“Gaslighting” is a term I had seen a few times on Twitter and while I knew that it was negative I didn’t understand exactly what it meant. I suspected that it would have a similar meaning to “flame war” which is when a person on Twitter deliberately inflames a discussion.
Flame War
A flame war is a heated argument between two individuals, that results in those involved posting personal attacks on each other during or instead of debating the topic at hand.
Urban Dictionary
Most forums have rules that forbid flaming. This is because the quality of conversation on a forum can be seriously degraded by a flame war. Topics can be “hijacked” by two people who would rather flame each other than discuss the subject of the thread.
A quick google search revealed that Gaslighting is much more sinister than just someone posting personal attacks on Twitter and upsetting people for shits and giggles.
Gaslighting
A form of intimidation or psychological abuse, sometimes called Ambient Abuse where false information is presented to the victim, making them doubt their own memory, perception and quite often, their sanity. The classic example of gaslighting is to switch something around on someone that you know they’re sure to notice, but then deny knowing anything about it, and to explain that they “must be imagining things” when they challenge these changes.
A more psychological definition of gaslighting is “an increasing frequency of systematically withholding factual information from, and/or providing false information to, the victim – having the gradual effect of making them anxious, confused, and less able to trust their own memory and perception. Your spouse begins telling you things that never really happened. For instance, he says that last week he told you he was going to go to the bar with his buddies this Monday night, but you never remember him telling you that.
Or maybe your boss gets angry because you didn’t prepare the report he asked you to. When you remind him that he usually prepares that particular report, he snaps that he told you to take care of it a few days ago because he was too busy. However, you know he never asked you to do so.
Both of these could be considered gaslighting.
Urban Dictionary
Imagine how disorientating it would be if two politicians, one activist and the New York Times all in the same month said that the sky was green. You know that it is blue yet here is a respected newspaper saying that it is green and now an American politician, a Kiwi politician and an activist are all tweeting that the sky is green.
What if the two politicians, one activist and the New York Times were all saying that President Abraham Lincoln did not abolish slavery and that in fact, it was President Obama (who was not even alive back then) who freed the slaves. Would you start to doubt your own sanity?
Now imagine that Minnesota Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, New Zealand Green list MP Golriz Ghahraman and Muslim Activist Linda Sarsour all claimed this month that Jesus was a Palestinian and that an opinion piece in the New York Times said the same thing.
You don’t need to imagine this scenario because that is exactly what has happened. Green List MP Golriz Ghahraman has been gaslighting Jews on Twitter, imitating Ilhan Omar and Linda Sarsour.
The term Palestinian was created 135 years AFTER the death of Jesus by the Romans when they crucified thousands of Jews, destroyed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and exiled the People of Israel from their homeland. It was a term, in fact, that was created to try to erase the Jewish connection to the land.
It doesn’t matter how many gaslighting politicians, activists or newspapers say otherwise, the sky is still blue and Jesus was a Jew.