The smearing of Minnesotans is DARVO

The federal government of the United States is at war with Minnesota’s Twin Cities. The feds are calling it the largest “immigration enforcement operation” in history. What that really means is that thousands of random men recruited with white supremacist propaganda have been handed military gear and told to roam the streets, brutalizing and rounding up seemingly anyone they come into contact with—especially people of color, regardless of their citizenship status. And a little over a week ago, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot a 37-year-old white American woman named Renee Good three times while she tried to drive away from him, killing her.

This is an even more violent escalation from last year, which was ICE’s deadliest year in more than two decades. 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025, where more than 68,000 people were being held as of mid-December. The way Donald Trump and his administration are describing it is the reverse of what’s happening: they’re baselessly claiming that immigrants in Minnesota and elsewhere are the source of violent crime, that they’re defrauding taxpayers, and that ICE is keeping Americans safe. In reality, ICE agents are the people turning the Twin Cities into a war zone, terrorizing everyone, and using their tax dollars to do it. And when it comes to Good, Trump and his cabinet have baselessly accused her of terrorism, falsely claiming that she was trying to run Ross over with her car.

This backwards logic is something called DARVO, which I write about a lot in Spitfire News. It stands for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. It’s a strategy used by perpetrators of abuse to project innocence and redirect blame toward their victims. And it works. I’ve previously argued that common criticisms lobbed at ICE protestors are rooted in the logic of DARVO, and I’ve used DARVO as the framework to explain victim-blaming in high-profile cases involving abuse and sexual violence allegations. Dr. Jennifer Freyd, the trauma psychologist who coined the term DARVO in the late 90s, instantly recognized when Trump and other officials were using it against Good. I spoke to her about it yesterday.

“I’ve been analyzing and writing about Trump and DARVO since 2017, so I’m familiar with him and others in his orbit and DARVO. But this is much more extreme than anything we’ve seen, both in the way the denial is brazenly at odds with the evidence and the way they’re all saying versions of DARVO,” Freyd said. “Our research also says DARVO is effective. It harms victims, but it also distorts perceptions of observers. If people don’t know that’s what’s going on, they’re more likely to be swayed by it.”

Freyd identified the false accusations that Good used her car as a weapon against Ross as part of the denial component of DARVO, with attacks on her credibility including baselessly labeling her as a professional agitator and demeaning her identity and character. Finally, in positioning Good as the perpetrator, Freyd said that the Trump administration has reversed the victim and the offender. Trump, JD Vance, the Department of Homeland Security, its spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem have all publicly smeared Good this way, along with countless of their political allies.

“DARVO is very specific. It’s about one particular kind of interaction, and it involves not only changing one’s perception of reality, but a series of steps to do that,” Freyd said. “I wish people would be really attuned to it, because the indication from the research is that will make it less likely to manipulate people’s thinking. It’s like a literacy.”

While Freyd wishes that legacy news outlets would send DARVO alerts whenever a government official or public figure tries to weaponize it, the reality is that the public has been primed to accept DARVO narratives. One of the most effective DARVO campaigns during the Trump era was actor Johnny Depp’s legal warfare against his ex-wife Amber Heard, who accused him of domestic abuse. Depp denied abusing Heard, sued her for defamation, and accused her of abusing him—a narrative that was embraced by a massive “Justice for Johnny Depp” movement around the globe. Like the killing and smearing of Good, the violence and hate Heard endured were driven by misogyny. In some ways, they were both even driven by homophobia. Good’s wife Becca was with her when she was shot, Ross called Good a “fucking bitch” after he shot her, and both Renee and Becca have been targeted with vile homophobic and misogynistic rhetoric ever since. When Heard testified about Depp’s abuse, she recalled one of the first times he hit her was after she hung up a painting made by her ex-wife, who Depp admitted he was jealous of during a cross-examination. Heard also said Depp pejoratively called her a “lesbian camp counselor.” Online, people accused Heard of being abusive to both Depp and her ex-wife, despite her ex-wife’s denials. Queer and especially bisexual women experience higher rates of gender-based violence, then are attacked through additional dimensions of bigotry by the public.

These aren’t the only similarities between the smearing of Good and modern DARVO campaigns against celebrity women. When Megan Thee Stallion was shot by fellow rapper Tory Lanez in 2020, online commentators immediately joined his defense. Lanez pleaded not guilty, with the influencers who supported him backing up his false narrative online. They positioned Megan as the perpetrator and attacked her credibility, even after Lanez was convicted. Misogynoir—the toxic combination of racism and misogyny against Black women—factored heavily into smearing Megan. She also publicly identifies as bisexual. In addition to public figures, DARVO has even been weaponized against women who are private figures but go viral overnight. Good and her wife are new examples of everyday queer women who are suddenly facing high-profile DARVO campaigns, this time from the highest authorities in their country. The instantaneous nature of disseminating information, disinformation, and reactions on social media platforms allows DARVO campaigns to commence rapidly against anyone. And with Good’s case, as well as the celebrity cases I’ve covered, video footage and other evidence works the same way. Those engaging in DARVO point to it as proof of their rhetoric, even if it shows the exact opposite of what they’re claiming.

“Denial can take various forms. Somebody can say something didn’t happen at all, or they can say it happened a different way, or they can agree something happened and say it wasn’t harmful,” Freyd said. “I think a lot of times, DARVO is not a consciously planned strategy. People have sort of implicitly learned it or they arrive at it."

The same way Trump and his administration have smeared Good through DARVO rhetoric is echoed in the wider DARVO campaign against all of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, both of which make up the Twin Cities. Whether people living there are protesting or not, they are currently in danger of ICE—a local Fox correspondent reported that an ICE agent launched a flash bang grenade into a car with six children, one just six months old, and the family was not even involved in protests. Now, their kids are all in the hospital. Trump has distinguished between Minnesotans in more rural areas who overwhelmingly voted for him versus the more diverse urban centers. Simply living in or nearby the Twin Cities is the official pretense for being targeted with federal violence and DARVO justifications.

Good being a white woman and a US citizen has also played a major role in how people online are centering her and recognizing the injustice against her. Previous victims of ICE violence, like Kilmar Abrego Garcia—who is still living under the threat of wrongful deportation and detainment—have also been smeared through DARVO tactics. Keith Porter Jr, a father who was shot and killed by an off-duty ICE agent in LA on New Years Eve, hasn’t received the same level of attention or calls for justice. The DHS accused Porter of being an “active shooter,” which his community disputes—another potential example of DARVO in action. And ICE’s victims and the target of the DHS’ white supremacist rhetoric have largely been Latino. Plus, police and the legal system often and historically rely on the logic of DARVO to get away with committing injustices against the communities they are supposed to serve. All of this laid the groundwork for the DARVOing of Good.

A pair of concepts Freyd also developed are institutional betrayal and institutional courage. The former often happens in tandem with DARVO, which can itself be weaponized at the institutional level, like we’re seeing with the federal government and some media outlets. According to Freyd, institutional betrayal occurs when institutions you trust and rely on mistreat you. That can include a failure to protect you. The opposite—”the antidote,” as Freyd puts it—is institutional courage. That’s when institutions or people within them respond appropriately and use existing research to become better. Freyd pointed to the half dozen federal prosecutors in Minnesota who quit rather than investigate Becca Good as an example of institutional courage.

For those who support my work to raise awareness of DARVO and contextualize smear campaigns against victims of violence through its lens, please consider a paid subscription to Spitfire News. It’s just $5 a month, and you’ll also receive access to my paywalled stories. Also, please consider reading Dr. Freyd’s op-ed about DARVO and Renee Good in Raw Story today. Until next time.