Grievance politics, like negative partisanship, is when our political actions are motivated as a way to defeat or strike back at a group we hate rather than align with a cause we like. Tom Nichols, in his book Our Own Worst Enemy, talks about the danger we face as a country due to our self-perception in comparison to those slightly better off than we are. We don’t want progress or equality for humankind, at least not in a vacuum; we don’t even want to better our station. We just need to feel that we are doing just a little better than those around us, and if we don’t, we are filled with rage.
I was recently listening to a history podcast about the American Civil War, and an interview with Sarah Churchwell author of The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells. The book explains the incredible popularity of this movie which is essentially (very effective) Confederate propaganda, spinning a tale about white grievance against losing their human property and the status of being a slave owner. Essentially, in giving up a society based on slavery in which white people had the right to the unpaid labor of black people, they traded down (slightly) to a society in which white supremacy still governed every institution from policing to legislation. White men were still the bosses, the business owners, the legislators, the police, and so on. They set the terms. But that’s a (slight) come down if you are used to owning people and their labor directly. You have lost your wealth, your status, and it’s clear that you are seen as immoral by others, particularly the self-righteous northerners, many of whom were also hypocritical racists. Instead, they built a post-slavery society in which corporations and business owners’ interests were protected, but they no longer had to house, clothe and feed their workforce. They also had a harder time killing them legally.
The book Gone with the Wind was based on a novel by Margaret Mitchell. She was born in 1900, but her grandmother was raised on an antebellum plantation with slaves and frequently opined to Margaret about the “good old days,” her lost status, and a bygone way of genteel life. In order to sustain this idea of earned privilege that was ripped from her, she espoused many of the supporting myths such as the “happy Negro,” the benificent slave-owner, and the infantilization of black people. She believed that black people needed and even wanted to be owned by white people, that it was the natural order, one that everyone accepted. Of course, this bolstered her own innate sense of being a good person despite benefiting from slave labor.
Gone with the Wind was partly popular because it came out during the great depression, when most Americans could identify with having lost everything, with dealing with hunger and poverty, with a society that would have to endure many trials but needed to rally to be able to overcome these obstacles and achieve greatness again. It is still considered to be the most successful film of all time, grossing over $3.4 billion dollars adjusted to 2014 inflationary levels. Despite being a war movie, we never see a single battle. It is entirely from its heroine’s perspective, trying to hold onto her privilege while a war is lost around her. She often behaves despicably, but she will never admit defeat.
This myth of a lost south, of a world in which white supremacy was held at its most overt and unapologetic manifestation, is a story of white grievance. And it’s a powerful narrative to believe that you have lost something that was your due, something you believe you earned.
I’ve been listening to the Sunstone podcast reviewing each episode of the Hulu series Under the Banner of Heaven. A point Lindsay Hansen Park made that was news to me is that among fundamentalists, many of the grievance myths of Mormonism hold a lot of sway. Polygamy, for example, was a “privilege” and a status symbol for the men who practiced it. This idea of a lost privilege, access to sexual diversity and more heavenly glory, is behind the thinking of those in the series who form the School of the Prophets. In the series Stay Sweet, the FLDS policy was that men needed to have at least 3 wives to be of any consequence in the community. Since all marriages were arranged by the “prophet,” you had to stay in his good graces to be rewarded in this way. A few weeks ago, I was behind an FLDS couple in the grocery store in Cedar City, and just seeing the husband pissed me off. I have a much different idea of what his eternal reward will be than he does.
But there are many more grievance narratives out there, far more common than these two very obvious ones. These can be shared stories, such as the rise of incels (celibate men who want access to sex with beautiful women, but can’t get it through persuasion, so they band together online in misogynist anger and frustration), or the rise in angry passengers during the pandemic physically and verbally attacking flight crews in their refusal to comply with mask mandates, or conversely, their anger at other passengers who refused to comply. Or even a former president whose property is raided by the FBI (run by his own appointee) due to his failure to return confidential records at the end of his term. Or a shock jock podcaster whose phone records have been sent to the prosecution, revealing his many instances of perjury about his persecution of bereaved parents.
