Now that the Government has asked the Law Commission to investigate whether new groups should be added to those already covered by hate-crime laws, the UK’s culture of grievance and victimhood has finally reached peak absurdity. Ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion, and transgender people already have protected status, but now it is possible that age and gender will also be added. Crimes against women may be considered to be motivated by misogyny, those against men could be driven by misandry, and offences against people over 60 the result of ageism.
Persuading parliament to classify your minority group as the victim of an oppressor group is only useful so long as your minority gains advantages. It has been possible to ensure quotas for public-sector jobs and experience the schadenfreude of seeing someone who disagrees with you hauled up before the courts and punished for a hate crime. But if everyone is a victim, what’s the point?
Back in 2006 I wrote a book called We’re (Nearly) All Victims Now.
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