Character Assassination.
In the end, it is clear that the owner of the place made famous by Lucarelli, who was found dead in the river, committed suicide. And now everyone is asking themselves the problem "what exactly is instigation to suicide", how does it work, is it really effective, or how do you know which guy made Caio decide to kill himself? Let's start from one point: that poor woman suffered what is called "Character Assassination".
Personally I have suffered several character assassinations. I've always come out of it in a way that I'll explain later. But if the question is "but is character assassination something that leads you to suicide" my answer will be… it is certainly possible, in some specific conditions.
These specific conditions are linked to the target's ability to change society, in a geographical sense or in a more… social sense, in a certain sense. You can character assassinate a person who lives in a Mormon community, and the result is that he or she will move out of the Mormon village. You can carry out character assassination of a person who is among Jehovah's Witnesses, and he will perhaps go to another group, without changing place, home, work, etc. (if successful)
I suffered my first “character assassination” between the ages of 12 and 13, with a peak at 14, the moment in which I became “famous” (locally) for, let's say, sexual activity that was out of the ordinary, let's say abnormal. To give an example: I literally entered the two bars in the village, before going to a training session, I asked for a coffee, and they served it to me in a small plastic cup. Only to me. For others a normal cup.
This should teach you what the first requirement is: when others define who you are, and when your identity and reputation coincide. For character assassination, in fact, these two things are needed:
- A context in which your identity and your reputation coincide. The world of entertainment, social media, the small provincial town.
- There are people who represent "hubs" of information, who are capable of defining your reputation, and therefore your identity.
When the identity that is imposed on you through the manipulation of your reputation differs greatly from your true identity, then a phenomenon of dysphoria begins, which in my opinion can lead to depression, and therefore to death.
Why didn't it happen to me? Because we were at the beginning of the 80s, and the "bad" character was now idolized as the good guy who fights against the puritanical hypocrites. Having the name of the one who did unspeakable things (starting from reality and then making it up), being "the rebel", was a very cool thing. If I had been a girl it would probably have been different, but when the legend is called David Bowie, Iggy Pop's ex-boyfriend, when Madonna causes a scandal, when things like Flashdance and Dirty Dancing are successful, when nine and a half weeks hits, I don't I'm working. I was evil and enjoyed being it.
But it wasn't just that, as my parents didn't seem too happy about it. The problem is, it gave me a chance to escape. But where? The problem is that provincial towns are made up of two layers, and in those days (without the internet, with an average of one car per family, information "for families", etc.) the two layers were really different. I don't know if you've ever read Clive Barker's Cabal, or even Hellraiser. The concept of an occult world, obscene and perverse, hideous but attractive, vicious and sordid, had always attracted me, because I saw society that way.
On the one hand, on the surface, death from boredom. The death of desire. The death of appetites. Lives of people who face the future like someone who enters a restaurant without being hungry. Traditional families with white beds. Women without dreams anymore, prison marriages, and boredom, boredom, boredom, boredom.
Below, was the occult world. And I was the shortcut. Maybe you don't know how the world of swingers worked at the time, for example. Ads were placed in newspapers for used things, and a letter (perhaps with a photo) had to then be sent to a "poste post", where the letter remained in storage but was anonymous, in the sense that it could only be collected with a document. The recipient was indicated only as CI (identity card) followed by the number or P, FE123456789, i.e. the driving license number. So you sent the advert, a month passed, the newspaper came out, after a couple of weeks the letter arrived, if you liked the two guys you had to contact them again, because for fear of being discovered they never wrote anything personal, so another letter, meeting in a poplar grove or parking lot, etc. Neurosis.
Or ask me. It didn't take long. I arrived home using a train, the "littorina", I took my bike and cycled for a quarter of an hour in the countryside to get there. Every now and then a car would come alongside and ask me for information. The same repression took place among the "closeted gays", male and female, the "private transvestites", etc.
Ultimately, that is, not only did I enjoy the self-esteem of officially being "evil", but I could live inside Midian. A hidden society where people showed themselves what they were.
Character assassination, therefore, needs a society from which one CANNOT escape. If you can escape, if you have another company, if only the local Midian (cit. Cabal), it doesn't work. The local priest checked reputations, speaking with the local beguines. But exactly like the priest, I could go around the town on a bicycle, look at the houses, and think "swingers", "transvestites in private", "active gay", "passive gay", and the houses were those of society " of surface".(1)
Shall we summarize the first part?
Here are the first three ingredients for a character assassination to work, that is, to lead to suicide.
- A context in which your identity and your reputation coincide. The world of entertainment, social media, the small provincial town.
- There are people who represent "hubs" of information, who are capable of defining your reputation, and therefore your identity. In my case, a priest.
- A society that does not offer enough livable gray areas, and which is completely homogeneous in its judgment. Evil is evil, good is good, in word and deed. At least in appearance.
Let's go to the second character assassination.
Everything was going great, and I was having a great time (at 15/16, then you have scary hormones) when something happened. It turned out that I was honestly NOT involved in a situation. In one of the villages where I hung out underground (Dogato, Migliaro, Migliarino, Ostellato) something was discovered. The public park bordered the back of the middle school. The net had numerous holes. The old pensioners had gotten into the habit of going to the park and paying kids to wank them or suck their things. A mother noticed this, her son had unexplained money, and notified the police. They lay in wait (hidden cameras didn't exist at the time) and caught the cream of the local priest kissers, also because the town church was just a few steps away. In practice they confessed afterwards. I don't know how the priest kept the complaints from coming, but a scapegoat was needed, and it was obviously me. Who else? And as if that wasn't enough, the bullshit added to the mess that arose the certainty that I had AIDS (which obviously I didn't). In short, you had to stay away from me.
