Mobilizing a Mob

Posted on April 9, 2015 by Human

Hello, my name actually is James, no guessing required. I’m a twentysomething psychopath from the smallish island of Great Britain…

woodwork2b We had a few poor teachers, everyone does I think. There was one who was particularly bad, not at his subject I might add; he was very good at woodwork. You have to be good at a technical subject like that to get a job teaching it. No, his problem was classroom management; he was hopeless. If he told you to do something, you just wouldn’t do it. His classes were always chaotic and dangerous (we had saws and big electronic tools at our disposal). I was – am – the opposite of him: good at managing people, bad at woodwork. I was failing my project and had injured a few people in the process due to my general carelessness around the drills and soldering irons.

This hack of a teacher could see how bad I was and I knew he was going to fail me the year, but he had a weakness. Everyone does, you see, but his was a fun one. On top of this general incompetence, he had a nasty temper. When he didn’t get his way in controlling the class he would blow a fuse and have a kind of tantrum. He’d shout a lot, go very red and generally look quite ridiculous. And his body language promised the potential for violence, he just hadn’t yet been pushed enough.

woodwork1 To get rid of him, all I needed to do was to rile him up a bit more. Or rather get the idiots in my class to do it for me.

Fighting the Workplace Bully

Posted on February 27, 2015 by Human

xxx

Expect to be on your own in your fight with a workplace bully, with no support from within the company. Co-workers are more likely to distance themselves from your problems, hoping to preserve their own positions and opportunities.
PatternBarHa700 Don’t be too surprised by the ruthlessness of a workplace bully’s actions or the rewards and honors bestowed upon him. You shouldn’t be shocked when the bully, a few weeks after you expose his diabolical plot against you, receives a huge bonus—just when you thought he was about to be fired.

xxx

From: Fighting Workplace Bullies, Part 2: Preparing Yourself to Respond
See also: Why Workplace Bullies Thrive: The Bystander Effect

Denying, Discounting, and Dismissing Abuse

Posted on November 27, 2014 by Human

Why is it so easy for an abuser to get away with it and so difficult for an abuse victim to be heard?

The typical serial bully is a Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde personality type (male or female) who has put considerable effort into establishing and maintaining a respectable and credible public persona. Bystanders may believe they know him well, that he is a genuinely righteous person, and that he couldn’t possibly be capable of the malicious behavior he is accused of. Unable (and probably unwilling) to imagine that they have been deceived, their logical conclusion is that the accuser is the antagonist, acting out inexplicable malevolence. With derogatory implications about his target’s mental state, lack of character, or foul motives, the abuser fuels this role reversal. Feigning moral indignation and playing the part of the victim, he encourages supporters to see the real victim, who is attempting to be heard, as the abusive one.

Dr. Vaknin explains: “Even the victim’s relatives, friends, and colleagues are amenable to the considerable charm, persuasiveness, and manipulativeness of the abuser and to his impressive thespian skills. The abuser offers a plausible rendition of the events and interprets them to his favor. Others rarely have a chance to witness an abusive exchange first hand and at close quarters. In contrast, the victims are often on the verge of a nervous breakdown: harassed, unkempt, irritable, impatient, abrasive, and hysterical.”

“Confronted with this contrast between a polished, self-controlled, and suave abuser and his harried casualties, it is easy to reach the conclusion that the real victim is the abuser, or that both parties abuse each other equally. The prey’s acts of self-defense, assertiveness, or insistence on her rights are interpreted as aggression, lability, or a mental health problem.”

Dr. Sam Vaknin, Narcissism by Proxy

Three cognitive strategies have been identified for when people deny, discount, or dismiss occurrences of abuse and for turning away from effective steps to stop it and hold abusers accountable:

1

Reflexively dismissing all evidence as questionable, incomplete, misleading, false, or in some other way inadequate.

2

Using euphemism, abstraction, and other linguistic transformations to hide the abuse.

3

Turning away: ‘I’m not involved,’ ‘There is nothing I can do about it,’ ‘I have no authority, jurisdiction, power, or influence,’ ‘This is no concern of mine,’ etc.

Social Aggression

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Human

Evil

From Wikipedia

Bullying

Social aggression or indirect bullying is characterized by attempting to socially isolate the victim. This isolation is achieved through a wide variety of techniques, including spreading gossip, refusing to socialize with the victim, bullying other people who wish to socialize with the victim, and criticizing the victim in different ways. Other forms of indirect bullying are more subtle and more likely to be verbal, such as name calling, the silent treatment, arguing others into submission, manipulation, gossip/false gossip, lies, rumors/false rumors, laughing at the victim, saying certain words that trigger a reaction, and mocking.

The effects of bullying can be serious and even fatal.

Bystanders

Despite the large number of individuals that do not agree with bullying practices, there are very few that will intervene on behalf of the victim. These individuals are labeled bystanders and unfortunately usually tend to lean toward the bully’s side.

In most bullying incidents, bystanders do nothing. If the bully faces no obstruction from the people around, he has permission to continue behaving badly.

Bystanders to bullying activities are often unable to recognize the true cost that their silence has to both the individual and to the group. A certain inability to fully empathize is also usually present in the typical bystander, but to a lesser degree than in the bully.

It is the general unwillingness of bystanders to undertake any type of risks that bullies often rely upon in order to maintain their power.