According to the logic of intersectionality (the ideological framework of progressive identity politics), an offense can only go in one direction: from a privileged group to a marginalized, victimized group. Black people cannot offend whites; gay or trans people cannot offend straight or cis people, and so on....
The argumentative circle that is used here is obvious: the formation of the offending community is based on the feeling of being offended . But not everyone has the right to be offended, because only the members of a recognized victim group have this right. Thus, victimization and victim identity are mutually dependent, and no one can say what is hen or egg here. You have to belong to the victim group in order to be able to present a politically exploitable grievance, and you have to be offended in order to belong to a victim group.
The goal of classic left-wing politics is to fight inequality and injustice. Victims should become people with equal rights. The new identity politics, however, insists on the victim status of certain groups because it promises greater political success than equality with everyone else . This method becomes its own victim, so to speak. Once a group has asserted its victim status and enforced it as the only legitimate source of power, the end of its victimhood status would be the end of its power. This is why new sources of offense must constantly be found and tapped and why every additional victim group represents a threat.
First off, no one group has a monopoly on being arseholes. They exist in all walks, creeds and colours, to deny this is racist in of itself. What really marks the difference is the impact of such arseholery. For example: Say we had two supermarket employees, both equally sexist and racist but one was the store manager and the other the trolly dolly. We can see how HR would want to deal with the former PDQ whilst the latter could mutter under his breath all day long. Similarly, straight white males whilst they may occasionally encounter some form of discrimination, are unlikely to have it seriously affect their employment prospects and are far from being underrepresented in government.
Victim groups are generally the province of the right. It is they who are constantly clutching their pearls and hurling accusations of bias eg Trump's "witchhunts, left-wing media and one site member who will remain nameless (cough, CourtJester) who claimed that Google was left-wing biased. Whereas the left tends to be too busy righting actual wrongs and trying to make our society more of a meritocracy than it otherwise might be. ( a goal that you might think a free-market ideology might aspire to).
This notion of victimology can only be viewed as an easy cop-out by the establishment. Rather than addressing any real problems and inequality in society. Take any criticism of Israel for example, to say it all stems from antisemitism is as spurious as denying there may be elements that are.
The right so often loses all of its credibility. They talk a big game about freedom etc, but when confronted with actual instances of oppression, they close ranks and fall into racist troupes. Eg The George Floyd case. One might think an ideology that espoused small government and individual freedom might be equally aggrieved by an actual cop's knee on an actual citizen's neck regardless of their race. One might consider Fox News calling on the party of Lincoln to join in BLM protests instead of vilifying them and engaging in victim blaming, Sadly this was not the case and if it were an isolated incident, there would be no discussion here. Is it any wonder how many black people might not like us as a bunch?
Of course, we could all just pretend that racism, antisemitism, misogyny, and anti-LGBTQ+ no longer exist within our best-of-all possible worlds and any talk of such is blatant victimology. This would be very convenient for the ruling elite as the status quo would be permanently maintained and none of their privileges that they deem as rights would be in danger.
"Progressive" is an irrelevant term. This term has been claimed by so many people with opposing ideologies, it is completely useless, as are the arguments for and against "progressive" ideologies.
To me, these days, the term progressive, at least when it comes to economic policy positions, is just a replacement for socialist, since the corporate media, and our whole political system, have poisoned and distorted the term socialism, into a scare word that is used recklessly and so loosely, that it has become meaningless, at least in political discourse by Repubs and conservatives, so progressives are really socialists, who are trying to get around and work around, all the scare tactics and propaganda being used against them.
Ummmm, what?