http://www.operationdoubles.com/narc/index.htmWhat to expect from "innocent" bystanders
In a word, nothing.
The most deplorable thing about narcissistic abuse is the bystanders' reaction to it. It can end your naïveté and turn you into a cynic overnight. The universal complaint of those targeted by narcissists is that they are universally abandoned.
See also "The Smear Campaign of the Abuser"
at Sanctuary for the Abused:
http://abusesanctuary.blogspot.com/ But let this fact comfort you. It's not because of something wrong with you, it's because of something wrong with them.
First let's understand this phenomenon. I warn you that doing so is painful. But from this understanding you can gain some guidance on where to look for help and where to place your trust.
People are like sheep. When a wolf approaches, you think they are blissfully unaware of his presence, but they are studying his every move. By showing no alarm, each sheep is just being careful to draw no attention to itself. The moment the wolf sets the evil eye on one of their number, the rest explode in all directions away from it. In other words, they betray/sacrifice the victim to it. Later, they come back to graze upon that very spot as if Lamb never existed.
History is replete with examples of this phenomenon in human affairs. The most ironic famous example is what happened to Jesus of Nazareth. The same people who thronged to welcome him crying, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord" one day abominated him crying "Crucify him!" the next. All because the wind shifted. So, they couldn't get close enough to him one day, and they couldn't distance themselves from him enough the next.
The same thing happens in every purge, pogrom, persecution, and witch hunt. People behave like unsupervised children do when a school-yard bully sets the evil eye on one of them. In fact, bullies quickly learn to exploit this behavior. The Lord of the Flies is a brilliant, sad, and enlightening novel (also made into a movie) that explores this phenomenon.
Before you know it, the bully is constantly picking on somebody. Why? To periodically make an example of what happens to anybody he sets the evil eye on. In other words, your little school-yard bully is now a terrorist. He is victimizing one kid to control the others. And he does so just frequently enough to maintain the atmosphere of terror he thrives on. He deliberately targets the last ones to deserve his hatred. Why? Because that shows the others that they needn't give him any reason to attack. He is so wild that he is likely to just go off at anybody. This makes the other children fall all over themselves to ingratiate themselves to him. They are so anxious to kiss up to him that they take advantage of opportunities to be seen by him abusing his victim themselves. So, he can sic them like a pack of hounds on anybody he wants.
Antiochus did it. Nero did it. Diocletan did it. The Inquisition did it. Robespierre did it. Stalin did it. Hitler did it. Senator McCarthy did it. Madam Mao and her Gang of Four did it. Pol Pot did it. Saddam Hussein did it. And Osama bin Laden does it. All terrorists do it. All gangsters do it. Every messianic pied piper does it. Every executive or administrative bully in the workplace does it. Every neighborhood or family "Old Man" does it. Every school-yard bully does it. It's childsplay.
How do the other children justify taking no action against the terrifying bully and persecuting the victim instead? The same way the terrifying bully does — by blaming the victim. How do they deal with their guilt? The same way the terrifying bully does — by projection. Onto the victim, of course. So, the victim gets to be, not only the victim of their sins, but also the one punished for them.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
—Voltaire
To "rationalize" (= irrationalize) what they're doing, the bystanders twist their thinking to pervert everything, so that anything the victim does is somehow wrong and everything the terrifying bully does is somehow excusable. They do this by looking on what the wild one does like those three famous apes — See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Speak No Evil. This is the worst form of lying, perverting the very mind. It is so stubborn that we hear people today making excuses (and blaming the victim) even for the sickening actions of Islamist terrorists whose behavior is blatantly psychotic. But if the victim lifts a finger to defend himself, the "innocent" bystanders suddenly come to and condemn him as evil for attacking.
That is extreme perversity, what Biblical theologians identify as the Sin of Sodom. The bystanders are awarding the terrifying bully the status of a child. That is, they absolve him of responsibility for what he does. It is all the victim's fault for making him mad. Making him mad by not doing what he wants them to. Or for not dressing so as to control his sexual appetite for him (by looking like a sack of potatoes). No matter what the context, it's always the same old story: Blame the Victim. That way, the wild one gets to do whatever he wants and have somebody else be to blame for it. Now that's infallibility.
So, your "innocent" bystanders aren't innocent at all. They're like a bunch of cowards at a rape: silent, mouth-breathing, eyes glazed . . . seeing nothing, hearing nothing, knowing nothing . . . till suddenly they get to point and condemn the victim for uttering a naughty word.
Sad fact, but true. They're collaborators.
Are they all crazy? No, they are just mocky-mocks, a cast of actors on a stage. They all believe their little stage play is reality. It's "their truth." So long as the house lights are down, the outside world (the audience) is out of sight and out of mind. They are in their own upside-down little world. An echo chamber. They act by believing that they really ARE the good characters they play and that the play is reality. They are just being politically correct in their play world, which is a virtual reality that their virtual conspiracy enacts.