Bullying has always been around and, unfortunately, always will be. It happens on ALL levels, ranging from the individual level to the government and political level. The best thing we can do is to take steps to bully-proof ourselves at the individual level to either cease to be victims or never become a victim.
It has dawned on me that the same mental processes and tactics that happen in bullying and mobbing in schools and workplaces against a target are the same processes that give dictators and autocratic leaders the ability to control countries.
From Saddam Hussein to Karl Marx and Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler; from Xi Zinping and Kim Jong Un, to Josef Stalin; dictators have been a terrible reality for many countries. Understand that dictators are bullies! They influence an entire population first by making empty promises of equality for all, play on our emotions by showing crime, suffering children, poverty, etc.
Once they get into office, they influence by fear and rule with an iron fist.
Understand that your worst bullies in school or at work are busting with charisma. They’re experts at charming and influencing the rest of the student body or workforce. They have a talent of fooling and appealing to others. They’re experts at persuading everyone to turn against their victims. This is how DICTATORS are made.
You can bet that every dictator the world has ever known got their start as a school or workplace bully!
Once a dictator is voted in and the people give them power, they disarm the citizenry, enact a set pay scale for everyone, a set healthcare system, take over the food supply and strip the people of their freedoms and human rights.
Dictators are bullies. Why? Because they rely on fear, dependency, and an imbalance of power from which to draw their power and there’s a clear imbalance of power between the dictator and the citizenry.
Just as bullies have followers, dictators have regimes, parties, and secret police. Also, these dictators have targets- certain groups of people they single out and oppress. Hitler’s targets were the Jewish people and anyone who disagreed with him. Stalin’s targets were ethnic Ukrainians, Polish, and Bulgarians.
Their followers are terrorist groups, such as Hitler’s Nazi party of Germany, Mussolini’s Fascist party of Italy. Then, we have Stalin, Lenin, Marx, and the Bolsheviks of Russia, who lead the Bolshevik Revolution and brought Communism to Russia, which is how the country became the Soviet Union, or U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).
Today, we have Antifa, The Red Guard, and other nefarious groups, who continue to burn and loot cities and physically attack anyone who they don’t like in order to bring Socialism/Communism to America.
Understand that all of it is a form of bullying because it instills fear and creates an imbalance of power in average citizens and is used for intimidation, dominance, and control of them against their will.
Dictators and terrorist groups have had targeted groups to oppress, torture, and kill and have thrived on fear to turn entire populations against their targeted groups. They do this through use of propaganda and usually complete their end goals of genocide. Down through history, Communism has caused tens of millions of deaths.
Bullies have influenced student bodies and workforces to turn against a target to assassinate their characters and kill their reputations. And the scary thing is that it’s such a slow process that it almost isn’t noticeable until it’s already gone so far.
The tactics used against targets are the same used against the Jews in Nazi Germany during the thirties- demonization. Understand that demonizing is how it starts.
Though the outcome was much worse, with the Jewish people ending up maimed, physically tortured, and murdered, bullying requires the same tactics that slowly build to the final culmination of a social murder of their targets.
Bullying and mobbing are still psychological torture, and it does kill, only on the opposite end of the violence spectrum. But the social contagion and pack-mentality that make each collective attack possible are pretty much the same. Again, it’s gradual and incremental. It happens so slowly that targets don’t realize they’re being conditioned to accept brutality and bystanders and witnesses don’t realize they’re being conditioned to hate and brutalize the target.
Target on your back metaphor as a person with a tattoo of a bulls eye symbol tattooed on the skin as an icon for being a victim of bullying and bullied or psychology of feeling vulnerable with 3D illustration elements.
Here’s how bullies target individual persons for bullying.
- A particular person is singled out and labeled as different from everyone else.
- Others spread the word of the targeted individual’s difference.
- Before long, everyone defines the target’s “difference” from the rest to suggest that the target person is inferior.
- Next, everyone is directed by a person in power to target the person for elimination.
- The person in power sends the message that if anyone associates with, befriends, or helps the target, that person will be targeted next. But if they join in the brutalization and humiliation of the target, they will be rewarded with acceptance and a climb up the social hierarchy.
- People increasingly leave the targeted person out of the social group and block them from access to knowledge and any deserved awards or credits.
- The target is isolated, called ugly names, and demonized, which makes it much more acceptable for others to harm them.
- The target is accused of the same things the bullies are themselves guilty of and a reversal of victim and offender is achieved.
- Soon, everyone agrees that the targeted person deserves abuse and inhumane treatment.
- Finally, the rest of the group eliminates the targeted person through character assassination and annihilation of his/her once-good reputation, whether it be isolation, expulsion, termination, banishment, or even murder.
- Later, everyone either denies they bullied the targeted person or they justify and rationalize it- giving reasons that sound justifiable for their part in the brutal treatment of the person to avoid feeling and looking guilty.
Here’s how dictators and terrorist groups target groups and populations of people. And it’s all the same!
- They single the targeted group out and put the word out to label them as different from other groups of people.
- The media and other tools of the oppressive government spread the word of the targeted group’s difference and perceived sins and evil.
- The labeled group is deemed evil and inferior, then marginalized by society.
- The message is conveyed to the rest of the people that it’s acceptable to oppress, even harm members of the targeted group.
- People outside the targeted group are encouraged to dehumanize them and deny them knowledge, a voice, and fundamental human rights- with those in power making it unlawful for members of the targeted group to defend themselves against being hurt.
- People in the oppressed group are deemed threats to the rest of society, insulted and degraded, cancelled, and denied representation,
- Dictators and oppressors accuse the targeted group of the same things they themselves are guilty of so that the oppressors can achieve the reversal of victim and offender and cover their own crimes against humanity.
- People outside the targeted group are only further encouraged to dehumanize members of the oppressed targeted group.
- Dictators and those in power also promote the message that if anyone associates with and dares to stand up for the targeted group, they too will be targeted along with them. But if they join the fight against the targeted group, they may be rewarded with influential positions!
- Soon, groupthink takes over, and everyone agrees, although wrongly and unjustifiably, that the targeted group deserves horrific treatment and needs to be destroyed no matter what it takes to destroy them!
- The oppression and brutality toward the targeted group finally progresses to a sadistic and deadly climax, where those in power have the targeted group murdered by committing genocide and the rest of society looks on with satisfaction.
- Later, they either deny their crimes against humanity, or they rationalize and justify them to keep from feeling dirty. (An example of this denial would be people, down through the years and even today who deny the Jewish Holocaust ever happened.)
Again. Understand that over time, the brutality ever so gradually increases in tiny increments. It progresses so slowly that it isn’t noticeable until it reaches a certain pitch. There are names for this slow, unnoticeable (or barely noticeable to the trained eye) progression- gradualism and incrementalism.
So, you see? The tactics and processes are exactly the same, whether on an individual, school, and company level or government and political level, all of it is BULLYING and MOBBING but only under different names!
These tactics are universal and have been used down through history. If you are target of bullying, the ability to think ahead and predict your bullies’ next move is essential if you expect to be able to protect yourself.