They Are Allegiant to Money, Not Citizens
Gaslighters in politics have one primary allegiance—to money, particularly their own. They live and die by the almighty dollar. Don’t expect them to vote based on what their constituency wants and needs. They are strongly influenced by the people and organizations who give them money—they vote and govern based on who writes the biggest check. While one may argue that many politicians do this, gaslighters take it to an extreme. It can get to the point where politicians take straight-up bribes, don’t even know what their constituents want, nor do they take any time to meet with those they represent. These politicians know who owns them and act accordingly.
US gun laws are a perfect reflection of this pay-to-play, money-trumps-all mentality. According to a 2017 report by the Center for Responsive Politics, in 2016 the National Rifle Association (NRA) gave over $1 million to politicians. Since 1998, the NRA has given $4.23 million to current members of the US Congress (Williams 2017). Take a look at how Congress votes on gun laws by checking out a report by National Public Radio (Kurtzleben 2018)—think that’s a coincidence?
Their Words Don’t Match Their Actions
While many politicians promise things during election season and don’t fulfill them when they get into office, gaslighters take this to an extreme. As you learned in Chapter 1, gaslighters talk a good game, but rarely do they follow it up with actions. One way to check whether politicians, particularly legislators at both the state and federal level, are doing what they say, is to look up how they voted on particular bills. For more information on where to find this information, see the Resources section at the end of this book.
“Politics is when you say you are going to do one thing while intending to do another. Then you do neither what you said or what you intended.”
—Saddam Hussein
They Turn Citizens Against Marginalized Groups
Gaslighting politicians compare their opponents to the worst evils. These types of politicians feed off people’s fear. If you turn people against a particular group—be it a political party, race, age, or culture—by inciting fear, you get those people to align with you. You then also conveniently have a target for all the woes you claim are happening in your country. This ties in to gaslighters’ lack of responsibility: blame a group for everything, and turn large numbers of people against them. This ropes in frightened individuals to do the work for the gaslighter. As you read earlier, gaslighters get a high off being able to manipulate people on that scale.
They Seem to Act Irrationally
“Act” is the key word here. Acting outraged can just be a cover, a distractor from the cold, calculating gaslighter personality. The term crazy like a fox typifies the gaslighter. Gaslighters know exactly what they are doing. And they know how to work a crowd. If you appeal to people’s base emotion of fear, they can be very easily manipulated. Germany under Adolf Hitler is a good example of this. Hitler would whip crowds into a frenzy with his yelling, xenophobic rhetoric, wild hand movements, and exaggerated gestures. He was acting—creating a persona to mesmerize his listeners. And it drew people in.
They Don’t Know the Word Cooperation
Gaslighting politicians do not believe in cooperation—they pit people against one other to further their own agenda. Except in one key aspect—they do require that everyone under them do what they want—in other words, do as they are told. If staff do not obey, they are met with quick rebuke and can expect to be dismissed at any time. And heaven help the subordinates whose gaslighting boss feels they have gone against him in public. Such bad optics are not tolerated.
They Make People Dependent on Them
If you keep your staff and citizens dependent on you, then you can pretty much get away with anything. They will not question you, even when your behavior is outrageous. If they questioned you, it would mean risking being cut off by you. One of the ways that gaslighting leaders achieve dependence is by initially aligning with a weak ally. Gaslighting leaders get the benefit of riding the coattails of an ally—and by the time they inevitably reach a higher level of power than the ally, the ally is dependent on them. The ally is then sometimes crushed by the gaslighters, now being seen as unwanted competition and expendable. At the same time, gaslighters crave having others depend on them, for it fills their narcissistic needs. For example, Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of Czar Nicholas II, believed that Grigory Rasputin helped heal her son from the effects of hemophilia. The more dependent Alexandra became on Rasputin (especially when the czar left town to oversee Russian armies during World War I), the more influence he gained over her—contributing to the polarization between the family and Russia’s citizens and government (Radcliffe 2017).
Their “Information” of Choice is Questionable
Merriam-Webster (2018) defines propaganda as “ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause.” Gaslighters are notorious for using propaganda to sway opinion. Of course, they don’t call it propaganda. Propaganda can be anything from not telling the whole truth, using false equivalencies to prove a point, or making broad generalizations that are not based in fact. And this is nothing new. Ancient Greeks and Romans used propaganda to sway public opinion (Jowett and O’Donnell 2018). Usually the “information” is presented in such a way as to scare people, anger them, and/or turn them against a particular group. Again, gaslighters are not interested in facts; their goal is to consolidate and maintain power.
“What good fortunes for governments that the people do not think.”