The heavy lifting a grievance narrative does is to turn a victimizer into a victim. Once you convince yourself you are a victim, you can begin justifying your perceived loss as grounds to blame and even harm others. Most situations are not that simple. Consider a few we may have heard in various forms. Who is the real victim here? Who is the perpetrator? Are the rescuers good actors or self-interested?
- Corporations are victims of regulation; they need help from legislators in order to protect American jobs.
- Gun owners are the victims of leftists who want to take away their freedoms; they need the NRA to protect their interests.
- Christians are the victims of LGBTQ people who demand support for their chosen perverted lifestyles through equal access to public goods and services.
- White people are the victims of affirmative action; they are being passed over for “less qualified” people of color.
This is identified in the Karpman Drama Triangle sometimes used in therapy. When engaged in this triangular game, a person sees everyone involved in a situation as either a victim, a persecutor, or a rescuer. If they see themselves as the victim, others are either rescuers (good guys who support and enable their victimhood) or persecutors (bad guys who cause their victimhood or challenge their grievance narrative). The trick is to see through this game for what it is, and to challenge our assumptions about victims, persecutors and rescuers.
The entire religious freedom argument feels like a grievance narrative to me, a byproduct of a pluralistic country in which some would like to be privileged within that pluralism. It’s why we are suddenly seeing the rights of conservative white Christians being expanded, even at the expense of women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ citizens. Would SCOTUS have sided with a football coach who was leading his team in a public observance of Muslim prayer? We all know the answer to that. Religious freedom, at least to be a white Christian, has always been protected in this country, but that freedom relies on pluralism, avoiding giving preference to a preferred sect. The dirty little secret is that the scale is tipped in favor of white Christian sects. For those who think otherwise, I’ll point out that we have never had an atheist who is the president. Atheists are even more reviled than Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses in national polling[1], and that’s saying something!
To return to Tom Nichols’ observation, we don’t need to build Zion, or at least that’s not really what we are trying to do; we just need to be better, to have less constraints on us, than other churches. We can handle a pluralistic society, if we must, so long as Christians are privileged above non-Christians. We embrace diversity, sorta, so long as BIPOC people act like white people and don’t get the most prestigious jobs over white candidates. If they ever do get a lofty position, we can declare “Racism is over!” and shout anyone down who disagrees. After all, one black person got the biggest job ever once. We are fine with equal pay for women, but only if they can operate in an environment built around men’s needs. If they want work-life balance or get pregnant, well, that’s on them; men are fine with how it is. Why do they need special treatment? That’s “reverse sexism,” we are told.
I’ve also been listening to a podcast that I can’t quite like, but almost, called Uncomfortable Conversations. The podcaster’s views are a little too conservative and smug for my taste, although I do agree with some of his points, partly. One point he often makes is that seeing oneself as a victim is never useful, even if it’s true, but especially when it’s not; as a bisexual man married to a man, he does not believe in LGBTQ victimhood, at least not in advanced western cultures. He does not believe the cake baker should have to bake the cake. I disagree with these specific points, but I do think victimhood can create problems. We should get past grievance narratives and solve real problems. The best way to do this is through more diversity, pluralism and basic protections and freedoms for all citizens. But I personally believe if you want to provide a service to the public, you can’t refuse to provide services due to homophobia, transphobia or misogyny. Maybe I wouldn’t compel you to do a good job I guess. I also don’t believe in refusing services to people from the other political party, but I can attest that one potential customer who called our business demanded that no Democrats provide the service he requested.
There are many grievance narratives in Mormonism, some of which we seem to be starting to distance ourself from, especially since the truth has come out that we haven’t always been the innocents we might have claimed to be. Mountain Meadows Massacre paints a new light on our persecution narrative, as do the Danites, the fact that the Expositor’s criticisms of Joseph Smith were basically true if inflammatory, and the fact that Joseph Smith had a gun that he shot during the mob attack at Carthage. As grown ups, it’s important we learn to question our own victimhood, the motives of “rescuers,” and how those we see as “persecutors” might see themselves as victims. Unfortunately, like most things, it’s easier to see the flaws in someone else’s thinking than it is in our own.
