On manipulation

Lately, I’ve been accused of being manipulative. People look at me with disdain and doubt, keeping their distance. They unfollow me, ignore my messages, and even walk out of dinners, leaving me with the bill. Why is that? The empire’s latest weapon isn’t soldiers; it’s diagnosis—specifically, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5, or DSM-5. It’s spread everywhere, condensed into quick clips on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube reels. 

Narcissism. Autism. ADHD. Now AuDHD, the combination of autism and ADHD, all wrapped in neat labels to box people in. I’m not here to discredit them. These terms have meaning for many. But ask yourself: what happens when these labels are turned into weapons? How quickly we slap a diagnosis on anyone who doesn’t fit, anyone who questions or demands justice. Why is it that when someone stands up and speaks out, they’re suddenly branded entitled or exploitative? Since when did a sense of justice become a character flaw?

We’re living in an era of censorship, where you can’t even see the full scale of genocide unless you’re following the banned accounts from Gaza. Mainstream media? Forget it. They either lie outright or present half-truths that twist the reality of what’s happening, using careful language to erase responsibility. We’re spoon-fed the narrative they want us to see, the sanitized version, while entire generations are obliterated offscreen. 

Footage of the genocide is scrubbed, shadowbanned, and censored. The same imperialists are at it again, like in the Opium Wars, but now their arsenal goes beyond pharmacological warfare. Our feeds are flooded with cute cat videos while seductive white supremacist content is pushed like crack candy.

Since the pandemic, I’ve started to speak more openly about the racism I experience. It’s everywhere—friendships, work, love, immigration, everyday errands. Going to the grocery store or seeing the doctor becomes a daily reminder of the violence. And when I speak about it, people close to me ridicule or roll their eyes. I can handle that. But the worst is when they nod in agreement, then retreat. They’ll click "like" on a post, but the next minute, they unfollow, they disconnect. They can’t handle the depth of the problem because to empathize would bring pain that they are not willing to take on.

We’ve all been taught to avoid hard truths. There’s this idea of sidestepping defenses in education and therapy: don’t push too hard, or you’ll lose people. It’s the Huxleyian way: prescribe painkillers for pain, numb yourself into avoidance. Studies show painkillers don’t just dull your senses; they kill your empathy, too. And yet, we are numbed out, living through times that demand urgency—we can’t afford patience. 

My background isn’t in psychology or education. It’s Public Relations, a field that’s perfected the art of bypassing defenses to sell desire. PR teaches people to want things they don’t need, to hunger for diamonds, Coke, or cheap clothes from fast fashion. It manipulates desire against your best interests, turning nothing into billion-dollar industries. 

Depending on one’s position and the funding behind your words, you may be referred to as a Doctor Professor or a charlatan. You may understood as a Creative Director or a fetishist. You may be an artist or a manipulative narcissist. But these are all judgment values—superficial categories. One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. 

My question to you is, what kind of world do you want to live in? What are you looking for in your life? Today, I am reminded by my comrade Lara Sheehi that just one person cannot achieve resistance. It is not a cult of personality. It’s how we push forward and resist demoralization and demobilization because we understand our cause is bigger. Our aim is not located in one person, place, or mode. This is one of many modes of resisting psychic intrusion that systems and purveyors of violence rely on. This is the time for focus, recommitment, and psychic divestment from modes of violence that infiltrate our internal worlds and ultimately defang our movements.

Yes, I hope I’m manipulating you. I hope these words make you uncomfortable and question what you’ve been taught. But they’re not "my" ideas. We’ve all been conditioned to compete, beg for state funding, and claw for institutional acceptance. But what institutions are left? The same institutions funded the slaughter of Palestinian and now Lebanese bodies with leftover ammunition from Vietnam. The pager bombs were carefully coordinated from factories in Hungary to Taiwan to maim doctors and frontline workers in Lebanon. 

I hope my words manipulate you. I hope that you may begin to act, to change, to find the necessary affect, so that you may provide the affection needed to get yourself and those around you out of the stupor this system has brought us down to. I am not your leader. I am not your superior. I have just spent more time learning to understand the pain and suffering that I have experienced. I am sharing that with you to reduce the time you need to process this information so that you may be the “manipulator” for someone else for the critical mass required to affect change.

You are invited to do your own research. Do your own investigation. You are invited to participate in the resistance. To speak. To act. To manipulate others. This is not about any one of us. I hope we can learn to reject the dirty money of the white supremacists and that we find communion with one another to break free from the psychic chains that hold us down.