At the outset: I ask you to mentally ask yourself to define the word "Gaslight" prior to reading and then I hope to help examine this and I am also interested in discussing.
A summation of this diary: Gaslighting as defined in the dictionary and the history of psychology is a manipulation technique intended to break down the victim and reduce them to questioning their own core beliefs and deeply weaken them and their ability to properly react to the manipulator. Republican Propaganda lies are a technique to activate a ready and willing army and give them cover and ammunition to tap into a part of them that they are waiting to have permission to tap into.
Further, There is very little similarity between either the technique and the intended outcome and the completely improper redefinition of the word Gaslight is an error in my opinion.
As an outcome, gaslit people do not become radicalized. People who become radicalized are the targets of a technique but that technique is not gaslighting.
Here is the full exploration of the above:
Whomever began the current use of the word gaslighting started an awful misuse of a very well defined word. I know there is no way to change this in the current vernacular but the adoption of this word as a semi-meaningless term is either sloppy or dangerous or maybe both and I will explain it both ways.
I will start by stating how I am deeply connected with this and although it is personal this doesn't doesn't change the fact that it shouldn't be misused as such, my personal experience is simply to help clarify what gaslighting actually is and is not.
I was gaslit for five years in a relationship and I needed a year of therapy to rebuild myself to emotional point where I began to retrust my own moral understandings. It was 7 years ago that this relationship ended and while I am a very stable and generally happy person the relationship permanently damaged me.
Gaslighting is a targeted psychological attack with an intended victim and a very clear strategy and no, the Republican party and Donald Trump and Fox News are not gaslighting - they are radicalizing with propaganda.
Yes, those entities are doing something horrific, they are engaging in verbal signaling and they have a goal but it has absolutely zero to do with the factual psychological phenomenon of gaslighting.
So why is this important? First of all, on our side words matter or at least they should. On the Fox News side they call me a communist and they have no idea what this factually defined word means and we call them out for it. I'm not a communist. I'm happy to be called a liberal, a progressive or a Democratic Socialist but I'm simply not a communist. But it's more than that. They can't tell me what a communist is. It's the same with the current abuse of Critical Race Theory - now immortalized as "CRT" by every propagandized member of their angry mob of listeners and watchers.
The tool of slapping a wrongly defined call to action and rage is their tool, not ours.
Here is the definition of gaslighting from the Dictionary
gas·light
/ˈɡaslīt/
verb
manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.
Notice first that the word "lie" isn't even in the definition.
Gaslighting isn't simply lying - no matter the size of the lie. It's about the manipulator having a target and making them question their sanity - to question their own beliefs, and yes, this most likely includes lying to the target/victim but the lie is a mechanism if used, it's not the goal and hence it isn't in the definition.
The fact is that very few lies on the planet are gaslighting. Even huge, whopper lies. Lies to get out of trouble, lies to cover up, lies to hide corruption - it doesn't matter how big or how serious and the reality is that propaganda in some cases may be gaslighting but it isn’t in the current American context.
Gaslighting has a victim and has a goal. Republican speech is not attempting to achieve this goal at all. First with specifics then more abstractly.
Republicans who tell lies are not trying to make a person who disbelieves the words they are saying think that they themselves are crazy. Donald Trump and Fox News aren't trying to take a person who knows that the January 6 was a violent coup attempt and make them ask themselves if they are actually wrong - if in fact that they don't know what violence looks like, to make them sit and think and feel that their own definitions of ideas are wrong.
This I 100% guarantee.
They are not trying to ask you or I to believe in them or join them.
I guarantee 100% that Tucker Carlson never once intends when he says some evil garbage claiming that supporting black people is actually racist will actually make a person who has human values think "oh my gosh, maybe I have this racism thing all wrong, maybe the black people are the racists".
That isn't what is happening - and that IS what happens to a person who is gaslit.
The gaslighter intends for the victim to question themselves, to wrap themselves in self doubt and the relationship between the two parties is set up so that it is usually partially or very successful.
The person who is gaslit comes to the relationship believing one thing and the manipulator weakens them, twists morals, uses methods that break the person down. The gaslit person is never activated by the gaslighting. The gaslit person either leaves the situation or they are broken down and they are made "un-strong" by the tactic. They don't come along easily and I'm pretty sure that most never become fierce advocates of the abuser/manipulator except in the case of extreme "Stockholm Syndrome" style victims. I don't think that the rabid Trump army has many of these.
So, let's look at this word and technique and see that it's absolutely not what is happening with the Republican speech.
We see it on TV, we know it but of note, I also have a personal connection to it. My mother is a Fox News cultist. She believes Trump won, she believes the vote was rigged, she believes it all. She believes Joe Biden is mentally incompetent, she believes Barack Obama is a Kenyan Muslim.
And she was never a victim of gaslighting. She was a willing and ready convert. She was a normal Republican until I was in my thirties and then Fox News came and sold her something she was looking for.
I contend that no Fox News fan was gaslit into watching. In other words they didn't begin watching as someone strongly disagreed and then slowly morphed, asking painfully "wait, is Fox correct, was I wrong, do I need to believe them in order to get what I need in this relationship but I deeply know it's not right?"
