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ABSTRACT SUMMARY, PART III
Trump's enthusiastic promotion of “alternative facts” is taken up by his base, who rise to the defense of the great leader, chanting lies at rallies (“Lock her up!” for the “criminal” Hillary Clinton and “Send her back!” for Llhan Omar).
Trump’s relationship to his base is simple: tell yourself what you need to hear: tell them what they want to hear, be relentless, keep doing it until the intersubjective becomes an hypnotic cryptopsychotic echo chamber.
Attack anyone who contradicts your message: Gaslighting requires that the perpetrator be persistent and even aggressive. The victims effort to test reality and restore a feeling of sanity must be attacked and repeatedly refuted. Like Charles Boyer in the movie, the perpetrator fains exasperation with the victims sense of reality.
He becomes irritable and short tempered as the victim tries in vain to assert the facts. Donald Trump uses this technique relentlessly. Recently during a Covid-19 Task Force news briefing, he repeatedly accused reporters of peddling “fake news” even when asking simple, obvious questions.
Exaggerate your success and efforts (especially when you have done nothing): One common technique is to circulate a public statement asserting (regardless of evidence to the contrary) that Trump and his administration have been victorious, done a tremendous job, and should get a grade of A+.
On April 30, Trump did just that by coordinating statements with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, at the White House. Trump began by claiming “We did all the right moves. If we didn’t do what we did, you would have had a million people die, maybe more, maybe 2 million people die.”
And later Jared claimed: “I think we have achieved all of the milestones we needed. The federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story. And I think that’s really, you know, what needs to be told.”
What is breathtaking both these claims is that they are easily disproved by facts from the public record (FILL IN THE CURRENT NUMBERS). However this gaslighting technique is fundamental to the abusers aim – to blatantly and proudly assert that what is false is true, and that anyone claiming the contrary is a liar: “fake news.”
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Lie as needed: In the movie
Gaslight, the perpetrator creates a series of lies about what is really happening, and drives them home, questioning the victim’s hold on reality.
Ingrid Bergman’s effort to question these claims is attacked as a symptom of her incipient madness; eventually she succumbs. Similarly, one of Trump’s simplest, tried and true techniques is to repeatedly and shamelessly assert his own lies or those being promoted by others in the media or social media.
In this regard he is without peer in politics: no amount of facts or evidence contrary to his claims will sway him. (In a recent article in the New York Times Michael Tomasky points out that as of May 29, 2020 Trump has uttered 19,127 false or misleading claims while in office.)
Trump believes that his contradictory remarks are always consistent, because each transaction exists independently from the other. His gaslighting and enthusiastic promotion of “alternative facts” is also taken up by his base, who rise to the defense of the great leader, chanting lies at rallies (“Lock her up!” for the “criminal” Hillary Clinton and “Send her back!” for Llhan Omar).
These hostile lies become rallying cries, binding the group together, asserting fundamental beliefs (that career politicians are all corrupt, that all foreign born people should be barred from the country). In their frenzy to join Trump in his grandiose quest to “build the wall” and “drain the swamp” the psychological and emotional archaic merger has its purest and most vicious expression.
During the early days of the current Covid-19 pandemic, Trump asserted a false narrative that the illness would simply disappear, the unproven medications would be panaceas, that anyone can get testing, etc., etc.
Eventually, when it appeared that he had accepted the reality of the epidemic, this was just another ploy. When needed, Trump would repeatedly fall back on lies, false assertions and far right conspiracy theories, often derived from and supported by conservative pundits and quacks.
In regards to Trump’s relationship to his base the technique is simple: tell yourself what you need to hear: tell them what they want to hear, be relentless, keep doing it until the intersubjective becomes an hypnotic cryptopsychotic echo chamber.
Attack anyone who contradicts your message: Gaslighting requires that the perpetrator be persistent and even aggressive. The victims effort to test reality and restore a feeling of sanity must be attacked and repeatedly refuted. Like Charles Boyer in the movie, the perpetrator fains exasperation with the victims sense of reality.
