Narcissists are one of the most damaging, unfortunate, and dangerous of society’s hazards. They are predatory, anti-social, extremely socially aggressive, and cause enormous harm to innocent, unsuspecting people.
A flying monkey is a person that a narcissist enlists as a tool of their abuse of their chosen victim. Narcissists are master manipulators of flying monkeys, who can be unaware and naive, or else just as anti-social and motivated to harm as the narcissist themself.
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Narcissists are notoriously difficult to deal with. One reason is that the nature of malignant and vulnerable narcissism is self-reinforcing. Narcissists are desperate to protect and boost their egos, self-esteem, and self-image.
Narcissists seek recognition and esteem that they don’t really deserve and that they have not really earned in order to receive the biochemical reward of dopamine. Dopamine is the brain’s reward neurochemical. Dopamine is released in response to positive social contact, social affirmation, and success. Therefore, any attempt to make the narcissist aware of the maladaptive anti-social behaviour exemplified in narcissism will be blocked or deflected to protect the very maladaptation that is causing the problem.
The support, laudation, and validation of a social group of flying monkeys is extremely important to the narcissist precisely because they need it to satisfy their narcissism. They believe they’re a social butterfly and a paragon of human ethical and social character. (Vulnerable narcissists certainly have an ego as fragile as a butterfly’s wings.) They work hard to perpetuate this narrative and to maintain appearances. Having a support network of trusted — or at least dependable — flying monkeys is one of the primary means that the narcissist has to camouflage themselves.
How can the narcissist be wrong or defective if they are so popular and have so many friends and moral supporters? (Can you think of any politicians who function like this?)
The Narcissist and Lack of Insight
As such, narcissists are notorious for exhibiting what psychiatrists and psychologists call lack of insight or lack of awareness. They are almost completely unable, in most cases, to discern or perceive that they have a problem and that they are really anti-social, vicious, socially aggressive, and often Machiavellian and lacking in empathy.
The narcissist doesn’t see themselves as a narcissist. They see themselves as an upstanding, socially well-adjusted hero figure.
As with psychopaths (anti-social personality disorder), even their overtly predatory behaviour and the trail of wreckage that they leave behind them is often not enough to alert them to a problem. For the narcissist, the trail of human wreckage and wasted resources (often legal and government based) instead signifies their moral and social superiority and value.
Flying Monkeys are Evidence
However, there is some good news about narcissists and their flying monkeys: flying monkeys are easy to spot if you know what you’re looking for.
Importantly, the very presence of a toxic network of flying monkeys is very good prima facie and social-psychological forensic evidence that a narcissist is operating. Victims generally don’t have any flying monkeys. Because narcissist’s victims are often chosen according to how vulnerable, isolated and ‘meek’, or agreeable and personable they are, they will usually stand out like a sore thumb among a crowd of flying monkeys.
Importantly, the very presence of a toxic network of flying monkeys is very good prima facie and social-psychological forensic evidence that a narcissist is operating. Victims generally don’t have any flying monkeys.
The group of enlisted flying monkeys surrounding the narcissist and the isolated, friendless status of many victims is strong evidence of who is who in the situation. Narcissists are practised — usually since early development — at hiding and camouflaging their actions. However, the behaviour of most flying monkeys is quite overt and obvious because they are operating as if they have been given permission to have no restraint.
Because flying monkeys are often impressionable and suggestible they will exhibit unusual confidence and boldness in their abuses and attacks on the narcissist’s victim. Why? Because in the flying monkey’s perception and estimation the narcissist has given them permission and justification. Moreover, flying monkeys are often themselves anti-social and lacking in empathy. They’re often looking for any excuse to bully and harass someone due to their own personal psychological and emotional pathologies. The narcissist gives them that excuse.
Narcissists rely on the perception of social support, group validation of their narrative, and popularity in their attack. That is the entire motive for enlisting the flying monkeys to begin with. Flying monkeys often derive a benefit themselves in terms of ‘dopamine cookies’ or neurochemical reward for aggressive social behaviour.
Of course as far as the narcissist is concerned, flying monkeys are something else. They’re a validating support network. This is one of the most unusual and interesting features of narcissism from a psychological perspective, because the manipulation of flying monkeys invariably involves deception, maladaptive social perception, and the will and intention to use other people to attack a victim. The narcissist certainly has some awareness of the latter behaviour and intention in most cases.
The narcissist knows at some level that they are being socially aggressive and manipulative, but their narcissistic internalising and externalising (behavioural) symptoms mean that they see this behaviour as not only valid but pro-social and desirable. As for empathy: their carefully selected and targeted victim deserves none for offending them by doing — in most cases — little to nothing at all of any consequence.
Usually the victim has done nothing, or nothing of much significance or consequence. The narcissist is usually aware on some level that their behaviour is deceptive and that they are lying about the victim, but the lies and deception are all in the service of a greater good outcome for the narcissist, and so it is not just okay but essential to satisfy their maladaptive emotional needs. False accusation will be the foundation of their attack, and flying monkeys will be enlisted to ‘prove’ the false accusations.
This means that the victim will be, in many cases, isolated, outnumbered, and not part of a group. They may be alone and have few, if any friends. They may be from a persecuted or vulnerable minority. They’re likely to be shy, or perhaps very personable and highly agreeable. Such people are prime targets of narcissistic abuse because they provide easy fodder for the narcissist’s army of flying monkeys and the personal satisfaction and ego-boost that the narcissist gains from proving yet again how righteous and worthy of respect they are!
Put simply: if it looks like someone is being attacked by a social group rallying behind a specific antagonist, then that is probably what is happening. The victim will often appear dismayed, shocked, and discombobulated. This is the desired result of the narcissist’s social ‘shock and awe’ social campaign against them, which attack will be something that is not normal in the victim’s experience. Basically: you can all but follow the trail of flying monkeys to the manipulative narcissist aggressor.
Narcissists often have ulterior and secondary motives, such as frivolous litigation for money and securing career or professional advantage for themselves at the expense of others. This kind of combined motive means that the narcissist is even more likely to employ, and deploy, flying monkeys at each phase of their attack on the victim.
The Victim
The narcissist needs victims in a fairly constant stream in order to help them to build their self-aggrandising narratives. Predators need prey to survive. Too long without the validation of victory over a victim, and the supply of laudation and affirmation dries up, and the narcissist is left with themselves and faced with their objective reality, which they cannot tolerate.
The narcissist’s objective reality is not in keeping with their inflated, self-aggrandising view of themselves and of their ethical and social standing. One of the reasons why both vulnerable and malignant narcissists are so socially (or relationally) aggressive and abusive is that they’re trying to escape their own failures, inadequacies, impulsivity, and lack of conscientiousness.
Sadly, this is usually the result of abuses during formative psychosocial development. However, this observation doesn’t help victims at all.
Narcissists pick their victims according to convenience and perceived vulnerability. As such, the narcissist will often spend considerable time and effort ‘marking their target’ and ‘deciding’ if the victim is a ‘worthy’ person according to their own maladaptive and ill-motivated judgement. This is often the first the use of flying monkeys: for investigating, backgrounding, and monitoring the victim and their behaviour. This alone is already clearly a maladaptive imposition on personal boundaries, and is anti-social and predatory behaviour.
Often the narcissist will closely monitor the potential victim until the victim makes what the narcissist thinks can be classified as an offensive mistake. The narcissist will often expend significant effort trying to bring such outcomes about by using bait-and-switch behaviour or other forms of social and situational sabotage. If there is no harmless mistake, then the narcissist will simply fabricate one and fabricate the narrative to go with it.
The victim doesn’t in fact have to do anything to the narcissist, and this is the most common situation. Certainly nothing serious needs to occur. A trivial error, faux pas, or goof that would not bother normal, healthy people at all will become a way for the narcissist to complain about the existence and character of their victim because they’re desperate for the ‘dopamine cookie’ (a literal boost to their brain’s dopamine levels triggered as a reward) they get by doing so. Often this means that the narcissist will habitually over-emphasise and overstate small problems.
The narcissist will often exhibit inappropriate transgressing of social and personal boundaries in their search for ammunition. Flying monkeys are particularly useful for doing this without the narcissist getting their own hands dirty.
Narcissists will regularly ‘bait-and-switch’ the victim. They will pretend to be friendly with the victim and establish seemingly happy and relaxed rapport, but then suddenly aggressively change the terms of the social and interpersonal ‘contract’ without warning. They may joke warmly and encouragingly with the victim and accept a certain level of language and rhetoric one day, and then suddenly decide the next day that the joke and the language were ‘offensive’. This behaviour is planned by the narcissist.
