schizoid. This is all well documented in the literature. This is what real victims look like. They don't go on camera, they don't advertise themselves, they don't open YouTube channels with millions of followers and make something like a million dollars a month. They don't do this.

These are not real victims. These are fake victims. Can I generalize and say that the overwhelming majority of these people are fake victims? Yes, I think I can actually. I know it's a controversial view, but I think Greta and all these millions of teenagers just found a way to enjoy 15 minutes of fame, to signal virtue, virtue signaling to their peers, and to generate awesome material for Instagram and TikTok.

I think these were the main motivations, not the welfare of the planet. Honestly. 

MODERN VICTIMHOOD

Coy: Do you want to get into more of the modern manifestations of victimhood movements that you were alluding to earlier, as you started to just now with Greta?

Vaknin: We can profile, we can try to profile modern victimhood. First of all, classical traditional victimhood movements usually did three things and fulfilled three functions. They decried specific transgressions. They tried to reverse the victimhood state. They were not invested in remaining a victim. They were invested in reversing the victimhood and eliminating it, actually.

Modern victimhood movements are invested in remaining and perpetuating the state of victimhood because it pays, it pays emotionally, a process called cathexis, and it pays financially, and it makes you famous and a celebrity, and then you can have a lot of sex. And I know this sounds crass and vulgar, but this is human reality. Humans are animals, ultimately. 

And so, classical victimhood, traditional victimhood, tried to decry the phenomenon, decry the transgressions, tried to reverse them, and therefore, traditional victimhood movements were remedial. They tried to remediate. They tried to heal. They tried to cure, and we had traditional victimhood movements among individuals, so individuals kind of tried to remedy individual transgressions, and we had them on the collective level, fights, real fights against bias, discrimination, and oppression.

So some anti-colonial movements, not all by any means, but some anti-colonial movements were blessed and very good. I think the civil rights movement, by and large, ignoring the malignant manifestations such as Malcolm X and I don't know what, but by and large, the civil rights movement was okay, was an okay victimhood movement, because the core message of the civil rights movement was, “We don't want to be victims anymore. We want to change the system so that we are never victims anymore.” This is not the message of modern victimhood movements. Not at all. So, modern victimhood movements are exclusionary. There is an exclusive membership in a club and this exclusive membership elevates you.

It's a kind of sick apotheosis. It renders you godlike, at the very least renders you unique or special in some way. So, it's a badge of honor to be a victim. It's identity politics in the worst sense of the word. You're becoming invested in your identity, and there is a disincentive to reverse your victimhood status. If you are a housewife from Indiana, and I know I'm being as politically incorrect as I can, if you're a housewife from Indiana and you go online, and you declare that you have been a victim of your horrible abusive husband, suddenly, you have 8,000 followers, and they listen to you, and you are the center of attention, and you are beginning to make $1,000-$2,000 a month off YouTube, and everyone caters to your needs, walks on eggshells, cossets you and pampers you, and suddenly, it's a new experience, it's narcissistic supply, it's wonderful, it's mini-celebrity, I mean, just the week before you've been a housewife in Indiana and now everyone in Bangladesh and Nepal and the Philippines has heard of you. It's irresistible.

It's irresistible even for healthy people, as far as healthy people are concerned. It's irresistible. We call it acquired situational narcissism. You can become a narcissist. It's late-onset narcissism. If you become a rock star, there have been studies of rock stars, who were not narcissists, but once they've become rock stars, they became narcissists. They were diagnosable. We say that they transitioned from subclinical narcissism to clinical narcissism. They were diagnosable. So this is called acquired situational narcissism. So this is exclusionary identity politics based on uniqueness, specialness.

And, now you have an incentive to multiply your uniqueness. As you say, I'm unique as a woman. Wow, what an amazing experience! But wait a minute. Is there anything else I can leverage here? Yes, I'm also black. I am not only a woman. I'm not only victimized as a woman. I'm also victimized as a black person. So, I'm a black woman. Double whammy. Double yummy. Not double whammy. Double yummy. Double whammy in traditional victimhood movements. Double yummy in modern victimhood movements. And this is known as intersectionality. It's amplifying exponentially the benefits and the perks and the outcomes of each victimhood movement by combining them, simply combining them, multitasking.

And of course, all these movements are grandiose. They're entitled. One of the really bad things about modern victimhood movements is that they dehumanize the other. We didn't have this in traditional victimhood movements. The Jews never dehumanized the Romans, never, actually, they learned from the Romans.

The greatest historian of the Jews is Josephus Flavius, who studied in Rome and spent most of his life in Rome. We did not demonize the Greeks, because they, you know, victimized us or demonize the Romans because of it. 

The first time we demonized anyone was the Nazis. It was the first time. And it kind of proves my point that modern victimhood movements demonize. The Jewish people never demonized anyone with a single exception, Haman in Persia is the only exception. We never demonized anyone else who victimized us as a people until the modern era when we demonized the Nazis. 

