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Actual CNN chyron during the raging riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin, August 2020
Actual CNN chyron during the raging riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin, August 2020
The term originates in the systematic psychological manipulation of a victim by her husband in Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play Gas Light (film adaptations released in 1940 & 44). In the story, the husband attempts to convince his wife and others that she's insane by manipulating small elements of their environment and insisting she's remembering things incorrectly or delusional when she points out the changes.
The play's title alludes to how the abusive husband slowly dims the gas lights in their home but pretends nothing has changed, in an effort to make his wife doubt her own perceptions. The wife repeatedly asks her husband to confirm her perceptions about the dimmed lights, but in defiance of reality, he keeps insisting the lights are the same - and that she is going insane.
These days, we're living in a perpetual state of gaslighting. 'Reality' that the media reports is at complete odds with what we see with our own eyes. When we question the false reality they present, or claim what WE see is actual reality, we are vilified as racist or bigots or just plain crazy.
You're not racist. You're not crazy. You're being gaslighted.
Comment: The ugly face of dictatorship has shamelessly reared its head throughout the Western world: