Verbal Judo: Beating Shame Attacks (SJWs & Moral

Police)
thepowermoves.com/courses/power-university/lessons/mastering-difficult-social-situations/topic/verbal-judo-
beating-shame-attacks-sjws-moral-police

SJW and Shame Attacks

SJW stands for “social justice warrior”.

There are different names for similar types of behavior, including: SJW, moral police, PC
police, virtue signaling, finger-pointing.
But at the core, they all use the same weapon.

And that weapon is shame.

Shame could also be described as “righteous indignation”, and as we have previously
mentioned it’s delivered from the judge power position.

The shame attack aims at ostracizing the victim.

It basically says “this is us, with our strong ethics and morals, and then there is you. And
you are disgusting and unworthy of being part of us / this world”.

These are particularly sneaky types of attacks because if you counterattack or defend
yourself ineffectively, you can easily make your position worse. For example, if they can
manage to frame your position as “wrong”, then the more you defend, the more you
entrench your position as “the bad guy”.

This lesson will teach you how to deal effectively with shame attacks.

Beating Shame Attacks

There are a few effective ways to beat the nastiest, most dangerous shame attacks, and
they are:

1. Reject the authority of their frame as “better”, “ethical” or “right”

2. Reject their personal authority within their own frame
3. Deny all accusations
4. Agree with some of what the attacker says (so simple yet so powerful)
5. Own and stand behind all your misdeeds

They can all be effective, as long as you execute them effectively.

So let’s see how to execute them effectively.

Word of Caution: Be Careful Rejecting Their Frame

Shame attacks are dangerous because they are highly emotional attacks that frame you as
“the monster”.

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Rejecting their frame can be dangerous if their frame is what most people agree on or
what the whole culture is accepting as “good”.

I’ll make an extreme example for clarification: if a thief rejects the frame that it’s wrong to
steal, he will likely lose the argument no matter what because people agree that stealing is
bad.
It’s easy for the attacker to frame a thief as defending an indefensible behavior and
branding him as an enemy of society.

If the attacker maneuvers well, you rejecting his frame can help him destroy your
social image. He can point at you and say: “and look, he doesn’t even think what he’s
done is wrong. He is an unrepentant, amoral, unethical public enemy N.1”.

Most of the time shame attacks are not based on easily identifiable “good morals” though.
But equally often, it doesn’t matter.
Indeed, shame attacks are not very rational.

As Friederich Nietzsche said:

In individuals insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

And once the group has decided on an enemy and a “wrong” way of doing things, the
more you try to defend your actions, the more you risk being annihilated.
The attackers’ own survival might depend on your annihilation.

Rejecting the attacker’s frame is a bit like power showdowns on steroids: win it and you
look untouchable.
Lose it, and you’re the public enemy.

So here is the correct way of rejecting their frame:

#1. Reject Their Frame: Attack Back Right Away & Take High-
Ground
If you reject their frame, do so right away.

This is the first and most important rule: the more you allow the attacker to entrench
himself in his high moral ground, the more of an uphill battle you fight.

When you react late or weakly, they build unstoppable momentum to reach their moral
high ground summit, and your late reaction signals you weren’t even convinced in your
defense.

People see their charismatic conviction, they see you’re teetering for an admission of guilt,
and they naturally rally behind the attacker -we said it already: crowds are irrational-.

So react early and forcefully and nip their attack in the bud.
As soon as they start climbing the hill of morality to take the high ground on you, you
gotta race towards that hilltop as quickly as you can.

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There is only place for one up there, and it must be you.

1.2. Stop Their Advance: Yell “NO!”

The more strongly you can stop their onslaught, the better.

Start right away by refusing their authority and attacking right back, like this:

SJW: What you said is shameful. Do you realize what you said is wrong and tantamount to
murder? You sir are making this world a much worse place
You: (loud) NO! You are are doing a disservice to this very audience and to the world!