There are numerous features of a person that make them a potential victim. The narcissist is practiced at identifying and exploiting these features. Psychological research has revealed that rapists with anti-social personality disorder who are on the psychopath-psychotic spectrum are prone to evaluate their potential victims by observing the victim’s gait. These predators choose their victim according to how the victim walks. A certain kind of posture and gait in walking communicates to the psychopath rapist whether their target will fight or submit easily.
Narcissists use similar mechanisms for evaluating potential victims, but they involve investigating every aspect of the person’s behaviour, social status, social standing, personal history, emotional responses, and interpersonal communication. For example, a favourite victim type of the narcissist is anyone whom they think is too nice to fight back. These kinds of victims are easily discombobulated by the onslaught of false narrative and false accusations that the narcissist suddenly manipulates their flying monkeys to support and perpetuate.
If the victim responds — understandably — with anger and dismay, then the narcissist will use this as further fuel to drive their toxic network of flying monkeys.
Ghost and Escape
The moment you witness this behaviour, politely take your leave and then ghost the narcissist. Don’t hesitate. Don’t weaken. Normally ghosting is regarded as a predominantly anti-social behaviour. However, there are cases in which is it appropriate and dealing with a narcissist is one of them. When dealing with a narcissist ghosting serves to signal strength and awareness.
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If you witness the above described narcissistic behaviour: run a mile. Leave. Assume your instincts are 100% right. You can’t help, and you cannot change the narcissist. (Most talented therapists cannot change a narcissist.) You are very likely to become a target yourself. Do not hang around to be charmed, evaluated, marked, menaced, and manipulated. If a narcissist tells you perseverative, self-validating, self-aggrandising, self-victimising anecdotes: they have a reason for doing so. They are measuring your responses. Are you a potential future flying monkey to use and manipulate? Are you a future victim? This is what they are desperate to learn.
If you cannot get away, then get away anyway. You have been marked for victimhood, and due to the trajectory of narcissistic maladaptive appraisal of social and interpersonal interactions, the narcissist will do everything in their power to manipulate flying monkeys to attack you. The trajectory of abuse and the progression of the behaviour is highly predictable and, as mentioned above, is strongly linked to, and driven by, the narcissist’s maladaptive emotional needs for affirmation and to boost their self esteem.
The act of escaping the sphere of influence of the narcissist will be immediately — in most cases — perceived by the narcissist to be 1. A further offence to be ‘punished’ and 2. ‘Evidence’ to share with flying monkeys that you are ‘guilty’ and worthy of attack. You are removing the narcissist’s next victim (you), and thus removing their opportunity for self-aggrandising self-laudation and for establishing false victim status to secure social affirmation.
The role of flying monkeys is multifaceted: they are tools for doing dirty work of social aggression and abuse, and are a ready-to-hand source of social affirmation.
The narcissist will be more offended when you ghost and escape, but they will be prevented from doing any serious damage. Moreover, they were going to pretend to be offended anyway. They will attempt to punish you for escaping, but they will have too little fake ammunition to sell to their flying monkey army.
Narcissistic Terror Management
There is another relatively controversial theory in psychology called terror management theory. The initial versions of the theory focused upon individuals’ needs to emotionally protect themselves from the personal terror of their own mortality: their knowledge that they will die. However, terror management theory also applies to managing the terror associated with low self-esteem.
The narcissist (especially the vulnerable narcissist) is desperate to ward-off low self-esteem. To manage the terror of low self-esteem, they will exhibit maladaptive, anti-social behaviour. Moreover, there is evidence that self-esteem is a foil to terror due to mortality salience effects: the effects of being aware of one’s mortality. This tends to compound the problem of the narcissist’s maladaptive behaviour.
Healthy people have normal responses to personal terror for self esteem threats and mortality. However, the narcissist’s responses are very maladaptive. Coupled with the constant need for a stream of socially based ‘dopamine cookie’ rewards, personal terror management for threats to self esteem and for mortality salience likely make for strong additional motivators to abuse victims.
Highly Predictable Maladaptive and Harmful Behaviour
Unfortunately some personality disorders are highly predictable. Different internalising and externalising symptoms seem to be almost governed by some kind of strict laws of nature. In an indirect sense this is true. This is because human beings have shared genetic heritage. Shared psychogenetic outcomes mean that our psychological phenotypes — our psychological properties and characteristics — tend to respond similarly to different environmental insults and stressors during formative psychosocial development. Moreover, NPD is known to have a significant heritability: to be genetically inherited from the narcissist’s parents.
