people really need to stop using gaslighting as a term to describe systemic oppression holy shit it’s a term specifically to describe interpersonal abuse not a way to analyse society
just to clarify: a politician lying to you is not ‘gaslighting’, mass media not giving a group which you belong to representation is not ‘gaslighting’, gaslighting is a person who forces you to question your own perception of reality and makes you unable to trust your own thought processes and memory
I can see where you are coming from and I definitely see some people misinterpreting gaslighting to simply mean ‘lying’ and misapplying the term gaslighting. But I also think there are people out there who fully understand the term gaslighting, look at society and notice it happening on a bigger than interpersonal scale.
When communities rise in defiance of police brutality and are then told again and again that the police brutality was a ‘reprisal’ to their violence and that they are bringing this all on themselves that if only they stopped rising up the brutality would stop. When transphobia pushes trans people to the edge of suicide and at the same time tells them that transness is solely to blame for their suicidal thoughts because transness is inherently defined by tragedy.
These and other processes of oppression of persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, aimed at making targets question their own memory, perception, and sanity meet the definition of a large scale form of gaslighting.
Media representations that support this process can definitely be seen as parts of a gaslighting process, an experience where almost everyone in society is constantly telling you that your experiences of oppression are not real, that you must have imagined it, that society never did that to you, that you liked it anyway,that you’re just looking for excuses for your own failures, that if you just stopped accusing people of oppression it would all go away. Like, I’m no expert but I think that’s gaslighting.
By the way, while I believe there is value in the concept of gaslighting-by-society as an aspect of oppression, I do not think that concept applies to the recent case of Donald Trump.
I do not think Trump is gaslighting American.
If that were the case, his goal would be to cause his opponents to doubt themselves and question their own sanity, that doesn’t seem to be his goal at all.
What Trump’s goal does seem to be is to constantly distract and exhaust his opponents.
Every day of his campaign and every day of his presidency, Trump presents his opponents with at least one lie, or denial of a previous lie, that his opponents can jump at. They passionate spend their energy trying to flesh out in detail just how Trump is lying, they write long editorials exposing his lie, they pride themselves on having exposed the lie.
And all the while nothing happens because Trump is not damaged by being caught in a lie. It hasn’t damaged him before, it won’t damage him the next time or the time after that. But it keeps his opponents busy.
This, incidently, is a game oppression plays too:
“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
Trump is not gaslighting America. Trump is distracting America.
There will always be one more lie. There will always be one more act of back peddling on an earlier statement. This is intentional. You can spend every day of your life chasing the lies and you will not be any closer to building a real resistance to Trump’s power.
More on alternative means of resistance: A guide to direct action
QueerAnarchism 