Liberalism and victimhood

Stephen Long ( Speaking of God: Theology, Language and Truth (Eerdmans Ekklesia) ) summarizes Alain Badiou’s complaint against the subordination of “truth to a liberal politics ruled by the language of rights and diversity”: “For Badiou the language of ‘rights’ requires that our political bonds are grounded in evil because we must first be victims who need protection before we can be political agents. ‘Diveristy,’ ‘the other,’ and ‘inclusivity’ merely repeat what already is. This language only tells us what we already know; we live in a world with people different from us. But in modernity this emphasis must always be viewed as a potential threat, and so it is emphasized. Then rights can be granted to protect us from it.”

If Badiou is right, the politics of victimhood is not an aberration from liberal order, but something close to its essence.