- Can you think of examples of grievance narratives you’ve seen?
- Have you ever realized someone you thought was a victim was a persecutor or questioned the motives of someone who was “rescuing” someone else?
- Have you let go of feeling like a victim by seeing the perspective of others?
Discuss.
[1] I blame proselyting.
Wheat & Tares 
This is a fantastic post thank you so much Hawkgrrrl . You made my day!
Great post.
I read an article a while back that suggested that the reason that the US is more religious than Europe is that the countries of Europe had a state religion. Many still do, such as England with the queen as head of the church. What happened, the author suggested is that cramming religion down people’s throats backfires. The very fact that one religion was preferred made people resent that religion specifically and didn’t help religion in general.
So, under this theory, if Christians really succeed in becoming the preferred religion, it will lead to people actually leaving Christianity. We can see it already with more and more people leaving the Evangelical churches. Their attitude of cramming their beliefs down other people’s throats and their sense of superiority is turning off their young people.
We see this dynamic on a small scale in Mormon families where too much pressure on children to conform to artificial standards of modesty, style, and behavior causes those children to rebel.
For myself, sometimes when I post on blogs like this, and mention certain facts of my childhood, people will respond with sympathy, emphasizing my victim status. I cringe, because I am no longer a victim. I survived. All that is in my past, except the battle scars. Sure, I limp pretty badly, but hey, I am up walking and I think that is pretty damned good.
And yet I know other survivors that have switched from being a victim of child abuse to being victims of drugs or alcohol, to being victims of themselves by cutting themselves or dangerous behavior, or just being the victims of some other man.
It is hard for victims to shed that victim mentality. They see how useful it is to excuse themselves from responsibility to adult.
It is the same for all the fake victims. They find seeing themselves as a handy excuse to explain their failure. If they don’t get the job, cry victim of reverse discrimination rather than looking in the mirror to figure out why they were less qualified, less attractive as a candidate for the position. It s just easier to blame something else than hold yourself responsible. And you get to maintain your self respect, even f that self respect is built on lies.
Very interesting points. It’s worth noting that when the US Supreme Court heard the first wave of religious freedom cases in the 1940s and 1950s, the Court was much more even-handed and was quite willing to support JW’s and Mormons and Catholics in the name of fair pluralism. I’m not so sure with the current Court. I have no doubt that all appointees are very capable legal scholars and judges, but it sure seems like below the surface some of the conservative appointees aren’t just conservative, they are closet Christian nationalists who harbor sympathy if not support for white privilege and a host of other conservative Christian myths. The recent significant decline in public confidence and support for the US Supreme Court suggests a lot of Americans can sense this. Trump ruined everything, even the Supreme Court.
Before those cases leveled the cultural/religious playing field, the religious culture and legal regime of the United States was what is now termed “informal establishment,” and the favored party was the Protestants. Everyone else was practically (if not formally) disfavored by law and tradition and culture. It seems we may be moving back in that direction. It might last a decade or two, but this simply cannot be a permanent shift. In the long run, demographics and legal precedent will move us back.
Last thought: the LDS religious freedom theme makes a lot of sense as a grievance narrative. It sure doesn’t make sense as fact or contemporary reality, a point which seems to be entirely lost on the membership and the leadership. It’s the same sort of manipulated religious and political myth used to stoke grievances and conflict in third-world countries. Maybe America is becoming a third-world country. It is certainly regressing.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or whether to cry when David Bednar attempted to claim back in 2020 (I believe) that religious freedom was under attack in the US. We’ve seen similar messages from other GAs recently too including DA Oaks. Nothing sells like sex and persecution.
A couple of possible examples. Here in Arizona we have a fairly strong contingent of ‘victims’ who lost the presidential election because of election fraud, which there is little evidence of. Every time I hear sound bites of those candidates they seem to play the victim card. Victims of deep state corruption, dead people voting, non functioning voting machines, voting that is too convenient, etc.
