# The Idolatry of Victimhood  ## Metadata - Author: [[archive.is]] - Full Title: The Idolatry of Victimhood - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: British politics now elevates victims above other concerns, shaping laws and inquiries. This focus can lead to costly, slow, and unbalanced policies that ignore trade-offs. Treating social failures as individual tragedies weakens collective responsibility and harms democracy. - URL: https://archive.is/uKUQK ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > Trade-offs are ignored when victims campaign. Martyn’s law, named after a victim of a suicide-bombing at a concert in Manchester in 2017, requires any venue that can hold more than 200 people to have an anti-terror plan, even if it is a village hall. It is likely to cost businesses about £170m ($225m) a year to comply and bring about £2m of benefits, mainly from lower crime. A careful balancing of interests is close to impossible if a victim’s mother is involved. “This would not have happened without your campaigning,” said Sir Keir at a meeting with Martyn’s mother, rightly. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k9f9q51pnd7655h1cxktkmxn)) > Allowing victims a hallowed status in British politics ignores the fact that state failures are collective scandals. Hillsborough could easily have happened at another stadium to other fans. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k9f9sdwr3tc5j88aw71wzrxd)) > In this way British politics becomes an autocracy of lived experience, in which politicians advise and victims decide. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k9f9vhr0cyx82q4e0hq2945t))