So, demonizing the other is again, an element. There is also conspiracy, the element of conspiracy. Victimhood is no longer perceived as an accident of history or a manifestation and expression of power asymmetries, or inexorable historical processes. No, now it's definitely, and always, the outcome of some mega conspiracy. So, in feminist gender studies, there is the patriarchy. I'm a man. I never heard of the patriarchy. I never voted for the patriarchy. Of course, similarly-minded people would end up doing similar things and thinking similar thoughts. That's very different from a conspiracy. And yet, we have conspiracy in all modern victimhood movements. And this is known in psychology as conspiracism. 

Conspiracism is a clinical, pathological element of personality. So there's a lot of conspiracism. There's also on the right, you have Marxism. It's not, I'm not limiting myself to the left. It's all over the place. It's left, right, you name it, Cultural Marxism, patriarchy, this, that, you know, it's all conspiracies. And the last thing I would mention is that modern victimhood movements are concerned with materialistic individual goals, while classical traditional victimhood movements were concerned with collective goals, like let's get us a country, or let's reverse a historical wrong, or let's preserve our tradition.

So these were collective goals. Modern victimhood movements are concerned with individual goals. Let's get more money, reparations suddenly– slavery reparations, 150 years later. Let's get more money. Let's have more sex. Let's become more famous. These are all individual goals. Traditional modern victimhood movements rarely discuss collective goals.

Even when you have a movement like MeToo, which supposedly deals with collective goals, the goals of women, is reduced to individual stories. You won't find an overarching manifesto of MeToo or an agenda of MeToo. There's no such thing. There are no scriptures. In Marxism, you have the Communist Manifesto.

In Judaism, you have the Bible. You don't have this in MeToo. You don't have this in Black Lives Matter. You don't have this in modern victimhood movements, because they are just an agglomeration of individuals, each one of these individuals, pursuing individual goals and collaborating ad hoc to obtain these goals.

This is what renders these movements narcissistic and psychopathic. 

Coy: So, do you think that this clamoring for collectivism, as I see it through Cultural Marxism, is really a misguided effort to mitigate against the atomization of living in the age of narcissism? A sort of “we vs. me” ethos, is there any relation? It used to be that we emphasized the individual, but now it seems to have mutated into a corrupted form of recognizing autonomy all the way on the spectrum to full-blown narcissism. You mentioned earlier communism being on the right. I'm not sure if you've misspoke. I think of it as on the left.

Vaknin: Of course. Nazism is on the right, even though this is debatable whether Nazism was on the right. 

Coy: Yeah, because I've heard that Nazism is still to the left, but it's just right of communism. That's how I've heard it framed. 

Vaknin: Yeah, it's debatable because Nazism was an eclectic movement. It didn't have a core, an ideological core. It was whatever worked, you know? So, because if you see the full name of the Nazi Party, it has something for everyone.

I wouldn't classify it either as right-wing or, or left-wing. But yeah, I think the left, progressive left, so to speak, or liberal left or whatever you want to call it, whatever epithet is your cup of tea. I think the left pretends to be collective the same way the right pretends to be individualistic.

I think both of them are actually goal-oriented. The goals are very materialistic, very short-term, very clear, and they want more and more of the same goals. Like, if you get $100, not enough, you want another $100. So, it's a never-ending quest. This is the incentive to perpetuate victimhood.

I don't think the left is collectivist and the right is individualistic. I think all of them are infested with narcissists and psychopaths. And when I say narcissists, I don't mean people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. I mean people with narcissistic style, or narcissistic tendencies, or traits, or behaviors. And this, I would say, characterizes a big proportion of the population.

So, all of them are infested with narcissists and psychopaths who discovered El Dorado, simply. Now whatever it takes. If having a collective call for action works, like in environmentalism, then let's do it. If catering to individual needs and individual grievances and individual hopes of getting whatever benefits, then let's do it. Whatever works. This expediency is also typical of modern victimhood movements. They are flexible to the point of non-existing, not existing in ideological terms. They go with the flow. They don't have a core. They don't have a spine. They just migrate to the path of least resistance. Whatever works, whatever gets things done. Whatever, you know, let's do it. And there's no loyalty and no adherence to any real ideological commitment or even idealistic commitment. Maybe ideology is not a good thing, but to have ideas is a good thing. No one has any ideas. These are impoverished, intellectually impoverished movements.

Coy: So, I'm going to pause for a moment and put myself in the shoes of someone who's new to you, listening to you, and right out the gate, it'd be easy to dismiss what you're saying as hyperbolic or cynical, jaded, what have you. But maybe if you were to put a finer point on it, what are the repercussions of these victimhood movements being hijacked by psychopaths and narcissists? I mean, how does it manifest? You've talked about a psychopathic collective, for instance. What does that look like on the ground? 

Vaknin: Well, first of all, let me be clear and give credit where it's due. I am definitely not the first to say this. There's a famous sociologist, Campbell, and he said that we have transitioned from the age of dignity to the age of victimhood. I fully agree with him. There are numerous studies substantiating every single statement I've made, however, hyperbolic and jaded. I did bother to mention 27 studies about 10 minutes ago, because I knew this was coming. There is a body of evidence that is decisive in my view, that victimhood movements have been hijacked by narcissists and psychopaths.