This will stun the attacker and grab people’s attention.

Then, you will flash out your own attack, and as we mentioned earlier, you can also use
those couple of seconds to think of what to say next.

This is an example of counter-attack by “going meta”.

You: I know what you’re up to Mr. and that doesn’t work with me. You try to paint innocent
people like monsters so that you can puff out your self-righteous chest for your own benefit
and get higher ratings.
You are not after truth, you are after scoops.
You are not a journalist, you are a witch hunter, trying to set innocent people on fire. Shame
on you!

As you can see the attack here is not very precise, but it doesn’t have to be. It still
leverages some strong keywords that are likely to push him back on the defensive.

Now that you denied the flank, it might develop into a nasty exchange.
I know, that sucks, it would be much better to talk like respectful adults, I agree. But you
can’t do that with shame attackers. And a nasty exchange is better than being pounded
into the ground.

1.3 Match Their Assault: Keep It Nasty

This is not the moment to show your control and soft-spoken demeanor.

Soft voices in the presence of shame attacks can easily make you a victim.

It’s important instead that you match their level of nastiness. Don’t go rational if they’re
emotional and don’t make big appeals to data and facts.
Here is the rule of thumb for early shame attacks frame battles: when they go low, you
must go lower.

Be passionate here: shame attacks can even get dangerous if you let them snowball. All
lynching mobs start with shaming attacks.

Once you contained the attack then you can calm down.

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PRO Tip: Going high when they go low
in a studio and in other very safe environments with no immediate danger, a soft spoken
demeanor against emotional rants can work in your favor as long as you are extremely
good with your words, the attack stands on no real ground, you present your facts well,
and the audience is neutral and not siding with the attacker.
That was the case with Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman, for example.

#2. Attack Their Authority: The Hypocrisy Power Move

Shame attacks need a leader around which the attack can coalesce.

The leader is most often the attacker, so if you can make the attacker look like a hypocrite,
then his attack will deflate as quickly as you can deflate his authority.

See how Trump goes for it against Hillary Clinton:

Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/9L0tpJkiVXo

Trump’s move, albeit not perfect, helped poke a hole in Hillary’s moral standing. It
removed a lot of heat from himself by framing it as “words” VS “Clinton’s facts”.
This as a great example of attacking the authority of your attacker.

#3. Vehemently Deny Accusations

With this technique, you vehemently deny the attack.

It’s important that you sound convinced in what you say. Ideally, you remove authority
from the attacker at the same time that you deny the accusations.

See how Trump did it:

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Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/Qw03RexI37w

Trump: “No I didn’t say that at all, I don’t think you understood what was said, this was
locker room talk“

First, he vehemently denies, and then he reframes it as “locker room talk”.

3.2. Block Every Jab: Deny Them The Judge Power Position
When the moral police won’t be able to attack you head-on, they will try sneaky
maneuvers to catch you off guard and then spin their web around you.

Sometimes you will not know what their game plan is, so a good technique to deny them
any authority is to refute every single thing they say.

When you block any attempt at framing the interaction, you make it more difficult for
them to become the judge of the exchange.

How do you do it?

Simple: everything they say, always say “NO”. Or that “it depends”, or tell them to be
clearer before you commit to any answer.
This is exactly the technique Jordan Peterson used against Newman:

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Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/LNuZiEH0IdQ

Jordan Peterson’s blocking technique never allowed Newman to build momentum, or to

play it sneaky like she had done in the past.

3.3. Extol Your Virtues (on a loop)

Moral police will keep trying to make a villain out of you.

And if you let them, you will become a villain.

Don’t allow your silences to give credibility to their attacks, but deny first and then extol
your virtues. On a loop.

The more you repeat something, the truer it becomes.

See Trump doing it:

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Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/Qw03RexI37w

#4. Remove Their Power: Agree

Moral police gather power thanks to their opponents.

Basically, their power is only as big as their enemies are bad. The bigger the villain you
are, the bigger they win.