This thing obviously bounced around much more than the previous rumors, I was forced to take a test, which obviously came back negative, but it was already done. Out of fear, the doors of Midian were closed, due to HIV. Now I was a pariah for real. Surface society rejected me, dark society rejected me, and this was a big problem. It was a tough time. Also because I didn't change my habits or appearance: Lipstick Metal, Hair Metal, with all the paraphernalia, without compromises. (anyone who says they lived in the area without ever noticing me is simply lying. Is the point clear to you, Roberto?).
I was left alone with 6/7 friends, obviously other weirdos, and found my way out when we got our first home-built modem, and were also able to build a BBS. Furthermore, under family pressure, I volunteered to organize the unity celebration of a microscopic village, about 200 inhabitants, and therefore I became "of the Party". The priest knew well that you don't have to take a dick at the party, and he let go. Furthermore, knowing how the postmaster and cruising mechanism worked, I moved my underground activity to Ferrara. Now I could go there on my scooter, I could stay there after school, I had time.
We then add a fourth factor:
Character assassination works when
- A context in which your identity and your reputation coincide. The world of entertainment, social media, the small provincial town.
- There are people who represent "hubs" of information, who are capable of defining your reputation, and therefore your identity. In my case, a priest.
- A society that does not offer enough livable gray areas, and which is completely homogeneous in its judgment. Evil is evil, good is good, in word and deed. At least in appearance.
- The local society does NOT offer an ally powerful enough to silence the fake news clearinghouse.
Let's go to the third.
However, since I had finished high school, I left and went to study in Bologna. I immediately fall in love with the city. It's not possible to ruin you. You don't have a reputation. The city is too big. At the time, it really offered a lot. It had a huge underground world. Knowing how to do it (mail delivery & cruising) you could do anything. Furthermore, there were saunas with darkrooms (at the time Via Boldrini and Via Saffi), the State Monopoli car park, the Vipera – which was next to the court, and so on. To complete the perdition, I managed to join the bouncer team of a well-known PR person who had almost 15,000 names on his agenda and was responsible for opening and launching new nightclubs throughout Emilia. My role was as a bouncer. Since I had no prejudices towards GLBT positions (colleagues were afraid that if they punched, a splash of blood could infect them with HIV, LOL), those were the best paid positions, and I turned them all over. Discovering new ones, too.
But one thing happens. At a certain point, a very gay university professor (who knows me because I was the only "dark" one in some places where we had met) invites me to spend the skiing holiday with him. Since it was unwatchable, I refuse and get my 18. Okay. He took it badly. A few years later, everyone knew that I was “cursed” by him. And he made sure that I had to come to him to finish. And somehow I was “burned”. Whoever I asked, it was “no”.
I learned one thing: character assassination is possible even if reputation does not generate your identity, in the case in which a part of your life (university, work, or other) depends on a small group of people.
What was the escape? Going to an office, filling out paperwork, doing long military service in the navy, showing up in an officer's uniform at the faculty, with the excuse of some bureaucracy, taking care to be seen by the professors. People weren't sure what kind of uniform it was, but I had chosen a khaki-colored summer uniform that resembled (at least to the people of Bologna, who are not used to the sea) that of the Guardia di Finanza. They stopped bothering me. One said yes.
And here is the last theorem of character assassination:
- A context in which your identity and your reputation coincide. The world of entertainment, social media, the small provincial town.
- There are people who represent "hubs" of information, who are capable of defining your reputation, and therefore your identity. In my case, a priest.
- A society that does not offer enough livable gray areas, and which is completely homogeneous in its judgment. Evil is evil, good is good, in word and deed. At least in appearance.
- The local society does NOT offer an ally powerful enough to silence the fake news clearinghouse.
- Character assassination can take place through Freemasonry, or through the baronies of an environment you need to live in. And which therefore you cannot abandon.
The restaurateur's situation, at least in her eyes, was the worst possible.
- Small country where identity and reputation coincide.
- The blow comes via social media, from the "Lucarelli" information hub.
- There are no gray areas where you can repair an entire restaurant.
- There are no powerful allies who can silence Lucarelli.
- Character assassination affects your vital economic activity, and you cannot abandon it.
In any case, how did I feel when I discovered that there was a sword of Damocles hanging over my head, a malignant and petty malice, something that you don't expect that is so low, and that ruins your life?
Depression. Panic. Panic crisis. Apathy. Tiredness. Want to sleep.
When someone is really thinking about killing themselves, they will tell you that they want to sleep a lot. Who feels tired. Who would like to go to bed and sleep. Because that's what he's going to do. He just wants to sleep forever. Death ALWAYS scares. Except when you're tired, and you mistake it for sleep. Then it becomes attractive.
Advice to parents. Your child is thinking about suicide if he/she often says he/she is tired and wants to sleep for a long time . Or when cutting. He does it to wake up, so as not to close his eyes. If he enters the world of sleep, of sleepwalking, he kills himself.
Yes, character assassination can lead to suicide, if all conditions are met. The thing that saves you is what I call "the breath of the world", or the fact that there is almost always a dimension that allows you to escape. Character assassination only works if you are locked in a kind of multidimensional ball from which you cannot escape.
Dynamic situations do not work for Character Assassination. Only when you see no way out, the only way out is death. I've been there. But what saved me was “the breath of the world”, that is, the fact that the world is big, and you can always move around. I lived in Ireland, now I live in Germany, and the thing I know is that in case of character assassination, the range of this weapon being very local, you just have to move elsewhere.
But if you are tied to a place or a group, it becomes deadly with indescribable ease.
I also experienced a Character Assassination attempt on the Internet, around 2015. But the situation was so open that it didn't work. By now I know the problem.
(1) I'm writing my biography, the real problem is to anonymize everything, even if those adults are now dead or in hospice). As soon as I have time I'll put it on Amazon.