The dimensional criteria for establishing the existence of NPD have been rigorously tested for half a century, and even psychological researchers and the psychiatric community are often surprised — and dismayed — by how robust and repeatable the results of studies and experiments are. This is not always true for all personality disorders. For example, there is far less experimental and empirical support for some of the other cluster B personality disorders such as histrionic personality disorder or HPD. However, for NPD the predictability of outcomes in terms of behaviour or externalising symptoms are far better established.
Narcissistic Narrative Construction
Narcissists have a very strong inclination to blow any mistake or error — no matter how unintentional and inoffensive to them personally— out of all proportion. However, in most cases they will simply completely fabricate the offences. Why? Because they have a desperate need for the ego-reinforcement and perceived validation that they gain from portraying themselves as a victim and a hero in the bad social situations that they themselves actively create. They are thus desperate to find and develop a bad narrative about their chosen victim.
The narcissist themselves cannot admit this status-quo. Their narrative will be constructed differently, and it is that narrative that they use to manipulate flying monkeys.
I once encountered a narcissist — let’s call them ‘Sally’ — who would talk incessantly about how they were the hero in past social situations involving ‘defective housemates’ whom they variously either heroically ‘helped’ or otherwise were ‘forced’ to ‘deal with’.
There were two notable things about these stories. First: they were shared perseveratively. Sally would talk about these experiences repeatedly, at length, and at every opportunity. When this was mentioned to Sally, they would justify and explain it by claiming victim status and that they were suffering PTSD due to the experiences. However, through the course of the lengthy diatribes, it was extremely difficult to detect any serious — or even real — offence in the behaviour of their target-victims, even though Sally was absolutely adamant about how bad the victims were. Sally always sounded like they were working overmuch hard to convince themselves as well as everyone else present of their virtuous victim status.
Secondly, it was evident in that case that the victims being discussed by Sally had been significantly isolated and bullied by her, and that Sally had intentionally singled them out for ‘special attention’ with the help of flying monkeys. Sally had a low opinion of these former housemates, and was determined for everyone to share that opinion even though the housemates were long gone.
Sally had another defining feature. They were one of the most confident, fearless, assertive, and outspoken people I have ever met. They were clearly afraid of nothing, and certainly were not afraid of any of the victims whom they falsely accused of harming them. In fact, it became clear that — just like the rapist predator who uses the gait of a potential victim to judge the victim’s vulnerability — Sally was practiced at identifying targets they thought would be easy. If the person was an alcoholic, mild mannered, known to suffer anxiety, or had other social problems, then they were very likely to become a target. Do not, under any circumstances tell a narcissist or a psychopath that you feel anxious. Any perceived weakness will be exploited.
Do not, under any circumstances, tell a narcissist or a psychopath that you feel anxious. Any perceived weakness will be exploited.
It was interesting also that Sally had significant control over who became a housemate in the first place, and so identification and targeting of victims may have begun very early. Sally had no concept that this was maladaptive and anti-social, since in her narrative the victims deserved to be punished for being offensive, and so Sally was free to behave socially-aggressively without limit or restraint. Note that this behaviour is often an indication of comorbidity with anti-social personality disorder (APD) or psychopathy, and can also be comorbid with borderline personality disorder. NPD, BPD, and APD are often comorbid.
That being said: NPD is dangerous and harmful enough on its own. It is dangerous because the effects on the narcissist’s victims can range from serious psychological impact, to career damage, to financial loss, and — in extreme cases — imprisonment, suicide, hospitalisation, and violence. The narcissist’s lack of empathy and deep-seated psychological need to socially predate can result in chaos and devastation for victims. Such damaging outcomes also boost the narcissist’s self-esteem and dopamine because of a satisfying and successful assault on the victim.
There is no way of avoiding the truth of the matter: narcissists like Sally are very nasty social predators. They have a vastly over-inflated propensity to use social aggression or relational aggression, and flying monkeys are instrumental and critical in achieving their objectives. This is the kind of aggression and social attack that has been well researched in adolescent populations. Adolescent sociopaths (statistically more often females who are less prone to engage in outright violence) will often target a victim of whom they are jealous by using clandestine character assassination: by secretly talking the person down to all of the other adolescents (also a kind of flying monkey) in the group.
Narcissists will often do their utmost to hide their use of flying monkeys in backgrounding, doxxing, toxic networking, and even stalking by proxy. (This was certainly a habit and practice of Sally’s.)