Now, if we take this to be the truth, or even partial truth, because one narcissist is the bad apple in the barrel, one narcissist, a single narcissist can corrupt the whole body. Ask Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler was a single psychopath in a system, a political system. He didn't even win the majority in elections.

He was just a prime minister in a minority government. He had five ministers and there were another 20-something, which did not belong to his party. But Stalin was the same. We have examples in history that it takes a single narcissist or a single psychopath to subvert the system and convert it into narcissism and psychopathy.

It seems that narcissists and psychopaths act as catalysts. They catalyze a process of increasing narcissism and increasing psychopathy, and that's what I meant when I use the phrase narcissistic collectives and psychopathic collectives. These are collectives who have been infected or infested with narcissists and psychopaths, and they don't have to be the majority.

They have to be strategically placed, that's all, and have to be good interlocutors, demagogues, speech makers, and so on and so forth. I, as you may have noticed during this conversation, have no allegiance to the left or to the right. If I had to give an example of what I've just said, Donald Trump, is such an example.

The man has corrupted the political system of the entire United States. All of it is corrupted now, beyond recognition, and he did this in fewer than five years. And definitely a single individual. So, yeah, it's dangerous to introduce narcissists and psychopaths into your environment because they take over the same way a virus does.

And so if these victimhood movements are infested with narcissists and psychopaths, and we are not talking about single individuals, according to the studies, we are talking 30-40 percent of leadership positions, then we are doomed. And we are doomed, I think, for two reasons. Victimhood movements have infiltrated politics.

I'm not talking only about the left. The Tea Party movement, Occupy Wall Street, I'm not limiting myself, I'm not a leftist, I'm not a rightist, I'm an observer. Victimhood politics is increasingly more victimhood-based, increasingly more. It's much more visible on the left because the right claims that it wants a small state.

But the right is still a victimhood movement. So right and left, these are victimhood movements and they've taken over the political machinery. That's point number one. Point number two, we make sense of the world today. We imbue our lives with meaning exclusively via victimhood. It became the exclusive principle.

The first question we ask is, who suffered, who is suffering, who has been hurt, how should we remedy, what things can we do to ameliorate someone's damage or... We take for granted that someone is a victim somewhere, at some time, and we need to do something about it. We have a commensurate obligation, and he has rights, or she has rights.

So, we can no longer think straight. We are not thinking straight anymore. Everything is now viewed via the prism of victimhood. We are, in clinical terms, trapped in a fantasy of victimhood. We are no longer in reality. We are fantasizing. We are delusional. We are clinically psychotic. We're in a psychotic state.

Now the psychosis in this particular case relies on the narrative of victimhood. But it doesn't make it less divorced from reality. Why does this bother me or worry me? Because survival is predicated on what Freud called the reality principle. Reality testing is critical to proper functioning in changing environments to derive beneficial outcomes. This is known as efficacy. You cannot be efficacious in your environment, you cannot extract benefits and outcomes that are helpful to you from your environment, human or not human, if you are delusional, you cannot do this. If we as a species have become psychotic and delusional, our days are numbered, it's as simple as this.

Now, you would say, yeah, but don't worry, we have science, there are enclaves. There are enclaves where victimhood has not penetrated. That is not true, I'm sorry to say. I happen to be a physicist. Even science has been infected with victimhood. You don't believe me? Read ecological literature or environmental literature.

It is phrased as a political manifesto, not as a study. You don't believe me? Read the recent diatribes about plagiarism, and lack of funding. Science is utterly immersed in victimhood culture. Utterly. Everyone is a victim of something. There are not enough funds, or there is no recognition, or we are not putting the right emphasis. We should emphasize the planet, not civilization, or I don't know what. And it's not limited to ecology and environmentalism. I see victimhood in physics. It's bad because it distorts our ability to view reality as it is, which is a precondition for survival. 

Coy: Except now we have something called postmodernism, which has introduced wokeism and you know, I, like you, don't share a fidelity to either the left or the right.

So I'm looking at the delusionality of the left, extrapolated out to a place of narcissism as it presents. And this frightens me more than the right, because as you've said, the right at its worst tends towards antisocial or psychopathic manifestations, but at least psychopaths are in reality, whereas the delusionality of narcissism on the left and as it's presenting through the fringes, which has become more and more metastasized. Would you agree with that characterization?

Vaknin: Something else bothers me in the dichotomy between left and right. Both of them are delusional, both of them are conspiracy-minded, both of them are victimhood movements. Both left and right victimhood movements are grievance-based. I don't see much distinction when it comes to the artificial, observable characteristics, the superficial ones, the superficial characteristics, like the structural, when you observe them from the outside.

