Ravish Kumar, Harry-Meghan: The economics of victim card

The 21st century is truly a game changer. It is a century where the world is going to see how dominance by the weak looks like. Signs of it are already there. While most part of human evolution has been directed towards respecting the strong, the 21st century stands in stark contrast with it. Early trends indicate that it is going to be the century in which victimhood will be elevated to sainthood. Make no mistake about it, there is a solid economic model supporting its structure. The model is built on pseudo-literate and weak interpretation of welfare state and trickledown effect.

Harry’s book is a massive hit

The new book by Prince Harry has broken the first day sale record of its publisher Penguin Random House. In the first 24 hours of its release in the UK, US and Canada, more than 1.4 million English language copies of “Spare” were sold. The sales figure was fuelled by four high-profile and should I say, bombastic promotional interviews given by a former British military officer.

In his interviews leading up to the release of the book, Harry accused the Royal family of discriminating against him. In an interview with CBS news, Harry had accused the Royal family of “getting into bed with the devil”. According to him, his stepmother Camilla’s connections with the British Press was dangerous. In another interview, Harry said that he was only a second fiddle to Prince William. Meghan’s husband felt like he was born for the sake of donating organs to his elder brother Prince William. Even the name of the book has been allegedly derived from the nickname “spare” which Royals gave him. William was called the heir.

How exactly Harry and Meghan earn

Despite these high-profile interviews centred around celebrity status of Harry, Gina Centrello, president and publisher of the Random House Group refuses to call it only a celebrity memoir. Gina said, “Vulnerable and heartfelt, brave and intimate, ‘Spare’ is the story of someone we may have thought we already knew, but now we can truly come to understand Prince Harry through his own words.”

“Vulnerable and brave”, both these qualities present simultaneously in one person. If not impossible, it is quite hard to reach such a level of balance in real life. Though, by clever play of words, communication of such delicate balance can easily be delivered to the public. This is what Harry and his wife Meghan have been doing after their feud with British Royals became public. There is an endless series of allegations on royals, hinted towards either open or slightly borderline racism. Meghan has been quite open about it and has made no bones in accusing them.

The can of worms was opened during their interview with page3 interviewer Oprah Winfrey. After that, accusations after accusations keep coming while the Press team of the Royal family is finding it hard to weather. They literally can’t stop this Frankenstein Monster.

The reason is that the family fight has transformed from being a local one to a business opportunity for Harry and Meghan. Rarely does it happen that anyone from inside the Royal family is seen revolting against the family. Media has got much needed TRP and they are chasing it. In turn, Meghan and Harry are getting richer day-by-day. After the interview, the couple was offered deals by many companies.

One of them is Spotify. Both of them signed a $30 million deal with the streaming platform. Both of them were asked to engage various other celebrities and bring more revenues for the company. Ultimately, Spotify had to look for more employees to generate content with them. Later, Meghan alone jumped in with ‘Archetype’, her own podcast. Initially, it was a success, until it became a supposed victim ranting platform. Failure of the podcast has left Spotify running for covers, while Harry and Meghan have other options in mind.

Both have another platform called Netflix to monetise their personal lives. It is paying $100 million to the celebrity couple, for documentaries, films, children’s shows, docuseries and more. They have personally invested in various segments as well and are happily living in a multi-million dollars mansion. Simultaneously, they do not skip opportunities to present themselves as perennial victims

BLM and fraud

In fact, this has become a trend. Remember Black lives matter? Yes, the same movement which had created a storm in the middle of pandemic. Athletes, film stars, politicians and many more were taking a knee to support the movement that erupted after the killing of George Floyd. Even Indian cricketers did the same without even thinking of long-term consequences. The repentance from people all across the world resulted in huge funding for the movement. It received more than $90 million in 2020.

There is very little audit available about the spending of all this money. On its part, Black Lives Matter has claimed that it has done its bit, but the assets amassed by founding members tell a different story altogether. Patrisse Khan-Cullors, one of the co-founders of the movement reportedly spent $3.2 million in buying 4 properties.

She also spent time deliberating on buying an ultra-exclusive resort near the homes of Justin Timberlake and Tiger Woods. The murky finance of the movement is still a big hurdle in its connection with the underprivileged community. BLM is often accused of failing to take up the on-ground reality of common blacks, a classic case of Marxist infested movement.

Ravish Kumar and sympathy angle

But who cares if the people at the top are able to show themselves as victims. With sympathy comes attention and media persons will tell you that every attention is good attention in modern-day and age. No one knows it better than newly freelanced Journalist Ravish Kumar.

Over the last few years, Ravish Kumar has left no stone unturned in showcasing himself as a victim of ‘Godi media’ (a term he uses to refer to media channels whom he accuses of siding with PM Modi). While having a platform like NDTV, the renowned journalist constantly accused the government of skittling his voice. During this phase, Ravish did some phenomenal reporting on poor state of Indian Railways, university education, government jobs and others. These were mega-hits and no one thought for a second that Ravish’s voice was being scuttled.

Somehow, from time to time, he found a way to position himself as a victim while he was earning millions from NDTV. Even when he left, the man appeared quite pompous in claiming that he was the ultimate victim of the buying of NDTV by Gautam Adani. More such outrageous claims were made in other interviews as well.

Sympathies poured in from all across the country. While a new YouTuber finds it tough to criss-cross the maze of complex YouTube algorithms, Ravish’s very first video amassed 8.5 million views (till the time of writing). The title is, “I have resigned from NDTV”. Within 60 days of establishment, the channel has nearly 4 million subscribers. It is not hard to estimate the total sum earned by him. Certainly, lot of this is going to be spent on production of videos, but everyone knows the philosophical foundation of the source. It is showing oneself as a victim.

Usman Khawaja comes out as victim

With the victim card, you can bend rules, take down established norms by getting an exception for yourself and what not. Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja has done it. The cricketer who was accorded enough opportunity by Australia to become a qualified commercial and instrument-rated pilot has left no stone unturned in accusing the very country of racism. He especially alleged that his religious and ethnic (Asian) identity was a hindrance in his social intermingling. The man claims that he is a teetotaller.

Ultimately, it led to Australian captain Pat Cummins changing the team culture. While celebrating a series win in 2021, Pat asked the team to set aside champagne bottles to accommodate Usman in the team huddle. Even when Usman scored a tremendous career-best 195, his victim mindset has not withered away. Few days back, he again accused Cricket Australia of having substantive bias.

These allegations have helped Khwaja to remain in the news. Though he is not as acclaimed as their other stars like Steve Smith, Marnus Labuschagne and Pat Cummins, the man has found a way to remain relevant in racially-coloured environment.

Trend needs to stop

Khwaja is not alone. Joe Biden, the supposed leader of the free world, gets away with his mistake due to his age. Even recent midterm elections in the USA witnessed a large swathe of voters voting because they were sympathetic towards the poor physical state of candidates. If the wealthiest country in world is promoting it from the top, the consequences are destined to be gut-wrenching for people who work day and night to increase their productivity.

This is nothing but the weaponization of virtue for moral, political and financial gains. Thankfully, there is still quite some time left before total destruction. Power to stop this ultimately lies in the hands of people. A proper guideline on these gaslighting techniques will come handy.