12 red flags you're being recruited as an accomplice to lead a smear campaign

How to Know if You're Someone's Flying Monkey

The origin story of a smear campaign…

It’s likely you’re a person who values truth, justice and freedom for all. These values are expressed in your professional life and if not, you’re part of groups where you can express those values to find meaning and affirm your belief in the importance of helping others.

You might be having a casual conversation with an acquaintance, coworker or approached by a stranger and they proceed to tell you a story involving an injustice that occurred to them or someone you both know. The story feels familiar as it involves themes of betrayal, deception or theft.

You gasp “No! That’s awful!” followed by a thought or statement like “The same thing happened to me/someone close to me!!”

Before you know it, you’ve been pulled out of the present moment of your own reality and drawn into the other person’s conflict. Your own memory of unresolved hurt from the past surface and you begin to feel their outrage, hurt and upset all over again, activating a yearning for vicarious justice.

Now that you’re no longer anchored in your own reality, flooded with memories and uncomfortable emotions, you’ve not only lost access to critical thinking, objectivity and discernment, you’re now mentally primed to be used as the Accuser’s agent of justice.

High on the feeling of being chosen because of your special knowledge, expertise or proximity to the one being accused, you unquestionably begin to transmit the accusation on their behalf in order to warn others against the Accused in your attempt to restore justice in a conflict that was never yours.

You, despite your intelligence, life experience and maturity, have been placed under a spell to form a growing army of sympathizers known as Flying Monkeys to execute a smear campaign against the Accused by someone using strategies of relational narcissism on you.

What is a Flying Monkey?

This term comes from The Wizard of Oz and refers to the Flying Monkeys who acted as the henchman to the Wicked of Witch of the West. Their task was to bring Dorothy and her entourage back to be punished in order to avenge the Witch’s sister’s accidental death and take Dorothy’s power. The Flying Monkeys intimidate, threaten and traumatize Dorothy and her crew in order to weaken and eventually destroy the targets on the Witch’s behalf. We discover after Dorothy accidentally kills the Witch that the Flying Monkeys, who were under a spell the entire time, rejoice in their freedom and restoration of their joyful nature.

This metaphor can be applied to ANY person acting on the behalf of the Accuser to transmit the accusation through others to punish the Accused. The intent is the constant, increasing and unrelenting assault by the Flying Monkeys will force the Accused to surrender, admit their wrongdoing and face the punishment that suits the definition of justice/revenge for the Accuser and/or be erased from existence.

Whether you refer to these people as Flying Monkeys, henchmen or minions, there’s no word that adequately describes the harm inflicted on targets when the onus of conflict resolution between two people is bestowed on others with bleeding wounds of their own.

Risk factors to becoming a Flying Monkey

Anyone is vulnerable to becoming someone’s Flying Monkey. When your unresolved inner or outer conflicts and memories of past betrayals are activated by resonance with someone else’s story, this causes a reaction that intensifies emotions felt in your body and compromises executive function needed for decision-making.

Reactivity will make you want to leap to solutions to fix the problem or save the Accuser (and possibly, your past wounded self) by overriding your critical thinking skills that involve empathy, discernment and healthy scepticism.

Your empathy, that is your ability to see someone else’s perspective without losing your own rational thinking skills and connection to yourself, becomes compromised when their story pulls you into their reality - their narrative, interpretation of the situation and emotional state that is keeping them in suffering.

If you are not firmly anchored into your own reality, you can get easily drawn into theirs, feel their feelings and a sense of injustice BEFORE you’ve had the chance to engage your reasoning and form your own interpretation based on additional information that you would need to seek out for yourself, including input from the Accused.

12 Red flags that an Accuser’s story isn’t adding up

What they’re doing or saying:

1. They ask for your help with a problem, especially if they approach you without knowing you or only knowing about what you do professionally.

2. They proceed to tell you details of their problem and eventually disclose the identity of the Accused with little to no prompting from you. The way they tell their story centres their victimhood to invoke sympathy, blames the Accused for the conflict and uses language that evokes emotion rather than presenting facts.

3. They make an accusation that is harmful to the Accused’s reputation.

4. They don’t offer to provide you with tangible, credible documentation and evidence beyond their accusation.

5. They don’t offer for you to speak to others who have been directly negatively impacted or they do offer that you speak to others who have strong alliances with the Accuser.

6. They don’t suggest you do your own research or homework.

7. They ask you or imply to support them on their quest for supports to build their case and warn others connected to the Accused on their behalf.

What you’re experiencing:

1. You’re aware that you don’t really know each other yet they are trusting you with a story about their victimisation while accusing someone else you know well or don’t know at all.

2. You resonate with their story because something similar happened to you.

3. You’ve lost sight of your own reality by being drawn into theirs and are taking on their perspective rather than remaining firmly rooted in your own reality.

4. You feel outraged or upset and compelled to act on their behalf to restore justice without having any other information beyond their statement and your own emotional experience.

5. You don’t inquire about the conflict, the Accused’s agenda or clarification of facts because you don’t want to come across as a non-believer or insensitive.

You’re left with a decision that didn’t exist before your were informed about the conflict. The decision you make will determine if you’re a Flying Monkey responsible for engaging in gossip and spreading lies to build a smear campaign or if you can remain neutral because you don’t have enough information to inform an action against the Accused in a battle that isn’t yours to fight.

If you ignore these red flags you are likely to engage in defaming someone who might be the actual victim in this situation. In your desire for justice, you could be participating in injustice and harm that impacts on someone’s economic capacity, reputation and psychological wellbeing in the form of trauma.

When the truth is finally exposed and you discover you’ve been emotionally manipulated by the flying monkeys puppeteer, you will also be dealing with your own moral injury from having participated in harm and self-harm through violation of your own moral values. Moral injury is a specific trauma that can have serious consequences on mental health and wellbeing if it gets buried inside, even if there is resolution to the conflict.

Finally, this can happen in any context - workplace, training community, social media group, friendship group, family group.

If this piece describes an experience you’ve had, I’m curious to know how you worked through it, either as a Flying Monkey or target of their work. Feel free to respond below.

Stay tuned for the next instalment that lays out prevention strategies to becoming a Flying Monkey.

Thank you for reading and for your thoughts on this topic,

Nathalie Martinek, PhD

The Narcissism Hacker