—Adolf Hitler
They Try to Rewrite History
Gaslighting leaders hate any symbolism or history that came before them. It’s as if they think they can reprogram citizens into thinking that the world started with their reign. It is a form of cultural genocide. This can take the form of destroying religious artifacts or buildings. In 2001, the Taliban destroyed by dynamite a pair of enormous sixth-century statues, the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Seventy years earlier, to enforce the USSR’s policy of state atheism, Joseph Stalin ordered the destruction of the original Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. Any sign of the past or different ways of thinking are a threat to gaslighting leaders.
They Give Themselves Titles
Not content with just being “president” or “king,” gaslighting leaders will give themselves special titles. They use this title as a message to everyone that they are more important than the people they serve. In North Korea, Kim Il-sung (1912–1994) called himself “Great Leader”; his son, Kim Jong-il (1941–2011), was “Dear Leader”; and the present ruler, Kim Jong-un, “Supreme Leader.” Gaslighters also tend to use these titles (or their names) in third person, including referring to themselves with the “royal” we.
They Project
Projection is a classic behavior of gaslighters, who put their own issues onto others; for instance, a politician may call someone a crook when he, himself, is the one who lacks ethics or is actually breaking the law. Gaslighters accuse an opponent of spreading misinformation about them when they themselves started the smear campaign, just to be able to scoff at or challenge it. It’s a classic move to distract—and to hold one’s own anxiety about one’s faults or weaknesses at bay. It’s worth paying attention to what people say about others. It’s often quite indicative of how they feel about themselves.
“It is a lie that I made the people starve. A lie, a lie in my face. This shows how little patriotism there is, how many treasonable offenses were committed.”
—Nicolae Ceauşescu
They Have Reaction Formation
Reaction formation is the psychological term for when people with anxiety and fears about something act as if they are adamantly against it. While reaction formation is damaging enough in families, politicians have the capacity to punish population groups for a behavior they actually share. For instance, a politician who is adamantly antigay rights is then discovered to be gay, one campaigning on “f
amily values” turns out to have had multiple affairs, or a pro-life politician persuades his mistress to get an abortion. In the hands of a politician, reaction formation can not only be an extreme form of hypocrisy but have brutal consequences.
They Repeat Outrageous Lies
Gaslighters are notorious for lying. When these lies are spouted from a politician’s bullhorn, it has the effect of eroding the collective sense of reality. They’ll repeat their lies over and over until people start to believe them. It doesn’t make a difference that there is no credible source to back them up. Also, the bigger the lie, the more you won’t notice all the other smaller lies that are sneaking right past you. They do this to destabilize, to weaken our grasp on what’s real, and to consolidate their power.
“There is no state with a democracy except Libya on the whole planet.”
—Muammar Gaddafi
They Need to Stay in the People’s Consciousness
Gaslighting dictators can’t stand when they are being ignored. They crave attention. They want to be in people’s mind, all the time. They don’t care whether it’s good or bad attention—they need it like they need air. Attention from constituents or followers gives gaslighters legitimacy. Social media is ripe for giving such politicians what they need: they will make a statement that is outrageous, just to get attention, and it will then be repeated again and again online.
“I am the object of criticism around the world. But I think that since I am being discussed, then I am on the right track.”
—Kim Jong-il
Gaslighting leaders will commission works of art with themselves as the main subject, even when citizens are starving. Remember that gaslighters don’t care whether attention is positive or negative attention. To them, attention of any kind is attention. Kim Jong-il commissioned a terrifying number of images of himself, placed around North Korea. Joseph Stalin had statues of himself erected all over Russia.
They Are Obsessed with Symbols
Gaslighters are obsessed with symbols that reinforce their power. They tend to take commonly used symbols, particularly those used by legitimate religions, modify them, and then adopt them as symbols of hate. Adolf Hitler took the ancient religious symbol of a swastika—used in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism—reversed the arms, and made it into the ubiquitous symbol of the Third Reich. Nazis also took to using a character of the pre-Roman runic alphabet, the othala rune; this symbol is now used by white supremacist groups. And although a Celtic cross, a cross combined with a circle, which dates back to ancient Europe, is still used legitimately in Christian religions, white supremacist groups now use an adaptation of it as another of their symbols. The power of choosing commonly used symbols and then giving them a variation is that it is at first subtle, and not seen as “odd” by the general public—however, it acts as a “code” to identify other followers. As this bastardized form of the symbol becomes well connected with a leader or group, it is used to invoke fear and show power of force.
They Use Distraction
Gaslighters know how to play citizens like a fiddle. If an unpopular law is created, they will say something outrageous or pivot the topic so as to distract. A gaslighter will pit people against each other so they are so busy arguing that they don’t notice or can’t deal with what the gaslighter is doing in the meantime.
