Anti victim: Why we despise vulnerability

"Victim" - once a term for injustice suffered, today a verbal all-purpose weapon. In parliamentary debates and at the dinner table, the word becomes a reproach: those who moan disrupt harmony; those who show sensitivity are seen as elitist. To conclude our "Zwischen/Zeiten" series, award-winning journalist Alice Hasters analyzes this dangerous cultural shift. Why are we suddenly celebrating the "right of the strongest" as authentic again, while vulnerability is degraded to a stigma? Hasters dissects with productive intellectual disquiet how this new cult of toughness is preparing the ground for authoritarian rule. Paradoxically, these very systems create their own "victims" - whether the "threatened culture" or the "endangered prosperity" - in order to legitimize their exclusion. Alice Hasters endures the contradictions of our present and counters division with the political power of solidarity. We reflect with her on a society at a tipping point and, together with the nationally renowned bestselling author, ask the urgent question of how we can regain empathy as a political strength.

In cooperation with Colloquium politicum & Landeszentrale für politische Bildung