Ressentimentful Victimhood: Emotional Dynamics and Political Consequences

This paper examines the emotional dynamics of ressentimentful victimhood and its political implications for attitudes toward democratic engagement, using survey data from the PLEDGE Horizon Europe project across 12 European countries. We identify three prototypes of ressentimentful victimhood: (1) dominant group self-victimization (Reicher & Ulusahin, 2020; Sharafutdinova, 2020; Illouz, 2023); (2) persistent victimhood narratives that adapt to shifting perpetrators over time (Szabo, 2020; Szabo & Lipinski, 2021; Kazlauskaite, 2022); and (3) victimhood identities within the progressive left’s emerging victimhood culture. We argue that neoliberal social, economic, and ideological conditions drive the proliferation of these identities. Operationalizing ressentimentful victimhood as the adoption of a victimhood identity imbued with ressentiment, we explore its association with other-directed moral emotions and its role as a foundation for collective narcissism. We test hypotheses linking ressentimentful victimhood to collective narcissism, grievances, and anti-preferences, providing empirical evidence of its destabilizing effects on social cohesion and pro-democratic attitudes. By identifying the emotional undercurrents and outputs of ressentimentful victimhood, this study challenges dominant paradigms in victimhood research, which have focused primarily on paradigmatic victimhood identities. Our findings highlight the complex ways in which ressentimentful victimhood shapes individual and collective behaviors, offering new insights into its implications for democratic societies.