But there's one major difference between left and right. The left is systematically oppressive. The right is individualistic. So the right is likely to be much more violent and much more psychopathic than the left, but the left, even in democracies, would leverage and deploy systems, whole systems, to oppress the individual and if there's any resistance, would become even more violent than the right. So it is the systematization of victimhood that on the left, that bothers me, what you call woke movements, self-censorship in academia. People lose their tenure, and worse, some people go to prison. It's not a joke. There is a systemic oppression of free speech, reality and evidence-based studies. There is the cancel culture. There are the woke movements. This is violence. The left is violent, and the right is violent. But the right is violent individual by individual, so it's not a serious threat. Honestly speaking, ask the guys who are now going to prison for January 6th. So the right is incapable of orchestrating, even when it is in power, because of the libertarian tendencies of the right and the individualistic strain of ideology, the right is incapable of orchestrating collective oppression, systematized oppression. We have never seen a right-wing regime, which was very good in the long term, with systematic oppression. We have seen, you know, brutes and thugs in juntas in Latin America. We've seen the Nazi regime, and so on and so forth. Nazi regime, I'm not sure it's a right-wing phenomenon, but we've never had a phenomenon like communist Russia or communist China.

This is what bothers me, what terrifies me about the left. I mean, we look at Congress and the House, I mean, we look at the House and say, okay, what the right is, so many presidents and so many majorities, that's nonsense. That's not where the game is taking place.

Politics has been sidelined, and not only in the United States but in Europe as well. Politics is no longer a relevant game—business is, and the public sphere, the masses. We are in an era of ochlocracy, mob rule. The mobs rule through social media. The mobs rule through mass victimhood movements.

Politicians are no longer relevant; they are totally solipsistic and autistic, if they think they have any impact on anything, you know? So this is the wrong way to look, but when you look at reality outside the beltway in Washington, or outside Brussels in the European Union, you begin to realize how horrifying the scene is, where on the one hand, you have militias, essentially militias of right-wing, you know, victims, self-styled victims, victims of the state, victims of the police, victims, I mean, self-styled victims.

So, right-wing militias, when I say militia, I mean 5 guys, 10 guys, 200 guys, this kind of thing, but they're ready to be violent. And on the other hand, you have absolutely systematic state-sponsored left-wing oppression. Absolutely. Even in the United Kingdom, which is supposedly at the hands of the conservatives.

Coy: That's the feeling of betrayal because the left has always presented itself as so open-minded and egalitarian and yet they frame things in oppressor versus oppressed. It's like they doth protest too much. They're the ones obsessed with power. 

Vaknin: Actually, I beg to differ. Okay. And it's good to have disagreements.

I beg to differ. I don't think the left has ever made these claims. If we look historically at writings in the 19th century, which is the origins of the left, you have Marxism, but even more powerfully, you have socialism. Marxism was a fringe phenomenon until the 1920s. Fringe phenomenon, the major movements.

When you look at socialist writings, definitely Marxist writings, they're not talking about, we're going to end up with oppression. They're talking about, we want to oppress. We have been oppressed hitherto, now we want to oppress. Marx is very open about this. He says we need to take back the means of production.

We need to destroy private property. The left is about victimhood in the sense that the left wants to render victims the oppressors. Like, let's give you a taste of your own medicine, you capitalist pigs, you know, that's the left. Now it is couched in very beautiful, you know, because the left is great at speaking and talking.

So it's couched in all kinds of... but when you go to the hardcore, the hardcore is about a redistribution of power. A redistribution of power, as simple as that. It's a power-oriented movement. It's about power, and so how do you take power? With power. It's a war. It's a very conflictual movement, the left.

The left is about war. That's the irony, because they cast the right as violent and conflict-oriented. Actually, the right is conflict-averse. Even rightist militias just want to be left alone. They don't want to fight. They want to be left alone, but the left is combative. The left is belligerent.

Coy: I think that's the irony, you're helping me to elucidate and zero in on. You were talking about earlier the transition from sacrifice to victimhood to frame this conversation. So how is it that America has become so narcissistic? You talked about Trump, for instance, also the DSM doubling in size, pathologizing everything.

If you pathologize more and more things like caffeine or internet addiction, you have to consider the profit motive in America. So to get rich, you make people feel like victims of a pathology. And if they feel like victims, they become narcissistic. So it becomes this sort of feedback loop and spinning off the rails, snowballing downhill.

So, how did America become so narcissistic? 

Vaknin: Activism is warfare by other means, social justice activism; they also call themselves social justice warriors. It's a war. Now, it's a war about which has to do with what, what is the goal of this war, what is the raison d'etre, a redistribution of resources.

So, we have an official redistribution of resources. It's called the tax system, taxation, and redistribution of wealth. It's even called redistributive justice, which is in my view, an oxymoron, but okay, we have redistribution, which is institutionalized, but now people want to redistribute everything, not only money.

They want to redistribute power, they want to redistribute access, including bodily access, which is the core engine of MeToo. They want to redistribute institutions, so there's defund the police, or redefine the police, or whatever. So, everything is up for grabs. Now, the elites, if you ask me, are very uncomfortable with what's happening.

Is there such a thing as the elites? Of course, there is such a thing as the elites. They don't meet in secret, in Bilderberg or World Forum, that's right-wing nonsense. There's no New World Order, and there's no forthcoming Great Reset. It's a game, conspiratorial hogwash coupled with mental illness, QAnon, and all this.

