Intimidation
- Bullying
- Intimidating people
- Threat
- Terrorizing
- Dependence on intimidation
Nature
Intimidation is the use of force or superior power to discourage people from certain activities or thoughts, or to enforce other activities or thoughts against their will. Intimidation may be physical or psychological and may relate to a wide range of situations. It induces fear, apathy and alienation, reinforces barriers to progress and facilitates exploitation.
Terrorizing is threatening to commit any crime of violence or dangerous act or falsely informing another that a dangerous situation exists with the intent of keeping another person in sustained fear, causing evacuation of a building, facility or transportation means, or causing serious other public inconvenience. This includes phone and mail threats as well as bomb scares.
Incidence
In 2021, several journalists in Belarus reported systematic intimidation, including threats and harassment, following their coverage of anti-government protests. Human rights organizations documented numerous cases where intimidation tactics were used to suppress dissent and restrict press freedom.
Claim
Any excuse will serve a tyrant (Aesop, The Wolf and the Lamb).
Counter-claim
A threat can be just or unjust, good or bad, depending upon whether the threatened retaliatory measure is morally justifiable. The sanction normally attached to positive law is, in effect, a threat of punishment to be inflicted upon its transgressors. To threaten punishment may therefore be reasonable and virtuous, and a parent, teacher, or a custodian of the law, would fail in his duty if he neglected in some circumstances to threaten punishment. Prudence and care for the society and the individual to be threatened must dictate the norms to be observed in making justifiable threats.
The perceived danger of bullying has been wildly exaggerated. The definition of what constitutes bullying has been expanded to include almost every form of negative human encounter. Some self-proclaimed experts say bullying is an attitude rather than an act, or that it is defined by the impact of the act on the recipient, not by the intention of actor. Such definitions mean that we can bully without knowing it, by merely thinking negatively about another.
Broader
Narrower
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Related
Strategy
Value
Reference
SDG
