[3cats-in-a-coat]

Unfortunately we fall for the claims of narcissists and psychopaths, and raise them to be our leaders. That’s why this keeps happening. In a bad moment, a narcissist is incapable of accepting blame. And a psychopath is never honest in accepting it. Confidence men and grifters have a very long finger and they’re constantly pointing it at someone, deflecting blame.

[galaxyLogic]

A childish but effective strategy is when someone accuses you of X, you accuse them of the same. A naive listener then can be easily misled. But more importantly if you say X, that gives your followers permission to say X as well. They don't then look crazy to their peers because they say something crazy, because a well-known public figure is also saying the same crazy thing.

[ZeroGravitas]

It's also the third step of DARVO:

> DARVO (an acronym for "deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender") is a reaction that perpetrators of wrongdoing, such as sexual offenders may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior. Some researchers indicate that it is a common manipulation strategy of psychological abusers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO

[galaxyLogic]

Good link. Some politicians really use it and seem to get away with it. It is amazing how many people fall for it. If they knew about DARVO maybe they wouldn't.

[k310]

That’s called projection, otherwise known as “Every Accusation is a Confession”, and it’s ubiquitous.

[RoyalHenOil]

In this case, at least, Musk leads Twitter only because he bought it, not because people were fooled by him. Everyone knew that it was a really bad idea. Even Musk himself knew: he tried to back out of the purchase at the last minute, but he did not have the legal grounds to do so.

[3cats-in-a-coat]

His Tesla wealth from which he sold shares in order to buy Twitter, his $13B lenders, and his co-investors at Twitter (which have /almost/ half the company) are already a mighty long list of people he fooled, and which enabled this purchase.

[keithalewis]

Harsh, but true. He was warned by the IDF well ahead of the attack but he allowed it to happen as a pretext to commit genocide. Better Israel than Hamas amiright? Oh, wait. You were frothing at the fingertips about Musk, not Netenyahoo. Carry on. /s