But the elites do exist. Rich people think alike, and they have the same interests. It's as simple as that. So, the elites are terrified. I am not only speculating. I have actually served most of my life as an advisor to very rich people all over the world. This is not exactly speculation. This is first-hand experience.

They are a bit terrified of what's happening, so they multiply the tools of social control. You've mentioned the DSM. Yes, it's about profit-making. It's about reimbursing therapists, and the insurance industry. It's about the pharmacological industry. It's all true. But over and above everything, it's a tool for social control.

The elites are engaging in two processes, which allow them to control the masses. For now, I don't think they're going to succeed in the long term. I think a revolution is coming. But for now, it allows them to control the masses. Two processes: pathologize and criminalize. Pathologize everything and criminalize every behavior, absolutely every behavior, criminalize. So, we have a situation where the DSM didn't double. It went up 10 times! The DSM used to be 102 pages in 1952. It is 1,180 pages today. If you go through the pages of the DSM, I think there are only two normal, healthy people in the world left, and that's because they've never met a psychiatrist.

Similarly, the tax code in 1920 was about 100 pages. The tax code today in the United States is 97,000 pages. The criminal code went up 11 times, double, I mean, multiplied by 11, a factor of 11. 

You are not even aware that you are every day committing offenses, crimes, and transgressions. Should they decide to arrest you, they will. Now, I'm not saying there's a conspiracy to arrest, for example, Russell Brand, but I'm quoting Elon Musk, not one of my favorites. I don't hold him in high regard, but I am quoting him when he said, “Well, it's, I don't know if it's urgent, but it's convenient.”

These are tools. Similarly, in the USSR, when you became a dissident, when you disputed the authority of the Communist Party, you were diagnosed by a psychiatrist. and confined to a mental asylum. That's the USSR, not the United States. Make no mistake about it. Pathologize and criminalize are the two strategies of the elites to control the masses.

They're not going to work for long because they require consensus. For example, the criminal code reflects a societal consensus. What if we were to say tomorrow that we reject the criminal code? We think it's ridiculous. 90% of it is total nonsense. We're not going to abide by it, which is what happened during the COVID pandemic, where people rejected the law.

Law is only as strong and as good as the consensus in society. And this consensus is fraying. And ironically, it's fraying because everyone feels like a victim. And when you're a victim, you have no vested interest in the status quo, or even in society, or even in any collective. 

You know what's the first thing that happens to real victims, real ones, women who have been, who've been really raped, not the ones who are lying about rape, but the ones who've been really raped, women who've been really abused domestically. Do you know what happens, the first thing that happens to them? They lose most of their empathy. Again, politically incorrect, but factual. Victims are less empathic, a lot less empathic. They become very selfish. They can’t think about collectives. They neglect their families, their children, and they divorce. If everyone is a victim, this is the mindset, the hell with the collective. Everyone is on his own. We have a fragmented and atomized society with victimhood. And this is the irony of the situation. The elites are going to lose and there is going to be a mass revolution, I'm sure of it, precisely because of the victimhood movements that have rendered the social fabric.

If I'm a victim, why would I support a state that enabled my victimhood and empowered my abuser? Why? To hell with it. I think many black people are saying this. Why would I support a system that has enabled slavery for like 300 years and then until the 1960s, turned a blind eye to Jim Crow and now is using the police to kill me? Why would I support such a thing? 

Coy: So Sam, if we don't have a shared sense of reality to base a collective on per se, you've talked about how we shouldn't participate in democracies. And what kind of advice do you have for us, because we're looking at two existential threats as I see it, one presented by the left through Wokeism and the right through Trump.

So, I feel as though I'm staring down the barrel, you know, looking at the crosshairs here. You know, people like January 6th, we've talked about the insurrection. I think of it as an insurrection, not just a riot gone awry. And see, we can't even agree on that shared reality either in this country. What kind of advice do you have for us as Americans as we look at the 2024 election?

Vaknin: If you look at history, victimhood movements always led to an apocalypse. I can't recall offhand, a single counterexample. All victimhood movements lead to an apocalypse, and of course, the latest example is Nazi Germany and communist Russia, communist USSR. So it seems you need to go through the rabbit hole.

You need to experience an apocalypse. Apocalypse is what Schumpeter called creative destruction. It's like ground zero after 9-11, you know, you can rebuild. You need to go through this disaster. The victimhood movements must culminate. And Trump is a victimhood movement. I'm not making this distinction.

The victimhood movement, left and right, must culminate, must clash, must obliterate each other, and the whole social fabric and state institutions in the process. This is what happened in Nazi Germany. That's what happened in communist Russia. That's what happened in communist China.

