Victim Blaming on the Targeted Individuals
In social psychology, there is a word called “victim blaming.” The term means the tendency of accusing the victim in a crime rather than blaming the criminal. According to the explanation in the Wikipedia, the word was derived from William Ryan's book, Blaming the Victim. The website explains that there are several causes for blaming the victim. One is “Just World Hypothesis,” which means the belief of fairness of our world caused the revenge on someone did wrong in the past. It is as if people believing on the cause and effect of the victimisation of the person, and they assume the victim must have done something wrong in order to become a victim. Another one is “Fundamental Attribution Error,” which stands for valuing on the character than the logical understanding of the circumstance.
In gang stalking, the Targeted Individual is often criticized as a suspect of some crime or having mental problem. It is easy for the whole people around the target to cooperate on the gang stalking if they rationalize their belief with “Victim Blaming.” We tend to think that an average person will not receive a claim on criminal suspicion or mental problem. Thus, when someone especially from authority figure question such matter to an individual, it is reasonable to believe what the gang stalkers say sounds more like the truth. Also, because of the fear on such easy targeting happens to oneself, people have a desire to believe the accusation is correct.
There are more issues that makes people around the target to believe target's story utterly. The people do not care about the personal problem of others, so they try to ignore the fact of the misfortune happens to other individual. “Victim Blaming” often occurs in the society where social insurance and other governmental helps are not functioning well to provide equality and democracy among citizens. In other words, “Victim Blaming” are more likely to happen in the society which has frequent discrimination or social divides.
This is one of the knowledge that every Targeted Individual must know and they must be able to explain to others around them. Some people join gang stalking because of this “victim blaming” effect. In 18C England, people could be hanged so easily by a small crime like stealing a bread. In the same period in the United States, notorious witch hunting killed many innocent individuals. No matter how innocent the suspect was, they persecuted him or her to death. It was a chain of “Victim Blaming.” If we want to stop the never ending unequal investigation, we must mention the psychological problem people often fall under the mass deception. During Nazis Germany, Jewish were openly accused for being Jews and their backgrounds. We do not want to be targeted because of what the others labeled on us. We, Targeted Individuals, are the real victims, and we have been accused as criminals because of “Victim Blaming” by the gang stalkers.
Work Cited:
Wikipedia. Website. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_blaming>. Last visited January 10th, 2008.
11/01/08