From ‘Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve’ to Family Court – The Fractal Nature of Manipulation
January 2026
Yesterday, Prime Minister Albanese announced he was backing down on his government’s hate speech laws. The racial vilification provisions would be dropped. Media coverage framed this as a defeat, a compromise, a victory for free speech advocates who pushed back against government overreach.
It was none of those things. It was the plan working exactly as intended.
And if you’ve ever been in a relationship with a narcissist, you’ve seen this exact pattern before.
In negotiation theory, it’s called ‘door-in-the-face’ or ‘anchoring.’ Start with an extreme demand you never expected to get. When you ‘compromise’ back to what you actually wanted, the other party feels like they won something. They experience relief. They stop fighting.
The technique is documented in psychology literature going back decades. It works because humans evaluate outcomes relative to anchors, not in absolute terms. If I ask you for $1,000 and settle for $200, you feel better than if I’d asked for $200 straight up – even though you’re paying the same amount.
Governments have industrialised this technique. But they didn’t invent it. They learned it from the same place we all encounter it first: personal relationships with manipulative people.
Anyone who has survived a relationship with a narcissist will recognise these patterns instantly. They’re not learning them from government – government is scaling what narcissists do instinctively.
The Unreasonable Opening: A narcissistic co-parent demands supervised visitation – supervised by them – for one hour per fortnight. They know this is unacceptable. That’s the point. When they ‘compromise’ to 30 minutes unsupervised, the other parent feels grateful. They received a gift. A favour. Never mind that they went from 90% custody to negotiating for minutes – the relief of escaping the extreme position overrides rational assessment.
Manufactured Generosity: The narcissist positions themselves as the reasonable one. ‘Look how much I’ve compromised.’ ‘I didn’t have to give you this.’ The victim is meant to feel indebted. The ‘compromise’ becomes leverage for future manipulation. ‘Remember when I was generous about visitation?’
Shifting Baselines: Each ‘compromise’ becomes the new normal. The victim forgets what they originally had. The narcissist’s extreme opening reframes the entire negotiation. What was once a given – regular access to your own children – becomes a privilege to be grateful for.
Control Through Uncertainty: The narcissist maintains power by keeping the victim in perpetual negotiation. Nothing is ever settled. The 30 minutes could be revoked at any time. The victim stays compliant, stays grateful, stays afraid to rock the boat.
These aren’t negotiation tactics. They’re abuse patterns. And they scale perfectly from kitchen tables to parliaments.
A fractal is a pattern that repeats at every level of magnification. Zoom in on a coastline and you see the same jagged pattern. Zoom in again – same pattern. The scale changes; the structure doesn’t.
Manipulation works the same way:
Personal scale: Narcissist demands unreasonable custody terms, ‘compromises’ to merely unfair terms, victim feels grateful.
Workplace scale: Employer demands unpaid overtime and weekend work, ‘compromises’ to just staying late every day, employee feels they won.
Corporate scale: Company proposes eliminating all benefits, ‘compromises’ by only cutting half, workers ratify the contract.
Government scale: State proposes criminalising speech, ‘compromises’ to merely expanding ministerial proscription powers, citizens celebrate.
Global scale: International body proposes total sovereignty transfer, ‘compromises’ to binding frameworks with no democratic override, nations sign.
Same pattern. Same psychology. Same manufactured relief. The only difference is the number of zeros involved.
Remember March 2020? The ask was simple: two weeks of restrictions to prevent hospitals being overwhelmed. A temporary emergency measure. We were all in this together.
Two weeks became two months. Two months became two years. In some Australian jurisdictions, three years later you were still scanning QR codes to buy coffee, still masking in certain settings, still showing papers to prove your medical compliance.
But here’s the key: at no point did anyone announce ‘we’re implementing a three-year surveillance and compliance regime.’ That would have triggered immediate resistance. Instead, it was an endless series of ‘just two more weeks’ extensions, each one presented as the reasonable compromise between doing nothing and doing something more extreme.
This is narcissistic manipulation at population scale. The government positioned itself as the reasonable party, generously granting freedoms back piece by piece. ‘We’re easing restrictions.’ ‘We’re allowing outdoor dining.’ ‘We’re giving you your lives back.’ The framing made rights into gifts.
The ratchet only ever clicked in one direction. Each extension became the new baseline. Each ‘temporary’ measure became permanent infrastructure. The QR check-in systems, the vaccine passport frameworks, the emergency powers – all still exist, ready to be reactivated.
Anyone who pointed this out in 2020 was dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. By 2023, it was simply what happened.
Just like the victim of a narcissist who finally realises, years later, that they gave away everything while feeling grateful for crumbs.
Now watch the same pattern with the Combating Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026.
May 2025: Government announces broad criminalisation of racist hate speech. Civil liberties groups raise alarms. Public debate focuses on whether words should be criminal offences.