It's inevitable. I don't think you can avoid this. I think January 6th was the first convulsion, the first gasp. By no means is it the end of anything. It's the beginning. It's absolutely the beginning. I think the situation on the left is getting worse by the day, in the sense that the left is grasping at straws, and the only straw it has is victimhood. And so, it is co-opting victimhood; it is institutionalizing victimhood; it is using victimhood as a form, as an oppressive tool. It is using other social control tools, such as the DSM, such as the criminal court, such as the tax code, using them in cahoots and in conjunction with victimhood. So the left is defining itself via oppressive victimhood, and the right is defining itself via violent victimhood.

There's no good ending to this story. Never has been, throughout human history, the same with Rome in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, before the barbarian invasions. There were victimhood movements, and Spartacus, have you heard of Spartacus? That was a victimhood movement. So, humans go through this.

As you build structures, as you build nation-states, and you build institutions, there is injustice perpetrated. We're all human. We make mistakes. We turn a blind eye. We're all human, you know. We need to accept our humanity. Victimhood movements do not accept the other's humanity. What's the main message of a victimhood movement? You should have never committed injustice. You should have never discriminated against me. But committing injustice and discriminating are human foibles and human flaws. We're all human. We learn. That's the meaning of learning. From less to more. From worse to better. That's learning!

Victims of movements say that you should have been fully formed from the very beginning. We don't allow you any space for mistakes, a learning process, a learning curve, or trial and error. You know, we don't allow this. You need to be punished for having done all this, even if you were an adolescent, for example, and you were fumbling with sex, you would still be accused of sexual assault because you should have known better than to touch this girl nonconsensually.

It's so there is this fantastic ideal view of humanity, that everything should be penalized. That's the oppressive nature of leftist victimhood ideology–everything should be penalized. So, I don't think there will be any forgiveness, any mercy or any pity. You don't need to look further than the communist revolution in Russia. There's no pity. Victimhood movements, ironically, come from suffering, but the main dream is to inflict suffering. This is the wet dream of victimhood movements. I'm going to torture my abuser, I'm going to put him in prison for the rest of his life, I'm going to take all his property, I'm going to, if possible, decapitate him, hang him or something.

These are aggressive movements. Victimhood is also driven by what we call negative affectivity—anger and envy. We're neglecting the role of envy in victimhood movements, the major driver of victimhood movements. So, I don't see any good ending. I think the United States is on the precipice and the European Union because states and institutions perpetrate injustice and discrimination because they are human. That's what humans do. They will always generate victims. Wherever there's an institution, there's a victim. Ask men about family courts. Any man will tell you, “I'm a victim of the family court.” Period. You create an institution, you create a victim. Always, someone's interest is served, someone's interest is hindered or obstructed. That's life. So, the only solution in the eyes of victimhood movements is to destroy all institutions. And here I come to an insight which is much neglected. Victimhood movements are anarchic; they're forms of anarchy. They don't want to truly reform anything. They want to punish and destroy. Exactly like right-wing victimhood movements.

Both left-wing and right-wing are focused on destruction. Out with the old, drain the swamp. Out with the old, in with the new, believing, stupidly, counterfactually, that new institutions will not create new victims, that it will never happen. The United States will go through its own Reichstag fire, its own, possibly, concentration camps, its own militias fighting each other, and its own balkanization and Lebanonization.

I don't think it's evitable. I think it's ineluctable. I think the same is beginning to happen in the European Union with the pressure of the war in Ukraine and so on and so forth. Today, a pro-Russian government was elected in Slovakia. It's starting, it's starting there. The fracturing of the European Union, and it's all based on victimhood.

In Slovakia, the government was elected. Its pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian government was elected because of a victimhood movement. Fico is a … there's a victimhood movement there that the Ukrainians victimize, the local Slovak, and so on.

I'm not optimistic in the short term, I'm more optimistic in the long term. But you have to go through this. 

Coy: Can you talk about the overlap between narcissistic abuse and totalitarianism? Obviously, a common denominator is control.

Vaknin: The narcissist is a cult leader and creates a cult, whether the cult is a two-member cult or a 20-member cult, or a 40 million-member cult, alluding to someone who is orange, it's still a cult. Totalitarian regimes are cults, writ large, and gone awry. They're cults. There's a we vs. they mentality.

There is a hermeneutic space of thinking so that critical thinking is discouraged, analysis is discouraged, and so on and so forth. There are repressive and oppressive measures, punitive codes, and so forth. Totalitarian regimes, therefore, are narcissistic. All totalitarian regimes are narcissistic, and therefore, whatever they do is by definition narcissistic abuse; it involves the falsification of reality and its replacement with a fantasy, whatever the fantasy may be, oppression and repression including via violent means, control which borders on micromanagement, distrust, pervasive distrust between the authorities and the population and vice versa, exploitation transfer of resources in an asymmetrical way. I'll go into it in some other, some other interview, maybe.

If you look at a microcosm, which is a narcissist and his wife, you're likely to learn everything you need to learn about Nazi Germany and communist Russia and Cuba and what have you, everything is identical. That renders narcissistic abuse a political issue. It's not necessarily only an individual issue because ultimately the polity, the body politic is comprised of individuals and households, and the more prevalent an incident of narcissism is, the more of these cells would be narcissistic.