One personal example that I’m trying to resist is that of being a victim of the LDS church lies as a youth – or at a minimum that I’m a victim of the church not telling the whole truth. I think in many ways I am, in fact, a victim of that but when I dwell there on my victimhood I become bitter and am tempted to poison relationships with my parents or other loved ones because of their being (to a large extent) unwilling or ignorant accomplices. I think I sort of agree with the idea that acting like a victim may not help even if it’s true. Is expecting accountability playing the victim?
Here is why grievance myths are so hard to untangle: they’re based on crumbs of truth. Look at how Hitler rose to power in the 1930s. He addressed legitimate grievances that the Germans were facing (economic decline, Treaty of Versailles, unstable government) while wrapping those grievances into myths of Jewish conspiracies and white supremacy. By combining valid German struggles with egregious lies, Hitler directed Germany on a path of unspeakable destruction and horror.
In Latter-day Saint history, it is an undoubted fact that we were treated mercilessly by the state of Missouri in the 1830s. In 1857, President James Buchannan sent 1/3 of the US Army to Utah to put down a rebellion that didn’t exist while ignoring the growing secessionist movement in the south (his voter base). HOWEVER, those same grievances drove southern Utahans to commit a massacre because they seriously believed that the grievances they suffered in Missouri justified an appalling act against the Baker-Fancher party, whose only offense was being from the same state (Missouri) that Latter-day Saints fled from earlier.
If we (or any other groups) are not diligent in separating the myths from the facts of our historical grievances, then I shudder to think of what could happen…
Margaret Mitchell said it was not until she was nine years old that she realized that the South had actually lost the Civil War.
My late wife’s Southern ancestors, from about 1860 until the 1930s, had at least one Robert E. Lee Butler or Stonewall Jackson Herring, or whatever, in each family. Pity the poor men who had these names: Atticus Finch, in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” stated that men named after Southern generals made for slow, steady drinkers. Their unfortunate names meant that they could never escape the past. The South lost the war, but in many ways, “The Glorious Cause,” in all its toxicity, still controls the narrative.
Fortunately, Confederate flags are being increasingly confined to museums, where they belong.
Actually, Margaret Mitchell’s book is quite different in tone from the movie. As successful as the book was, it was completely overshadowed by the movie, which romanticized the South and its slave-holding past. But the book, even though Mitchell was no progressive, was actually rather critical and ironic about the Antebellum South.
Years later, Alexandra Ripley wrote a sequel to GWTW, called “Scarlett.” The critics trashed it. Ripley had the perfect comeback: “Margaret Mitchell was a much better writer than I am. But she’s dead!”
Taiwan Missionary: The way I’ve heard it described is that the South lost the war but won the peace, and unfortunately, that is pretty historically accurate. Slavery is definitely our country’s original sin, even though there have been enslaved people throughout history. Most of those civilizations who practiced it eventually fell or were substantially recreated. You can’t completely alter an economy without actually burning it all down and starting over.
Toad,
I have two thoughts with your question at the end of your post about are you playing victim to expect accountability. The first is that, no, you are not “playing victim” to say you feel victimized by the church lying to you about some of its history. If the church really told you things that you later learned are false, then that is real victimization. “Playing victim” is usually reserved for those who claim victim status when no one has actually done them any real harm. Example of Trump whining about having the election stolen from him when he actually lost the election fair and square. Or a white man insisting they lost a job to a less qualified woman, without having any proof of her qualification, just that because she is a woman, of course she isn’t as qualified. That is “playing victim”.
The second thought is probably more what you were getting at and that is that be expecting accountability, you are remaining in the victim role. You are putting your healing from the injury on hold while you wait, expecting accountability. This is where a lot of people get hung up. They feel they can’t move on, can’t forgive, unless there is some accountability. But don’t make your well being dependent on them being held accountable. Move on with your life whether or not they are ever held accountable. Stop caring about them and just worry about your own healing and moving on in life.
I may be naive, but I believe that the Church’s efforts towards religious freedom in the past was an effort to change the ethnocentric Wasatch Front towards, well, a more tolerant and Zion-like locale. Dallin Oaks signed the Williamsburg Charter for the Church twenty years ago, and I appreciated what he said about religious freedom then. He also contacted a Utah school district and talked them down from implementing a policy which would ban employees, volunteers and guest speakers from wearing religious emblems or apparel. I think he saved the district from a serious lawsuit.
