Let's talk about tactics of information warfare. This is to help you to counter psychological attacks, or to attack psychologically your enemies in a net forum situation. I'm not a real psychiatrist, but I have studied psychoanalysis, and been debating and analyzing my opponents for a long time. I would like to share my knowledge.
There are many psychological attacks, but today I will talk about passive-aggressiveness, and how it works, and what are its effects. So let's have an analysis of the method of passive-aggressiveness. How does it influence the subject, but also analyze the user using passive-aggressive methods of attacking, and some good ways to counter it, like reflection.
In my view it's part of a general type of emotional argumentation, that evolves around profiling. In most cases, a passive-aggressive person tries to imply that attachments to emotions are irrational and weak. I see this being a personality trait among the people with "nihilistic personality disorder". If you are passionate about something, you are seen as irrational, and it's implied that you are in need of professional mental help. All passion and aggressiveness are accused of being anger related, and thus it can be dismissed as irrational. It's this nihilistic personality trait, that you cannot be passionate about anything, or care about anything of value. Two types of people mainly use this tactic, the nihilistic and the sociopathic type who will accuse you of irrationality with passive-aggressiveness. Once you show passion, you are in their trap. You cannot show emotion or else it gives a window into your psychological profile, and they have a way to profile and psychoanalyze you.
Passive-aggressiveness as a tactic is strong because it doesn't rely on direct attacks, that can be easily pointed out and recognized by the average third-person onlooker. Its strength lies in the projected social pressure. The more social pressure the passive-aggressive attack has the more devastating it becomes to its victims. You can increase pressure by increasing the amount of social power by authority, or by numbers involved in the attack. The victim of passive-aggressive attacks feels himself being isolated, controlled, and their identity stolen, by negative and weakening profiling by the profilers. It's extremely annoying, as there is no direct way to counter, It's a very good way of derailing a topic, and make the conversation about the profiled. All attempts to direct the conversation back to the original topic will be further analyzed and attacked passively.
I think this is psychologically the most destructive attack, as there is a certain truth to it, which makes it unconformable. Not because you are physically or mentally weak, crazy or stupid, as the passive-aggressive personality claims you are, but because you cannot control personal emotion/reactions, or the social environment that is surrounding you and as you are weak in front of the attackers and attacks, and corrosive emasculation accrues. The trick is to get the victim invested emotionally and thus directly to something/whatever and once the victim shows emotional involvement, you turn that emotion into weakness by analyzing it and profiling it. Once a person is directly invested in his opinions and shows feelings and passion, then you can start passive-aggressive attacks.
This is extremely bad in internet conversations, and anonymous sites, where people and internet groups data mine, and try to gather personal information by way of doxing, data mining, and profiling of grammar, image, and topic-related patterns. If the person who is being attacked has been successfully profiled and doxed the attackers can start to go personal. There is zero way to fight back by dialogue when the attacking party has his real identity hidden. This gives an advantage as the attackers can speak "personally" and the victim has no way of counter-punching with profiling of his own. If the attackers know a person's real identity, they can successfully gang up and always profile the person, and use passive-aggressive tactics, then there is no real discussion and the other person is dismissed. Once you have been profiled, then the conversation will always bring back to profiling.
Passive-aggressiveness can cause mental damage more than any other psychological attack. It's one of the most powerful attacks and it can be used to make people crazy, desperate, depressed, suicidal, and radicalize people and their views.