Push Back!

How to Take a Stand Against Groupthink, Bullies, Agitators, and Professional Manipulators

B. K. Eakman

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781628738834
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Research & Methodology in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

How many times have you had the unsettling experience of being treated as a troublemaker as soon as you question or raise an objection to a school policy, a textbook, a course of study, a new county regulation, or a community proposal?Every day, attendees of conferences, community forums, PTA meetings, and board meetings are made to feel uncomfortable and occasionally foolish by the person or persons leading the meeting. The speakers, moderators, or provocateurs—whom author B. K. Eakman refers to as professional manipulators—hold power over the room and know how to steer the discussion back to their agendas without ever answering audience questions or addressing their concerns. These people use techniques to ostracize those brave enough to stand and question or criticize them.With Push Back!, readers will be able to counter group manipulation tactics by learning to: Recognize psychologically controlled environments
Identify the professional agitator/provocateur
Examine components of psych war
Undercut faulty, distorted, and biased arguments of opponents
Squelch techniques used to rebuff audience members who complain or balk
Neutralize consensus-building techniques
And much more

BEGINNER COURSE—PROVOCATION AND CONSENSUS

Introduction

It’s tough today to be a traditionalist, constitutionalist or even the generic “conservative” in America’s ever more left-leaning, bureaucratic political scene. Even the trusty dictionary and thesaurus are against you, characterizing “conservative” in negatives: “old-fashioned,” “unadventurous,” “fearful of change,” “inflexible,” “reactionary.”

Most Americans have been conditioned—through their schools, the media and the “popular” culture—to crave acceptance and comfort more than to cherish the liberties identified in the US Constitution.

Anthony Daniels, a physician and former prison doctor in Britain, who also writes under a pen name in America, recently observed that people don’t necessarily want to be free; they’d rather be comfortable. His comment was this:

“It is a mistake . . . to assume that all people want to be free, in the sense of the American pioneers. I think they much prefer to be comfortable; as the establishment of welfare states almost everywhere . . . has shown. [T]he greatest of all freedoms, the one that people want more than any other, is freedom from responsibility and consequences.”

In order to be completely comfortable, special privileges emerge for preferred groups and bogus government payouts. The populace becomes increasingly dependent, regimented and regulated. A bureaucracy grows by being tasked with ever more oversight duties, onsite inspections and, finally, enforcement.

I ought to know; I was once among those bureaucracies.

Bureaucrats have powerful incentives to enlarge departments and enforce regulations. Soon you have a government that “creates jobs.” Once that begins to sound normal, the nation is in trouble.

Counter-Strategy Earns Successful Results

I noticed this evolution of enlarging government while I was still a classroom teacher, and again later, working for several federal agencies. I learned a lot, and started reading more on the political strategies of countries that had skidded into, rather than directly ordering up, their fully regimented societies. I found my first golden opportunity to use this new-found knowledge in a mandatory sexual-harassment/AIDS-awareness workshop for employees at the federal agency where I worked. Everyone had to sign up for one of three days.

As most of us expected (including the liberal staffers, which today usually comprises a majority), it was all about political correctness. Since the workshop was required, most employees were anxious to show that they were sensitive and not prejudiced. So, my colleagues smiled and preened, even though they were miffed at having been pulled away from their desks—mostly piled with “make work.” Even so, leaving the busywork unfinished would have affected their employee evaluations.

The lady who served as the moderator began by asking: “What pops into your head when I say: ‘AIDS’, ‘HIV’, ‘sexual orientation’?” We were all supposed to call out something.

Then she dimmed the lights and showed a short film featuring interviews with homosexuals and others—they may have been actors—all of whom, of course, decried “homophobia” and went on to express incredulity that something so “normal” could cause a person to be ostracized. Afterward, the moderator worked, without much success, to generate discussion, and then turned to the topic of how one could not get AIDS or HIV from the fellow in the next cubicle, or by using the same bathroom, etc.—which was only minimally accurate, as long as one doesn’t accidentally take in a bodily fluid, such as splash-ups from drinking faucets and whatnot.

What neither my colleagues, nor the moderator herself, knew was that there was someone in the room who not only understood we weren’t getting the whole picture, but also had researched and written on consensus-building, the kind where psychological manipulation is a sucker’s game.

After listening to the p.c. spiel for half an hour, I waved my hand: “Excuse me, I have a question.”

Now, this was music to the moderator’s ears because she thought that she might be starting to connect with her unwilling participants. So, I said:

“I think all of us here know the risk of catching AIDS or HIV from the person in an adjacent office or bathroom is minimal. That’s not what concerns us. What many of us are concerned about is the compromised immune systems of folks who indulge in risky sexual behavior, individuals who go on to get strains of pneumonia, tuberculosis and other contagious diseases that are resistant to antibiotics. What materials have you brought us to address this issue?”

The moderator was flummoxed. She never expected the question, had no literature, and no snappy retort. I yawned and stretched, then said: “Well, if there’s nothing in your arsenal that addresses real concerns like this, I think we’re done here.”

I got up and proceeded to walk out, whereupon everybody else followed me out of the room—including the liberals.

This is how you co-opt phony consensus meetings, and get others, including weaker colleagues, even those representing other political views, to join you.

But wait: What, exactly, did I do?

