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DARVO: Thread by @hafnia@wandering.shop
- Original Link: https://wandering.shop/@hafnia/104997378933311199
- Reference: https://dynamic.uoregon.edu/jjf/defineDARVO.html
Reposted with permission of Hafnia.
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It's important to know what DARVO is and how it's used as a tool to bully people into silence/complicity in bad behavior.
DARVO is an acronym. It stands for:
Deny Attack Reverse Victim and Offender.
It is a technique that is used by abusive people to cover up their abuse.
It is incredibly common. Knowing how to spot it is key.
There are a lot of famous examples of this. Brett Kavanagh. Matt Lauer. R. Kelly. Some people refer to it as “playing the victim”, but it's more complex than that, and a lot of the time, especially in situations where it's not high-profile people involved, it gets used successfully.
When called out on bad behavior, someone will DENY that they did it: “I never said that, you can't prove it, I meant [x] not [y]…”
They will attempt to change the narrative.
Usually, this doesn't work, because people have proof, or it's extremely plausible that this happened. Think like, “this person has a history of bad behavior and it's believable that they'd do this.”
At this point, they will double down and begin attacking their victim. Sometimes it looks like attacking their credibility, sometimes it's their character, and sometimes it's simply saying, “well, they have also done this and I have intangible 'proof'”.