In this episode of Based Camp, Simone and Malcolm Collins dive into one of the strangest social phenomena of our time: why does public sympathy for aggressors often increase after horrific attacks? From 9/11 to Charlie Hebdo to October 7th, they examine the shocking data showing spikes in pro-Muslim and pro-Palestine sentiment right after major acts of violence.

Simone lays out her theory: the concept of “victim blaming” was originally created to address real systemic injustices but was hijacked and weaponized in the 2010s by feminist movements (SlutWalks, MeToo, “Believe All Women”). What began as a tool against unfair bias became a reflexive shield that makes it taboo to assign any responsibility to victims — even when they are the aggressors. They also discuss the rise of external locus of control, cultural shifts on the right, demographic realities, and how women helped turn “victim blaming” into a societal mind virus.

Show Notes

WHY

* Did muslim sentiment in the USA improve after 9/11

* Did muslim sentiment in France improve after Charlie Hebdo’s offices were subject to a terror attack?

* Did pro-Palestine sentiment spike after the October 7th attacks on Israel?

It may come down to a concept that was created to address unfair bias against people who were genuinely screwed over by societal forces but ultimately co-opted and ruined by… women.

So let’s discuss how women appropriated and ruined the concept of victim blaming.

The Mystery of Victim Blaming

Since when did victims become beyond reproach?

Our immediate hunch is that this happened because the urban monoculture elevates victims and holds victims to be blameless, but WHY WOULD SOMEONE DO THAT?

We checked Google ngram viewer for “victim blaming” and were kind of shocked:

* The term “victim blaming” only emerges around 1970

* From 1970 to 2010 Victim blaming shows modest linear growth

* And after 2010 its trajectory changes into exponential growth, which only after 2020 started showing signs of a shift to mere exponential growth

Google Trends shows similar results (the term would only spike with incidents, then go back to zero, before 2010).

To add to this: @NotAldousHuxley had observed that pro-muslim sentiment spiked after 9/11 and anti-Israel sentiment spiked after the October 7th attack Palestinean attack on Israel

This suggests some sort of pathological favoritism toward whoever might be seen as a potential victim, but I found this hard to believe so I double checked:

Victim Blaming Ideology in Action

Pro-Muslim Sentiment

What’s

Pew research found that pro-Muslim sentiment rose in the US after 9/11 and in France in 2015 after the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s offices (the publication that published an illustration of the prophet Muhammad).

From their article: “A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 76% in France say they have a favorable view of Muslims living in their country, similar to the 72% registered in 2014. Meanwhile, the percentage with a very favorable opinion of Muslims has increased significantly, rising from 14% last year to 25% today. Attitudes toward Muslims tend to be more positive on the political left in France, but ratings improved across the ideological spectrum.

The pattern is similar to what we found in the U.S. following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Favorable views of Muslim Americans rose from 45% in March 2001 to 59% in November of that year. The increase took place across partisan and ideological groups, with the biggest improvement occurring among conservative Republicans.”

Pro-Palestine Sentiment

After the October 7th attacks, Gallup found that Americans shifted toward being more sympathetic toward palestineans:

The change is most pronounced in young people:

And least pronounced in old people:

The Creation and Appropriation of Victim Blaming

Before Victim Blaming

Genuine victim blaming is old: There are plenty of religious texts that frame victims as sinners.

Before the term was popularized, people sometimes pointed to the “just world hypothesis”: That people want to believe the world is fair, so they sometimes assume victims must have done something to deserve their suffering.

Origins

Psychologist William Ryan introduced the phrase “blaming the victim” in his book of the same name, published in the 1970s

* He developed the concept to critique explanations of poverty and racism that shifted responsibility from unjust social structures onto marginalized communities themselves.

* Ryan’s work specifically responded to Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report on Black poverty, arguing that such analyses implicitly blamed Black families for structural inequalities.

* So Ryan’s critique there is pretty fair, as it does seem that after 1950 a bunch of policies changed that did really screw over black families and we’ve covered them in various episodes

* 1950s Black Families Where Twice as Stable as Their White Counterparts: The Theft of Black Culture

Exponential 2010s Growth

What happened starting in 2010???

TL:DR Victim blaming got primarily hijacked by women about women who then reflexively internalized that it was NEVER acceptable to blame women.

Specifically:

* 2013: SlutWalk framed victim blaming as a central injustice

* The 2013 SlutWalks were a series of global, grassroots protest marches held in cities worldwide—including New York, Chicago, and various university campuses—to protest rape culture, victim blaming, and slut-shaming.

* The movement first originated in 2011 after a Toronto police officer advised university students to “avoid dressing like sluts” to prevent sexual assault. By 2013, the marches had expanded into a massive, worldwide phenomenon

* Demonstrators, primarily young women but open to all genders, took to the streets in clothes that were conventionally considered “provocative” or “slutty,” alongside signs with slogans like “Still not asking for it”.

* 2017: #metoo became a global phenomenon when actress Alyssa Milano encouraged women to use the phrase following the sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein.

Broadly:

* Universities, NGOs, and government agencies began publishing extensive material on “rape culture” and “victim blaming,” making the term standard in training manuals, awareness campaigns, and policy documents

* Psychological and criminological research on victim blaming expanded, including studies of attribution, just‑world beliefs, and rape myths, so “victim blaming” appeared more often in titles, abstracts, and key terms.

* Professional bodies (e.g., police oversight offices, social services, health institutions) issued formal guidance documents on “ending victim blaming” or “reducing victim blaming in investigations,” further institutionalizing the term.

* Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and later Instagram and TikTok enabled rapid diffusion of feminist and social‑justice terminology; calling out victim blaming became a recognizable move in online debates.

Victim blaming was literally censored

* Facebook’s Community Standards defined bullying and harassment as content that “purposefully targets private individuals with the intention of degrading or shaming them” (e.g., targeted shaming, altered images, doxxing, or repeated unwanted contact). Victim blaming would be categorized as bullying or harassment so long as it entailed direct, targeted degradation of a specific victim (e.g., shaming a named survivor in a harassment campaign),

* Twitter’s Rules prohibited abusive behavior, targeted harassment (e.g., one-sided insults, threats, incitement), and hateful conduct.

Wait—is this about a rise in an external locus of control?

The most direct and frequently cited peer-reviewed evidence comes from a 2004 cross-temporal meta-analysis published in Personality and Social Psychology Review:

* The researchers analyzed 97 samples of college students (N=18,310) and 41 samples of children ages 9–14 (N=6,554) from 1960 to 2002.

* Locus of control scores became substantially more external (about 0.80 standard deviations) over this period.

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