Actually, several techniques were at work here, even though it all appeared very smooth:

• First, I didn’t give the moderator anything to arouse suspicion, either through something I said or my prior body language, until she unintentionally provided an opening (which I figured she would, eventually). So, she had no means of shutting me out.
• Secondly, I didn’t get distracted by her effort to create a “we” mentality with her little opening gambit of “what pops into your head. . .?” In fact, I used the tactic on her!
• Thirdly, I didn’t refer to myself; I used terms like “many of us” and “we,” making it difficult for the facilitator to ostracize me.
• Finally, I affected a calm, laid back, non-confrontational, even a bored, demeanor, which drew in even my liberal colleagues.

These techniques are grounded in the axioms and rules of psych war that we will be studying and practicing in this course.

If you’re reading this text, you’re not looking to be comfortable. You expect to counter your smug opposition. You recognize the absolute necessity of taking the battle to the adversary. Some leftist tenets have become embedded in the Republican Party, in fiscally conservative groups, and a few religious organizations, too.

Make no mistake: We didn’t win the Cold War. We lost it. The Left has been busy since the 1970s taking America down. They’re regrouping in places like Vietnam which recently began offering free university-level education in July 2013 to those applicants at state universities who agree to study the works of the approved pantheon of orthodox communist thinkers, and is hoping to attract more students globally. This goes beyond the requirement for all students to take courses in Marxist-Leninism.

Many countries in South America have seen a resurgence of old Soviet-era dictatorships. The Left has become really good at provocation and agitation. Someone even better has to deal with them.

America is going down an eerily familiar politically correct path, complete with penalties for noncompliance. Thus, you are a rarity, if you are willing to push back. Dissention is tantamount to being “uncooperative” and “argumentative,” both of which have been determined by “experts” to be signs of mental disturbance. To be honest, I don’t know if traditionalists and constitutionalists actually have the numbers anymore. But if we stick to counter-strategies that work, numbers per se make no difference, as we shall discover in this course.

Starting Point

Where does one start? In your neighborhoods, in your schools and houses of worship, in town meetings, task forces, focus groups, local campaigns and curriculum committees. You must shut down the bullies—nearly all paid to come in from the outside and “facilitate” local meetings or task forces under the cover of chairing, or maybe “moderating,” a discussion to make sure the “consensus” goes a certain way. Their bottom line is always to increase reliance on government at local, county, regional, state and, finally, the federal level—the classic description of creeping socialism.

Dependency upon government typically begins under the cover of “a good cause,” and from there, it moves along subtly to mandatory compliance. The underlying justification for certain programs and attitude-changes creates a vicious cycle: more local, state, regional and federal spending. Once governments at all levels start depending upon what is known in political circles as “pass-through federal dollars” to get the job done, there follows an accumulating public debt from which, eventually, there is no escape.

For example, many Republican lawmakers—suddenly sensitive to the growing public disdain for ObamaCare, with its increasing list of previously unnoticed taxes (such as for medical devices like X-ray machines and oxygen tanks)—are in a quandary. They know that their constituencies are addicted to related government programs, like Medicaid! So, in March 2013, some Republican legislators in Congress made a show of rejecting any expansion of the program under ObamaCare, while simultaneously applying backroom influence to allow for an extension of—guess what?—Medicaid benefits!

This stands in stark contrast to the values endorsed by the Founders of our nation in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights—concepts like self-sufficiency, self-reliance, self-discipline and self-determination—ideals that formed the cornerstones of the American experiment in self-government. But “self” is now the operative term that no longer dare speak its name!

Are You a “Troublemaker”?

Many of you, no doubt, have had the frustrating experience of being treated as a “troublemaker” as soon as you raise a concern about a policy, proposal, or school curriculum? Sometimes you wind up ostracized when all you wanted was to inject another viewpoint.

Unfortunately, most laypersons—which sometimes includes even legislators—don’t realize they’re dealing with well-trained provocateurs the minute they set foot in the room with folks who are chairing a meeting. These chairpersons frequently have an ulterior motive.

To have your view heard and taken seriously, you must know, first, how to recognize psychological manipulation. You must be able to reframe a debate, take it away from your adversary, and argue the issues you and your colleagues want to discuss, and not get sidetracked into your opponent’s agenda. To do this requires mastering certain principles of argument, then applying them in a group setting, under pressure.

The AIDS/sex awareness workshop opened a window for me: I discovered I had a knack for this, and many of you will find that you do as well. Even if you don’t, you can subtly support those who do.

SECTION 1

Agents of Change and “Marginalization”

For reasons you will understand shortly, it’s easier to control a group than it is to control an individual. Now, that may seem strange, but it’s actually the reason behind attempts to collectivize participants in focus groups, committees, etc.

Unethical facilitators—those with ulterior motives—will try to maneuver you toward groupthink instead of “I think.” That’s the first giveaway that you ar...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• BEGINNER COURSE–Provocation and Consensus
• INTERMEDIATE COURSE–Loose Logic
• PRACTICE EXERCISES: DEFLECTING MANIPULATION
• ADVANCED COURSE–Hardball Attack Strategies
• POST-GRAD COURSE–Roots of Manipulation
• Behind the Scenes Summary
• Self-Test
• Self-Test Answers
• Appendix