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We Are Fooling Ourselves About Bullies | by Beverly Garside | An Injustice!

We Are Fooling Ourselves About Bullies

How we must open our eyes and change our strategy to fight the Bully Mafia

Beverly Garside

7 min read  Mar 1, 2023

Photo by robin mikalsen on Unsplash

I used to think bullying was about schoolboys, i.e., not my problem. It wasn’t until I learned that this was an adult thing too, that it hit me.

I have been bullied — badly. That was the name for what I experienced.

Furthermore, I think we have vastly underestimated how much bullying adults do. I believe we have only begun to expose this beast, and the way we are defining it and confronting it leaves much to be desired.

Bully legion

Our current concept of “the bully” is in the singular. One person with power over another terrorizes them. They are an isolated “bad apple” in the barrel.

Consequently, we put “the bully” on the couch, analyzing their psychology and looking for traumas, suffering, or insecurities that motivate them. This may be correct in some cases, especially with children. But I don’t believe it’s the norm for adults. Bullies are not the few among the many. They are legion. And they rarely act alone. They operate in packs, like wolves. They recognize each other, form hierarchies, compete for leadership, carve out territories, and protect each other.

Bullies are a mafia. It’s opportunistic and loosely organized, but it’s a mafia.

We just have not opened our eyes wide enough to see it. We don’t want to admit how many of us do not mean well. But we need to. For as long as we continue to treat the problem as a few maladjusted individuals, we allow the larger beast to continue to prosper.

Other labels

It’s not that we don’t see them, it’s that we don’t acknowledge them as bullies:

·      We call it “police brutality,” but it’s actually an arm of the bully mafia that has infiltrated and taken over multiple police departments;

·      We call it “catcalling,” but it’s actually an arm of the bully mafia that feels entitled to terrorize women and girls in public places;

·      The military calls it “toxic leadership,” but it’s actually an arm of the bully mafia that has taken over entire units in the armed forces;

·      Kids call them “mean,” but they are actually an arm of the bully mafia that operates in schools, orphanages, churches, camps, scouting, and anywhere else adults are in charge of children;

·      We call them “nasty bosses,” or “cut-throat co-workers” but they are actually an arm of the bully mafia that operates in workplaces;

·      We call it “sexual harassment” but it’s actually an arm of the bully mafia that prefers this type of predation;

·      We call it “hazing” but it’s actually a training and induction program into bully society.

Who are the bullies? They are all those in respectable society who do not mean well. While the rest of us may not always get there, we at least recognize the right path and try to follow it.

Bullies strive instead to do the maximum harm to us without stepping too far outside the law.

My bully education

I learned about bullies and their operating system during a long-ago enlistment in the Air Force.

In basic training at Lackland AFB in San Antonio, my flight’s training instructors (TIs) were mean and scary — as they are supposed to be. But they never crossed the line into abuse or cruelty. After a few weeks, they began to ease up and created a relationship with us of respect and affection. This inspired us to do our very best and we ended up graduating as an honor flight.

Other flights were not so lucky. Their TI’s called them insulting names, like “losers,” “retards,” and “heifers.” They would humiliate individual airmen in front of everyone. They loved it. It showed on their faces. And this was just what we saw outside in the open. Tales of what went on behind closed doors were way worse.

My first experience with a bully was in basic training. I was standing in line at the chow hall, minding my own business. Suddenly a TI from another flight came up to me and whispered in my ear: “You better wipe that fucking smile off your face before I shove it up your ass!” Then he turned to his fellow TI buddies, and they all had a good laugh, watching me.

At every base, I went to thereafter I encountered a similar gaggle of NCOs (sergeants) whose joy in life came from harassing and preying upon us junior airmen. Their favorite tactics included scheduling room inspections and work details during our sleeping hours and days off. They were also creative in finding other ways to “get” us. It was a game to them.

My darkest days in the Air Force were when I became a personal target of one of them in my work center. He spread false rumors about me, alleging that I had embarrassed the whole unit with specific acts of incompetence (which never happened). He even tried to use me as a credible scapegoat for his own violations and failures on the job.

And I was far from his only target. He was high enough in the chain of command to spread this treatment to anyone he pleased. He was a warlord over us and even had a cohort of cooperative vassals doing his bidding.

Then one day he came up to me and made a snarky remark about someone else on my flight. Our eyes met. It was like looking into the soul of a demon. But there was something more there — an invitation.

He was inviting me to become a vassal in his fiefdom. All I had to do was laugh or express agreement, and all the persecution would be over. Instead of his target, I would become one of his accomplices.

I said nothing and looked away.

The mafia methodology

The Air Force was not my only experience with bullies. Along the way I have observed their methods and tactics:

·      There are many types of bullying. All of them, however, first target your mind. They break you down and make you doubt yourself, wondering if maybe you deserve it, or whether anyone would believe what you say.

·      They have cover from above. The Air Force’s mafia sergeants knew they had nothing to fear from the units’ officers. As long as they kept things running smoothly, the officers didn’t care what they did to us. Bully mafia cells require complicit or indifferent superiors to operate.

·      They recognize each other and team up. In numbers, they have more safety, protection, and strength. And just like criminal mafias, they recruit vassals into their fiefdoms to act as accomplices in lower places.

·      They create a bully-or-be-bullied paradigm. Everyone must be either prey or predator.

Leveling the playing field

Wherever bullies team up with complicit or indifferent superiors, we don’t seem to have a chance. But maybe we have more resources than we realize. I believe we can fight back better if we change our current approach.

First, we must raise awareness of the scale of bullying. Stop treating its various categories as separate, unrelated issues. See the big picture. It’s all different forms of bully predation. It’s all done by the same type of people.

Next, we must stop pathologizing them. Not everyone who is traumatized, angry, or insecure is a bully, and not all bullies are traumatized, angry, or insecure. Many of them are just entitled and resentful. They enjoy wielding power over others. There is an element of choice and character in joining the bully mafia.

Adult bullies are not ill. They are evil.

We must shift from considering bullies as problematic individuals to recognizing that they are a social problem, a scourge that debilitates society every bit as much as criminal mafias. They are organized gangs, not “bad apples.”

In organizations, every individual bully has at least one superior to cover for them, and a cohort of vassals and fellow mafiosos to vouch for them. Victims, however, are most often alone. Telling someone who is being bullied how to protect themselves is like telling a lone hen to take its complaint to the wolf pack.

But what if we didn’t confront them alone? What if, instead of just taking the good advice to “keep book” when we are bullied (documenting everything that happens), we also did it when we saw others being bullied? What if we banded together in support of each other?

Imagine if instead of one person filing a complaint, half the class or work center signed it. Or if we spoke up for the victim when the bully insulted or ridiculed them publicly. What if we refused to go along with the same person being made to come in after hours, or do the most unpleasant job, every single time?

We are often too afraid of becoming the next target to get involved. But if we agreed to work together, to stand up for each other, no one would have to fight the monsters alone. The weight of a group’s testimony and opposition is always more powerful than that of a single person.

We need to shift from defending ourselves to defending each other.

It’s not a silver bullet. We can never win this war. We will always be in a struggle between those who mean well and those who don’t. But if we fight smarter, I believe we can do better than we’re doing now.

Who knows? Maybe the tables could turn.

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