Thread by @FreedomFriesInc

Thread: Here is what makes me tick.

The issue is both political and personal. I survived a series of events over several decades and am now in a position to offer insights to others. The same healing process is directly relevant to world politics, too.

The above YouTube link is to the start of a 14 video playlist on the channel of the highly experienced Texan psychotherapist Les Carter, PhD.

Bio: survivingnarcissism.tv/about-survivin…

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/SNarcissism101/status/1492534117593923592

The market has really taken off in recent years for therapists and others offering guidance through YouTube on surviving the behavior of narcissists.

There are many I'd recommend but Dr Carter is the one I most value at the moment.

The pandemic has forced many of us to confront toxic situations in our own lives in order to improve our chances of surviving this historic worldwide crisis.

It's also exposed political and media personalities who try to dominate entire countries with their NPD toxicity.

My increasing understanding of NPD enabled me to eventually recognize that the international far right fascist movement has expanded in the past 30 years and is now the number one threat facing the world.

Many world leaders and those around them have NPD or similar pathology.

This has always been the case. That some world leaders have NPD. The difference in the past 30 years and especially the past decade, is both their ability to target exponentially more people, and that the guardrails of democracy are weaker than they were between 1945 and 1990.

Often when we see how widespread personality disorders like NPD are among those who control our political, military, business, & even charity sectors, we feel pessimistic about our ability to solve such a widespread problem.

But, there's never been a better time to work on it.

The same social media environment that enabled far right fascism to infect so many more people than in the past, can be used to inform and educate in support of the international resistance movement.

And by the way, that movement is not only for "the left." Not at all.

When I ran for the hills away from supporting the Republican party of the USA, I found a very warm welcome in the international resistance mvt.

Almost no one on Twitter has told me I'm not welcome there (as a moderate conservative.) Those that do? I think they're paid trolls.

I've yet to see compelling evidence these naysayers are the organic Twitter accounts of real people, anywhere.

My conclusion (after years of this) is that the bad actors who fund the far right, also fund (some of) the far left, esp. those more active on social media than irl.

Opinions on the >8 year war of aggression by Russia against Ukraine are an excellent bellwether.

And that includes media outlets in NATO member countries like the big newspaper and TV companies, and the AP in the US, for example.

When they say "Russia might invade" they are lying by omission because Russia already invaded in 2014 and stole a big chunk of Ukraine.

When they say unironically "But Russia said they have no plans to invade Ukraine" they are knowingly spreading propaganda on Putin's behalf.

It's like a historical re-enactment club's summer project that acts out German policy on Poland in 1938 and 1939.

And just like it was in our (more or less) democratic countries at that time, most of our media are distorting the facts to fit a narrative THEY desire.

Those in charge of major media companies have an outsized degree of power over public opinion in democratic countries.

And it should stay that way, because it's far better than the alternative.

The best antidote is for you and me to become better educated about it.

In my personal life right now I'm under a lot of pressure to get more ready for when the Omicron variant of Covid peaks in my region of New Zealand. As a #spoonie I don't have as many hours in the day as the average person does. I'm fighting a battle against NPDs in my orbit.

Being a spoonie is why I became active on Twitter in the first place. On days when I have to force myself to rest between bouts of the manual work I love doing (especially outdoors), engaging my mind online helps me balance my energy levels day to day. Physical and emotional.

I used to be able to use the online world of politics as an escape from the depressing reality of #SpoonieLife. The pandemic changed that.

There are fires constantly needing to be put out in both halves of my day to day life. So I found a way to integrate them in my mind.

I didn't consciously do that, ofc. But in hindsight I see that my need to overcome the NPDs who threaten my survival right here in the region where I live, is a lot like the international resistance movement's need to stop the fascist network's advance ASAP.

Both projects have a way of sharpening our focus. I try (& often fail) to ignore distractions in my personal life, & when observing global politics these days.

Anyway, let me know what you think. What can we learn about countering fascism, from the world of NPD recovery?

#AMA