Narcissistic Rage?
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Somehow stumbled across this while looking for tennis videos.
Note the turning his rage on and off like a light switch. Is that real? Or a device? He's just controlling the truth by drowning the other guy out. Indeed, the first thing out of the BBC talent's mouth is an imperial dictate for the other person to stop talking.
So, the Beeb wasn't just blowing his stack, he was trying to control the other guy's speech.
That other guy wasn't following the BBC script, you see. The Beeb repeatedly tried to deny the man the right to his own words - to even ask a simple question - with phrases like "You cannot assert that!"
Then Suddenly Same Again Sweeney asks, "Do you understand?"
Yes, we understand that you will beller your head off like a lunatic if people don't let you use them as your ventriloquist's dummies. So people must follow your script or get screamed at and humiliated by you on a TV set.
It reminds me of what David J.H. Garvin, the Program Director of Alternatives to Domestic Aggression, said of abusers doing this:
For example, one may believe the answer is an anger control problem. Saying that a batterer has an anger control problem is like saying Lucciano Pavorotti needs vocal lessons. Batterers use their anger instrumentally and strategically. If a situation calls for the effective use of anger, the batter will summon his anger to do the job. The batterer may, just as effectively use his sorrow, sadness or shame to also be an effective and coercive means to establish maintain or regain control. Simply stated, battering is purposeful, instrumental and strategic behavior designed to bring about a result.
Garvin goes on to say that he believes this abusive behavior is 100% premeditated, though it has become such a lifelong habit in narcissists and other bullies that it is an ingrained pattern of behavior they no longer need to calculate. So, they pull this trick from their bag of tricks at the drop of a hat, more or less thoughtlessly.
And, like a child picking up his marbles, Suddenly Irrational Again Beeb ended the interview when the interviewee didn't cave in and do what the Beeb demanded.
UPDATE from Brits for those Americans who haven't tuned into the BBC since the end of the Cold War.... Not everybody is making excuses for the bully. Not everyone is making the BBC bully the "victim."
I kid you not: I have heard several people make excuses for Sweeney calling HIM the "victim"! Are they on LSD? Are they watching the same video? Or what?
Note that this is exactly what the bystanders always do in response to a narc attack.
You can tell by the bizarre choice of the word "victim" for him that they are willfully transfering victim status from the real victim to the bully, so that they can side with the latter. They thus willfully bolix up the course of logic in their mental record of this event. This is why trying to reason with them is an exercize in futility: deep down, they know they are wrong - they are WILLFULLY being wrong about it - so don't waste reason on the irrational. It's like throwing pearls before swine.
Here are some British sources on the event:
True Colours from Biased BBC
BBC bias? from EU Referendum
My own take on this is that there's nothing a brainwasher hates more than running into the brick wall of another brainwasher he's accusing of being a brainwasher and having his own cute little verbal tricks and stunts turned on HIM for once. Ooooh, never give a jerk a dose of what he dishes out. That makes him really mad!
No excuses for abuse. No excuses for abuse. No excuses for abuse. I stand no excuses for abuse. Excusing it puts the bystanders in the wrong as complicit.
But, ah, I wish that jerks like Sweeney would always butt heads only with their own weasel-wordy kind and leave the rest of us in peace :)
But he doesn't. When told that his comments about the Scientology faith were "derogatory", "offensive" and "bigoted," Sweeney tried to dodge and deflect with an attack on America to change the subject to his favorite target of attack:
I am a British subject, not an American citizen, and in my country we have a freedom of speech.
Where did that come from? Why is he suddenly insulting America with the absurd accusation that we have no freedom of speech?
A diversionary tactic to change the subject? Click the link: the BBC itself publishes this blatantly false anti-American slur.
Why? Out of all the other quotes and material they had for this story, they selected this slur as worthy of mention in it? It isn't even relevant: it's just tacked on to the end of the story, slipping in that nasty meme in a place of prominence, without even bothering to tie it into the story. And to how many millions (several hundred millions) of people throughout the world in 43 languages did the BBC monger this misinformation about America?
And so, when to your shock, you discover that most people in the world think we have no freedom of speech, you'll know where they got that idea. You can sneak any insidious idea into people's heads that way.
If this were the only instance of slipping a misleading dig about America into a story, it wouldn't mean anything. But several BRITISH sources have been documenting the never-ending barrage of them. One of these sources is none other than the London Telegraph newspaper! The oldest and most entertaining is the original Beebwatch.
