I feel like we’re entering an age where we’re all being utterly gaslighted, without a shred of subtlety. Even 20 years ago politicians would at least create convoluted and complex narratives to avoid telling the truth. Now they just say one thing to our faces and outright do the opposite, again, right in our faces. We’ve seen this in the UK with Keir Starmer shamelessly lying to get elected as Leader of the Labour Party, and now with Israel. To anyone with eyes and ears and a heart, it’s clear that Israel is committing a genocide, and yet our elected leaders stand in front of us, supported by mainstream media, telling us that what we are seeing isn’t really what we are seeing. The climate crisis is just another example of where this dynamic plays out.
Psychologically I’m interested in how such a dynamic persists. I think on some level, the majority may know subconsciously that they’re being lied to, but feel it’s more palatable to believe the lie than to sit with the truth. In the case of Israel, it’s hard for anyone who isn’t a sociopath to not feel deeply disturbed at the scale and brutality of Israel’s murderous war in Gaza. So perhaps people would rather just disassociate with a narrative of Israel just “defending itself” against terrorists.
What I do know, is that if the majority of people keep denying or ignoring reality in this way, it simply emboldens those in charge and hands them impunity. We’re already seeing that. And ultimately, the Gaza/Israel war just becomes a testing ground for how far those in power can go with their insistence that reality is not indeed reality. If we turn away from the war in Gaza, one day we may found ourselves unable to turn away from violence aimed at us.
That’s their job: laundering US war crimes.
They’ve had plenty of practice
I feel like we’re entering an age where we’re all being utterly gaslighted, without a shred of subtlety. Even 20 years ago politicians would at least create convoluted and complex narratives to avoid telling the truth. Now they just say one thing to our faces and outright do the opposite, again, right in our faces. We’ve seen this in the UK with Keir Starmer shamelessly lying to get elected as Leader of the Labour Party, and now with Israel. To anyone with eyes and ears and a heart, it’s clear that Israel is committing a genocide, and yet our elected leaders stand in front of us, supported by mainstream media, telling us that what we are seeing isn’t really what we are seeing. The climate crisis is just another example of where this dynamic plays out.
Psychologically I’m interested in how such a dynamic persists. I think on some level, the majority may know subconsciously that they’re being lied to, but feel it’s more palatable to believe the lie than to sit with the truth. In the case of Israel, it’s hard for anyone who isn’t a sociopath to not feel deeply disturbed at the scale and brutality of Israel’s murderous war in Gaza. So perhaps people would rather just disassociate with a narrative of Israel just “defending itself” against terrorists.
What I do know, is that if the majority of people keep denying or ignoring reality in this way, it simply emboldens those in charge and hands them impunity. We’re already seeing that. And ultimately, the Gaza/Israel war just becomes a testing ground for how far those in power can go with their insistence that reality is not indeed reality. If we turn away from the war in Gaza, one day we may found ourselves unable to turn away from violence aimed at us.