INTIMIDATION TACTICS -aka. hARASSMENT tECHNIQUES
A list of harassment techniques and research journals written about the subject of targeted individuals and techniques used to persecute and silence.
Housing Sabotage and Deprivation
Purpose: To take away peace, sleep deprive, to create a situation where one is more vulnerable and susceptible.
How it's carried out: Surveillance, appliance sabotage while out of house, door tampering (intended to be noticed or not?)
Workplace Surveillance and Intimidation
Purpose: Odd behavior in place of work, spies (depending on nature of work), gaslighting, unfair treatment
How it's done: Booking out places that were previously available during non-peak times, including remote rural areas.
Vandalism
Purpose: To keep you having to pay unexpected costs, to set you back from a goal. To keep you reporting and hopefully lose credibility through the frequency of reports.
How it's done: Booking out places that were previously available during non-peak times, including remote rural areas.
Surveillance
Purpose: To gather information, study patterns and behavior, find out how much you know, awareness levels, find weaknesses for future use
How it's done: Public transport, homeless people paying special attention to your movements in an area. In Ireland it is not uncommon to see a middle aged man writing notes by public transport, especially of certain routes. Hacking into devices and wifi networks.
Street Theater and Mentalism
Purpose: Usually to cause confusion and distraction or influence behavior or reactions. Sometimes used to gain further information based on reactions.
How it's done: Replay of scenarios, sometimes of things you've experienced in the past or of fears and traumas; using keywords of recent events. This creates paranoia in hopes that you will be too fearful to do anything at all for fear one is being watched or that someone knows something about you.
Usually done in groups (gang-stalking)
Social and Economic
These target the structures that keep a person stable: their home, income, reputation and relationships. By quietly undermining work and housing, spreading damaging rumours and turning others against them, they leave the person isolated, financially insecure and less likely to be believed if they seek help.
Housing sabotage / economic deprivation
interfering with tenancy, work or income. The goal is instability and dependence.
Workplace mobbing
coordinated hostility from colleagues. Designed to get the person pushed out or discredited.
quietly closing off jobs or services, to isolate the person economically.
Blacklisting
Smear campaigns / slander
interfering with tenancy, work or income. The goal is instability and dependence.
Isolation
turning friends, family or neighbours against the person, to remove their support network.
spreading rumours about mental instability, criminality and so on. This destroys credibility, so complaints aren’t believed. It was central to Zersetzung
Blacklisting
Psycological
These aim at the person’s sense of safety and trust in their own perceptions, using visible surveillance, staged encounters, provocation, unexplained disturbances and sleep disruption. Each incident is small and deniable on its own. The intended effect is cumulative: exhaustion, self-doubt and a constant feeling of being watched.
Surveillance (overt)
being watched visibly on purpose, to create a sense of being constantly monitored. How it's done: Public transport, homeless people paying special attention to your movements in an area. In Ireland it is not uncommon to see a middle aged man writing notes by public transport, especially of certain routes. Hacking into devices and wifi networks.
Street theatre
staged encounters or remarks by strangers that seem personally pointed. Designed to unsettle the person and make them doubt their perceptions. How it's done: Replay of scenarios, sometimes of things you've experienced in the past or of fears and traumas; using keywords of recent events. This creates paranoia in hopes that you will be too fearful to do anything at all for fear one is being watched or that someone knows something about you. Usually done in groups (gang-stalking)
provoking a reaction (anger, a confrontation) that can then be used against the person.
Baiting
Gaslighting / “black bag” entries
moving or removing belongings at home without obvious break-in signs, to make the person doubt their memory or sanity.
Noise harassment / sleep deprivation
repeated disturbances, especially at night, causing exhaustion and lowered resilience.
copying someone’s movements, or references to their private life, to signal “we know everything”.
Mirroring / anchoring
Electronic harassment
hacked accounts, odd calls, device interference, to create a feeling of having no safe space.
Vandalism / minor property damage
Sometimes done with bio-weapons/ energy weapons or any available substances that may cause undetectable harm (in terms of the source). How it's done: This is a recent one; bed bugs that seem to come at any given point in time of the day. Gases or substances. Noise pollution is the most relied upon - Constant banging noises above roof no matter where we stay. (Has to be some kind of technology to be doing that everywhere).
health sabotage (recent tactic specifically used, based on experience & observation)
small, deniable damage that wears the person down and is hard to report.
understanding targeted individuals and common reasons for targeting
A targeted individual is one who is often a whistleblower or one who has managed to upset an powerful individual or an organization either by refusing to participate in their activities or join their societies. It could also be that they have information on them. That tends to be the common target. It is often a powerful person involved due to the costly nature of the tactics used over a long period of time. It is used to conceal information or continue to perpetuate slander or propaganda.
These tactics are designed to discredit and dishearten the individual; to silence them or cause them to give up or self-destruct. The tactics are subtle by design, in order to create doubts and to distance people from the target individual.
why these tactics are hard to pin down
the Stasi deliberately chose tactics that were small, deniable and individually explainable, so victims would struggle to prove anything. That same quality means these experiences can also arise without any coordinated effort. Researchers who surveyed people reporting “gang stalking” (Sheridan & James, 2015) found the distress was very real, but in most cases they couldn’t find evidence of organised groups. They also found that stress, isolation and lack of sleep can make ordinary events feel connected.
must-read
Comfort and Other Traps lets you in on how things unfold, provides background which may uncover deeper truths that might explain why this trial has been arduous.
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