Gaslight in Your Eyes

Imagine you try to talk someone out of jumping off a bridge, or persuade someone to get real medical help instead of drinking a harmful potion. Suppose you fail. Would you think that since people won’t listen to vital advice, you should just keep quiet from now on? Or would you reflect on how you might do better in future to steer people away from danger?

We have this very challenge at the societal level. Charlatans are out to deceive people into thinking they would be making a terrible mistake if they did not help the trickers win political office. Wearing the Joker’s grin, they invite people to blame and despise innocent scapegoats, reject any measure that can curb the irresponsibility of their financial backers, and hand them the power to do as they please. And people are falling for it.

Mass gaslighting has become an all too familiar phenomenon. “Can’t you see, it’s these immigrants who are causing all the problems”. “Don’t listen to the experts and the do-gooders, we are the ones who can save our country”. “It’s dreadful how our wealth-creators are held back by red tape”. “Anyone calling us racist or sexist is ‘woke’ and must be ignored”. “You want things to get better, you vote for us”. So it goes.

But isn’t their electoral success proof that nothing can be done about it? Look at Trump, look at Farage. Despite a calamitous first term and his attempt to overturn the democratic election of Joe Biden, Trump went on to get enough votes to win a second presidential term. Despite the catastrophic damages caused by Brexit, Farage would go on to secure widespread backing in the latest local elections.

Both deploy classic gaslighting techniques: deny all wrongdoing whatever the evidence; dismiss victims’ accounts of events as ‘fake’; change the subject when questioned about difficult issues or their own inconsistencies; accuse others of being oversensitive; get demonstrably outraged when people would not believe and support them unreservedly; and tell people to stop complaining and just move on.

But should we shrug and move on when we see an arsonist burning down buildings and screaming how that would make everyone better off? That’s what these charlatans want us to accept when their destructive policies and corrupt practices leave immense socio-economic devastation in their wake. Instead of being gaslit into feeling that we should not ‘moan’, we must share the truth widely to stop more of our future going up in flames.

Farage’s Brexit/Reform party promised the freezing and cutting of council tax, but once in power, they put council tax up. What’s more, they cut local services, reduced funding for adult social care and school transportation, scrapped regeneration schemes, and cancelled initiatives needed to protect the environment. And contracts were given to people with highly questionable track record who had donated to the party (https://goodlawproject.org/reform-council-that-promised-cuts-delivers-payday-for-party-backer/).

In addition to all of us doing our bit to expose lies and distortions, we need public figures whose demeanour, sincerity, humour, charm can combine to get through to people who might otherwise fall for the political equivalent of pyramid schemes or ‘discounted’ snake oil.

That’s what we need, honest and persuasive voices, if we are to stop people jumping off the electoral bridge.