Anyone can be the narcissist's flying monkey.
Let me repeat this. Anyone and everyone can find themselves in the position of being the narcissist's flying monkey. However unwittingly, however unintentionally.
The narcissist co-ops people around him or her, and sometimes they don't know what they're doing. They become the narcissist's long arms, his strategic weapons, and they've never meant to be. But here they are, where the narcissist has placed them.
So anyone can serve as the narcissist's flying monkey. Intimate partners, children, parents, friends, co-workers, neighbors, the mentally ill, activists, law enforcement, institutions, criminals, the media, and academics. Anyone and everyone can become the narcissist's flying monkey because the narcissist converts people into flying monkeys via confabulations, fantasies and alternative realities. Just about anyone and everyone can be compromised, brainwashed and recruited into the shared fantasy.
Narcissists can appear to be charming, convincing, vulnerable, hurt, victimized.
Narcissists are actors. They can be whatever they put their minds to. And they believe their own lies. They believe their own fantasies.
These are not lies technically because the narcissist is absolutely emotionally invested in the narrative, in the story that he is telling everyone.
His commitment to the narrative, his vehemence, his energy, his persistence and insistence, his ferocity, they're very convincing. They exude self-confidence, they exude veracity. It is easy to believe that something is truthful if it is defended, protected, buttressed, supported relentlessly.
And so this is the narcissist. The narcissist's energy passes for the truth. The narcissist's commitment and investment in his own concocted piece of fiction passes for reality.
And everyone is sucked in and dragged into this shared fantasy. They become the narcissist's allies, rescuers, saviors, healers, fixers, they are out to defend and protect the poor, vulnerable, fragile, hurt, inner child of the narcissist, and out they go to attack all the narcissists' opponents, adversaries, exes, etc.
Be careful. Ask yourself time and again, am I being the narcissist's flying monkey at this very moment? Am I fully aware of what I'm doing?
The people I support, the people whose views I espouse, the people I vote for, the people I work for, the people I collaborate with, the people I defend and protect, are they narcissists? Have they converted me into a flying monkey? Am I being victimized?
Ask yourself that time and again in every possible setting with every possible person.
Because unbeknownst to you, you may become an abuser. You may become a narcissist yourself.
Narcissism is contagious, and numerous flying monkeys found themselves in the position of abusing other people, hurting them, and becoming more and more narcissistic.
Be careful.