The United States has one of the lowest Covid vaccination rates in the developed world, a result of our other pandemic: delusion.
Sophia A. McClennen considers at Salon why conservative thought leaders across the U.S. are actively sowing vaccine distrust among their ranks when it is literally killing off their own. She gives the response a name: Victimized Bully Syndrome.
Some of you will be familiar with DARVO, an acronym for deny, attack and reverse victim and offender. DARVO describes the behavior of psychological abusers when they are being held accountable for their behavior. Donald Trump and his supporters clearly exhibit DARVO habits. Rather than accept blame for anything they do, they turn around and accuse those blaming them of creating the problem. Victimized Bully Syndrome (VBS), as I’m describing it, though, is slightly different from DARVO. With DARVO the abusive behavior comes first and DARVO only emerges if the attacker is asked to take responsibility. But with VBS the cries of being victims come first and are used to justify the underlying bullying behaviors. The bully under VBS is always already acting in self-defense.
Tell President Joe Biden on Christmas Eve, essentially, to go f*ck himself, and then complain your freedom of speech is under attack when people condemn you for it.
A U.S. Senate candidate suggests the government’s COVID-19 vaccine and masking protocols victimize citizens and “limit our freedom.”
Similar to the “sore winner syndrome” we saw emerge in the wake of former President Trump’s election, VBS posits that those on the right are all the time being victimized by their government and that it makes perfect sense to respond aggressively.
Kyle Rittenhouse, for example:
In a post-verdict statement issued by the victims’ parents, they nail the dangers of Rittenhouse’s VBS. The verdict, according to them, “sends the unacceptable message that armed civilians can show up in any town, incite violence, and then use the danger they have created to justify shooting people in the street.
VBS, then, isn’t only being used by the right to foster a public health catastrophe, it is literally being used to justify armed murder and armed insurrection. As long as we allow the right to continue to describe themselves as victims who have been harmed, injured, threatened and therefore need to act aggressively in self-defense, the closer we get to civil war. In fact, a recent Public Religion Research Institute poll showed that 30 percent of Republicans believe that “true American patriots” might need to resort to violence in order to save the country. Nearly 40% still think the election was stolen.
McClennen sees Victimized Bully Syndrome as a serious threat not only to public health but to the health of our democracy. But she offers no way to neutralize it, just that we should.
There is an old rhetorical ploy — a loaded question, really — expressed in, “When did you stop hitting your wife?” It’s a form of logical fallacy, but those with VBS have rejected logic anyway. And since we’re talking about tamping down abusive behavior, perhaps some version of that question would work.
Like, “When did you stop hating your country?’ or “When did you stop advocating sedition?”
Someone more clever than me might want to tackle the problem.