A gangstalking dilemma...

JLord

Critical Thinker
J
Joined
Aug 11, 2010
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If you've never heard of gangstalking, there is another thread about it on the front page that got my attention:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=129037

There is also www.gangstalkingworld.com to get the insider information about this movement.

My dilemma is that I volunteer at an organization that (in trying to help the poor generally) winds up dealing with a fair amount of gangstalking "victims." These people are genuinely very stressed and upset and I usually try to get them to see thier doctor about the stress (goes over better than telling them to see a psychiatrist) which I would hope then leads to further psychiatric evaluation.

However, some victims are highly sophisticated individuals with good education and so on. They are aware that socety's best explanation of what is happening to them is mental illness. They have usually been to see psychiatrists and that hasn't solved the problem. They often have evidence that they believe proves they are being gangstalked and they are interested in ways of objectively proving what is going on. They don't see any hope in police or docors or any authorities either because they've tried to report their problems and were dismissed, or because these are the people they believe to be responsible for the gangstalking.

I have also found that these people rarely are aware of the concept of gangstalking or the on-line presence of gangstalking victims and support groups. In lots of other stressful situations people find themselves in it is considered a very positive step to speak to other sufferrers, find out you're not alone, support eeach other, speak to someone who understands, etc. However, I am always worried about telling these people about gangstalkingworld.com for instance because I am concerned that this will make things worse and draw them deeper into this world of delusions.

But on the other hand, there are people that have been gangstalked for years such that it doesn't look to be going away on its own. These people are under tremendous stress and often wonder why they have been singled out. They live in a world where nobody understands them or even believes that they are not crazy. So being told "you're not alone" could also be a great benefit to their lives if the community can help them cope with living as a victim of gangstalking. If it's not going away anyways, I might as well try to give them some comforting information that might not help with the gangstalking but might help them loead happier and more fulfilling lives as gangstalking victims.

So there are two compelling arguments here in my opinion. I am not advocating giving every victim this information all the time as I think some people can get much better help from the medical field. But if seemingly all else has failed and someone appears to be a potential lifelong gangstalking "victim" would it be a good idea to share this information with them?
 
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I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that feeding the delusions of people suffering from delusions would be harmful.
 
The shrink quoted in the NY Times article seemed to think that the websites were not helpful.

Dr. Ralph Hoffman, a psychiatry professor at Yale who studies delusions, said a growing number of his research subjects have told him of visiting mind-control sites, and finding in them confirmation of their own experiences.

“The views of these belief systems are like a shark that has to be constantly fed,” Dr. Hoffman said. “If you don’t feed the delusion, sooner or later it will die out or diminish on its own accord. The key thing is that it needs to be repetitively reinforced.”

That is what the Web sites do, he said. Similar concerns have arisen about a proliferation of sites that describe how to commit suicide, or others that promote anorexia and bulimia, providing detailed instructions on restricting food and photographs of skeletal women meant to be “thinspiration.”

For people who regularly visit and write on message boards on the mind-control sites, the idea that others would describe the sites as promoting delusional and psychotic thinking is simply evidence of a cover-up of the truth.
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And another Dr. quoted seems to be leaning the other way.

Dr. Bell and some other mental health professionals say that even if the users of such sites are psychotic, forging an online connection to others and being told — perhaps for the first time — “you are not crazy” could actually have a positive effect on their illnesses.

“We know, for example, that things like social support, all of these positive social aspects are very good for people’s mental illness,” Dr. Bell said. “I wouldn’t say it’s entirely and completely positive, but it can be positive.”
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So you know where the wrapup is headed - "too soon to say!" :
Psychiatrists and researchers say it is too soon to say whether communication on the Internet among people who may be psychotic will negatively effect their illnesses.” This is a very complex little corner,” said Dr. Ken Duckworth, the medical director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy group. “Some people may find it’s healing, but these are really hard questions. The Internet isn’t a cause of mental illness, it’s a complicating new variable.”
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Thanks for that. At least it's good that the experts are not sure either. I think I'm going to try giving this information to some of the more sophisticated people and see how it goes.
 
Gang Stalking is a systemic form of control, which seeks to destroy every aspect of a Targeted Individuals life. Using occupational health and safety laws, warning markers can be added to a targets file. Individuals can be added to a Threat Assessment List for monitoring. Once a target is flagged, a notification is sent out, and the target is followed around 24/7 by the various communities that they are in. A covert investigation might be opened, and electronic means used by the civilian spies as part of the covert monitoring and surveillance process.

