Gaslighting: The Way of Modernity, By Brian Simpson
The temptation is to treat political "gaslighting" as a pathology of one figure or one administration, an excess of personality, a kind of rhetorical bad weather that rolls in and out with electoral cycles. That reading is comforting, but it is also shallow. If anything, what we are seeing in controversies around figures like Donald Trump is not an aberration but a particularly loud expression of something far more structural: modern societies depend, to a surprising extent, on managed perception, gaslighting.
The term itself comes from the old play and film Gaslight, where reality is subtly altered and then denied until the victim doubts their own senses. In politics, the metaphor is usually applied to brazen contradictions, saying one thing yesterday, another today, and insisting both are consistent. But that is only the crude version. The more pervasive form is quieter: it lives in framing, omission, selective emphasis, and the slow reshaping of what counts as "normal."
Modernity, for all its talk of transparency and rationality, runs on layers of mediation. Very few people directly observe the systems that govern their lives — financial markets, public health policy, intelligence assessments, climate modelling, even basic economic statistics. Instead, we receive curated interpretations through institutions: governments, media organisations, corporations, universities. These bodies do not merely report reality; they organise it into narratives that can be absorbed, acted upon, and — crucially — accepted.
That doesn't automatically make them malicious, but it does create an environment where control over narrative becomes a form of power. If you can define what is happening, you shape what people think should be done about it. And if you can do that consistently, you don't need overt coercion. Consent is manufactured upstream.
This is where the idea that "gaslighting is a ruling-class tool" needs tightening. It's too easy to slip into a cartoon: shadowy elites deliberately deceiving passive masses. Reality is more complicated and, in some ways, more unsettling. The system often runs on distributed incentives rather than just central conspiracy, although that exists as well. Journalists chase attention and access; politicians chase votes and legacy; academics chase funding and prestige; platforms chase engagement. Each layer nudges the story in small ways. The result can look like coordinated distortion even when no one actor is fully in control.
Still, the effect on the public can feel very similar to classic gaslighting. Conflicting claims circulate simultaneously. Yesterday's certainty becomes today's error, quietly buried. Language shifts — what was once unacceptable becomes necessary, what was once obvious becomes "misinformation." Over time, people either disengage or align themselves with whichever narrative tribe feels least dissonant. In both cases, independent judgment erodes.
That erosion is the real issue. A healthy public sphere assumes that individuals can compare claims against some shared baseline of reality. But when the baseline itself is constantly moving, scepticism becomes both necessary and exhausting. Too little scepticism, and you become a conduit for whatever narrative is dominant. Too much, and you slide into blanket distrust where nothing is credible. The system, perversely, can accommodate both extremes.
So, it is too narrow to pin "gaslighting" on one administration or one ideology. It is better understood as a feature of large, complex societies where information is mediated at scale. The modern citizen is not just informed; they are continuously managed — sometimes crudely, sometimes subtly, often invisibly.
The harder question is what to do about it. Simply declaring everything a lie is no solution; that collapses the distinction between truth and falsehood entirely. Nor is blind trust in institutions sufficient, given their corruption, incentives and limitations. The only workable path is a kind of disciplined scepticism: checking claims against multiple sources, paying attention to what is not being said, and resisting the pressure to outsource judgment completely.
That is not a heroic stance. It is slow, often frustrating, and rarely rewarded. But it may be the only way to remain something more than a spectator in a system that increasingly treats perception itself as a terrain to be managed.
https://insighttoincite.substack.com/p/donald-trump-maga-memory-holes-and
