To be a right winger these days, you have to be good at playing the victim. Victim-playing defines the behaviour of right wingers from the Prime Minister and his in-fighting colleagues, throughout the right-wing business world, all the way down to the rank and file right-wing-trolls on social media. This is not just an Australian right-winger thing – but rather a worldwide movement. Play the victim. Take responsibility for nothing. Zero self-awareness. Here are some examples:

Men’s rights activists. I’ve watched The Red Pill. The men in this documentary claim that men are victims of society, more so than women. They provide evidence for these claims that include that men undertake more dangerous professions, and when there is a plane crash, women and children get saved ahead of men. They say this is evidence of society treating men as dispensable, a form of discrimination against poor, weak, underprivileged men. These men have massive gripes about family court custody decisions (which last time I checked are designed to benefit the children) and obsess about the problem of male suicide. I’ve got no issue, by the way, with men campaigning for more attention to be paid to male suicide. But I don’t see why they need to talk-over, and put down, feminists campaigning for less sex-discrimination, more gender equity, and less violence against women by claiming MEN are the victims of society. Ever tried to talk about domestic violence and had the discussion railroaded by men who claim that ‘not all men are violent’ and therefore they are the victim of any action to stop women being hurt and killed? Clearly women have much more reason, overall, to fight societal status quos which keep us from achieving life-equity with men. If this situation changes in the future, I’ll be the first to celebrate.

Speaking of male suicide, this issue was also used to back up Liberal Mark Paton’s bizarre claims of victimhood for ‘heterosexual, white men over 30 with jobs’, who are apparently victims because ‘they’re not included in anything’. The ‘anything’ Paton is speaking of referred to policies such as the one being discussed in the ACT Assembly when Paton made his outrageous claims – programs to improve inclusion of women, gay and lesbian people, refugees, Indigenous Australians and vulnerable members of the community. Not content to agree that these groups are the victims of marginalisation, discrimination, inequality and systemic disadvantage, Paton wanted the subject changed to talk about his preferred group of victims who apparently don’t get enough of the victimhood pie: middle aged, economically comfortable, white men. The men who dominate and run every institution in the country. What the fuck? So desperate to be the victim, and to reject any claims of privilege, right wingers are resorting to satirising themselves. And by the way, since when is victimhood a pie? Can’t men be disproportionally the victims of mental illness leading to suicide, and not have to take this victimhood away from other just-as-worthy discussions of other victimised groups in society?

Let’s look at Malcolm Turnbull. Have you noticed how he can’t talk about any policy for which his government is responsible, a government that has been in power for four years, without blaming all his obvious problems, contradictions, failures and inadequacies on the previous Labor government? That’s right – Turnbull, the man who threw in over a million dollars of his own pocket money to help himself get the top job, plays the victim card at every possible opportunity. It’s revolting really. And all his colleagues do it too. Whether it be energy and climate change policies (who exactly did cancel the Carbon Price which was working to cut emissions?), school funding (the Liberals have adopted a less-good version of Labor’s Gonski policy), employment (let’s not forget who told the car manufactures to leave the country) and any other policy you can think of – nothing is Turnbull’s responsibility. No, he will whinge and whine and cry and play a tiny violin as he begs to be the victim.

This behaviour has become endemic in right-wing politics. Donald Trump is the master of the victim card. Look at his Twitter feed and see all the things he complains about; painting himself as the poor-hapless-victim-of-other-people’s-nastiness. Recently he complained that people were writing books about him who didn’t know him. The President of the United States. Everyone in the media (except his friends at Fox) are out to get him and are making things up about him – poor little down trodden him. And, just like Malcolm, anything that is wrong with America is NOT HIS FAULT – it’s all Obama’s fault. But, conveniently, everything that is going well is all thanks to him. Amazing how he takes responsibility for only one side of the ledger. Typical card-carrying-victim, teaching all his followers how it is done.

The loony right in Australia make a living out of victimhood. Recent examples abound, but include Cory Bernardi claiming a charity drive where school students wear school tunics to raise awareness of the importance of female education is, apparently, evidence of a plot to do away with gender. You seriously couldn’t make this shit up. Pauline Hanson wearing a burqa to parliament to raise awareness of how she feels victimised by multiculturalism, in an act of religious intolerance and blatant bigotry, is my new definition of hypocrisy. The strange thing in all this is that those doing the discriminating – those exhibiting text-book racist, bigoted, homophobic, intolerant, aggressive, freedom-squashing discriminatory behaviour – are painting themselves as the victim. The victims, obviously, are those being discriminated against. Not the villains doing the discriminating. Apparently, this is not obvious enough to right wingers.

Same goes for those voting ‘no’ to marriage equality – who are all over social media grabbing every victim card in site – who claim to be the ones suffering from the yes campaign. Tony Abbott’s alleged headbutting is just one example. The Trolls are on-message, claiming to be bullied about their discriminating ideas. Poor, silenced Lyle Shelton, head-spokesmen for the no campaign, who has been given more media opportunities than the three leading yes campaigners put together, claims that no campaigners like him are being bullied and intimidated.

My message to these people, who are literally campaigning to encourage no voters to reject the rights of gay people to do what non-gay people are allowed to do, and are campaigning against gay peoples’ rights in unrelated areas, such as their right to have children, and their right to feel safe in educational environments, is this: you are not the victim. The victims are gay people. And there’s more. Those blocking the rights of gay people are the villains of this story. If you don’t like being called the villain, if you don’t like being called homophobic, racist or bigoted, stop being these things. And stop claiming to be the victim, claiming to be bullied, when it’s pointed out to you that your behaviour is bad. The person in the wrong, like any 5 year old knows, is not being bullied when they’re told to stop misbehaving. This is a very simple idea which seems to be so easily muddied by right wingers, you’d swear their holding training workshops to show people how it’s done.

The business community. Those people who have managed to achieve a 40% increase in their profits over the last four years, while, coincidentally, also managing not to give their workers a pay rise, are represented by the chief whingers, otherwise knowns as business lobbyists. This week the Business Council of Australia were whinging that they want stability in energy and climate policy because uncertainty is bad for business. That’s right. The very same lobbyists who refused to accept Labor’s Carbon Price policy, who campaigned against it alongside the Liberals and a complicit media for three years, are now say they are the victim of instability in climate policy. Seriously folks, you couldn’t make this shit up. Have the business owners and ridiculously over-paid executives ever wondered how their workers cope with huge household power bills when their household incomes have remained stagnant for years. Have they considered the victims of climate change? I get it – there’s no time for sympathy when you’re busy playing the victim yourself.

I’m fed up with the lot of them. Right wingers need to grow a spine, stop whinging and trying to find ways that they are the victim, when, in almost every case, it just so happens that they are not an innocent bystander, but are actively engaging in villainous behaviour. Progressives need to get better at calling out right winger’s false claims of victimhood as we go about our core business of making things better for the real victims in society. Victim-playing is a potent strategy of right wingers to deflect blame away from their actions, and it’s time we stopped letting them get away with it.