A Not-So-New But So Dangerous Slogan of the West’s “Victim Economy”

When the NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said, "If you don't spend that 5% (on defense), you'll be able to keep your National Health Service... but you'd better start learning Russian." It wasn’t a warning. It was a marketing slogan for the West’s new economic paradigm - one where citizens are expected to pay, not for prosperity or security, but for the right to feel heroic in a battle against media-designated evil.

The evolution of the Western political narrative - from pandemic management to the Ukraine conflict, and now to the Israel-Iran - has taken on a distinctly theatrical tone. What was once framed as pragmatic policy or “values-based leadership” now resembles a collective psychodrama, playing out along the classic lines of the “drama triangle”: victim, aggressor, savior.

The key feature of this new phase is what might be called Churchillization: political leaders no longer promise a better life but instead offer heroic meaning through struggle. Citizens are not promised comfort - they are told to embrace sacrifice for a noble cause.

In this narrative:

×          The Victim is Western society itself, including Israeli civilians.

-          “We must sacrifice prosperity for freedom.”

-          “We face a binary choice: resist or be destroyed.”

×          The Aggressor is any geopolitical rival - Russia, China, Iran.

-          “They threaten our way of life, our values, our existence.”

-          “They alone are to blame for inflation, shortages, and instability.”

×          The Savior is the political class and its institutions - civilian and military.

-          “We are protecting you from existential threats.”

-          “Trust us - we’ve learned the lessons of history.”

Israel’s recent strike on Iran exemplifies this role-play logic. A “preemptive strike” is recast as “self-defense.” The attacker is now the victim, and the actual victim becomes the threat. This inversion is the system’s defining feature: the victimhood of the powerful, the righteousness of aggression.

A week before, Rutte warned Europe that meeting the 5% defense spending threshold could jeopardize domestic programs like healthcare - but that failing to do so would leave Europeans at the mercy of Russia. It’s a near-perfect expression of the triangle: citizens-as-victims must surrender social goods so their governments can save them from foreign aggressors.

Everyone, it seems, gets their Churchill moment. From Boris Johnson to Zelensky, from Ursula von der Leyen to Netanyahu - down to the Baltic mini-Churchills like Kaja Kallas. The Churchill model substitutes prosperity with blood, sweat, and tears. The harder life becomes, the more moral the mission must be.

In this logic:

×           Hardship becomes proof of virtue.

×           Sacrifice signifies moral superiority.

×           Shortages validate the righteousness of the cause.

Rutte even quoted Churchill directly, invoking the specter of 1936: “Will the terrible words ‘too late’ be recorded?” - as if the only choices left are rearmament or catastrophe. It’s not governance; it’s moral theater.

This theater has created what can only be called a victim economy:

×           Declining living standards are no longer policy failures - they’re patriotic duties.

×           Cuts to healthcare and pensions become moral imperatives.

×           Citizens are told to be grateful for the chance to suffer for a “just cause.”

×           The worse things get, the more meaningful the struggle becomes.

But a Churchill narrative requires a “Hitler”. And so, everyone from Putin and Xi to Trump has been likened to Hitler. The moment an opponent is designated as such, all measures - no matter how extreme - become morally justified. Compromise becomes appeasement. Diplomacy becomes treason.

This moral license drives a media economy based on fear. “If it’s Hitler, then switch off your brain and panic.”

Technology intensifies this. Social media is optimized for emotional extremity; AI delivers a bottomless stream of outrage. Nuance is drowned out by virality. Emotion becomes easier than thought. Certainty becomes more valuable than analysis.

In this scheme:

×           “Our” saviors are rational, democratic, and modern.

×           “Their” leaders are backward, revanchist, and irrational.

×           We protect values; they threaten existence.

And you - the user, the citizen - are the center of the storm. Your job? Don’t reflect. Share.

The system also creates a dependency: it needs the aggressor. Without Russia, China, or Iran, the moral economy collapses. Victimhood loses meaning. Legitimacy disappears. This structural dependency explains why diplomatic resolutions have become nearly impossible - they would remove the very basis of the system’s emotional and political architecture.

Where would Netanyahu be without Iran? Where would Kaja Kallas be without Russia?

So no, Rutte’s words about learning Russian were never a geopolitical forecast. They were the perfect advertising slogan for a sacrificial economy - an economy where citizens pay for the privilege of feeling like heroes in a war against imaginary evil.

That said, why am I writing about this? Because when a victim no longer wishes to remain a victim - or when the "victim status" outlives its strategic utility - there comes a point when the victim inevitably transforms into its opposite. It becomes inspired to fight back. It must, and it will, become the aggressor. And by then, it won’t matter whether the “original” aggressor - who was always more symbolic than real, crafted to fulfill a role - does anything wrong or not. Everything it does will be interpreted as wrong. Every act will be labeled aggression.

So again: why am I writing about this? Because this is precisely what is happening in the West today, particularly in Western Europe. And because it mirrors - almost perfectly - what unfolded in that same region in the late 1930s. And we all know what followed next.