The thing that seems to be missed here is that passive aggression is a perfectly valid way to deal with direct and immature aggression, such as you get with personality disorders. Maintaining a level of deniability isn't always a bad thing. And any idealization of "direct aggressiveness" is just an excuse for psychopaths (or NPD, BPD, etc). Of which I've had enough in my life, thank you very much.

It's sad that much of the discussion here is effectively excusing fascism. Another case where passive aggression is a perfectly valid and mature coping mechanism.