The spread of a victim culture now means that more than seven out of ten people claim they are oppressed.

Huge chunks of the population have been racing to join the ranks of the officially disadvantaged, a report found.

Belonging to a victim group means the opportunity of financial gain and promotion at work, and the chance to denounce enemies to police or in the courts.

The ranks of those given special rights because of their victimhood have now swelled so that they outnumber their alleged oppressors.

The analysis by criminologist Dr David Green said that Government recognised victim groups now take in 73 per cent of the population.

Official victims, all with their own state apparatus to advance their claims and prosecute their enemies, include all women, all ethnic minority members, and all disabled people. They are represented by the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Commission for Racial Equality, and the Disability Rights Commission.

However, from next year two more big groups will be added to the list of victims.

The new Commission for Equality and Human Rights will have powers to act for pensioners and for homosexuals, bringing the numbers of official victims to more than seven out of ten of the population.

But Dr Green said victim culture had now become so popular that, if the claims of some victim groups are taken seriously, there are more victims than people in the country.

He said this is because of 'multiple discrimination', in which some people are said to be victims on more than one count.

So gay lobby group Stonewall, for example, says that a black gay man experiences prejudice from blacks because he is gay, from gays because he is black, as well as racism and homophobia from everyone else.

On this reckoning, the number of victims amounts to 109 per cent of the population, Dr Green said.

In his report, We're (Nearly) All Victims Now, published by the Civitas think tank, he said: 'The political-recognised victim status described by this list of isms and phobias has begun to do lasting harm to our liberal culture.'

'Groups who have been politically recognised as victims are starting to use their power to silence people who have had the cheek to criticise them.'

Dr Green added: 'Modern victim groups create entrenched social divisions by defining opponents as oppressors who not only must be defeated by the state, but silenced by the state.'

He cited the term Islamophobia as a word intended to demonise opponents. 'The pseudo-psychiatric term Islamophobia is a statement that any criticism of Muslims is evidence of clinical pathology,' Dr Green said.

'Yet the label is often attached to valid criticisms of particular Muslims whose behaviour has laid them open to legitimate censure.'

The report said that members of victim groups stand to win advantages at work - for example middle class women who demand promotions they have not earned on the grounds of the claim that women were discriminated against in the past.

Recognised victims are also in a strong position to win compensation from courts and tribunals.

They can also call the police to act against their critics.

The report referred to the case of Lynette Burrows, the writer warned by the Metropolitan Police that she had been reported as causing a homophobic incident after she gave a BBC radio interview in which she questioned whether children always benefit from having gay adoptive parents.

Dr Green said the law means that murdering members of victim groups is now more serious than murdering anyone else.

The killers of Jody Dobrowski, a gay barman murdered on Clapham Common, were jailed for 28 years last autumn - but the trial judge said their sentence would have been halved if they had not been motivated by dislike of the victim's sexuality.