They See People as Expendable
Gaslighting dictators see their citizens as means to an end. If someone has to die, then so be it.
“In any country, there must be people who have to die. They are the sacrifices any nation has to make to achieve law and order.”
—Idi Amin
Gaslighters will go to extremes and kill whoever stands in their way. They usually have someone else do the killing, as they feel doing it themselves is “not their job,” and they are above such a task. But they have no problems with giving out the orders to kill. They don’t like their opponents? They kill them. During Joseph Stalin’s “Great Terror,” 1.2 million “anti-Soviets” were killed (Ellman 2002).
They don’t like what a journalist wrote about them? They kill them. Someone speaks out against them? They kill them. Take, for example, Alexander Litvinenko, a former Soviet agent who openly criticized the Kremlin, including in a book he wrote; became a British citizen; and worked on behalf of British intelligence. Litvinenko was exposed to polonium-210, a radioactive substance, possibly through a cup of tea poisoned by another former Soviet agent. At the time, Litvinenko was looking into the assassination of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a vocal critic of Russia’s war in Chechnya. A public inquiry by the British government found that Litvinenko’s poisoning was “probably” approved by Russian president Vladimir Putin (BBC 2016).
“People who try to commit suicide—don’t attempt to save them!.… China is such a populous nation, it is not as if we cannot do without a few people.”
—Mao Zedong
People are less likely to speak out when they know their life is on the line.
They Appoint Their Family to Positions of Power
Gaslighters’ obsession with loyalty is one reason why they put family members in positions of power. They know the family members will be loyal to them—to a fault. Additionally, politicians’ secrets are less likely to come out when they have their family in political positions. The family has an emotional investment in keeping illegal and unpleasant activity quiet. Political nepotism is almost always a recipe for disaster for the governed. When a family in power is focused on its own interests, it can run a country right into the ground. Fidel Castro’s brother, Raúl Castro, Cuba’s defense minister for almost fifty years, was named president of Cuba after Fidel Castro’s death in 2008 (Radtke, 2017). Other family members can even be stealing from the government coffers and no one will confront the leader because he has surrounded himself with yes men. Especially when the leader encouraged the heist in the first place.
If you are a gaslighter, you want to surround yourself with people that are afraid to question you or bring up their own needs. Your family is the best bet—your manipulative behaviors have bred a high-level fear into the people closest to you. The more they fear you, the more you can get away with gaslighting the citizens you represent. No one is going to question you.
That said, if a gaslighting leader is caught doing something illegal, or he fears relatives pose a challenge, he will have no qualms about throwing family members under the bus. For example, Kim Jong-un arrested and then executed his uncle, Jang Song-thaek, a senior government leader, and subsequently executed Jang’s family and Kim’s own half brother as well. A statement released that Jang had engaged in “treachery in betrayal of such profound trust and warmest paternal love shown by the party and the leader.” (Ryall 2017; Fisher 2013).
What Can You Do?
What can you do about politicians that trade in lies and can be bought and sold? First, always exercise your right to vote. It is one of the most powerful means citizens have to let their voice be heard.
Educate yourself on the sources of your politicians’ funds. There are several websites that keep up-to-date information on contributions. See the Resources section at the end of this book for some of the best ones I know of.
Gaslighters want you to be quiet, to not make a scene. Don’t fall for this. Call out gaslighting behavior. When you see a politician displaying gaslighting tactics, such as distracting with outrageous behavior, blatant lying, abuse of power—state the obvious. Social media is a way to let your opinion be heard.
Join organizations with like-minded beliefs. There is power in numbers. Your professional organizations usually have policy committees. These committees commonly organize a day where you visit your state and federal legislators to discuss with them (or their aides) your concerns.
Let your elected officials know where you stand on bills and other issues. There are simple ways to contact them—including via phone or e-mail, or by text bots that fax your representative with exactly what you want to say. For more informatio
n, see the Resources section at the end of this book.
Remember that you are paying the salary of your state and federal representatives. You are their employer. If you don’t like what you are paying for, vote accordingly.
Let me say it again: It is very important to exercise your right to vote. So many people never get the opportunity. Your vote counts.
How Gaslighting Leaders Ultimately Fail
As we discussed in Chapter 1, many gaslighters eventually fall victim to their own manipulative behaviors. There is always a large chance that gaslighting leaders will do so—because the very same tactics that seek to control other people often ultimately work against the gaslighters themselves. After analyzing 218 events since 1800 where democracy was established after an authoritarian (dictator) regime, Daniel Treisman PhD (2017) found that two-thirds of these events were due to mistakes by authoritarian leaders. He detailed four mistakes that these leaders make which lead to their downfall. The four errors are:
Calling for elections and starting military conflicts, then losing them
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