Anyway I greatly appreciate the post. Victimhood can destroy our efforts the unite people into a faith community or a nation.
This is an interesting subject and conversation in the midst of me feeling like I gradually and then suddenly exist in a culture where everyone has some kind of victimhood story to tell. I’m fairly tired of all the whining, TBH. It sounds to me like Anna has a great deal of experience analyzing the finer points of victimization, and I agree with how she separates out components. I’ve thought previously that I was a victim of the church having an arms-length relationship with the truth, but I don’t feel that way anymore. The task of figuring out whether what they say is at all truthful is mine, as it is with any information with which I cross paths. The church has a creation myth, as does any belief system, and it’s subject to as much scrutiny as any other, even if and perhaps especially when they don’t like the scrutiny.
I can’t talk about victimization without also thinking about self awareness, which is hard for individuals and seems like an almost impossible task for cultures. The church’s culture of victimization is well established, but self awareness with regard to church actions and beliefs seems lacking. The church may have THOUGHT or SAID that the Baker-Fancher party originated in Missouri and had something to do with the assassination of Joseph Smith, but they were actually from Arkansas. Did church leaders know this? Did they care?
Similarly, Germany suffered greatly in the period after WWI, but much of their suffering was the product of their own behavior, which the nation didn’t seem to acknowledge. Indeed, the Marshal Plan was an effort to avoid the fallout created by Versailles and to dole out less punishment while taking an active role in reshaping the German nation and culture to perhaps avoid similar calamities in the future. As I understand it, modern Germany is very much aware of the nation’s past sins and erects monuments to the victims to support long-term collective cultural memory.
Now, can cultures become more self aware without overcoming national tragedies? I don’t think so, no. The Civil War qualifies as a national catastrophe, and millions still rewrite the history and embrace the symbolism used by the south.
As I started reading the post, I was thinking about the Karpman triangle, and then you mentioned it with a link (to Karpman DT wikipedia page) which i skimmed to refresh my memory, and check if they disclose the ways the tool is used badly. Kudos to them for recognizing that the important part of identifying true victimhood from a sham grievance is honesty in facing who is truly acting out which role; how they are going about it. I tend to mistrust the Karpman triangle because abusers glom right on and cast themselves a victim of whoever they’ve harmed. But it can be a useful analysis tool when applied with honesty and experience, by examining the roles in specific relationships, to determine what truly fits an individual, and how using the role may cast a shadow over an individual’s power and choices by which they can change something, or remain entrenched in a status quo for the perceived benefits.
I loved GWTW (the novel) and read it several times when I was younger, but it and the movie played a role in normalizing in my mind, the romanticized origins of the Klan, and other profoundly racist attitudes that I once was surprised to find in myself, rather later in my life. I don’t think it should be banned outright, but it should be read in the context of an artifact of history that normalizes American White supremacy, and definitely should include the perspective of current Black reviewers. Caveat emptor: there are better things to study to see the true colors of White supremacy, but learning from contemporary Black readings of GWTW clued me into my own romantic notions from the novel that needed a reality check.
The biggest grievance narrative I’ve seen recently is the way MAGA republicans are reacting to the DoJ/
FBI raid to retrieve documents that presumably were illegally removed from the classified pool in the Trump presidential papers, now part of the National Archives. We’ll know about that sooner or later, but in the meantime some folks characterize it as the worst travesty ever perpetrated on a totally innocent former President who is just minding his own business trying yet again to get back into the Oval Office, where he can truly make another 4 years of Patriotic Changes to our democracy, that Worthy and Sensible Voters want, the way Our Founders intended – that cannot be undone easily, maybe not at all.
Do I sound sarcastic? Actually I’m dreadfully concerned.
Interesting thoughts.
Back in December 2020, James Kimmel wrote in Politico that “I am a violence researcher and study the role of grievances and retaliation in violent crime. Recently, I’ve been researching the way grievances affect the brain, and it turns out that your brain on grievance looks a lot like your brain on drugs. In fact, brain imaging studies show that harboring a grievance (a perceived wrong or injustice, real or imagined) activates the same neural reward circuitry as narcotics.”
