Witch Burning or Blame is the Name of the Game
Witch-burning has been with us a very long time. Today it’s a bit more metaphoric than literal, but accusations and “witch burning” remain very much a part of “human nature”, whether we participate or just watch. What lies at the root of the finger-pointing? Who are you escorting to the witch hunt?
Bullies and Bystanders
Bullies cannot operate alone. To gain supporters, they exploit the ignorance of unsuspecting bystanders. They seek control of communication to prevent others from learning the truth about their malevolence and to restrict information to what serves their interests. They don’t want people to interact with each other, and typically, they will try to intimidate the victim from speaking with anyone. Threats, blackmail, and stonewalling are standard methods of control.
Wherever bullying occurs, the people who are aware of it and don’t object or intervene may believe that they are being neutral. In reality, they are actually helping the bully. Fear that they, too, will be subjected to mistreatment is one reason why bystanders look the other way when someone else is being targeted. A “culture of fear” develops easily, affecting everyone in an organization. People become intimidated from raising concerns, voicing opinions, sharing ideas, and afraid to be seen as “stepping out of line” while the more brazen personalities have their way without being questioned. Do we want this kind of tyrannical atmosphere in our community? Just how much oppression or pressure to conform is acceptable?
When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed.
—Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged 1957
Object to mistreatment—at your own risk.
While standing up for yourself is the right thing to do, toxic people simply don’t believe you have any right to refuse their mistreatment and they will set out to “punish” you for having any opinions that differ from theirs.
From Smear Campaigns Part 1
lightshouse.org/lights-blog/
Playing the Blame Game as a Manipulation Tactic
Dr George Simon, PhD:
By habitually blaming others for their own indiscretions, disturbed characters resist modifying their problematic attitudes and behavior patterns.
Perhaps no behavior which disordered characters are prone to displaying is more common than their tendency to blame others when they do something wrong. Confront them on something they did that was insensitive, inappropriate, hurtful, or even harmful, and you’ll find them playing the blame game — pinning the fault on someone or something else. You’ll often hear them claim that some person or circumstance made them do what they did instead of acknowledging that they had a choice about how to respond to the situation and failed to choose wisely.
From: Playing the Blame Game as a Manipulation Tactic
Mobbing And The Virginia Tech Massacre
Who is to blame?
The Virginia Tech shooting (also known as the Virginia Tech massacre) was a school shooting that took place on April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. Seung-Hui Cho, a senior at Virginia Tech, shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others in two separate attacks (another six people were injured escaping from classroom windows), approximately two hours apart, before committing suicide.[6]:92[7][8]:78 The attack is the deadliest shooting incident by a single gunman in U.S. history and one of the deadliest by a single gunman worldwide.[9]
Massengill Report: “Mass Shootings at Virginia Tech April 16, 2007: Report of the Virginia Tech Review Panel” (PDF). Commonwealth of Virginia. August 2007. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 7, 2013. Retrieved April 26, 2014.
Memorials for the 32 killed.
Excerpt from:
Mobbing And The Virginia Tech Massacre
By Kenneth Westhues, Professor of Sociology
University of Waterloo, November 2007
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…The main reason for the inadequacies of the Massengill Report, and for simplistic attribution of Cho’s rampage to his allegedly evil character, is the human craving for scapegoats – a phenomenon that René Girard has analyzed with enormous insight.
To point out that Seung-Hui Cho was mobbed at Virginia Tech is to say also that he was scapegoated. The words are synonyms. At least from the fall semester of 2005, Cho was an outcast in the English Department, an “evil presence.” He was not unknown, not a quiet boy passing beneath other students’ radar. He was known and noteworthy, singled out, marked out, exceptional, as a model of how not to be. Other students passing him in the corridor would have thought to themselves, “We are here; he is there.” Cho sensed this. This scapegoating, I have argued above, led to Cho’s depression, his suicidal tendencies, and in a downward spiral, to his crazed effort at revenge.
Only a true devil, the most hideous monster imaginable, could possibly do what he did. We can only be glad he is dead and pull together to heal. An adequate explanation of the Virginia Tech massacre requires becoming conscious of the scapegoating mechanism, transcending it, and then calmly picking through all relevant evidence, toward a factual, reasoned account of what happened and why. It requires accepting the awful truth of what John Donne wrote, that no man is an island, that every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main, that every man’s death diminishes me. This does not mean trying to excuse Cho’s inexcusable crimes. Nor does it mean trying to shift blame and scapegoat somebody else. It means trying to get at the truth of what happened: empirical identification of the sequence of events, what led to what. Sound scientific explanation honors those who wrongly and unnecessarily lost their lives or suffered injury at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, and gives promise of preventing repetition of the tragedy… |
Blame, Denial, Blame…
Today’s challenge: Figure out the meaning of this statement. “The only thing I will say at this point in time is yes, it’s certainly possible that certain things I have said could have inferred blame and I can see why you could have interpreted them that way. I realize that even though it was never my intent to convey blame that my, sometimes, poor choice of words could have given that impression.”
See also: Denial of Denial
Commonly Misused Psychology Terms
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16 May 2014 How we see things really matters. And how we label behaviors is important, too. Knowledge is power. But to be fully empowered you have to understand what’s really going on and how to appropriately interpret and label various behaviors. Here are some terms that are frequently misunderstood and misused by lay persons and professionals alike: Denial, Rationalization, Addiction, Defensive, Projection, Self-Esteem… Continue reading… |
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Witch burning
Psychopath Resistance
- What is a narcissistic injury? — R. H. Writes
- 100 Traits & Behaviors of Personality Disordered Individuals
- Why the Disturbed Characters in Your Life Don’t Seem to “Get It”
- Disturbed Characters Never Want to Accept Blame
- The Narcissist Epidemic
- What Is Reactive Abuse?
- Happy Valentine’s Day! Be careful.
- Distortion Campaigns
- 14 Manipulative Tactics
- The Smear Campaign—Trademark of a Sociopath
Path Whisperer
- Title: “Wake Up Kids! Anti-Virus Guy [John McAfee ] Died Trying to Save You” — Subtitle: Sounds like murder to me
- A psychopath’s self reflection on his condition
- “Yuval Noah Harari spills the beans: ‘We just don’t need the vast majority of the population’”
- “Klaus Schwab’s WEF: Humans Are Now ‘Hackable Animals that will be Re-engineered’”
- The Psychopath Nation hates us and ‘loves dem some vaxx’ — Leana Wen
Psychopath Free
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Love Fraud
- The narcissist and the ‘Drama Triangle’
- What happens to your brain with PTSD, and a promising technique to fix it
- LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: Listen to the gift of fear
- Classic sociopathic control strategy: Accusing you of cheating
- LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: My ex-wife, the sociopath
- The top 5 brazen lies your psychopathic partner tells you
- LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: Psychopathic boss —pure malignant evil
- Why betrayal by a sociopath hurts so much
- LETTERS TO LOVEFRAUD: Sociopaths can fool anyone
- Why falling for a sociopath doesn’t mean you’re stupid
Salem Witch Hunt 