So if you have a body where 40% of the cells are infected and narcissistic, that body would become narcissistic. If 40% of the population of the United States qualifies as subclinical narcissists, the United States will end up as a totalitarian country, because this is the political manifestation of narcissism.

So it starts, it starts at the bottom. Narcissism is a grassroots movement, and narcissists, of course, consider themselves victims. Ask any narcissist. There's no exception. All narcissists are victims. They always present themselves as victims. They're underappreciated at work, or the wife took all the property, or I don't know what. They're always a victim. So there's a confluence between narcissism and victimhood, and infection of the body politic, from the grassroots level. 

Coy: I'm so glad you said the grassroots level, because there's so much emphasis placed on the elite as though the pressure cooker is from the top down. But if you study totalitarianism, it's from the bottom up, and then the elite sort of mirror.

Speaking of existential threats, I'm going to segue a little bit here. You've said that the gender wars are more of an existential threat than even climate change. Can you expound upon that? 

Vaknin: Climate change is one of the biggest tragicomedies I've ever witnessed, and I'm not a young man, you may have noticed, and it's the greatest tragicomedy I've ever witnessed.

I am not a climate change denier. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind, not even a zero or one percent doubt in my mind, that it's real. Absolutely real. I think the most extreme scenarios are going to happen much faster than we think. That's not the issue. The issue is our response to climate change. We're responding, again, via the victimhood lens. The planet is a victim. That imposes on us obligations to remedy the situation. Here's the breaking news. There is nothing we can do about climate change. It's not only too late. But it requires sacrifices that no one is willing to make on the country level, on the societal level, and on the individual level.

I am not willing to do anything to prevent climate change. Period. I'm going to eat meat. I'm going to use air conditioning. I'm going to drive my car. I'm going to do everything as I always did and always will do. And that is the vast majority of the population. Ignore the activist nonsense or noise online.

So, rather than pretend that the planet is a victim, and we are the white knights, the saviors, the healers, and the rescuers–a mental health pathology, well recognized by the way [Karpman Drama Triangle]. Rather than do this, why not say climate change is a fact, let us adapt to it? What do we need to do to survive with climate change?

That is reality-based, evidence-based thinking. Our current reaction to climate change is a fantasy defense. Why is it a fantasy defense? Because it is not based on reality. And can never ever be based on reality. Period. There's nothing we can do to prevent or reverse or remedy climate change. That is reality.

Now, live with it. Adapt to it. That's what mature adults do. But we are not reacting as mature adults. We are reacting as people with delusional disorders. That's the example of climate change. Climate change is not and will never be an existential threat. We will move our cities inwards. Some countries will become tourist destinations, like Sweden. Some countries will bake, as they've always done. Climate change is not an existential threat. It will impose a heavy toll on our resources and ingenuity, but we're going to solve it. We're going to coexist with climate change. And here's something shocking. We're going to benefit from climate change. Climate change is a redistribution and reallocation of resources on a global level. Some countries will benefit. Some countries will not. That's the way it's always been in the last Ice Age, for example. That's it. That's reality. 

Not so, gender wars. The gender wars are a real existential threat. If men hate women, and women hate men, if women regard men as potential rapists, one and all, and men regard women as manipulative liars, one and all, if they wage war through the legal system, if they refuse to collaborate, for example on making children and forming families, that is an existential threat.

Already, in about 40% of the world, we are under the replacement rate. More people are dying than being born. Now you could say, but we don't need more people. We have 8.1 billion people on this planet! Yes, but of the wrong age. In industrialized societies, 26 percent of people are above the age of 65.

Actually, we are missing 80 million children if we take into account only the looming pension crisis. That is only pension. If you take into account infrastructure and other things, we are missing 300 million children. We need 300 million children. But who's going to make these children if men and women refuse to collaborate in forming families?

And when we do make children, look at the results. The children are mentally ill. Depression quintupled. Anxiety disorders tripled. Suicide rates among youngsters is up 48 percent in the last decade, because men and women don't collaborate. We need men and women to continue as a species. We don't need a specific temperature to continue as a species. I have no doubt that if the temperature goes up another 5 degrees, it's going to be mighty inconvenient, but we're going to survive. I do have a doubt, however, that if gender relations continue the way they are now we will survive as a species.

I have a grave doubt, and it's not getting better because of victimhood. Women and men have adopted the victimhood narrative. Women are men's victims and men are women's victims. When you are someone's victim, what incentive do you have to compromise, negotiate, and form a consensus?

You're demonizing the other. The other is an enemy. We call it in psychology a persecutory object. You don't negotiate with enemies, you vanquish enemies. And so this, this filters down. If you think that gender wars are limited to the bedroom, you would be very wrong, because, for example, in workplaces, 57% of men refuse to work with women. That’s the Pew Center, not Sam Vaknin. 57% of men are afraid to work or collaborate with women because they are afraid of allegations of sexual assault. And 40% of women! This in itself is a shocking number. The overwhelming vast majority of teenage boys are afraid to approach teenage girls, for the same reason, the MeToo movement. That's the overwhelming majority. They are afraid to approach teenage girls. In the United Kingdom, love bombing has been criminalized by the prosecution service. Love bombing is when on the first and second date I offer you marriage and I'm planning our future and I buy you flowers and I tell you that you're the most amazing person ever and I've made up my mind to marry you.

