SMOKERS’ CORNER: VICTIMHOOD NATIONALISM

In May 2025, the Pakistani armed forces achieved a major victory against their traditional adversary, India. Following this milestone, the state and government orchestrated a rapid ascent for Pakistan on the global stage, by successfully facilitating a dialogue between the United States and Iran at a time when the conflict between those two nations was rapidly escalating. The Pakistani state is now leveraging these dual successes as a foundation upon which to construct a more unified sense of nationalism. This is a rare occurrence in the contemporary era. This rarity is not simply because the situation concerns Pakistan, a country that has endured years of demonisation, largely as a result of specific military and ideological misadventures. Rather, it is because, as the South Korean historian Jie-Hyun Lim observes, modern nations have increasingly stopped constructing their core identities around grand victories, choosing instead to actively compete over who has suffered the most. In his 2025 book Victimhood Nationalism, Lim observes that when a nation internalises the memory of a past tragedy, it effectively grants itself a collective moral immunity. Political leaders then weaponise this shared trauma to fuel nationalism while conveniently ignoring their own historical flaws. Victimhood in this regard has evolved beyond a psychological response to suffering. It has transformed into a strategic political tool. This shift elevates grievance into a persuasive collective narrative. As the London School of Economics academic Lilie Chouliaraki writes in her 2024 work Wronged: The Weaponisation of Victimhood, modern political actors across the ideological spectrum now routinely claim the status of being a victim to shield themselves from critique and rally popular support. Lim sees Israel as a prominent example. Israel’s existentialist purpose is deeply shaped by collective trauma, specifically through the memory of the Holocaust. This horrific memory has been sanctified and thoroughly embedded in Israel’s state narrative. To paraphrase Lim, when external critics dissect and censure Israel’s military actions, or its treatment of Palestinians, the Israeli state immediately invokes the memory of the Holocaust. States such as Israel and India are increasingly weaponising a perceived ‘suffering’ to steer their national and international discourse, while Pakistan is now attempting to build its nationalism on achievement rather than grievance By framing Israel’s geopolitical conflicts as extensions of historical anti-Semitism, Israeli leaders use past victimisation to justify Israel’s aggressive policies and deflect accountability. This strategy is frequently deployed in various ways by wealthy Israeli lobbies across political, social and cultural arenas. Whether through funding political parties and individual politicians, or financing social media platforms, Hollywood films and television series, these efforts continuously refresh the memory of historical Jewish victimhood. This remains the case despite the fact that there are many Jewish people who view Israel as an aggressive Zionist state rather than a Jewish sanctuary. In fact, Jewish academics who have criticised Israel have often been labelled as anti-Semites by right-wing Zionist groups, and falsely accused of being Holocaust deniers. These targets include several distinguished intellectuals, such as Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Ilan Pappé, Avi Shlaim and Norman Finkelstein. Illustration by Abro Embracing past traumas as the foundation for nationalism is not a new phenomenon, but it has witnessed a spike in recent times. According to Lim, victimhood has become the ultimate source of global moral authority and sympathy. To Chouliaraki, victimhood can be framed as an ongoing, open-ended threat. This allows political leaders to manipulate public anxiety, inflating geopolitical disputes into existential crises by convincing their citizens that any external critique is simply a continuation of historical persecution. When India launched cross-border airstrikes into Pakistan in May last year, India justified its actions by accusing Pakistan of harbouring the militants responsible for a terrorist attack in Pahalgam. The claim did not carry any actionable proof and remains unverified. The Indian adventure backfired when Pakistan’s retaliatory response resulted in the downing of six to eight Indian fighter jets. Confronted with this reality, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to national television in apparent disbelief. His statement, “Instead of helping us crush the terrorists, Pakistan attacked us! [ Unhon ne hum pe hi hamla kardiya! ], ” did more than just broadcast his surprise. It can be perceived as a micro-manifestation of the victimhood nationalism that the Modi government is actively shaping in India. It relies heavily on the premise that the region’s Hindu culture and faith were violently suppressed during more than five centuries of Muslim rule between the 13th and 19th centuries. Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, is deeply rooted in this specific grievance. Within this framework, Hindu nationalism views Muslim-majority Pakistan as a contemporary continuation of this historical trauma and slight, thereby constructing a national identity around the collective memory of ‘past brutalities’ committed against an innocent Hindu populace. Ironically, though, there is more evidence debunking this view than there is confirming it. In his 2004 book Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States, the noted American historian Richard M. Eaton demonstrated in detail that, out of tens of thousands of temples in India, roughly 80 documented cases of destruction or desecration occurred under Muslim rulers. A classic historical example of victimhood nationalism is the ‘Lost Cause’ myth propagated in the American south after the Civil War (1861-65). Defeated pro-slavery Confederate sympathisers completely recast their military loss as a heroic, doomed struggle for state sovereignty against ‘greedy’ northern states. The myth continues to be flexed by right-wing Americans based in the country’s southern states. It is a form of ‘white nationalism’ constructed on a ‘heroic tragedy. ’ When a state anchors its identity in past suffering, it often develops a paranoid outlook. For decades, Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe anchored the state’s identity entirely in the trauma of British colonial exploitation. While these grievances were legitimate, weaponising them as the sole basis of nationalism led to disastrous economic consequences, such as official land-grab policies and hyperinflation. Contrariwise, South Korea built its modern identity not by dwelling on the brutal trauma of the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945), but by rallying around collective triumph of rapid post-war industrialisation and technological dominance. By anchoring national pride in tangible achievements, South Korea built a forward-looking, confident nationalism. A nation that constantly demands recognition for its historical wounds eventually experiences diminishing returns, exhausting international goodwill and creating flawed local and paranoid foreign policies. States that celebrate tangible triumphs derive a highly durable form of international soft power. Something the state just achieved in Pakistan. This has been validated by global respect and partnership, rather than the defensive isolation that Pakistan faced for decades. Published in Dawn, EOS, June 28th, 2026

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