Mar 20, 2024
"Ex-officer Amber Guyger testifies in
wrong-apartment murder trial: 'I was scared to death,'" a
" story reported in 2019. "Starbucks Files Complaints with
Labor Board, Accuses Union Organizers of Bullying and Harassment,"
reported Food & Wine Magazine in April 2022. "Labour MPs
fear for safety as pro-Palestine protesters target offices,"
The Guardianwarned in November 2023.
Within the last decade, we’ve seen the rise of a
phenomenon we’ll refer to as “elite crybullying," in which people
in power engage in political manipulation in order to portray
themselves as victims. Routinely, we hear that armed American
police fear for their safety around unarmed civilians, lawmakers
feel for the their safety after there's a sit in protest and
corporate executives are being unfairly intimated by union
organizers.
It's a sleazy, manipulative tactic that not
only flattens, but flips, power dynamics. By claiming to have been
bullied or traumatized by those who oppose them, wealthy and
influential figures suddenly transform themselves from victimizers
into victims. Meanwhile, by this same perverse logic, they
characterize their actual victims–be they organizing workers and
peace activists, who merely seek to stand up for themselves, or
people killed by military and police violence – as victimizers.
On this episode, we explore the rise of
ruling-class crybullyism, how elites increasingly traffic in the
language of anti-bullying and therapy-speak to indemnify themselves
from criticism, examine how cynical distortions of power relations
recast the upholders of colonialism, labor abuses, and police
violence as the oppressed, and the people who dare to object as the
oppressors, all in an effort to silence dissent from the
justifiably angry masses.
Our guests are Mari Cohen and Saree Makdisi.