James Alison says that our predilection for individual rights is merely the reverse of the victim mechanism. Instead of the single victim against the righteous group, individual rights pits the righteous individual against (or at least suspicious of) the potentially oppressive many. Here is what he writes:
"In exactly the same way, the modern, 'enlightened' equivalent relies on the same distortion, but from the reverse side: it is the individual who is the sacred good, imbued with inalienable rights and with an inalienable freedom and conscience. The 'many', the social other, are the threatening and dangerous element, who may at any moment fetter 'my' freedom of rights, which are always worked out over against the social other. To be able to claim the high ground of victim status is indispensable for furthering whatever cause 'I' seek to sponsor. In this case, as in the previous, there has been no escape from the founding sacrality of the victim, as indeed there cannot be without a recognition that the victim is exactly the same as the many, and that the difference is produced by a collectively held delusion." (The Joy of Being Wrong, pp. 37-38.)
