I'm just going to talk a little about DARVO and projection, two tactics abusers and gaslighters use to obscure their toxic behavior. (Thread)

DARVO stands for "deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender." It's often used pre-emptively to get outside observers onside.

If a politician says, "Oh, they're probably going to accuse me of corruption," if a former spouse says, "They constantly make up lies about mental cruelty," before you've even heard from the other person involved, maybe check some outside sources.

Because abusers and criminals and corrupt politicians do lie, of course. What's tricky is that they model their lies on what honest people say in the same situation.

But if somebody ALWAYS seems to be the brunt of the same kind of attack from different sources and never bears any agency or accountability (and we're not talking about structural inequality here), that's a red flag.

"You made me behave badly" is abuser 101.

If all of somebody's exes are, according to them, people who make up stories about abuse to win divorce cases maybe don't date that person.

If all of a politician's opponents make spurious allegations about corruption to hide their own corruption, maybe vote for somebody else.

How did they know the specifics of what their ex or opponent might accuse them of in advance? How did they know it was, say, cruel child rearing practices? Bullying? Infidelity? Money mismanagement? Tax fraud? Emoluments?

"He's going to say I'm a racist."

Thus we come to projection.

"My exes are all liars." "My opponents are sickly drug addicts." "These protestors are all thugs and hoodlums." "SJWs are the real racists." "Soyboys are gamma males."

Watch how people CONSISTENTLY characterize those with whom they disagree.

It will give you a window into how they see the portions of their own selves they are most ashamed of and most wish to hide. They project their worst fears about getting publicly shamed or called out on their opponents.

Be careful out there. It's a weird old world.

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