Forgiveness is the antidote to attack thoughts and consists in abandoning the attack thoughts and replacing them with loving thoughts.
Mental attack—of self or others—is futile.
In fact, mentally attacking others has the effect of attacking my own mind, because it is in my own mind that the attack is taking place. If I want stop stop feeling attacked, I have to stop attacking. When I substitute loving thoughts, I also feel the effect of those.
Attack thoughts are both the sense of attacking and the sense of being attacked. Both are equally pernicious. The sense of being attacked invariably gives rise to attack thoughts directed against others, and vice versa. The more vicious the attack, the deeper the perpetrator's sense of being attacked. This is the vicious cycle of attack.
This is completely distinct from change. I can recognise that change is necessary in myself or in the world without attacking anything or anyone. Relinquishing attack does not mean relinquishing change.
In fact, attack thoughts usually stand in the way of change, firstly because attack triggers resistance and secondly because it gives the false sense that something is being done about the problem. Attack is destructive. Change is constructive.
When I attack myself, that does not produce change.
When I attack others, that does not cause them to change either.
A glance at the world should confirm this.
To forgive, I withdraw the judgement, I withdraw the underlying demand, the insistence that things be other than they are, and then, once I'm at peace, I ask the Higher Power for the next right thought or action.
This approach I have found to produce major change in me and around me.