CA

Character Assassination

Those of us who have encountered people with narcissistic, predatory, or even sociopathic tendencies (for the sake of simplicity referred to as manipulator) have experienced a phenomenon where the manipulator tries to vilify you by using triangulation, gossiping, power play, mischaracterization, and other tactics. It usually goes like this.... 

The Mechanism Behind It

The manipulator is driven by shame, insecurity, and fear. As soon as they start feeling inferior, or as soon as you notice the manipulator's toxicity—or as soon as they notice you noticing their toxicity—they begin feeling deep insecurity. In their attempt to manage it, they may try to cover their tracks and save their image by giving you made up explanations and excuses, instead of recognizing their unhealthiness and working on themselves to overcome it. If you are able to see though their smoke and mirrors tactics, ideally you will either set a firm boundary and distance yourself from them or they will get terribly scared and ashamed and distance themselves from you, because they avoid people who can see through their facade like a plague. 

Now, since manipulators are terrified by others not liking them or having a negative perception of them, they will try to make themselves feel better by finding others to support their delusions. So they will use their social power, or go tell their circle their version of the story where you are a villain or where you are the perpetrator and they are the victim. In doing so, depending on the type of the relationship, they will say how you are a bad person, mischaracterize you, be overly-critical of you, while in reality they feel inferior—and in certain aspects factually they are inferior—and project that onto you, sometimes without even consciously realizing it. 

In other cases they can be what sometimes is called the devious type, where they see their remorseless destruction of you as a means to an end in realizing their own goals, and they will justify it with a soothing narrative where you are a villain, where they have no choice but to do what they are doing, and where they are a hero. They will use various manipulation tactics to gain people's trust—sometimes the very people they aim to destroy—and then utilize it in their attempt to assassinate their target.

Manipulators are cowards, as they need a group to get their narcissistic supply, enabling, and resources for their schemes. In many ways, they are just like bullies who intimidate or beat somebody up 4 on 1, send their goons after you, or try to sabotage you with lies and deception. Usually their group consists of admirers or yes-men or "like-minded people" or minions—dependents and enablers—who lack their own identity and fail to question the manipulator's or their own toxic tendencies.

In psychology, this whole mechanism is called character assassination. It involves triangulation, gossiping, power play, tribalism, reality distortion, and mischaracterization. This phenomenon is widely common and can be observed or experienced first hand in one's family, school, professional environment, or personal relationships. 

In families, it usually happens in a way where a child or adult-child is terrorized by one or both of their toxic parents in relation to other family members or even to other social contacts. The parent's conscious or unconscious goal is to make you, the child, look and feel bad, and to justify their unjust treatment of you. The same can also happen between siblings, peers, or schoolmates. This is painfully prevalent, and most people have experienced it as children in one way or another.

In a professional environment, manipulators often feel insecure around their colleagues or subordinates. A common story is that the boss terrorizes you, the employee. Between colleagues, if you are a better worker, instead of concentrating on themselves and learning how to do a better job, your colleagues will feel threatened and entitled and try to sabotage you: by turning other coworkers against you, grouping against you, or turning the management against you. Especially if you simply try to mind your own business and concentrate on doing a good job instead of actively "competing with them." 

It is also horribly common in one's adult, personal life: in unhealthy romantic relationships, marriages, and social circles. "Friends" will gossip behind a "friend's" back. Ex-lovers will release a revenge porn video or stalk their ex and spread rumors. A boyfriend or a girlfriend will complain to their circle how horrible their partner is. A wife or a husband will do the same regarding their spouse. In some cases, a partner who suffers from narcissistic tendencies may even go to a therapist (who also suffers from narcissistic tendencies or is incapable of identifying such tendencies) and tell them how their spouse is narcissistic and terrorizing while in fact the spouse is the healthiest member there. And then they create a unity against the actual victim, sometimes to the degree where they plan to actively harm them. Sometimes certain forms of character assassination happens in couples or group therapy, too.  

Granted, not all cases are extreme, this phenomenon is much more commonplace than people realize or want to recognize.