Hereditary victimhood operates through imagined memory, not genetic or family ties.

Evidence

‘Hereditary victimhood’ is the principal socio-psychological device serving the systematic production and distribution of evil. One should beware of confusing the phenomenon of hereditary victimhood with genetic kinship, or with family tradition preserved through parental influence over the educational setting. Heredity in this case is mainly imagined, acting through the collective production of memory and through individual acts of self-enlisting and self-identification. Thus the status of the ‘Holocaust children’, that is, of hereditary victim, is open to every Jew, whatever his or her parents might have been ‘doing in the war’ or whatever was done to them during that war. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 675

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core conceptual definition of hereditary victimhood as imagined rather than biological — a key extractable term for the theory vocabulary.
• XREF: Parallels Anderson’s ‘imagined community’ mechanics — both theories make collective identity a product of imagined, collectively produced memory. — connects to: Totalitarian terror extends to the victims’ families by forbidding grief and remembrance; Hereditary victimhood functions as a blank cheque for moral righteousness — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 667; The collective unconscious is socially acquired, not inherited genetically. — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 664 (+2 more)
• QUESTION: How far does this imagined-heredity mechanism transfer to other identity groups (e.g. settlers, diasporas) beyond the Jewish case Bauman cites?

Related

• Hereditary victimhood functions as a blank cheque for moral righteousness (similarity 0.81)
• Memory of genocide can teach victims to become future victimizers. (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• The collective unconscious is culturally imposed, not biologically inherited #corroborates (0.90) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 668
• The collective unconscious is socially acquired, not inherited genetically. #corroborates (0.85) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 664
• Memories often reshape our understanding of deceased relatives. #expands (0.75) — Crews, Harry, A childhood the biography of a place, 41