The Politics of Envy

The Politics of Envy by Anne Hendershott

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We are living in a nasty moment. After a year of riots against a “White Supremacy” - resulting in blocks of burned buildings and murdered citizens - so intangible that the words “microaggression” and “white privilege” have been invented in the absence of actual white supremacists, we've had the cultural/financial/political elite gain control of the federal government, erect barb wire around the capitol, stigmatize the opposition as “insurrectionists,” and, now, boycott the State of Georgia for requiring some form of identification for voting.

What's going on.

Perhaps, Anne Hendershott offers the best explanation – envy.

This is an erudite and encyclopedic discussion of the topic of envy. Hendershott starts with the traditional understanding of envy: it was the devil's envy that death entered the world (Wisdom 2:24) and envy was classed as one of the seven deadly sins. Envy got updated in modernity:

“Marxism, the pernicious theory that still motivates many within academia and beyond, is based entirely on envy. The Marxist promise of “fairness” to the proletariat was a promise of a utopian world in which all conditions that produce envy will disappear. The Marxist assures us that an egalitarian world would remove all targets of envy so that the envious will have nothing to envy. But, as the following pages will demonstrate, envy creates its own targets, regardless of how equal people may appear to be. In the aftermath of the revolutions to overthrow capitalist systems — whether in Cuba or Nicaragua or Venezuela — the spoils are never evenly divided. In the final days of the Nicaraguan Revolution in 1979, when the Sandinistas marched into Managua, the first thing the revolutionary leaders did was to grab for themselves the luxurious homes left behind by the Somoza regime.”

“Even in a socialist system, there will always be something to envy. History has shown that envy increases in communist countries because the stakes become so small that even the slightest advantages are envied.” Hendershott points out (quoting Hedrick Smith) that in the closing days of the Soviet Union “corrosive animosity” had turned “rancid under the miseries of daily life.”

Hendershott offers the classic distinction between envy and jealousy. Envy is “hostility or a negative feeling toward someone who has an advantage or something that one does not have and cannot seem to acquire. Jealousy, on the other hand, typically involves an attempt to protect a valued relationship (especially marriage) from a perceived threat (especially adultery). In some ways, jealousy can be a useful emotion — it is the desire to hold on to a loved one — especially when one feels the relationship may be threatened by outside forces.” “Envy is the pleasure, the malicious joy that is felt when the object of one's envy falls, fails, or suffers.” “In On Rhetoric, Aristotle described envy as “the pain caused by the good fortune of others.”

In the second chapter, Hendershott surveys classic literature for the “narratives of envy.” This is worth reading by anyone who seeks wisdom.

The third chapter discusses envy as involving being “other-directed.” The envious are always concerned about what another person has and which they think they are being deprived of by those others. In this chapter, she introduces the topic of the “Incels” (the “involuntarily celibate.) Incels are misogynistic, but their animosity is directed at the “Chads,” those men who obtain the sex that they feel deprived. (Women are not much better off in their jealousy toward other women and their assessment that “most men do not meet female human standards. It is for this reason that women on dating sites rate 85 percent of men as below average in attractiveness.”) Envy in this case has costs:

“And, as Girard would have predicted, reducing the number of unmarried men reduces the envy-driven competition for female partners and thus reduces the incidence of rape, murder, assault, robbery, and fraud in societies that value pair-bonding enough to encourage it.119 In some ways, the Incels are correct in their assertion that the Chads are capturing the highest-status women — leaving little for the rest. But, as the following chapters will point out, in a chaotic society like ours, most women are not the winners in this competition either.”

In chapter four, Hendershott discusses the horrific “crimes of envy,” such as where a nanny killed two of her minor charges because of her envy for the parents' wealth. Malicious vandalism is another phenomenon associated with envy. Finally, anti-Asian racism – blamed since March 2021 on “white supremacists” – is actually a product of black envy:

“Similar patterns of envious rage and frustration were evident in the 1992 riots in Los Angeles, when Korean-owned businesses were targeted for vandalism and destruction through arson.126 More than 1,700 Korean businesses were destroyed because the African American community opposed the widespread Korean ownership and control of real estate across South Central Los Angeles. African American and Latino rioters believed that they did not have the same entrepreneurial opportunities. A Korean business owner who was interviewed on the local television news decried the fact that no fire trucks were coming to Koreatown to put out the fires: “This is no longer about Rodney King. . . . This is about the system against us.” It was an envy-inspired insurrection against Korean-owned businesses.”

Chapter 5 concerns envy and antisemitism. Working its way through Hendershott's book is the thought of Rene Girard, who wrote about “mimetic desire” and “scapegoating.” Initially, I thought that this was psychobabble, but as she made her case, I became more convinced that they were on to something. She explains:

“René Girard has argued that the major driver of all conflict and violence is mimetic desire — desire that is aroused by the craving of another. For Girard, all envy is mimetic. In his work on Girard's theory of mimetic desire and scapegoating, Gil Bailie, the founder and president of the Cornerstone Forum and a former student and longtime friend of Girard, appears to understand the relationship between mimetic desire and violence better than anyone.”

“The very existence of human culture “requires” that the constant threat of violent conflict arising from the mimetic nature of desire or envy be somehow counterbalanced. Unfortunately, throughout history, people have drawn upon what Girard has called the surrogate-victim mechanism — or the scapegoat — in order to make human culture possible or to achieve social order. To do that, people encourage a form of mimetic contagion in which participants become vulnerable to mimetic suggestion and begin to make accusatory gestures toward rivals.”

What we are seeing today in many forms, and most recently, President Biden's call to boycott the State of Georgia because it passed voter ID laws (and Major League Baseball doing exactly that) is not only political opportunism and authoritarianism but, more important, given its unhinged from truth dimension, a kind of scapegoatism to make leftists feel “clean.”

