“Victim Olympics”: The Collective Psychology of Comparative Genocides

In his new book on the impact of the Holocaust on American Jewish identity, The Holocaust In American Life, historian Peter Novick discusses what he dubs the “Victim Olympics.” This is an unseemly phenomenon of ethnic one-upmanship which pits groups against each other with self-serving interpretations of historical grievances and suffering. The psychological dimension involves how the need to feel ethnic pride has created this mutually antagonistic competition.