He becomes irritable and short tempered as the victim tries in vain to assert the facts. Donald Trump uses this technique relentlessly. Recently during a Covid-19 Task Force news briefing, he repeatedly accused reporters of being unprofessional and peddling “fake news” even when asking simple, obvious questions.
Although primitive in form, Trump’s ability to persistently attack and refute his “enemies” is a key part of his effort to sustain his message and wear down the public, who become numb to his insults and begin to question their own sense of what’s real. Meanwhile his base of support revels in his rudeness and assertion of their shared delusions and twinship of the “real” situation and denigration of expertise.
Twitter has allowed Trump to sustain his attacks.
There are many days (and often nights) when a barrage of tweets inundate the phones of followers and enemies alike, with repeated attacks against Trump’s enemies. Even on off days, Trump rarely misses an opportunity to project blame and to attack those whom he feels have betrayed him, opposed his policies, or simply told a truth that he does not share.
The maintenance of an attitude of blaming and verbal attack, sustains the ire of his followers and creates a siege mentality, while he urges his base to go after some opposition candidate, foreign dignitary or organization, or perhaps a dead senator or a “nasty” woman newsperson. By sustaining the attack he keeps his followers effectively revved up and focused on the enemy.
Exaggerate your success and efforts (especially when you have done nothing): One very common form of this technique Trump uses is to circulate a public statement asserting (regardless of evidence to the contrary) that Trump and his administration have been victorious, done a tremendous job, and should get a grade of A+.
On April 30, Trump did just that by coordinating statements with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, at the White House. Trump began by claiming “We did all the right moves. If we didn’t do what we did, you would have had a million people die, maybe more, maybe 2 million people die.”
And later Jared claimed: “I think we have achieved all of the milestones we needed. The federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story. And I think that’s really, you know, what needs to be told.”
What is breathtaking both these claims is that they are easily disproved by facts from the public record (FILL IN THE CURRENT NUMBERS). However this gaslighting technique is fundamental to the abusers aim – to blatantly and proudly assert that what is false is true, and that anyone claiming the contrary is a liar: “fake news”.
Use confusing rhetoric: Another gaslighting technique which Trump relies on almost continually, is confusing, often contradictory rhetoric. Rather than full sentences where an idea is made explicit and clear, he uses phrases and incomplete asides which lead the audience to feel uncertain regarding what he means and what he might be referring to.
He states several different things at one time, sometimes even in the same sentence. For example, regarding his handling of the Covid epidemic: “Yeah, we’ve lost a lot of people. But if you look at the original projections, 2.2 million. We’re probably heading to 60,000, 70,000. It’s far too many. One person is too many for this. And I think we’ve made a lot of really good decisions.”
Listeners are justifiably confused by this statement. What does he mean? What point is he trying to make? Rather than scrutinizing the claims, a loyal follower will simply latch onto pieces of the statement: 60,000 is less than 2.2 million. Yes one person is too many, he cares for all people. And finally that he is doing a “tremendous job.”
In this approach rhetorical coherence and syntactic conventions are ignored as communication is reduced to disconnected phrases and affectively charged punchy assertions. This is the language of cryptopsychotic narcissism in which the communication functions to strengthen and clarify the grandiose bond with the audience, while at the same time confusing and ultimately numbing the attention of the public and hopefully, opponents.
Deny everything: At first Trump simply asserted: “I don’t take any responsibility for this.” blaming President Obama as the Covid-19 death rate began to increase beyond Trump’s “rosy” predictions (50,000 dead!). Rather than admit his miscalculation, he began to assert the false claim that the medical profession was intentionally exaggerating the death rate to undermine his policies.
Allied pundits joined in giving cover to his denial of the reality of death and the sacrifice of first responders. Even a quack physician was elevated to support this claim. In the end, this is Trump’s ultimate fallback position: “It didn’t happen.”
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