Perhaps the ultimate gaslighting in human history is our current fiat money creation system that benefits the few at the expense of the many.
The terms gaslight and gaslighting are entering the political media lexicon, with partisans of both parties accusing the other side’s candidate of gaslighting in the presidential election. The terms refers to the 1944 film Gaslight in which Charles Boyer subtly manipulates the environment to cause Ingrid Bergman to question her memory and sanity.
Generally speaking, gaslighting has been used in the context of personal relationships to describe a manipulative person’s attempts to undermine and control their romantic partner.
As I understand it, gaslighting refers to a specific set of manipulative techniques:
1. Questioning, belittling, discounting and undermining our experience of places and events.
2. Overwriting our memory of events with false memories, again by undermining, questioning and belittling our memories.
3. Discrediting and marginalizing our definitions of self and identity, in favor of the manipulator’s definition of our identity and place in the world.
4. Using authority and “experts” to disqualify and discredit dissenting views.
5. Denigrate and deny our lived experience and memory by repeating the institutionalized authority-approved narrative of “what actually happened.”
6. Disorient, discredit and destroy dissent with a torrent of false statistics, false narratives, false accusations and false claims of our errors.
Correspondent C.D. suggests gaslighting can be applied to the entire financial system. Here are his comments in reference to last week’s post Beyond Income Inequality:
Do Wallerstein or Picketty (or any mainstream economists) ever talk about larceny via extortion, fraud, artifice, forgery, false pretense, and conversion, among other types of theft? Do they talk about interest-bearing, debt-based money? If they don’t, I think they’re missing two gargantuan pieces of the puzzle.
