Push Back!: How to Take a Stand Against Groupthink, Bullies, Agitators, and Professional Manipulators

by B.K. Eakman

How many times have you had the unsettling experience of being treated as a troublemaker as soon as you question or raise an objection to a school policy, a textbook, a course of study, a new county regulation, or a community proposal?

Every day, attendees of conferences, community forums, PTA meetings, and board meetings are made to feel uncomfortable and occasionally foolish by the person or persons leading the meeting. The speakers, moderators, or provocateurs—whom author B. K. Eakman refers to as professional manipulators—hold power over the room and know how to steer the discussion back to their agendas without ever answering audience questions or addressing their concerns. These people use techniques to ostracize those brave enough to stand and question or criticize them.

With Push Back!, readers will be able to counter group manipulation tactics by learning

Recognize psychologically controlled environments
Identify the professional agitator/provocateur
Examine components of psych war
Undercut faulty, distorted, and biased arguments of opponents
Squelch techniques used to rebuff audience members who complain or balk
Neutralize consensus-building techniques
And much more

Genres: Politics

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 2, 2014

About the author

Beverly K. Eakman is a former teacher and speechwriter, and a retired U.S. Justice Department employee. She is now a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer and author.

Known as Education's Whistleblower, she is a veteran of over 650 nationwide radio and television talk shows and over 150 speaking engagements.

Her articles on education, mental health and privacy issues have appeared in such national publications and online news sites as NewsWithViews, Education Week, Chronicles Magazine, The Washington Times, National Review, Crisis Magazine, Vital Speeches of the Day, and The Washington Post.

She is the best-selling author of Cloning of the American Mind: Eradicating Morality through Education, Educating for the New World Order, Microchipped: How the Education Establishment Took Us Beyond Big Brother and How to Counter Group Manipulation Tactics.

Her latest book Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms Are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks points to an agenda that begins with government-controlled childrearing and force-feeds young people a pseudo-education under the cover of mental health, safety, jobs, and something called lifelong learning. Walking Targets is a wake-up call for parents and educators alike. With over 40 articles covering education, family, behavioral science, mental health, privacy, political correctness and manipulation of public opinion the reader will come to see how educators and provocateurs are driving a wedge between parents and their children. "

Reviews

[John (JP) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is an attempt to teach critical thinking in a hyper- political environment.The book is not unbiassed. It takes an early bend to the right and keeps going. The introduction has phrases such as " Its tough to be a traditionalist, constitutionalist or even the generic conservative in America's ever more left leaning , bureaucratic political scene."The author claims that professional agitators and provocateurs infiltrate meetings and manipulate them to their leftist agenda . Eakman offers no support for her claims. Eakman cites no sources not even newspapers or pamphlets. This book makes no claim of objectivity. This books claims it has the ability to teach you how to recognize them and counter their arguments. Ity fancies itself a teaching tool. It fails at that too. I wish this book had been better written. It comes close to making sound arguments its causes but like the Brown's football teams fails at the last minute. The bad writing keeps it from achieving its goals to educate the true believer and inform those who aren't.

[Elentarri · Rating 4 out of 5]

How to spot and deal with professional manipulators. Informative.