America is often portrayed [by the BBC] as an ignorant, unsophisticated sort of place, full of bible bashers and ruled to a dangerous extent by trashy television, superstition and religious bigotry, a place lacking in respect for evidence based knowledge. I know that is how it is portrayed because I have done my bit to paint that picture.
That was Justin Webb, the BBC's Washington coorespondent, with both feet in his mouth.
So, shall this American turn the other cheek? Haven't I learned by now not to do that? Sweeney had to go and try to sidestep the issue by dissing America. So he asked for it.
This is too easy, because it's really stupid to go around accusing others of being what you are. For, in their answer, they will expose you for it.
ANSWER TO JOHN SWEENEY'S ACCUSATION
So, my fellow Americans, this John Sweeney, this British SUBJECT is so uneducated and ignorant he thinks we CITIZENS have no freedom of speech in, of all places, the United States.
Pardon me for a moment while I get my head around that.
Should someone that ignorant really have his job? This shocking ignorance forces one to ask just which people are the "ignorant" ones - us or them? which country has the terrible schools - us or them? We are all taught about the Magna Carta and British Common Law. Aren't Brits taught anything about our system? How can any Brit fail to know that he would have far more freedom of speech here than he does there?
How ignorant of the wider world beyond your borders. How provincial ;-)
But I thought WE AMERICANS are supposed to be the ones who fit that description.
How's your Irony Detector doing?
Passing over Sweeney's ignorance of the meaning of the word subject as well, - oh, really? Then what about Piglet Jihad? Is that freedom of speech? What about the M word? The T word? Words he doesn't dare use. Is that freedom of speech? What about the directives coming down from the EU? Is that freedom of speech?
Whose freedom of speech is he talking about? HIS freedom of speech extends to inciting bigotry against a whole religion?
These religions are portrayed as dangerous, "sinister." Like Christian fundamentalism in America and Scientology also in America. THESE are the dangerous religions in the world today. (Get it?)
We stupid Americans didn't follow enlightened Europeans en masse in falling away from religion since WWII. Yes, they just fell away, so the majority aren't real, honest atheists. Officially, the French, for example, are still 90% Catholic, though on what grounds is a bloody mystery. It's just politically incorrect to go to church there, period. But never underestimate the skill of Europeans in making a vice (like this, the vice of phoniness) sound like a virtue. To hear them tell it in the land that gave birth to the Inquistion and Crusades, religion is still practiced widely here only because we Amewricans are just too stupid to follow their example in falling away from religion: we have an extremist, a Bible-bashing evangelical or a Scientologist under every bush here in Neanderthal Land. That's what elected the Fuhrer George W. Bush and makes America the backward warlike and benighted land it is, "the greatest threat to peace in the world."
BUT, while spreading this fear of American religion, notice what the BBC is NOT reporting about a certain other religion: As of today, since 9/11 there have been 8,394 deadly attacks throughout the world targeting people of every race and religion for the crime of not belonging to the right religion, or of belonging to the right religion but the wrong sect of that religion, or of belonging to the right religion and the right sect but being of the wrong race. Last week (May 12-18) alone, for example, there were 58 attacks, 442 bodies, and 458 critically injured. Last month, for example, there were 276 attacks, 2,081 bodies, and 2,396 critically injured. All in the name of religion. In fact, these attacks are often conducted by enraged mobs charging out of places of worship after prayers. Anything will do for an excuse. For example, recently when radicals bombed a place of worship in India, killing 10 of their co-religionists for belonging to the wrong sect, the survivors took out their rage on nearby shopkeepers and Hindus.
In the midst of this spine-tingling horror, this mass insanity, this gruesome global carnage daily, the BBC concludes that it should see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. In the few instances it does report, the BBC refuses to reveal that the attack was carried out by people in the name of their religion. They maintain that revealing this fact of the matter would be evil! It would be the thought crime of "attacking" a religion.
"Attack?" Isn't this the wrong place to lay the label of "attacker?" Is that supposed to be some kind of joke? Newsflash to BBC: It's every other religion getting attacked, not that one.
YES, KNOWING THAT PEOPLE ARE DOING THIS IS THE NAME OF A RELIGION IS ATTACKING THAT RELIGION = KNOWING THE TRUTH IS EVIL. The idiots who parrot this nonsense haven't the brains God gave a goose.
Attack this religion with what, pray tell? That's absurd. If a stupid American can see that, Europeans' claim to be of superior intelligence isn't just fat headed, it's a joke.
Tip to BBC: Refrain from portraying a group of people as stupid while you're in the very act of saying something astronomically stupid. That leaves them no choice but to point out how stupid you are.
And how come they never fail to report it when some Christian bombs an abortion clinic in the name of religion? Yes, it's the double-standard that proves their dishonesty.
