The Endless Tediousness of DARVO

Here’s a manufactured structure I just described, showing up again a few days later.

I don’t have the patience to dig into the details, and you wouldn’t have the patience to read that, but Elon Musk has suspended the Twitter accounts of journalists who shared the real-time location of his private airplane after a stalker used the information to block and approach a car carrying Musk’s five year-old son. Musk said that real-time posting of personal locations amounts to the delivery of “assassination coordinates,” and announced a new blanket rule forbidding that practice for all accounts. This is, of course, a sign of rising fascism, and a national scandal, and the banning already has its own Wikipedia page.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOC

You’re a public figure. An extremely controversial and powerful one. I get feeling unsafe, but descending into abuse of power + erratically banning journalists only increases the intensity around you. Take a beat and lay off the proto-fascism. Maybe try putting down your phone.

Elon Musk @elonmusk

@micsolana They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service

There’s no way to exaggerate the hysteria of the response, and MSNBC (for example) promptly labeled the banning of journalist accounts a “threat to democracy.” Many headlines stripped away the personal location angle and just said that Musk was banning “reporters who cover him.”

And Elon Musk is also, of course, literally Adolf Hitler, a calm explanation you can find on an infinite number of insignificant Twitter accounts:

FatAndysIndustries @DrewPortnoy

Elon Musk's tweets sound better in the original 1930s German.

The people warning that Elon Musk was erratically forbidding journalism declared that the banning of journalists on Twitter was “unprecedented,” and wow the gaslighting. No one’s ever been banned from Twitter before, obvo.

Now, exactly one week ago I wrote about an embattled Los Angeles city councilman who was baited into an angry response to a mob that chased him and invaded his personal space, after which a slow-motion video stripped out the context and made that councilman a vicious attacker:

See This and Remember It

So, again, you’re going to see this over and over and over again. Without debating the details, because I don’t care, Musk perceived a threat to his family, and narrowly banned a set of journalists from posting over his view that they had specifically posted or linked to his real-time location, and the real-time location of his family members. Someone blocked and rushed at a car that his five year-old son was in, possibly having found that location on Twitter, and Musk responded — which became instant fodder for a flood of hysterical stories and social media posts warning that Elon Musk is forbidding journalism, which is exactly like what Hitler did in the 1930s, and oh no THE RISE OF FASCISM!!!!

Musk: Stop telling people exactly where my five year-old son is in real time;

AOC: “Lay off the proto-fascism.”

That’s insane, but it’s not insane insane — it’s a calculated game.

1.) Deliberately provoke someone

2.) Get a response

3.) Isolate the response from its context and use it to play victim and scream “Nazi!”

This maneuver, which is pretty much Saul Alinsky 101, has been called DARVO for a long time: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. It’s a common feature of domestic abuse and the American political culture, two milieus that increasingly blend into one.

Attack someone, get them to hit you back, and then play the “he hit me!” narrative.

It’s a weekly event, now, in some form or other, and it’s roughly as predictable as the sunrise.