^This is called phobia indoctrination. Phobia indoctrination instills irrational fears in members of a controlling community and uses those fears to manipulate members, discouraging or preventing them from questioning the group's beliefs or leaving the group.
The deliberate terrorising of children and young people by adults is not just having an appalling effect on them, it is what leads "trans allies" to physically attack women in the belief that they are "nazis" who literally want to hunt trans people down and kill them. I saw this play out in social media in the run up to a public meeting about Women's Rights.
Older adults, mainly trans-identified males and drag queens, were whipping up a frenzy of fear by claiming that this was actually a secret meeting of women in the KKK (this was in the UK!) who were planning to seek out and lynch trans people.
Utterly, batshit insane but there were teenagers and students replying who were scared to go out; lots of frantic "Stay safe!" messages and "Let me know when you get home!" They were genuinely frightened.
The mob that gathered to scream outside the meeting included, disgracefully, some local councillors who knew some of the women organising the meeting, were well aware that they were not "nazis" and had no intention of lynching anyone, even had their arthritis and other age-related infirmities allowed it.
It was shocking to see such callous manipulation and fear-mongering and I could quite understand how well-meaning people could end up mobbing and physically attacking perfectly innocent women. All they needed were pitchforks and flaming torches to complete the picture.
Some of the women and girls attending the meeting, from young teens upwards, were rightly terrified. They were the only ones whose safety was actually threatened.
Notable about the whole event was that all the people fear-mongering on social media ahead of the meeting were male, the person who organised and sent a contingent to protest the meeting was male, whereas the protesters themselves were almost all female. That made it far less frightening to be on the receiving end although there were a handful of rather aggressive and over-excited men in there.
The fact that some of those men were screaming, "Haven't you heard of intersectional feminism?!" in our faces made the experience more farcical than intimidating and it was difficult to keep a straight face at times.
That is not to detract from how manipulative, dangerous and cynical this fear-mongering is.
Yeah, there's phobia indoctrination for the vulnerable/manipulable members of the in-group and threat inflation to justify aggression against the outgroup. Scary story.
The deliberate terrorising of children and young people by adults is not just having an appalling effect on them, it is what leads "trans allies" to physically attack women in the belief that they are "nazis" who literally want to hunt trans people down and kill them. I saw this play out in social media in the run up to a public meeting about Women's Rights.
Older adults, mainly trans-identified males and drag queens, were whipping up a frenzy of fear by claiming that this was actually a secret meeting of women in the KKK (this was in the UK!) who were planning to seek out and lynch trans people.
Utterly, batshit insane but there were teenagers and students replying who were scared to go out; lots of frantic "Stay safe!" messages and "Let me know when you get home!" They were genuinely frightened.
The mob that gathered to scream outside the meeting included, disgracefully, some local councillors who knew some of the women organising the meeting, were well aware that they were not "nazis" and had no intention of lynching anyone, even had their arthritis and other age-related infirmities allowed it.
It was shocking to see such callous manipulation and fear-mongering and I could quite understand how well-meaning people could end up mobbing and physically attacking perfectly innocent women. All they needed were pitchforks and flaming torches to complete the picture.
Some of the women and girls attending the meeting, from young teens upwards, were rightly terrified. They were the only ones whose safety was actually threatened.
Notable about the whole event was that all the people fear-mongering on social media ahead of the meeting were male, the person who organised and sent a contingent to protest the meeting was male, whereas the protesters themselves were almost all female. That made it far less frightening to be on the receiving end although there were a handful of rather aggressive and over-excited men in there.
The fact that some of those men were screaming, "Haven't you heard of intersectional feminism?!" in our faces made the experience more farcical than intimidating and it was difficult to keep a straight face at times.
That is not to detract from how manipulative, dangerous and cynical this fear-mongering is.
Yeah, there's phobia indoctrination for the vulnerable/manipulable members of the in-group and threat inflation to justify aggression against the outgroup. Scary story.