While playing see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil with this real, worldwide problem in the administration of a religion with a billion adherents, the BBC is busy manufacturing a scare over a few tens of thousands on the fringes here (confusing all Baptists with the most radical Christian evangelicals to misrepresent the statistics) with repeated warnings to Britons that Christian fundamentalism and Scientology in America are "sinister" threats, the religions that Brits should be worried about.
Have they an adequate supply of psychiatrists over there?
There. Notice that I turned the charicature of Americans as ignorant, uneducated, hicks who are deluded by their mass media and know nothing of the world beyond their region - I turned that portrait of "the Americans" back on the artist who painted it. How evil of me to thus expose the irony of the pot calling the kettle black.
So, I have a hot tip for anti-American Europeans like John Sweeney: it's best not to be an ignorant, poorly educated hick if you're going to go around calling other people ignorant poorly educated hicks. It's more like a confession than an accusation.
And when your millenium-long constant waring and conquest for empire blew up twice into world wars that cost nearly 200,000,000 lives worldwide a few decades ago, you had better be careful about whom you call warlike and accuse of imperialism. And since your beloved socialism has plunged Africa in a black hole and piled up a higher body count than any 10 wars combined, maybe you should shut up about how evil capitalism is. And maybe your greenhouse gas emmissions should start going down instead of up annually, before you accuse the only nation whose emmissions have steadily decreased every year for the past five, and the only nation that is a net carbon dioxide ABSORBER of destroying the planet. You lose all credibility that way.
And maybe you shouldn't pretend that our pollution control and reforestation efforts began yesterday like yours did, so that you can penalize us for having tackled the problem decades ago and being way ahead of the rest of the world on it. You lose all credibility that way.
And maybe you should consider greenhouse emissions in the context of population, land mass, climate, and the distances people must travel daily in a land where they're not crammed together in densely overpopulated areas like sardines. Yes, and maybe you should consider the emissions in the context of PRODUCTIVITY. You know, like all that food we sell and give away to the rest of the world. Shall we stop it to reduce emmissions and let them eat air? I bet you've never been told the productivity of the American worker. And the punch line is that we Americans are the simplistic ones, that WE are the ones mislead and duped by our media.
Shall I continue through the whole list of beliefs in Europe's creed about America to show what a joke each one is? It wouldn't do any good. Because Europeans believe their creed about America as firmly as any Bible-basher believes that the world was created in six solar days.
Why? Well, that is one thing I understand and almost sympathize with Europeans about. Who would want to admit that everything you thought you knew about America is wrong? That you have been subjected to an anti-American propaganda campaign your whole life? That would rattle your cage. When presented with evidence of it, you would flee into denial.
Besides, believing all that crap about "the Americans" enables you to polish your nationalistic fingernails and feel better than those degenerate Americans. What a nice narcissistic stroke to your nationalistic ego.
Woops (nationalism is another thing Europeans constantly accuse "the Americans" of), that's what you get for your nationalism and contempt of evidence based knowledge when you go around accusing others of nationalism and having contempt for evidence based knowledge.
So, there's no enlightening Europeans about this. Few have set foot here - no troops, few tourists, just businesspeople. And the vast majority of them have never ventured more than 17 miles inland. So they know nothing. Ignorance of the truth about America is bliss. Like Bible-bashers, they just deny your credibility and do it arbitrarilly to believe what they want, though it fly right in the face of sense and the known truth.
It's no accident that the list of charges in Europe's indictment of America are so ironic. For, when people denigrate others, it's always for narcissistic reasons. It's ALWAYS projection. Not that we Americans have no faults: it's just that Europeans are blind to them. In us they see THEIR national character flaws, just like a narcissist does.
Which is why I wish Europeans ditched this supremacy act and really did think well of themselves. They seem deeply ashamed of the white race and Europe's great history and culture. I truly believe that they are still on a guilt trip over the two world wars, the Holocaust, and their empires. I wish they'd get off it already. Then they wouldn't have to trash us to feel good about themselves.
They claim to have learned their lesson. Baloney. The lesson they were to learn 60 years ago is to stop looking the other way when your neighbor is attacked. And they haven't learned it. Indeed, they have made a virtue of it, mocking us with the ridiculous assertion that they refuse to lift a finger, abandonning people by the millions to crimes against humanity, out of "humanitarian concern" and "love of peace." Gag me with a spoon.
I bet it stings Brits to hear me describing Europeans in the same terms we Americans hear Brits describing us in day in and day out. Good. Let that be a lesson. It hurts. So cut it out. Unless you want to be treated like you treat us.
