Why You Should Fear the Smear

It is highly likely that you have been on the receiving end of a smear campaign. It is unusual if such a campaign is not used by our kind when dealing with the person who holds the position of primary source of fuel. The benefits of instigating the smear campaign are numerous and indeed in many instances the smear campaign is a necessary device for the maintenance of appearances, fuel and control. Since we are creatures of economy when it comes to the expenditure of our energies we operate those manipulations which are the most rewarding in terms of energy versus effectiveness. Smear campaigns rank high on such a list and this is for the following five reasons.

1. Conviction

The smear campaign is rolled out in a convincing fashion. It is done with speed, it is done for the most part without your knowledge and it is effected by us in a manner which suggests that our words are undeniable truth. We are very good at persuading and portraying something as correct and the truth when it is not. We will seize on some element of your behaviour, some aspect of actions on your part or things you have said which are recognised by people. Perhaps you once got drunk at a party and kept falling over (it was a one-off and not helped by the fact you hadn’t eaten beforehand the copious amounts of alcohol we plied you with) but this forms the basis of creating a picture of your abusive alcoholic actions. You may be known for getting over emotional, especially when tired and therefore the picture is painted of you as histrionic. Taking some germ of truth and then applying it out of context, exaggerating and magnifying is a skill we utilise in the creation of the smear campaign.

“Yes, I am afraid I am at my wit’s end with Jenny, her drinking is out of control. I have kept a lid on it so far for your sake, I didn’t know want you upset, but I do not know what to do. You remember that party at Jonathan’s? Yes, that’s right when she could not even sit up, that’s a nightly occurrence now.”

We speak with such conviction and confidence that people do not challenge what we say. People usually accept the truth of what they are told by other people. This is a necessary social device because if it was to the contrary nothing would get done if people were suspicious and question everybody’s motives and comments. We play on this default setting and our confident and superior nature allows us to create a convincing smear campaign and thus guarantee its effectiveness.

2. The Façade

Our façade of respectability that we have carefully created whereby we are seen as good, reliable, dependable and kind to the outside world provides us with serious support when doing out a smear campaign. In the similar way by which we point to evidence of your drink problem, temper tantrums and neediness as the basis for a much larger and wide problem, we rely on the existence of the constructed façade to demonstrate that we are not the issue. How can we be? We are seen by your friends, the neighbours and your family as that generous, pleasant and helpful chap who must be a good husband and father. He always says hello, is polite, holds down a good job, is seen out and about in the community and so forth. The creation of the façade is not only important for us to draw fuel; it is a fundamental part of why our smear campaigns are so effective.

3. You Don’t Help Yourself

You fall right into our trap with a lot of your behaviour when you discover that you are being smeared. Rather than consider obtaining some independent and impartial evidence which you present in a calm and measured manner, allowing people to reach their own conclusions, you charge around, wild-eyed and upset, declaring repeatedly that

“It is him, not me, can you not see it? You must be blind or stupid if you cannot.”

This will not endear you to anybody. Nobody likes to be criticised. By slating their ability to make a decision you make them defensive and it becomes easier for them to make a decision which favours us. Do they believe the calm individual who has presented as such for the last year or so and who has come to explain you have a problem and we need help to deal with it or do they believed the swivel-eyed, tear-stained, histrionic person who keeps protesting it is not them? It is not a difficult decision to make.

Of course we encourage you to present in such a manner through our steady manipulative treatment of you. Moreover, we know that it mightily offends you to be thought of as something that you are not and in your frazzled and highly-strung state, you will not approach the denial of the smearing in a rationale or constructive fashion. This heightens the effectiveness of what we are doing. To some extent, you are proving our case for us.

4. You Are Eroded

Linked to the above is the fact that when the smear campaign starts you will in all likelihood have been subjected to a sustained period of devaluation which has taken its toll on you. You will be exhausted from our tactics of preventing you from sleeping. You are anxious. You are hypervigilant. You cannot think straight owing to fatigue and the gas lighting to which you have been subjected. Your confidence has been whittled away and your ability to think in a critical fashion has been damaged. The combination of all these ailments means that you are ill-equipped to fight the battle with us for the minds and hearts of those observing. We got in first and you will always be fighting an uphill battle with few resources to rely on. You will have been isolated by us from your support networks. At best this means you cannot call on help when you most need it. At worst this results in those people you thought you could rely on, taking our side. This ineffectiveness of your ability to cope – caused by us – result in our campaign becoming more effective.

5. Aversion to Conflict

People do not like conflict. People hate it when a couple divorces. It is not so much about feeling sad for the fact that two people they like are splitting up. Instead, it is more about the selfishness which means they have to choose on over the other and they would rather not do so. They want people to get along and when we present to those observing that we have tried to make things work but you have not allowed this to happen, the observers’ inherent desire for people to get along causes them to prejudge you. You become labelled as the troublemaker. People have their own lives to lead and they want everything else to run smoothly around them. If you are preventing this state of affairs from existing, then this will result in those supposedly impartial observers taking our side and not wanting anything to do with you because you have breached the peace. Knowing this to be the case of course will cause you to react even more and it becomes self-fulfilling. Again, this backdrop of the mind-set of others has this impact on the effectiveness of our campaigns.

Smeared

Smearing and Smear Campaigns