DARVO math

It's not just for sexual assault anymore

Well, y’all, it’s been a week. For me, anyway. Maybe for you, too?

I came off the high of watching New Jersey Senator Cory Booker bust through (racist) South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond’s 1957 record for the longest Senate speech in history— 25 hours and 5 minutes of compelling, symbolically powerful speech and action, which is exactly the sort of action I urged us all to undertake a few weeks ago, wading full force into this imagination war we’re in the midst of to reclaim the narrative and spur a non-violent tsunami of resistance— to our current president announcing massive, nonsensical tariffs against nearly every trading partner we have across the entire globe (including some penguins just for shits and giggles, I guess?). Exempting Russia, North Korea, and Hungary because, of course, he did.

I say massive and nonsensical because leading world economists couldn’t make heads or tails of the tariff percentages Trump was imposing on imports, and thus on American consumers. They had no clear relationship to the tariffs imposed by various countries on imports from the U.S. And yet, the president was standing there with his posterboard, proclaiming they were “reciprocal”. (Does anyone else remember this posterboard from his first term? I swear to God, no one has ever managed so much stupidity and menace at the same time simply using basic classroom supplies from Staples.)

Photo via BBC

I don’t think that word means what you think it means, sir.

Reciprocal tariffs are a tit-for-tat, “taxes or trade restrictions imposed by one country on another, in response to similar actions taken by that country, aiming to create balance in trade and protect local industries.” But just like that definition was written by ChatGPT, so were Trump’s tariffs by some accounts. It was economist James Surowiecki who finally figured the rationale out, though. The administration based the tariffs on “the difference between how much stuff the U.S. buys from and sells to each of its trading partners”, the Wall Street Journal explained. Surowiecki summed it up more succinctly, describing Trump’s tariff math as “dumb and deceptive.”

This is not the first time Trump or any of his cronies have been dumb and deceptive (Signalgate, anyone?), and it’s not likely to be the last time either. So, no surprise there, really. Still, the attitude underlying the argument tickled something in my brain. Because I do think the whole thing is dumb and deceptive, but there’s also a certain underlying conviction. What’s that about?

Then I remembered: DARVO

DARVO is an acronym, first coined by psychologist Jennifer Freyd in 1997, to describe a particular manipulation tactic employed by domestic abusers and rapists. It stands for “deny, attack, reverse victim & offender”. An example: when my father died I encountered my abuser for the first time in years and years. He approached me a couple of different times at two different memorial gatherings. The first time, he circled me steadily, like a big cat eyeing its prey, and then appeared way too close to me, coming at me from behind and getting right in my ear to whisper hello, his breath hot on my neck. The second time, he approached me full on, saying, “So, all that stuff when we were kids? We’re okay, right?”

I was in an elementary school gym full of people and stacks of folding chairs. What was I going to say? You preyed on me from the time I was in preschool until you threatened to kill me when I was 17? When you got home from prison the last time once we were both grown, you menaced me anytime I tried to come home, sitting in your car outside the house staring up at my bedroom window, appearing in my bedroom doorway in the middle of the night while I stood there, a half-naked deer in headlights?

I mumbled, Sure, walking away as quickly as possible. Then, when I got home I wrote him a letter. It was not a laundry list of years of abusive incidents. It was just a boundary declaration. We were not okay, I told him. We would likely never be okay. However, if he cared about whether I was okay he would accept responsibility for his actions and the reality that he would never, ever be welcome to stay in my house. Even if, someday, our mother ended up living in my house until she died, which was always the plan.

He could visit, but he would stay elsewhere. And if I ever felt that I or my children weren’t safe, even that concession would be off the table. I wished him no ill will, ultimately, but I wasn’t prey anymore and would never be again.

His response? He scrawled across my carefully typed letter in black sharpie, “You crazy, lying bitch. I NEVER RAPED YOU.” Then he stuffed it back in the envelope, adding, “No wonder your husband left you” on the envelope, and mailed it back to me. Then he made a point of enlisting his girlfriend and our mother in his manipulation, insisting to them how terribly hurt he was by my baseless accusations. I know, because I saved that letter to share with my mom the next time she came to visit in the hopes she would finally see what I was dealing with, finally understand the malicious harm he was perpetually inflicting.

Her response was to tell me how upsetting the letter was for him and his girlfriend, implicitly supporting his denial, attack, and claiming of himself as the true victim.

My heart broke in that moment. But it wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last. My brother perfected DARVO years before Freyd ever coined the term, and as a tactic it worked in perfect concert with the systems of addiction and enabling that had existed in our family for generations. We were primed for it.

Various studies have been conducted over the years since Freyd first coined DARVO as a concept— to understand how it functions, both in the minds of perpetrators and bystanders, as well as how it aligns with the goals of systems, which have never been interested in supporting victims but instead in sweeping violence against women under the rug as quickly and thoroughly as possible. The interesting thing for the purposes of our conversation here, however, are the studies that have documented how those perpetrators who use DARVO when they commit abuse or assault really commit to the bit. Having found success with DARVO in instances of domestic abuse or sexual assault, they extend use of the tactic, and the underlying belief that supports it (That they aren’t responsible, ever. That they are the victim, always.), into other areas of their life.

Trump’s tariff math is DARVO math. He isn’t the one who misunderstands basic economic theory. He isn’t the one who’s tanking the economy. It’s all those other countries. They are exploiting us, taking advantage, and sucking the American people dry.

We are the victims along with him. Not of him or his willfully ignorant and disastrous policies, but of everyone else. Everyone. But don’t worry, he will liberate us.

Once you understand the DARVO dynamic you can see how it pervades Trump’s entire way of inhabiting the world. And it’s an attitude that is shared by the people he surrounds himself with because maintaining the bit depends on bystander agreement and investment. The only way to disrupt it is unwavering refusal to buy into his narrative.

That’s where we come in. Maybe you plan on participating in one of the hundreds of Hands Off! protests occurring around the country on Saturday, April 5th. I’ll be there. Maybe you want to call your members of Congress to insist they take the necessary steps to revoke Trump’s tariffs. Maybe you want to talk to your family and friends to make sure they see in this what you see, that they understand who the perpetrator is and, with you, are willing to hold him accountable.

DARVO, whether used personally or publicly, is the opposite of practicing integrity. It is denying responsibility, eschewing accountability, and weaponizing dishonesty in order to enact further harm. But it only works if we allow it.

What will you allow? How will you stand up?