Exceptional Myth – The Binding Chaos Lexicon

Exceptional myths encourage both unjustified glorification of the group and its endo-ideal and unjustified demonization of the negative image as well as other endogroups and their endo-ideals. The five primary types of exceptional myths address creation, leaders, superiority, persecution and destiny. A purely magical creation, like the endo-identity; its purpose is its function, not its meaning.

Expanded explanation

The last clause is the key to the rest. Purpose is function rather than meaning, so an exceptional myth is not a belief to be assessed for truth but a device to be assessed for what it does. What it does is stated plainly. The purpose of the exceptional myth is to establish a basis for the persecution of people outside the endo-ideal, and it includes both victimhood and superiority because it needs both, one to justify the persecution and the other to authorize it. Every endogroup follows only one set of laws, the laws of endoreality, and the myth is what allows those laws to look like principles. This is why inconsistencies appear in every endogroup rather than in badly run ones. Exemption claimed on one ground is refused to others on the same ground, and the myth absorbs the contradiction because it was never a proposition. The five types map the directions from which a challenge can come. Creation covers where the group came from, leaders covers who may speak for it, superiority covers comparison, persecution covers grievance and destiny covers where it is going. Marsh's account of endogroup credit runs through the same machinery, since all sin is debt and all virtue is credit, so a group's sense of entitlement depends on the exceptional credit its myth accumulates. Where a new endo-identity is invented, the absence of a ready made exceptional myth is one of the things that has to be supplied.

In Heather Marsh’s words

Marsh reads the myth as a device rather than a claim, which is why its inconsistencies do not weaken it.

“to establish a basis for the persecution of people outside the endo-ideal”
The Creation of Me, Them and Us

Examples

Function over meaning: The myth is not offered as a proposition, so demonstrating it false leaves its work untouched.
Victimhood with superiority: Both are required, one to justify persecution and the other to authorize it, which is why the pair appears together.
Inconsistency absorbed: Exemptions claimed on a ground and denied to others on the same ground do not damage the myth, since coherence was never the point.

How others use it

Nationalism studies has a substantial literature on founding narratives, with Anthony Smith's myth-symbol complex and Hobsbawm on invented tradition covering much of the same material, and Georges Sorel wrote on political myth as a mobilizing device whose truth is beside the point. Chosen trauma and chosen glory, from Vamik Volkan's work on large group psychology, correspond closely to Marsh's persecution and superiority types. What her account adds is the enumeration and the derivation. The five types are not observed themes but the positions from which an endo-ideal can be challenged, which means the taxonomy predicts what myths a group will need rather than cataloguing what it happens to have.