What you can do than to beat them is to avoid entrenching yourself behind positions that
are objectively too hard to defend, which is a mistake that too many people do!
As Sun Tzu said in The Art of War: avoid fighting wars that you can’t win.

Whenever you can then, wholeheartedly agree with some of their positions and align
yourself with the audience by sharing PC platitudes and throwing Oprah-style audience
candies.
Appeals to love, unity, and togetherness always work.

Julien from the video example above could have pulled it off by going deeper on the
wedding stories he mentioned and then adding something like:

Julien: Absolutely! Many guys meet their partners for life with our seminars. And I’m so
happy for them. My job at the end of the day is about helping people find love, and that’s
what makes my work so meaningful to me

Look how Trump does it again with Hillary Clinton.

Clinton tries to paint him like a divisive dark horse, and what does he do? He agrees!

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Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/9L0tpJkiVXo

This was so simple yet so genius.

Unless you’re trying to learn to debate, I invite you to look for ways to agree with your
opponent any time you can: it sucks the wind out of their sails and you avoid both making
enemies and wasting time.

Also keep in mind that for some people the “default setting” is to disagree or find faults
(Tony Robbins calls them “mismatchers”).

Are you one of them?

If you are, watch out because it can lead you into debating dead-end roads and unneed
escalations. You might find yourself at times defending positions you don’t even a strong
opinion about.
Force yourself to find ways to agree instead.

#5. Proudly Stick to Your Guns

.. And own all your misdeeds.

Finally, when there is no real physical danger, a risky but high reward technique is to own
up to what you believe in.

This ties back to owning your dark side as we described in “practical steps to increase your
social power”. You own it with yourself, and you own it with the world.

Of course, you can’t use this technique for false, slanderous and indefensible behavior, but
for personal choices like “sleeping around”, “staying unemployed” or even living a
debauched life, it’s fair game.

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If you do it well and effectively, then it can become your own brand.

See Russel Brand resisting a shame attack by owning it:

Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/SWTzUKF-Kdo

And here is one more example that we saw earlier. The kid owning who he is on an
onslaught of shame attacks became a star:

Watch Video At: https://youtu.be/xc0CB6URrV0

He became a star because most people are not good at resisting shame attacks and owning
their unpopular choices.
Learn to own your decisions, and your social power will skyrocket.

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Dangers of Owning: watch out that you don’t “own” anything that could destroy your
reputation or career in the future. It’s easy to get heady with the idea of “owning who we
are”.
But if the political climate brands your actions immoral, your owning up could spell the
end of your public persona.
Maybe you can allow that to happen, but if you cannot (yet), then that’s something you
must think about.

Avoid Engaging in Shame Attacks

Shame attacks and finger-pointing are popular because they give a strong sense of power
and omnipotence to the people who use them.

You don’t even need to make a lot of sense to get people following you: crowds are
notoriously irrational.
All that it’s needed are emotions, conviction, and a booming voice.

Charismatic leaders have been using shame and finger-pointing across history to rally
crowd and climb to power.

But ultimately, shaming and finger-pointing come from a place of little power and, often,
deep insecurity (cognitive dissonance, a mental defensive mechanism, also often drives
shaming).
Its power, albeit it might last if the charismatic leader knows how to transition, is often
likely to end up in a fiery ball of destruction.

Historically, Robespierre leveraged shame and finger-pointing for his terror. Same as
Savonarola did when in the name of religious zealot he had secular masterpieces of art
burned in Florence’s central square.
And they both ended up executed.

Of course, not all charismatic leaders get executed, but people usually tire of irrational
fervor and emotional bloodbaths and move past them.

If you are deploying shame attacks:

if you see in yourself a tendency of finger-pointing, cut it out. To be an all-around socially
powerful individual you need to build your power on the stronger foundations of your
personality, skills, and competence.
Not on finger-pointing and shaming.

Questions? Open A Topic & Ask Here!

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