The latter happens when the speaker makes ambiguous statements that cannot be conclusively refuted. Think leaders countering public memory about an event witnessed in real-time (“no one demolished the Babri Masjid”) or misrepresenting reality through denying public experience (“India’s vaccination drive is a success”). The former happens when a speaker explicitly peddles demonstrably false information while presumably being aware of the falsity. ![]() Researchers have also distinguished between overt and covert political gaslighting. If the pandemic has shown us anything about politics, it is that political gaslighting is not just rhetoric - it can be deadly. In India, the government’s claims about the pandemic - pointing at communal bogey to divert attention from the real causes, claiming premature victory over the crisis - have translated into Covid-norm defying behavior. These abstract statements naturally have devastating consequences for people who have suffered during a crisis. The technique is also used to stoke communal fires and overwrite history leading to alternative narratives about ourselves as a people.įurther, the pandemic saw an alarming rise in political gaslighting - with leaders worldwide calling Covid19 a “conspiracy,” saying there is no vaccine shortage when there is, among other manipulations downplaying the severity of the situation. A very similar technique - with a slight modification of letters on laptops - is believed to have implicated Indian activists. The first, controlled, and carefully planned instances of political gaslighting were seen in Nazi Germany, in which dissidents were toyed with in many ways - i ncluding the sending and receiving of fake letters attributed to them. ![]() The Govt Celebrating “Power of Positivity” Is An Example of What Toxic Positivity Looks Like ![]() Political gaslighters may try to silence the latter. What happens when individuals do this to more than one person? What if the grand vision of control is directed towards a whole nation?Īccording to Latif, there are two distinct victims of political gaslighting: the gaslit (those who are successfully manipulated), and those who hold opposing views (journalists and researchers). Typically, gaslighting is a tactic used by powerful individuals with narcissistic tendencies who seek to manipulate another person into their control. Notably, when the government says no one died in the last months due to an oxygen shortage, despite multiple first-hand accounts, the line between fact and fiction becomes too thin. The downplaying the administration’s wrongs, discrediting political opponents, encouraging deliberate misinformation, and diverting attention from relevant news are all markers. Political gaslighting may not always be called by this name. The idea of gaslighting is mostly discussed with respect to intimate partner relationships or family dynamics but in a political sphere, experts note its impact on mass paranoia, confusion, pain, and uncertainty. Being gaslit on a mass level undermines the public’s capacity to think about policy in the long and short-term (and their ability to have a say in it), distorts truth and reality, and creates a sense of distrust among the public. ![]() The result of this manipulation is pointed. Latif adds that political gaslighting becomes a strategy to “garner support for or against an ideology, viewpoint, or policy.” In reality, this translates as creating false, alternate narratives not based in reality calling them irrational or undermining their sanity for questioning the gaslighter’s narrative covering up lies to make them sound convincing, and so on. Gaslighting makes use of words and power - two things that feed off inequality. “ utilizes deceptive and manipulative use of information with the motivation to destabilize and disorient public opinion on political issues,” Farah Latif, a communications expert from George Washington University in the U.S., noted in a paper. The process of political gaslighting makes use of certain techniques. If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because it is - political gaslighting is fast becoming the defining feature of our times. To “ gaslight” someone is to manipulate them into questioning their perception of reality.
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