January 2026: Bill introduced bundling racial vilification provisions with hate group bans, ministerial visa powers, and protest restrictions. Everything packaged together.
17 January 2026: Albanese ‘backs down.’ Drops the racial vilification provisions. Media reports this as a defeat for government overreach.
But look at what remains:
Ministerial power to ban organisations deemed ‘hate groups’ – definition controlled by government, minimal judicial oversight.
Ministerial power to reject visas of people deemed problematic – discretionary authority with limited appeal rights.
Police powers to restrict public protests for up to three months following any ‘terrorism declaration.’
Expanded surveillance and prosecution infrastructure that will long outlast any particular government.
The racial vilification provision was the lightning rod. It drew all the fire. Everyone argued about whether speech should be criminalised. Meanwhile, the actual power expansion – discretionary ministerial authority to proscribe organisations and restrict movement – slides through as the ‘reasonable compromise.’
Just like arguing about supervised versus unsupervised visitation while never questioning whether 30 minutes is acceptable at all.
The genius of the technique is that it manufactures genuine relief. When the extreme provision gets dropped, people actually feel grateful. ‘At least they listened.’ ‘At least they compromised.’ ‘At least we don’t have criminal speech laws.’
This is identical to the relief a narcissist’s victim feels when the rage subsides, when the punishment ends, when ‘normal’ returns. The relief is real. The gratitude is real. And both are manufactured by the person who created the threat in the first place.
Trauma bonding works the same way. The abuser creates the fear, then provides the relief, and the victim bonds to them as the source of safety – forgetting that they’re also the source of danger.
The same pattern appeared throughout COVID restrictions. Every time a particularly onerous measure was ‘eased,’ people felt relief – and failed to notice that the baseline had shifted permanently. The easing of outdoor mask mandates was celebrated as freedom returning, while indoor mandates, vaccine requirements, and check-in systems remained.
We were trauma bonded to our governments. They created the fear, removed our freedoms, then gave some back and expected gratitude. Many complied.
Partial retreat is not retreat. It’s consolidation.
There’s another layer to this. While domestic citizens face 41 criminal charges for social media posts deemed antisemitic, foreign disinformation operations run freely on Facebook. AAP FactCheck has documented multiple rounds of fabricated political stories from Vietnam-based engagement farms. These pages remain operational, generating fake news about Australian politicians, while Australians posting opinions face police visits.
The laws are never enforced symmetrically. They’re tools of selective application. The infrastructure exists to be used against whoever needs to be controlled at any given moment.
This too mirrors narcissistic abuse. Rules apply to the victim, never to the abuser. The narcissist’s ‘boundaries’ must be respected absolutely; the victim’s boundaries don’t exist. The narcissist can say anything; the victim’s words are policed for tone, content, and implication.
COVID enforcement showed the same asymmetry. Protests against restrictions were treated as super-spreader events requiring police intervention. Protests for approved causes were treated as legitimate expressions of democracy. Same virus, same crowds, different enforcement.
The powerful never follow the rules they impose. That’s how you know who the narcissist is in any system.
Once you see the anchoring technique, you can’t unsee it. Every major policy expansion of the last decade has followed this template:
Anti-terror laws post-2014: Proposed powers were extreme, ‘compromised’ versions still expanded surveillance dramatically.
Metadata retention: Initial scope was broader, ‘limited’ version still requires ISPs to store two years of your data.
COVID emergency powers: ‘Temporary’ became permanent-ready, infrastructure remains in place.
Hate speech laws 2026: Broad criminalisation dropped, ministerial proscription powers retained.
The ‘compromise’ is always the objective. The extreme position exists only to make the objective look reasonable by comparison.
And once you’ve seen it in government, you’ll recognise it in every narcissist you’ve ever known. Once you’ve survived a narcissist, you’ll recognise it in every government policy announcement.
The pattern is fractal. It scales infinitely. And it works until people stop feeling grateful for their losses.
Yesterday, the Australian government successfully expanded ministerial powers to ban organisations and restrict protests, with minimal public resistance, by packaging these powers with a provision so extreme it guaranteed controversy.
When that provision was dropped, people celebrated.
That’s not a compromise. That’s a magic trick. It’s the same trick every narcissist pulls when they ‘allow’ you to have something that was always yours.
The question isn’t whether they’ll do it again. They’re doing it right now, on multiple fronts, continuously. The question is whether enough people will recognise the pattern to stop celebrating their own defeats.
Survivors of narcissistic abuse often describe the moment they finally ‘saw’ the pattern as the beginning of their recovery. They stop negotiating within the narcissist’s frame. They stop feeling grateful for crumbs. They stop believing the ‘compromise’ is real.
Nations can have the same awakening. But only if enough individuals have it first.
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Breathe manually.