Any excuse to attack is a good one for a narcissist — no matter how trivial or how true. The social aggressive and the narcissist are practised manipulators. They have often effectively been ‘trained’ to be good at such behaviour from a young age by parents with similar personality disorders. They have often been frustrated in their attempts to manipulate flying monkeys in the past, and so they learn how to do it better out of desperation to be satisfied and rewarded by a successful attack. They need the social affirmation and the maladaptive ‘dopamine-cookie’ reward that they get with it.
Challenging the Narcissist and their Monkeys Will Fail
Don’t try to tell the narcissist that they’re overstepping boundaries, being manipulative, and exhibiting maladaptive, anti-social behaviour and judgement. They will immediately become offended and you will dramatically increase your chances of becoming their next victim. They think they’re fantastic and can do no wrong, and you won’t be able to demonstrate otherwise to them.
Challenging the flying monkeys of the narcissist is unlikely to be much more successful. A person who is is so impressionable and manipulable by a narcissist is likely to be unhelpful and not very discerning. Moreover, many flying monkeys are themselves social-aggressives and have personality problems. Trying to reason with a flying monkey in thrall to a narcissist likely has failure built into it. The best response if the flying monkey is aggressive is to tell the flying monkey what they are, and tell them to stop and that you won’t tolerate them. Remember what the reality of the situation is, and assert it. Tell them that they are defective, but do not attempt to reason with them. Essentially, you need to tell them to get lost and you may need to call police if it is necessary.
Cases of NPD that present to therapists are often effectively incurable. There are many books of therapist’s notes that record that just when they thought they were making progress with a narcissist, the narcissism exploded again. It is often the case that the therapist will become a resented target! This happens due to the common therapeutic outcome of transference. Transference is when the client has emotional responses to the therapist.
Therapies like psychotherapy and interpersonal therapy are based upon establishing rapport with the client and upon developing a client-therapist therapeutic collaboration. It is unlikely that a narcissist will submit themselves to therapy, for obvious reasons. However, if they did so, then interpersonal therapy and psychotherapy may not be very good options for treatment precisely because of transference. (Most NPD cases are diagnosed after general therapy begins). A type of interpersonal therapy called transference therapy has been intentionally tried with NPD sufferers, but there is a lot of data indicating that it results in very heated and difficult transference and counter-transference. Narcissism is not very conducive to genuine good rapport and to a fruitful therapeutic alliance.
Narcissists are also prone to jealousy. If they are jealous of someone then that person is instantly a prime candidate for a victim. If the narcissist thinks that they can manipulate their flying monkeys to attack such a person, they will enact this as soon as possible. For example, the narcissist may decide that in their ‘supreme opinion’ the person is not worthy of the opportunity and benefits that they are receiving. Perhaps the narcissist has squandered their own opportunities due to maladaptive lack of self control and impulsiveness.
Maladaptive Self-perception
The narcissist believes that they are worthy and righteous. They also usually need to believe that their victim is not. This makes their abuse easier in subjective psychological terms. It also aids in manipulation of flying monkeys.
Most narcissists have a desperate need to appear to be in the right, to be perceived as morally and ethically upstanding, and to be the good person in any given scenario. When they identify a vulnerable victim, they must make the person worthy of punishment by any narrative means necessary. This is required to feed their deep need for recognition and respect, even when they don’t especially deserve any of either.
As is the case with psychopath-APD sufferers, the maladaptive behaviour of the narcissist can be adaptive up to a point, or adaptive in certain situations or circumstances. Psychopaths are known to thrive in situations involving conflict, violence, and unethical competition. Narcissists will derive benefits from their successful attacks on victims up to a point. However, eventually victims and people associated with them will become aware that there is a problem.
Therefore, in the short term self-deception and lack of insight based on a warped self-perception serve the needs of the narcissist. However, the damage and harm they cause ultimately brings them undone. The behaviour is maladaptive overall.
The Bold Lie and — Drugs
In order to sustain the appearance of a cohesive narrative in which they are the victim, the narcissist will use one simple and proven strategy: lie boldly and with confidence and conviction. Flying monkeys are easily manipulated by means of such emotional camouflage.
Often psychopaths and narcissists are master manipulators, and this involves the use of language and general non-linguistic and paralinguistic communication such as facial cues, body language, and tone of voice. In just the same way as they carefully choose their victims, the narcissist will carefully evaluate others for their utility value as flying monkeys.
