Victimhood Nationalism

Jie-Hyun Lim's work theorizes 'victimhood nationalism' to explain how memories of collective suffering are instrumentalized to serve nationalist agendas and moral claims.

Through comparative case studies—Poland, Germany, Israel, Korea, and Japan—he explores processes that transform victims into sanctified martyrs and sometimes recast perpetrators as victims.

Lim investigates how Holocaust memory became globally central, how nations employ selective memory, and how transnational memory practices entangle distinct historical experiences.

The book proposes methods for overcoming competitive victimhood through critical relativization, radical juxtaposition, and practices of forgiveness aimed at fostering reconciliation.