If you know anything about me, you know that I know defending yourself is no sin. We Americans are supposed to continue turning the other cheek to this crap for another 40 years? We are supposed to be too stupid to ever learn that until we start sassing back, it will never stop?
Duh, we are slow learners, but eventually we catch on. Anti-Americanism will stop when it costs rather than rewards.
There are brave Brits speaking out against it over there, but they are few. There will be no fault found with a lying, anti-American remark like Sweeney made - just with any ticked-off American's answer to it. Like this one.
THAT will be the only thing to speak up about and condemn in their eyes.
Typical. Excuse the abuse and condemn the defense. Watch it come. Just as with the victims of narcissists, the only offense the bystanders see is in defense.
THAT will be where they see an "outburst" - not in Sweeney's explosion, but in my answer to it. THAT will be where they see all the hate = in the defense, not the attack.
There's no reasoning with such twisted minds. There's no getting along with such people. The only solution is to cut off relations and have nothing to do with them.
But the anti-Americanism in Sweeney's diversionary tactics is a side issue. The issue is his raging abuse of the person he was interviewing.
If you follow the links I gave and read the account and explanation in the Guardian, it becomes clear that Sweeney had simply met his match with those cunning Scientologists. It was almost like a sting. When Sweeney saw that the BBC was being exposed, instead of Scientology, he became desperate to stop the interview, to shut that Scientologist up. So, he threw a fit to drown him out, period.
The way he turned his rage on at off like a switch, and in response to nothing the other party did, shows that it wasn't even genuine, because people who are truly furious don't do that. So Sweeney is demonstrably lying about that, too. It was just an act, a device, to try and regain control of the situation.
He didn't like having his prey pull the same verbal stunts on him that he was trying to pull on them. He didn't expect them to be filming the encounter themselves and to post what he was doing on the Internet. He and the BBC got exactly what they deserved from people just like them. If that ain't justice, I don't know what is.
I guess you could say we John Sweeneyed John Sweeney. The licence fee payers in Britain [taxation for the right to watch TV] are entitled to see what goes on behind the scenes. It's about time documentary makers are held accountable.
And watch yer mouth about America too, unless you want to build enmity. Do you? I think you do. I really do think you are deliberately trying to drive a wedge of hostility between America and Europe. In that, you will most likely succeed.
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Labels: bullying
3 Comments:
I completely take your point about the use of anger as a method of control. It's just a pity that you chose this example. I saw the whole of this programme and respectfully have to say that I think you could not have got it more wrong in saying that this acceptedly ott theatrical outburst of anger was an attempt to drown-out the truth.
No. What I meant was that the Beeb tried to silence the other man, because the Beeb wanted to control the other's speech. He wanted to control what transpired.
Doing that IS attempting to drown-out the truth. You are disallowing the truth to come out when you won't let the other person speak.
But that isn't what I meant anyway.
The other man was off the Beeb's script, so the Beeb used the same rage tactics a narcissist uses. In fact I've seen stuff coming too close in the White House press briefings, deliberately trying to insult and intimidate the President's former press secretary into to accepting their words for something into his mouth. Yes, some of these big deals in the media are getting pretty contemptuously arrogant. Because nobody dares call them on anything they do.
I can't defend scientology and wouldn't want to. But the BBC doesn't like Christianity either, and no matter what religion this is, these people have a right to be treated decently.
How would you like to be raged at like by a famous person like a network TV anchor on a TV set? Can you see what a bullying act that is for a famous and influencial person to do to the average person? Wouldn't you turn red with shame and want to crawl into a hole and die because all those people see him shaming you publically like this?
There is no excuse for it. No excuse whatsover for it.
And the way he turned it on and off proves that it was disingenuous = calculated to silence and intimidate.
This was a very profound essay, Kathy. I think you made your point very well about a narcissist finally getting a dose of his own tactics. It's an amazing thing to see to video. Perfect example of the fake rage of a narcissist. Rage for effect.
The part of your essay that deals directly with the anti-Americanism of Britain and Europe is the most profound part of your comments. I, for one, am sick to death of the constant bashing of America by European elitists and their American wanna-be-European elitists counterparts found mostly on the left and in the media. We take it and take it and take it. It is time to sock these idjits in the mouth. America has spread more freedom and wealth and resources around the world than any country in human history. We have earned the eternal hatred of lesser nations for it. Time to smack some of these mental-midget bullies around a bit otherwise they will continue to fuel hatred around the world. Thanks for pointing out the ironies and stupidity that are passing for intellectualism out there. It did my heart good.
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