“This isn’t a metaphor; it’s brain biology. Scientists have found that in substance addiction, environmental cues such as being in a place where drugs are taken or meeting another person who takes drugs cause sharp surges of dopamine in crucial reward and habit regions of the brain, specifically, the nucleus accumbens and dorsal striatum. This triggers cravings in anticipation of experiencing pleasure and relief through intoxication. Recent studies show that similarly, cues such as experiencing or being reminded of a perceived wrong or injustice — a grievance — activate these same reward and habit regions of the brain, triggering cravings in anticipation of experiencing pleasure and relief through retaliation. To be clear, the retaliation doesn’t need to be physically violent—an unkind word, or tweet, can also be very gratifying.” (The essay is called “What the Science of Addiction Tells us About Trump.”)
So it is of even more interest that a big part of addiction recovery (whether AA, NA, or anything else) involves a process of “dismantling the grievance story”, as part of the “searching and fearless moral inventory”, that is removing the beam from one’s own eye that a person might subsequently see more clearly (Matt. 7:2-5). Recovery involves turning one’s critical eye inward, rather than outward. In Jan 1833 Joseph Smith wrote, “Strange as it may appear, yet it is true, mankind will persist in self-justification until all their iniquity is exposed, and their character past redeemed, and that which is treasured up in their hearts be exposed to the gaze of all mankind.” (TPJS, 19)
You are not part of a “marginalized group” if you have the sympathy and moral/financial support of the media, the mainline churches, the entertainment world, the corporate CEOs, the universities, and the political class. All these institutions are all excited and work extra hard to promote lesser qualified colored people over the most marginalized group straight, white, men.
Excellent post Hawkgrrl! I was puzzled when I first heard the religious freedom rhetoric coming from the church. As several other commenters have noted, it makes complete sense as a grievance narrative.
Some of the church’s conservative base became discontent with the church’s handling of the pandemic regarding vaccines, masks, etc. I’m wondering if perhaps the religious freedom rhetoric is a way to get some of those conservatives back on board. The religious freedom grievance narrative could be the church’s way of promoting unity and purpose amongst conservatives, through creating an outside threat that everyone can pull together to fight against. That’s just a theory – I hope I’m wrong about it.
GWTW was one of my favorites. However a couple of years ago, I reread it. I was horrified by the racism and misogyny in the book. I was also shocked that I could have possibly overlooked the horrific othering of women and Black people. Perhaps it’s an accurate portrayal of how Southerners believed and behaved, but I just placed my well-worn copy in the Little Library and will never recommend or read it again.
Mark I, nice try, but that’s a swing and a miss. A free press writing articles about marginalized people isn’t the same as having power.
I’m liking this discussion of grievance politics and the Karpman Triangle. One of the things I find most interesting is how much easier it is to see the Triangle in operation when the perceived victim is from an out-group or makes claims of victimization one doesn’t believe are legitimate. It’s a lot more difficult to see and get out of the Triangle when one’s inside it one’s self or can identify with the victim group. For example, Hawkgrrrl makes mention of Donald Trump, incels, and gun owners. These so-called “victims” come from the political right and and their dysfunctional perceptions are relatively easy to call-out by those looking at it from the left or who otherwise don’t identify with the complainant. It’s much harder to see the same style of drama traps at work when it’s on the other foot. Still though, the drama traps are just as plentiful and equally intoxicating. Instead of Hawkgrrrls examples, consider the BLM protester that insists unarmed black men are being disproportionately singled out by police. Or in the wake of the recent Supreme Court abortion ruling on Dobbs, consider the activists who believe Kavanaugh and his ilk just committed “violence” against women. It’s hard to see the same Karpman Triangle at work in these examples also. But it’s indeed alive and well on both sides of the aisle.
I’ve had a lot of mixed personal experience with affirmative action. But the statistics are interesting. Companies that practice it have more productive work forces overall.
That tells me that the effects of discrimination are still ongoing (otherwise affirmative action would reduce productivity).
In addition I was struck by Dallin Oaks speaking on the limits of religious rights and how a society needs compromises and not absolutes.