The citizen informants can be parts of these community oriented programs, but are often just average citizens. Everyone in the targets life is contacted, advised as to why the individual has been listed or flagged. Advised not to discuss the notification and asked to be a part of the ongoing, never ending monitoring (systemic harassment) process. This process is covertly designed to destroy the target over time, leaving them with no form of support.
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:eye-poppi

Wait, they're serious?!
 
You know, i would have a simple solution to this problem....

When approached by someone who claims gangstalking, give them a gun. And tell them to use it on the next car, or person they suspect of being part of the conspiracy.

The trick is, the gun isn't real, it looks real, it feels real, but when fired it will emit a bang, and send a signal to an appropriate psychiatric agency to come pick the person up.

My theory is that those who are just doing it because it provides an escape, a way to feel important in a big world, will not use the gun, and this fact will spurn them to realize that even they don't really believe. While those who are mentally ill enough to do so will be properly taken care of.
 
Is there anything about these people that would be subversive to whomever has the resources to carry out the purported gangstalking?

It would be interesting if these people all had the same political beliefs, for example.

Gangstalking being automatically dismissed as delusion is a result of your beliefs about how the world works - your world view. If you believe that the world operates on the basis of transparency and general plurality, the idea of positive action taken against dissidents seems ridiculous and false because there is no context for it. If, however, you believe the world is ruled more in the fashion of an authoritarian oligarchy, then its not as unreasonable. The people in the early Soviet Union who received visits from the secret police were likely thought of as crazy as well for this same reason of political belief and context.
 
corbin, I think you need to read up on the gang stalking phenomenon. It's not anything at all like dissidents being visited by secret police. Try the New York Times article that I linked, and maybe read the forum topic linked in the opening post.
 
carlitos said:
corbin, I think you need to read up on the gang stalking phenomenon. It's not anything at all like dissidents being visited by secret police. Try the New York Times article that I linked, and maybe read the forum topic linked in the opening post.
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How is it not like dissidents being visited by secret police? The silencing of dissidents is the goal and effect in both cases.

I'm saying that dismissing it out of hand and getting on your high horse to offer all these psychological explanations shows your bias toward a particular world view. There are world views in which gangstalking can be identified as an expected phenomenon, and there are those where it can be identified as delusion. The argument should really be about these world views and which is more accurate.

I don't mean to say that is the only method of analyzing precisely what is going on here, though. Certain predictions are made by the delusion theory, which can be tested for through statistical analysis. For example, do these people experience visual/auditory hallucinations? Catatonic states? Schizophrenic behaviors like hair twisting? Disjointed thought patterns? Frenzied behavior?... or are they otherwise normal except for this one belief?
 
corbin said:
How is it not like dissidents being visited by secret police? The silencing of dissidents is the goal and effect in both cases.
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The people who believe that they are being "gang stalked" are not dissidents to anything. There is no "goal" to silence them, as they are not speaking out about anything of consequence. Cui bono?
 
I'm not clear on what exactly corbin is trying to get at here. One of things you find in the academic research on conspiracy is an attempt to be sympathetic about the whole thing. Who controls the labels of 'conspiracy' or 'journalism' or 'research'? So whose to say that the 9/11 Truth 'tards are crazy or just lay journalists? I don't know if that's what corbin is trying to get at. It all kind of reminds of the anti-psychiatry movement that's pretty much died out except among Scientologists.

Is that what you're trying to get at corbin? Some sort of liberal take on all this?

I have also seen people who appear to be quite disturbed asking questions like this. There are 9/11 Truth forums where people admit to being under the care of medical doctors for their paranoia who then go on to make these sorts of arguments about how the gobermint is behind all the bad things including the turning of entire buildings into dust with magic ray gun machines.

Is that what you're trying to get at corbin? Some sort of disguise for your mental illness?

Really, this isn't a mental exercise for libertarians or intellectual liberals. There's a lady in my hometown who drives around taking photos of license plates with the number 666 on them as proof she's being stalked by some nameless dark force. Quite honestly, she should have her driver's license revoked. She should not be allowed to buy guns. I don't need to run some pseudo-experiment to know this. I don't need to get the police or whoever to investigate her claims because, you never know there might really be something behind this. There's nothing behind this except her own dysfunction.