This conversation, if it ever happened to someone, somewhere in their head - is an anomaly and I don't think it has ever happened.
This conversation happens in the head of 100% of actual gaslit people.
No, the fact inductees of Fox News have landed on the channel and shouted in their heads "YES! Someone is finally validating my positions which I used to think were extreme. Now I have a real home!" and they grab a beer and smile. Day one.
And I know this again because I saw it happen to my mom. She ate the lies up like cake and she continues to do it and it is my memory that she ate them up from day one. There was no breakdown of her psychology and zero self doubt. Ever.
And she was the target of this method. She was the intended set of ears to get the message. She was an activatable cell waiting for the marching orders, waiting for the doctrine, waiting for the Propaganda feed.
The words weren't meant to beat her down. They were meant to weaponize her and they did a fantastic job - her and 40% of our country. They aren't beaten down gaslighting victims who questioned the path they walked down, who were lead to confusion, possible self hatred and so many other crippling emotions that accompany successful gaslighting.
Zero of this.
On our side of the coin, we are angered, yes. We are infuriated, yes. We are pissed off. We can ask questions "How can he/she possibly say that crazy and horrible stuff, how can they lie so flagrantly?"
BUT!
We never follow it with "wait, maybe he/she is right" - ever.
And without that there is zero gaslighting, and, to clarify, not one of them ever think that they will get that response, that they will get that "flip", that they will get that emotional destruction.
In fact, they aren't even remotely interested in it. They have zero interest in a person with self doubt, who is crippled into questioning what they think. They don't want victims, they want an army. Do they want to lobotomized people? Yes, for sure, they are happy with robots, but not with gaslit damaged people.
If you are interested in seeing the end product of actual gaslighting as it previously was defined, I offer you to Google and check a few gaslighting support groups and see the pain that is caused by gaslighting.
If you look at the posts in these groups you will understand that the handful of deprogrammed Q cultists that exist are not a parallel. Much more, the emotions of the truly gaslit are absolutely not the emotions that we Democrats feel watching the Republicans manipulate our democracy.
I will be blunt in l saying I find zero connection. I can't find a way to define what is happening in our politics to be even connected to the actual phenomenon of gaslighting and thus to be haphazardly redefining words and in this case. As far as I can see it is actually just a buzzword for "a big political lie". The word is in the dictionary and anyone trying to explain some other version of it is abusing the English language.
If we want to do that then we should just chuck it all and call ourselves communists because the right has decided that this means "American Democrat" and so we should just go ahead and go with that - it's an equal concept. Obviously the word communist does not mean that, but also obviously the word Gaslighting - in the dictionary and in actual psychology and life, doesn't mean whatever it is poorly being used to mean either....
And the very last and maybe worst part about this is - maybe people actually aren't being sloppy. Maybe our pundits and writers somewhat know what the word means and they actually somehow are getting it wrong what the Republicans are doing - that somehow they think that Tucker Carlson is trying to convince people on the left that they are crazy with our fundamentally correct moral standing in direct opposition to his screeds. Maybe they believe that we are the intended targets, the victims as would be the case - because again, by absolute and clear definition there is an intended target of gaslighting.
If this is the case (which I really don't think is accurate but.... Maybe??) well, that is a dangerous misunderstanding of the enemy and that should be corrected. Know your enemy. This is akin to believing and enemy is approaching from the east as opposed to the west.
Gaslighting never creates power in the victim. Gaslighting has a victim and the absolute intention is to weaken the victim in a very specific way. Gaslighting doesn't create violent mobs. Gaslighting doesn't create an army of people chanting and clapping for the lies.
Gaslighting always has the effect that the target either breaks free or that they lose power and give it away. The gaslighting victim questions themselves severely. A true victim of gaslighting is emotionally wounded. There is a battle to break them down and if they are broken down they are left very weak.
I feel like I've said a few versions of the same thing but I can still hear people saying "I don't think it's any different" and so I will try one last way.
You, me and everyone who leans left are not the targets of this attack and never were, so we can't be being gaslit. It's not that it didn't work on us, it's that it wasn't intended to work on us.
When your friend's partner is being gaslit you see it but you aren't the target. Your friend is being beaten down and you see it, know it and know what is going on.
My mom was the target and she was never gaslit. She was radicalized. I could see it. She wasn't being convinced that she was insane - she was being fed the words to allow her to say what she wanted to say. She was being instructed, not reprogrammed.
The irony is that I am and we are the victims, as is democracy - but we are the victims of our countrymen being propagandized, we aren't the victims of gaslighting.
OK, I think I have beaten this horse. Now I ask at the end, looping back to the beginning - has your opinion of the use of the word gaslighting changed or do you think I am missing what it means in our modern practice and that I can't see that everyone gets the new definition?
I'm really interested in the comments. I know I can't change an army of pundits - I do wish I can. I know I am tied to my idea so it bothers me more than (um, probably anyone ever) when I hear it - but I'm interested to see if it's just a "well, hey, that sounds sort of like you are taking this too personally" or if it's like "oh, wow that sounds pretty valid and even if it will not change at least you made the point"
I'm open to hear either way.