NPD is also commonly comorbid with substance abuse disorders and eating disorders. Substance abuse is well known to be accompanied by deceptive and manipulative behaviour, and abuse of certain narcotics results in altered moral perception and anti-social behaviour. This was certainly the case with Sally, who was a user of recreational drugs.
Watching You and ‘Evaluating’
If you sometimes get the impression that a person is watching your behaviour and asking a lot of unusual questions about you, then be wary. If you feel like you could be being set up as a victim of narcissist, then your instincts might be right. In fact, the uneasy feeling that you get when a narcissist probes you is based upon social discernment abilities that have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years.
Some theories of cognition propose that humans likely have what are roughly cognitive ‘modules’ for these kinds of social and situational discernment tasks. Such cognitive modules — proposed according to controversial massive modularity theory — are also thought to be the basis of our mate selection and social threat detection. In fact a narcissist is likely to trigger your evolved social threat detection ‘module’ or capacities.
Just as you would not ignore an aggressive stray dog growling at you: do not ignore it.
Most mentally healthy people don’t regard constantly measuring, judging, and evaluating others as either healthy or prosocial. This is especially the case if the evaluation involves disrespecting personal boundaries by stalking by proxy and backgrounding using flying monkeys.
Personal Boundaries and Flying Monkeys
Evaluating the victim for vulnerability is often the first task for which narcissists will enlist the help and energy of flying monkeys. The flying monkey will be manipulated into variously invading and monitoring the potential victim’s personal life: gathering information like a spy and doing toxic-networking (relational aggression) on behalf of the narcissist. Of particular interest to the narcissist are the details of the victim’s history, relationships, any mistakes from their past, any reputation problems they might have, and any enemies that they have.
Flying monkeys are very much a tool that the narcissist uses to do their dirty work for them. Why? Because the narcissist is trying to maintain the illusion — mostly for their own benefit — that they’re a victim and a pro-social archetype or exemplar.
If you find you’re suddenly being backgrounded and ‘investigated’ on social media or via the narcissist’s network of toxic flying monkeys, then remove yourself from the situation as soon as possible. The narcissist won’t like being cut off and they will respond with righteous indignation and an attempt to punish you. This is a behaviour that falls under the dimensional diagnostic criteria of NPD, and it is common for narcissists. They work hard to cultivate a victim, and do not like losing their prey.
Watch Closely for Flying Monkeys
Therapists know very well that these social dynamics and outcomes are very common where narcissists are involved. NPD has an epidemiological prevalence in the population of about 1.6%, making it less prevalent than most other personality disorders except for histrionic personality disorder. However, the condition is aggressive and predatory, and reliably produces bad outcomes.
NPD is also more statistically common in men who account for about 75% of NPD sufferers (while women tend to have higher prevalence of borderline personality disorder). However, no matter which gender a narcissist is, they are to be avoided.
This is an unfortunate but necessary recommendation due to the nature of the externalising symptoms of NPD. Narcissists are almost always socially aggressive (also called relational aggression) and their behaviour is very predictable. Most importantly, however, once they commit to predatory abuse of a victim they are unlikely to relent or desist. Their persistence is assured by their need to secure social affirmation, validation, and associated dopamine-based rewards. The victim must be destroyed in order to secure the desired outcomes.
Perhaps the most relevant and useful take-home of this discussion is that flying monkeys are very good evidence that there is a narcissist operating. Flying monkeys can be naive and unwitting, or they can be more invested and themselves socially aggressive. Either way, the results of the narcissist’s manipulation will be that the behaviour of their flying monkeys will be remarkable and distinctive.
(Remember that social or relational aggression is a specific, documented kind of aggression that has the features of group bullying and clandestine or secret social sabotage. The bully hides their actions behind a network of flying monkey tools whom they use to effect the abuse and attacks.)
Just as importantly — the victim is likely to have no flying monkeys and, because of the social aggression of the narcissist and their flying monkeys, to have few allies of any kind due to the normal dynamics of group psychology. Ostracism, stigma, group bullying, and social aggression tend to have a snow-balling effect.
If you encounter a narcissist, then the best strategy is to completely remove yourself from their sphere of influence and from the situation. If this is not possible, then that is bad news. The externalising symptoms of NPD tend to involve very entitled, socially aggressive behaviour. This means that there is little chance that you can spend time in the presence of a narcissist and their flying monkeys without being attacked. It is analogically somewhat like spending time in a bear or lion enclosure and expecting not to be attacked at some point. The narcissist has a driving need to make victims, and flying monkeys are instrumental in that objective.
References
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