Yes, this does show my bias behind a particular world view. Some people believe things that can not possibly be true. It is not possible that gang stalking exists in the way it is reported on gang stalking websites. And I suspect you would know this, unless you have this problem yourself, or you're playing some liberal thought game trying to see how far you take with your friends here on the JREF.
 
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Silly Green Monkey said:
A collection of 666 license plate pictures would be awesome.
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She's got a whole Facebook page of them. It's creepy. But our new friend corbin would have her buying guns and rat poison until a trustworthy investigation proved there's nothing behind this. We can set up a whole special branch of the police to investigate the crazy claims of gang stalkers. Turn over the whole FBI to them. I think this is a great idea.

How about it corbin? Is this the right direction?
 
It might help people to go through the logistics of gang stalking with them and explain that they are just nuts/paranoid and should try to ignore it.

(If people laugh when you enter a room, is it at you, or have someone just told a joke?)
 
Scott Sommers said:
I'm not clear on what exactly corbin is trying to get at here.
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He's trying to suggest that at least some of the people who report being victims of "gang stalking" are in fact, victims of organized surveillance similar to what the Gestapo or KGB would engage in when trying to control the populations of Nazi Germany and the USSR.

Of course, such activities have taken place in the past, and are probably taking place even now in places like North Korea. The difference between that and "gang stalking" as reported by these people in North America is, the activities of organizations like the KGB were carried out for identifiable reasons (controlling dissidents), and used methods that made sense (monitoring their communications, confiscating subversive literature, and hauling them away in the middle of the night). They were also carried out by well-identified groups (that being, the KGB), who were explicitly employed by the government of the USSR for this purpose.

Also, these activities were pretty well known to just about everyone, even if they didn't see fit to speak out, for fear of being hauled away.

What is being reported by "gang stalking" claimants is completely different. The people being targeted are not engaged in any kind of subversive activity, they're just randomly selected regular Joes. The actions that are attributed to the "stalkers" are nonsensical if their intent is to control subversives. And those identified as "stalkers" are either normal people in the world around them, or regular police, who are not employed by an organization that is dedicated to such activities.

As such, attempts such as this to depict "gang stalking" as a plausible occurrence for any large number of people in North America are just silly.
 
Scott Sommers said:
Yes, this does show my bias behind a particular world view. Some people believe things that can not possibly be true. It is not possible that gang stalking exists in the way it is reported on gang stalking websites. And I suspect you would know this, unless you have this problem yourself, or you're playing some liberal thought game trying to see how far you take with your friends here on the JREF.
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Or, he just hasn't read up on it, as I suggested that he do. I personally had never heard of it until that guy started the thread here. .
 
Horatius said:
He's trying to suggest that at least some of the people who report being victims of "gang stalking" are in fact, victims of organized surveillance similar to what the Gestapo or KGB would engage in when trying to control the populations of Nazi Germany and the USSR.

Of course, such activities have taken place in the past, and are probably taking place even now in places like North Korea. The difference between that and "gang stalking" as reported by these people in North America is, the activities of organizations like the KGB were carried out for identifiable reasons (controlling dissidents), and used methods that made sense (monitoring their communications, confiscating subversive literature, and hauling them away in the middle of the night). They were also carried out by well-identified groups (that being, the KGB), who were explicitly employed by the government of the USSR for this purpose.

Also, these activities were pretty well known to just about everyone, even if they didn't see fit to speak out, for fear of being hauled away.

What is being reported by "gang stalking" claimants is completely different. The people being targeted are not engaged in any kind of subversive activity, they're just randomly selected regular Joes. The actions that are attributed to the "stalkers" are nonsensical if their intent is to control subversives. And those identified as "stalkers" are either normal people in the world around them, or regular police, who are not employed by an organization that is dedicated to such activities.

As such, attempts such as this to depict "gang stalking" as a plausible occurrence for any large number of people in North America are just silly.
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Yes, I know. I think if you read my whole post, this would be clear.
 
Toke said:
It might help people to go through the logistics of gang stalking with them and explain that they are just nuts/paranoid and should try to ignore it.

(If people laugh when you enter a room, is it at you, or have someone just told a joke?)
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I have tried to do this extensively but I find that most "victims" have answers for everything. Not actual answers but ones that make sense within the context of their delusion. So for instance take an obvious question like "Why would anyone spend such immense resources to cause such minimal harassment?" There is always something they have an answer, proving they have thought about these things themselves already. It will be something like "well it's because I'm the only one who knows that the police chief is actually a murderer but they know that can't kill me because that will look suspicious etc..."
 
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