Manipulators Do Not Use Language The Same Way Normal People Do

The world would be a much better place if everyone understood that manipulators do not use language the same way normal people do. Normal people use language to communicate and connect, while manipulative people use language to control and extract.

Propagandists, hasbarists, politicians, and people with disorders which incline them toward manipulative behavior like narcissistic personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder, use language with the goal of advancing agendas rather than to convey information and connect with other people.

Manipulators use their words to influence the thoughts people think about themselves, about others, and about their world. They use language to extract favors, money, resources, sex, esteem, loyalty, or submission from other people. They use it to trick people in order to ensure that life transpires in accordance with their will.

For the manipulator, language is a tool you use to move people around and get them to do what you want them to do. They use it like a physical force in the world. When you have a narcissist standing in front of you trying to snow you with a barrage of manipulative language, it can actually feel like you’re being physically whipped around or pushed downward by their voice.

This is a completely different use of language than you see in normal, healthy people. For normal people, words are how we join our minds with others. I have a sad feeling, I use language to tell my friend about my feeling, and now my friend understands my inner state and can make me a cup of tea to help me feel better. My husband has a thought about tacos, he uses language to suggest that we go out for tacos together, and then a few minutes later we’re sitting at our favorite taco place thinking about what to order.

It’s a kind of magic, if you think about it. Through a process of internal cognition, small mouth noises, and vibrations in the air causing vibrations in the eardrum of another human, we can actually cause the thoughts we think in our minds to appear similarly in the mind of another. I’m doing the same thing right this very moment with the written word, conveying all these complex abstract thoughts from my own mind to the mind of you, the reader.

It’s amazing. Kind of miraculous. But that’s not how it happens for the manipulator.

The manipulator isn’t interested in using language to convey a thought in their mind to the mind of someone else. The manipulator has a thing in mind that they want from the other, and then they make whatever noises they need to make in order to obtain it. They don’t begin with the goal of communication, they begin with the goal of obtaining.

This is completely night-and-day different from how the rest of us are interacting with each other. The two truly could not be more different. But because we’re all speaking the same language and using the same words, normal people tend to think a manipulator is using language in the same way they are. They think they’re speaking with someone who’s trying to communicate with them, so their guard is down, and they don’t notice the manipulations.

Manipulators rely on this, because manipulation only works if its target isn’t aware they’re being manipulated. If more people were acutely aware of the fact that there are individuals walking among us who use language in a completely different way than how normal people use it, manipulation would have a greatly diminished role in our society.

This would make the world a much better place, because so many of the abuses in our world are made possible by manipulation — be it large-scale or small.

Westerners grow up swimming in an ocean of propaganda from the moment they’re able to learn about the world, because the manipulators who rule the western empire understand that the public could turn to revolution if they are not indoctrinated into accepting all the injustice, inequality, exploitation, war and tyranny that the empire is built upon. That’s why the news media, the mainstream pundits, the Silicon Valley algorithms, and the trolls in our comments sections are always working to manipulate our perception into accepting the imperial status quo.

Abusive interpersonal relationships are always rife with verbal manipulation, because language is a powerful tool for both bending someone to your will and for dissuading them from leaving. A skillful manipulator can have their partner bending over backwards to accommodate their every desire and tolerating every kind of unfair treatment without ever even raising a hand to them.

Abusive partners, abusive parents, abusive employers, abusive clergy members and cult leaders, abusive class systems, abusive governments and abusive empires all use manipulation to exert control and to get what they want. The more people become aware of the many ways manipulation affects their lives and their world, the less often the manipulators will get their way.

The best way to cut through manipulation is to ignore the words and watch their actions. Watch where the resources go, where the money goes, where the weapons go, and who keeps getting their way. Watch who’s getting the real material goods, and who is getting fed mountains of empty narrative fluff.

If you see all the world’s resources moving from the global south to the global north, that tells you all you need to know about what’s really going on, regardless of all the narrative spin the propagandists try to put on it.

If you see Israel constantly inflicting genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and abuse on people, then that tells you all you need to know about its true nature, regardless of the mountains of verbiage the hasbarists may try to throw at you.

If you see millionaires becoming billionaires and trillionaires while working people have to toil harder and harder to pay their bills, then that tells you all you need to know about the systems we live under, regardless of how many spinmeisters tell you that capitalism is working out great.

If your spouse is getting most of the relaxation time, energy, orgasms, money and resources and always gets their way while you’re feeling more and more exhausted and strained, then that tells you all you need to know about your marriage, regardless of what language they throw at you to rationalize what’s happening to you.

Watch the raw, material data and ignore the narrative spin, and the manipulations will start to stand out like a black spot on a white page.

And then start taking back what the manipulators have stolen.

Reading by Tim Foley:

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/manipulators-do-not-use-language