User:Dreacasillas/sandbox

General Definition
The definition of gaslighting is maipulating someone psychologically through doubt of their own sanity. From a psychological standpoint, the term "Gaslighting" is used to describe a psychological form of manipulation. The process of Gaslighting includes techniques such as creating false memories, inflation of imagination, and the construction of impossible memories. Gaslighting is most effective under an authoratative leader in which the listener has complete and total faith in the superior. Gaslighting is most commonly seen in parenting cases in which children are highly dependent on their mother or father. This a modern form of hypnosis and is most effective when nurturing some sort of strong dependency. Consequently, the dependency is used to forge the facts and feelings of the past to further push the agenda of the hypnotizer.

Modern Use

 * Specific examples from Trump —
 * He told his supporters to "knock the crap out" of protesters at his rallies, adding "I will pay your legal fees." When confronted with the statement, he responded: "I didn't say that.”
 * After mimicking a disabled reporter and seeing the video used as evidence against him, he repeatedly denied it, claiming his opponents should be embarrassed to say he did. "I would NEVER mock disabled. Shame!"

Expansion on Russia

 * In Russia, the truth became a matter of opinion under a strategy implemented by a clever aide to President Vladimir Putin, Vladislav Surkov. Surkov, who has a background in the arts, orchestrated a kind of political theater in Russia, creating a gauzy façade where no one knew which group was a creation of the government and which wasn't.
 * He reportedly financed liberal groups and neo-Nazi skinheads. Russian politics became theater, and Putin gradually gained almost total control, with the independent media gradually disappearing as an alternative to journalists loyal to the government.
 * Russia's false reality then moved from the domestic arena to global theater. When "little green men" made their appearance in Ukraine's Crimea, Russia denied that there were Russian operatives in unmarked uniforms. And when pro-Russian militias emerged in Ukraine and elsewhere, Moscow claimed they emerged spontaneously in a quest for independence, even as Russian military forces moved into position in a sovereign country.
 * Russia even tried to gaslight US voters, as intelligence agencies concluded, trying to undermine their faith in the democratic process. And when Moscow thought Trump would lose, it planned to promote the view that the election was stolen, under the #DemocracyRIP banner, a plan whose seeds Trump had already planted.


 * There is a long list of receipts when it comes to Trump's lies. With the help of PolitiFact, clear-cut examples of deception include Trump saying that he watched thousands of people cheering on 9/11 in Jersey City (police say there's no evidence of this), that the Mexican government forces immigrants into the U.S. (no evidence), that there are "30 or 34 million" immigrants in this country (there are 10 or 11 million), that he never supported the Iraq War (he told Howard Stern he did), that the unemployment rate is as high as "42 percent" (the highest reported rate is 16.4 percent), that the U.S. is the highest taxed country in the world (not true based on any metric of consideration), that crime is on the rise (it's falling, and has been for decades), and too many other things to list here because the whole tactic is to clog the drain with an indecipherable mass of toxic waste. He also lied about the size of his inauguration crowd size and the weather. The gas lighting part comes in when the fictions are disputed by the media, and Trump doubles down on his lies, before painting himself as a victim of unfair coverage, sometimes even threatening to revoke access.
 * Trump has repeatedly attempted to undermine the press, including such well-respected publications as the New York Times. He has disseminated a wealth of unsubstantiated attacks on the media, though this baseless tweet from April pretty much sums it all up, "How bad is the New York Times -- the most inaccurate coverage constantly. Always trying to belittle. Paper has lost its way!"

Trump

 * 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.

Other media

 * Long-running soap operas such as “Guiding Light” were among the first to seize on the concept, he says. “Victor Newman is constantly gaslighting his children in ‘The Young and the Restless’ to convince them that the problems with the family are their fault and not his.”
 * Jack Nicholson’s character in “The Shining” tries to convince his wife that she is overreacting to alarming occurrences in a haunted hotel. In Showtime’s “Homeland,” Claire Danes’s character is gaslighted by enemy operatives who swap her bipolar medication and send her spiraling into a full-blown breakdown. The HBO drama “Westworld” is centered on an entire race of androids who have their memories controlled and repeatedly wiped clean by human overlords. In last year’s thriller “The Girl on the Train” — spoiler alert — gaslighting was an essential part of the film’s climactic plot twist.


