We should all be more like Jason Beer KC, the lead counsel to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry.
Because you don't hear politicians accused of lying any more. Instead, they're accused of gaslighting us.
The concept comes from Gas Light, a 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton set in the London of the 1880s. In it, a man tries to convince his wife that she is going mad.
The story is so well known because, under the title Gaslight, it was twice filmed. First in England in 1940 and then in Hollywood in 1944. It was the latter production that gave the 17-year-old Angela Lansbury her big break in movies.
I suppose the concept of 'gaslighting' appeals to modern sensibilities because it paints the voters as victims. We faint alternately on the sofa like ineffectual Victorian heroines.
And for a certain sort of left-winger, the masses do now exist to be counselled, policed and therapised.
I prefer a radical politics that wants the workers to take control of their own lives - even to run the industries in which they labour.
So let's give up 'gaslighting' and be more like Jason Beer KC. If we hear a lie we should say so.
Are you trying to gaslight us into not being gaslighted? Bloody liberals!
ReplyDeleteWhen the expression 'gaslight' was popularised in the early 2000s, it served a useful meaning. It described psychological manipulation within a close relationship -- by a lover, relative or trusted professional. That useful meaning was lost when 'gaslighting' was used to describe any message which seemed unpleasant or unwelcome, rather than malice from an intimate.
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