Human Rights v2.0: The Victimhood Heist

History, as we know, is written by the victors. But reality is rewritten by the editors of the dictionary. Welcome to late 2025, where the United States State Department has just performed the most impressive semantic backflip in modern diplomatic history: transforming the concept of “equity” into a human rights abuse.

According to the new guidelines for US diplomats, the promotion of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies abroad—specifically those offering “preferential treatment” based on race, sex, or caste—is now to be cataloged alongside torture and political imprisonment as a violation of human rights. Simultaneously, state-subsidized abortion is flagged as an infringement, while the definition of rights itself is being hard-coded as “given by God.”

Do not mistake this for a mere policy pivot. This is a ontological heist. We are witnessing the wholesale theft of the concept of “victimhood.”

For decades, the logic of human rights was a tool for the marginalized. It was a shield for the weak against the structural violence of the strong. DEI, flawed as its corporate implementations might be, was structurally designed to act as a counter-weight to centuries of accumulated advantage. It was an attempt, however clumsy, to level a playing field that had been tilted by gravity itself.

But under the new “America First” operating system, this logic has been inverted. By framing affirmative action as “discrimination against the meritorious,” the administration has successfully redefined the retention of privilege as a fundamental human right. In this new moral universe, the white male passed over for a promotion due to a diversity quota is the new political prisoner. The corporation forced to hire inclusively is the new dissident. The oppressor has looked at the oppressed, seen the moral authority that comes with suffering, and said: “I’ll take that, too.”

This is the brilliance of the “natural rights” framework being deployed. By anchoring rights as “given by God” rather than negotiated by humans, the administration removes them from the realm of democratic debate. You cannot vote against God. If the Creator endowed you with the right to purely meritocratic advancement (defined, of course, by metrics invented by those already in power), then any human attempt to adjust the scales is not just bad policy—it is blasphemy.

It is a masterclass in gaslighting. The State Department is no longer monitoring how governments treat their most vulnerable; it is policing how governments treat their most comfortable. The annual Human Rights Report, once a weapon against tyrants, is being retooled into a global complaint box for the aggrieved privileged class.

Consider the elegance of the trap: if a foreign nation tries to subsidize abortion to protect women’s bodily autonomy, they are now “infringing rights” (of the unborn). If they try to mandate corporate diversity to dismantle caste systems, they are “infringing rights” (of the high-caste). Every attempt to correct a historical wrong is now, by definition, a new wrong.

The ultimate irony, of course, is that this redefinition is being sold as a return to “traditional values.” But there is nothing traditional about weaponizing the language of liberation to entrench hierarchy. That is a distinctly modern innovation. It is the final victory of the powerful: not only do they own the land, the capital, and the courts, but they now also own the right to cry “injustice.”

So, let us update our lexicons. “Human Rights” no longer refers to the protection of the weak from the strong. It refers to the protection of the status quo from the inconvenience of change. The heist is complete. The vault is empty. And the alarm you hear ringing? That’s just the sound of freedom, v2.0.