 * The new Trump administration stunned and outraged journalists, pundits and plenty of ordinary Americans this past weekend with false assertions about how many people showed up for Friday's inauguration
 * On Saturday, his first full day in office, Trump visited the CIA and immediately attacked the press. "As you know, I have a running war with the media," Trump said. "They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth," he added. Then he disputed the estimates that a smaller crowd showed up to Friday's inauguration than to his predecessor Barack Obama's in 2009 and 2013. "It looked like a million, a million and a half people," Trump said..

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 Current wikipedia entry 

In the media
British film-maker Adam Curtis suggested in 2014 that "nonlinear" or "asymmetric" war (as described by Vladislav Surkov, political advisor to Vladimir Putin) is a form of gaslighting intended for political control.

Some of the actions of Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential election and his subsequent time as president have been described as examples of gaslighting.Ben Yagoda wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education in January 2017 that the term gaslighting had become topical again as the result of Trump's behavior, saying:"The new prominence came from Donald Trump’s habitual tendency to say "X," and then, at some later date, indignantly declare, "I did not say 'X.' In fact, I would never dream of saying 'X.'""

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 .Proposed Wikipedia contribution 

Donald Trump
On the Internet, gaslighting is a term that has generated increasing interest in recent years. Ben Yagoda in the Chronicle of Higher Education in January 2017 credits the surge in popularity to President Donald Trump's behavior, saying:"The new prominence came from Donald Trump’s habitual tendency to say "X," and then, at some later date, indignantly declare, "I did not say 'X.' In fact, I would never dream of saying 'X.'"" Yagoda was referring to some of the actions of Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential election and his subsequent time as president:
 * Donald Trump was a prominent figure in what was later to be called President Obama’s ”birther” movement. In 2011, Trump voiced skepticism of Obama’s place of birth on Good Morning America. He was cited numerous other times in the media demanding Obama's birth certificate with substantial video evidence. He even tweeted about the movement 67 times. However, during the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump said he was not a key figure in the birther movement, but that it was the Hillary Clinton campaign when she ran against President Obama in 2008 that caused the conspiracy theories.
 * At a campaign rally in South Carolina in 2015, Trump did an unflattering impression of a New York Times reporter, Serge Kovaleski who has arthrogryposis. During the third presidential debate of the 2016 Election, Hillary Clinton brought up the incident with the reporter to which Trump famously interrupted with “wrong.”
 * On the day of Trump’s inauguration, The New York Times released a story comparing Trump’s crowd to Obama’s 2009 crowd with pictures indicating Obama had a much larger crowd. President Obama’s crowd is estimated to be 1.8 million. Keith Still, a professor of crowd science at Manchester Metropolitan University, estimated trump’s inauguration was about one-third the size of Obama’s. Despite these facts, the White House press secretary Sean Spicer briefed the media with the quote “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration – period.” Kellyanne Conway defended by saying the press secretary had alternative facts.
 * failing NYT/other media criticism?
 * rising crime rates not really rising
 * others?

Russia
Similar to the US, gaslighting by Russian politicians has been utilized as well. British film-maker Adam Curtis suggested in 2014 that "nonlinear" or "asymmetric" war (as described by Vladislav Surkov, political advisor to Vladimir Putin) is a form of gaslighting intended for political control. Surkov used his influence to finance various political coalitions so none of the Russian citizens could know if an organization was created by the government or a grassroots movement. This extended into Russia's global relations, when Russian operatives went to Crimea and the Russian officials continually denied their presence and manipulated the distrust of political groups in their favor.

Several intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia tried to use gaslighting tactics to interfere in the 2016 US election and support Donald Trump. This led to the expulsion of Russian intelligence officers and other sanctions on Russia.

Film and television (We don't have to do this one, but if we don't I think we should change the head topic to "In politics" rather than "In the media")
Gaslighting has been used widely in horror and thriller genres:
 * the Shining
 * Girl on the Train
 * Westworld

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