Consider this passage:

“In 1908, University of Berlin historian Dietrich Schafer wrote a scathing evaluation aimed at preventing Georg Simmel, one of the founders of modern sociology, from being given an academic chair at the University of Heidelberg. The son of Jewish converts, Georg Simmel, whose work is still widely read and respected by sociologists and political philosophers today, was described by Schaefer as “an Israelite through and through, in his external appearance, his demeanor, and the character of his intellect.” Envious and resentful descriptions of Simmel's talents were woven throughout Schafer's evaluation of the popular lecturer, who was accused of possessing a “pseudointellectual manner” that is “greatly valued by certain circles of listeners in Berlin.””

Reconsider that passage in light of the recent firing of 47-year newsroom veteran science writer Donald McNeil Jr., because the New York Times' management, under public pressure from more than 150 employees, decided that when it comes to speaking certain radioactive words, not only does intent not matter, any utterance is potentially a one-strike offense. How much of that outrage comes from people who thought that the salary and prestige of this older white guy could better be divided up among them?

In chapter six – Envy as the Path to Power – Hendershott comes close to the insight of Steven D. Smith's recent “Pagans and Christians in the City” where modern politics was explained as a fight between those with a transcendent religion, i.e., conservative Christians, and those with an immanent religion, i.e., secularists. Building on Christian libertarian Doug Bandow, Hendershott writes:

“Bandow was prescient about the growth of government and the envy that has driven it. He would not be surprised that the secular atheist ideology that has grown over the past two decades distorts our understanding of reality. Those distortions work to hide the true goal of politics under atheism, which is, of course, power. Once God is banished, we become creatures not of God but of society politics, and we then have the choice either to rule or to be ruled. The stakes can be no higher because, for the secular atheist, man is the highest thing, and so power among men is the highest good. That is why everything is now political and why people lose their minds over elections. Bandow understands that there will always be a significant portion of the population who will vote for the candidate who promises to take away the most wealth — and sometimes the very freedom — from the greatest number of “undeserving” people. But the 2016 election of President Donald Trump disproved the theory that promoting the envy of the rich helps to win elections. Rejecting progressive promises to destroy the rich and the powerful, voters awarded President Trump with the presidency because he reassured them that America can again be the “envy” of others if we are willing to change course. President Trump knows that most of us do not envy the rich — we admire them. We may even want to emulate them. President Trump understands that for most of us, our dreams are not to hurt those who have more than we do. We just want to have good jobs that pay us enough to support our families and make us feel secure.
This is not to say that President Trump does not acknowledge that we often want to blame others when we experience hardship. And, although his message in the 2016 election was subtle, there were undercurrents of an appeal to envy in Trump's promises of “greatness” for Americans. Conservatives can, of course, be envious. As Helmut Schoeck writes, “Envy is politically neutral. It can be equally mobilized against a socialist government that has been in power since living memory, as against a conservative or liberal one.”194 The decisive difference is that the nonsocialist politician will always direct the voter's envy or indignation and resentment against certain excesses, the extravagant spending, the way of life, the nepotism of individual politicians. The conservative candidate will not pretend — as the socialist-leaning candidates do — that once he is in power, his aim will be a society in which everyone is equal and that there will be nothing to envy. Trump never promised an egalitarian society. Rather, he promised greatness — a society that others would envy — and this is what helped him win the presidency.”

You can see this difference in our age when the Woke One Party State aims at ending “white supremacy” root and branch.

The Never Trump movement and Trump Derangement Syndrome was clearly related to envy in the sense that the formerly “in-group” found itself out of power:

“The “Never Trump” movement that emerged within the Republican Party during the 2016 presidential primaries and continued through the early years of the Trump presidency relied on these concerns about within-group status among those who oppose Trump. Even though President Trump may have significantly improved the economic position of most Americans, some within the Never Trump crowd have continued to deny that he deserved any respect and certainly not their vote in 2020. To support the president openly would bring an unwelcome decline in within-group status for high-profile Never Trumpers such as Bill Kristol, the founder and editor of the now-defunct Weekly Standard, who has enjoyed high status because of his frequent media appearances on progressive cable television news sites where he continues his attacks on President Trump.”

In chapter seven, Hendershott discusses the papacy of Pope Francis I.

In chapter eight, begins her discussion of envy in Academe with, “Several years ago, American writer Gore Vidal, a public intellectual known for his piercing prose and clever witticisms, famously said: “Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.”

In this chapter, Hendershott provides a valuable discussion of “mobbing.” “When the resentment becomes strong enough, and other faculty members with similar resentments are enlisted, there is danger of an organized “mobbing” action to be taken against an individual on campus — usually a high-status and highly productive individual — in order to destroy the perceived threat to the faculty.”
“People caught up in the scapegoating movement, Girard believed, are “too naïve to cover the traces of their crimes.”295 Scapegoaters are “imprisoned in the illusion of persecution.”296 Girard believes that the social eliminative impulse, or what Westhues calls “the lust to wipe another person out,” is categorically similar to the impulse for food and sex because it can consume a person to the point of obsession, spreading like a virus through a group, becoming the driving force behind collective energy. Much of that impulse emerges from envy. In his book Envy of Excellence: Administrative Mobbing of High-Achieving Professors, Westhues writes that the most basic clue that a mobbing action is occurring is that the eliminators' focus is on the targeted person, rather than on the allegedly offensive act: “The guilty person is so much a part of his offense that one is indistinguishable from the other. His offense seems to be a fantastic essence or ontological attribute.”297 When an individual is being mobbed, there is an attempt to break that individual's bond with everyone else by humiliating him or her. “