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Two close friends, Iben and Malene, come to suspect the older, socially awkward librarian Anne-Lise of being behind the threats and of being untrustworthy. Their suspicion hardens into systematic office ostracism and harassment, and the other women join in or stay silent. The women doing it are professional experts on how ordinary people come to persecute others.
Most people accept that ordinary humans can take part in cruelty, but each person privately exempts themselves as the exception who would recognise it and refuse. This self-exemption is itself the danger. Someone who is sure they cannot be a persecutor reads their own hostility as justified self-defence or moral judgment, so they never notice it as persecution.
Understanding how genocide and persecution work gives no protection against reproducing the same dynamics in miniature. Expertise can make it worse, because experts assume their knowledge makes them immune. It also supplies a sophisticated vocabulary for rationalising their own conduct. Under stress, fear and group loyalty override what people know intellectually.
When a group faces a threat that is anonymous and cannot be controlled, blaming a nearby, vulnerable member turns unbearable uncertainty into a concrete target that can be acted on. Shared suspicion then strengthens the bond among the accusers. Each act against the target makes it psychologically costly to admit the target might be innocent, so the persecution escalates rather than corrects itself.