NBC: Some Experts Say Trump Team’s Falsehoods Are Classic ‘Gaslighting’
This is a very specific accusation. To “gaslight” someone isn’t just to lie to them or to manipulate their emotions. It is a deliberate attempt to deceive someone into questioning their own perception of reality. (“Suddenly, I’m beginning not to trust my memory at all,” says Bergman’s character, Paula, as her faith in her senses begins to fray.)
Throughout Trump’s ascent to the presidency, he was repeatedly accused of this sort of manipulation. When he wanted to shift attention away from his vocal support of the birther movement, he falsely claimed that Hillary Clinton had started the conspiracy theory. Trump told the New York Times that it was a “mistake” for him to retweet an unflattering photo of Ted Cruz’s wife — then later insisted in a TV interview, “I didn’t actually say it that way.” He vehemently denied that he had mocked a disabled reporter, despite a widely circulated video that showed him doing exactly that. After winning the election by a narrow margin, losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million, Trump hailed his victory as a “landslide.” Most recently, Trump and his administration have insisted that the crowd at his inauguration was the largest in American history — even as aerial photographs, crowd estimates, Metro ridership numbers and witnesses on the scene show otherwise.
Naveen Joshi, a professor of cultural studies at Humber College in Toronto, isn’t surprised that commentators have assigned a clinical label to Trump’s tendencies. “Gaslighting” was adopted by psychologists after the movie, which was based on a 1938 play.
But “with the rise of people talking about mental health, you see people using these terms more effectively now,” well beyond professional settings, Joshi says. “And especially with online social networking, they can circulate like wildfire.”
This is a very specific accusation. To “gaslight” someone isn’t just to lie to them or to manipulate their emotions. It is a deliberate attempt to deceive someone into questioning their own perception of reality. (“Suddenly, I’m beginning not to trust my memory at all,” says Bergman’s character, Paula, as her faith in her senses begins to fray.)
Throughout Trump’s ascent to the presidency, he was repeatedly accused of this sort of manipulation. When he wanted to shift attention away from his vocal support of the birther movement, he falsely claimed that Hillary Clinton had started the conspiracy theory. Trump told the New York Times that it was a “mistake” for him to retweet an unflattering photo of Ted Cruz’s wife — then later insisted in a TV interview, “I didn’t actually say it that way.” He vehemently denied that he had mocked a disabled reporter, despite a widely circulated video that showed him doing exactly that. After winning the election by a narrow margin, losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million, Trump hailed his victory as a “landslide.” Most recently, Trump and his administration have insisted that the crowd at his inauguration was the largest in American history — even as aerial photographs, crowd estimates, Metro ridership numbers and witnesses on the scene show otherwise.
Naveen Joshi, a professor of cultural studies at Humber College in Toronto, isn’t surprised that commentators have assigned a clinical label to Trump’s tendencies. “Gaslighting” was adopted by psychologists after the movie, which was based on a 1938 play.
But “with the rise of people talking about mental health, you see people using these terms more effectively now,” well beyond professional settings, Joshi says. “And especially with online social networking, they can circulate like wildfire.”