Okay, it's manipulative, it's laughable, if you ask me, but it's not criminal and yet they're criminalizing. We are criminalizing, and we have criminalized flirting. And every other known form of interaction between men and women well into the bedroom and the minutest prurient details of the sex, everything is criminalized, stigmatized, if not criminalized.

Coy: I don't know if you want to comment on censoriousness and the uptick therein, since you're talking about these control tactics from a lot of different angles. But, you know, also speaking of the consummate victim, Trump, why does he self-implode under all these legal battles, can you help us understand that?

Vaknin: Self implode? 

Coy: Everything’s falling apart, he's self-negating, you know, I mean, he brings this upon himself, all these legal troubles... 

Vaknin: He's leading in Iowa by 30 points. 

Coy: Yeah, it's well…we know that narcissism is a paradox. So he's both a child and a tyrant and all of this. So, you know, authoritarian.

Vaknin: I have a bit of a different take. I think to some extent he's engineering his troubles because they are the ticket. 

Coy: I see, because of victimhood. Okay, it all comes full circle. 

Vaknin: Yes, it renders him, it renders him the alpha victim, the apex victim.

Coy: I've been thinking lately he's going to win. 

Vaknin: All these prosecutions are the guarantee that he may win the primaries. I'm not talking about the elections, the Republican primaries. I'm almost convinced of this because he was losing momentum before the prosecutions. He was losing momentum.

I mean, people were talking about DeSantis and this and that. He was losing momentum and suddenly all these prosecutions…I don't know why they are bothering to debate. I mean, it's a waste of everyone's time. From Trump's perspective, this is great news, the more the better. Bring them on, these prosecutions. “I've never been more of a victim than I am now.” So what's the ticket? Victimhood. What did I say before? The confluence of victimhood and politics. It's an enormous risk because you have the levers of power. You have the red button. You know, you have…this is terrifying, it's absolutely terrifying.

North Korea engages in victimhood, a victimhood narrative, and many Western countries are on the way to North Korea. That's what they don't realize. They think if they have a parliament or Congress or whatever, they are not North Korea. But North Korea is a country founded on a victimhood narrative. To this very day, North Koreans present themselves, interpret their history, and manufacture nuclear missiles, because they are perpetual victims.

So you want to see the future? Look to North Korea.

Coy: There's been an increase of crime in America, just overall decline, degradation. Recently in Oakland, California…in Philadelphia, the Apple store was ransacked and looted. So people are talking about it more, also extreme environmental activism, you know, throwing soup at Van Gogh paintings, what have you, gluing your hands, do you think that this is all an expression of narcissism and/or victimhood ideology?

Vaknin: You recall that when we were much younger, you and me, I mentioned competitive victimhood. You need to be noticed, you need to become ostentatious, and you need to escalate your ostentatiousness, because the competition is wild, and multiplies by the day. So like, you're competing with two billion other victims. What's going to put you on the map? If you're competing for resources, you need to be on the map. 

This question of resources…there's a lot of money in victimhood, a lot of money sloshing around victimhood—donations, institutional money, even corporate money, social responsibility bullshit, corporate money, you know, there's a lot of money there.

So if you want a piece of a pie, a piece of the cake, you need to stand out. And how to stand out? Everyone is doing the same thing. Everyone is saying the same thing. They're all singing from the same book, you know. They're all on the same page. They're boring. Everyone's so boring. I mean, so you need to, I don't know, glue your hands or spit on Van Gogh, or I don't know what.

I mean, you need to do something outrageous and controversial, which would gain you media coverage. That is Donald Trump's secret. That is the genius of Donald Trump, that he always does the outrageous and controversial thing, and gains media exposure, free media exposure, and a lot of victimhood dollars.

Everyone wants to be Donald Trump nowadays; he is the role model, the one and only role model. 

Coy: So, we should probably start to wind down this conversation. I did want to close out by mentioning that I've been a contributor on a taxonomy for Michael Shellenberger and Peter Boghossian, mapping Cluster B psychopathology to Wokeism and of course, it's all been inspired by your work, and you're an advisor on this project as well. So that's coming down the pike shortly, so I wanted to highlight that. 

Vaknin: Wonderful classification system. Really wonderful, really. 

Coy: Good, I'm glad you think so!

Vaknin: I'm a very blunt type. 

Coy: I know you don't blow smoke! In closing, Sam, I just want to express my gratitude that there's a particular exquisite beauty with which you speak that you're bringing forward in your work.

It's truly an honor to speak with you today and to gain your insights as a fellow truth lover, and I am; I do thank you for your commitment to the truth. 

Vaknin: Thank you for having me and for resolving the issue of the recording. Thank you. 

Coy: My pleasure. Bye-bye!

Vaknin: See you again. Bye-bye! Don't be a victim!