Greek mythology always holds an answer. And there is a myth, that of Cassandra, that not only explains why deep down we are all a bit like the priestess of Apollo: who hasn't been called crazy at some point? Cassandra also reveals why Donald Trump is -in his own way- the heir of the god Apollo. The young woman, by the way, was never believed when she warned of the danger hidden in the Trojan horse, just as the American president pretends that we do not believe what our own eyes see.
If Cassandra was one of the first victims of gaslighting in history, there are those who now warn that Donald Trump is making us all gaslit. That is, confusing us to make us think that, as his former lawyer, former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, said, "truth is not truth". Gaslighting or psychological manipulation, traditionally used against women, is now being used against society as a whole.
According to writer and philosopher Hélène Frappat, who has just published Gaslight or the art of silencing women (Editorial Paidós), this manipulation "historically has a gender mark." However, now it has become a "systemic phenomenon." Today, all of us can be Cassandra.
The legend goes that the god Apollo, enchanted by the beauty of the young woman, granted her the gift of prophecy in exchange for sleeping with her. Cassandra's sin was accepting the gift but then refusing to be possessed by Apollo. Her refusal provoked the wrath of the Greek god, who sought revenge by cursing her: whatever she said, no one would believe her.
And that's how they gaslit the young woman to "silence her wisdom." The invention that a beautiful woman is also a stupid one not worth paying attention to began with Cassandra. "Gaslighting is the tool of the patriarchy, the mechanism to execute it, where the first step is to kill language and kill the ability to speak, as Apollo did with Cassandra," says Frappat via video conference. What good was it for her to speak if no one listened to her?
The perverse pleasure of calling someone a fascist: "By using that word, we have the false sense of putting History in order"
But gaslighting has moved from the field of psychology to the public debate thanks precisely to Trump, whom the French author describes as a textbook gaslighter. She is not alone, because back in 2018, psychotherapist Stephanie Sarkis published an article in the newspaper USA Today pointing out that the Republican is an expert in the classic technique of gaslighting: "Telling victims that others lie and are crazy, so that the aggressor is the only source of true information." As Trump would say, "what you see and what you read doesn't exist."
The technique of psychological deception is as old as Cassandra, but the concept of gaslighting was coined by Hollywood in 1944. It was Ingrid Bergman who portrayed, in the movie Gaslight by George Cukor, the terror of the marriage. The gaslight was what her husband used to, without her noticing, dim the gas lamps and then deny it, confusing her. She goes mad not being able to trust what her five senses tell her.
According to Frappat, the concept of gaslighting as a technique of psychological manipulation has transitioned in a matter of decades "from cinema to psychoanalysis, from feminism to politics, from private to public space, from the bedroom to the company, from pop culture to political theory, from family to the State, from heteronormative marriage to international diplomacy."
As writer Rebecca Solnit, the inventor of the mansplaining theory, pointed out, what is striking about gaslighting as an attempt to distort reality is that "it is a form of violence not against bodies, but against facts and truth." And in that trap, we can all fall (have we fallen?).
At this point, with Trump installed for the second time in the White House, it has become clear that his strategy involves pointing out reliable sources of information... as unreliable sources of misinformation. The question is how we got here. Or, if preferred, how he has deceived (almost) everyone.
Frappat responds: "It's called fascism." "Every fascist starts by changing the meaning of words and appropriating them to use them with the opposite meaning, as described by George Orwell in his novel." It's the doublethink of 1984, twisting language to distort reality. "War is peace and slavery is freedom as common sense is now... What is common sense in Trump's mouth?"
"Trump makes you doubt the facts so you don't doubt him"
"Common sense is a fascist concept," warns the French author, for whom it is no coincidence that it has become the "key concept" of his second term. Donald Trump, in fact, began by promising to restore "common sense" in the federal government. What in his newspeak translates to attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies that have caused so much harm.
Toni Aira, author of the book The Politics of Emotions and professor of political communication at UPF-BSM, also sees Trump as a "schoolyard bully" who uses gaslighting to build a parallel reality where those who perceive the world as hostile feel comfortable. "Alternative facts are lies, but Trump tells you they are his facts and that if you don't like them, they are alternative. But they appeal to an audience that feels like an outsider, attacked by political correctness," he explains.
According to Aira, gaslighting comes in when "Trump makes you doubt the facts so you don't doubt him." In other words, what a psychological abuser would do. "He is the one who will guide you and who wields that power to nullify any kind of alternative reasoning mechanisms within you."
It all started with his first inauguration as President of the United States in 2017. If the media insisted on pointing out with data and images that many more people attended Barack Obama's ceremony in 2009, there was Trump's then-advisor, Kellyanne Conway, to defend her boss and outline what was to come: "He presented alternative facts. There is no way to count the people."
For Aira, this tactic is not exclusive to Trump, but since then, it has been especially replicated by nationalist populisms. Frappat, in fact, considers the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, as "one of the greatest manipulators of our time." And evidence of the "contagion of alternative truth in Europe."
Frappat is convinced that the two terms defining the spirit of our time are gaslighting and post-truth. That's why the former was chosen as the word of the year in 2022 by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, six years after the Oxford dictionary enshrined the latter. "Post-truth is expressed through the invention of alternative facts," she writes. "And for this power takeover of language to work, one must have the faith (or disbelief?) of a human who accepts the falsification of reality." "Common sense must be denied," summarizes the philosopher.
And this is how, for example, the roles of victim and aggressor can be exchanged. As if it were a magic trick, which is what gaslighting plays at. The aggressor ends up convincing their victim that she is the bad one and that she is acting against him by not believing him. Taken to the extreme, Frappat argues that gaslighting allows for the "perfect crime": "All you have to do is convince the victim that they never existed and convince the world that the victim never existed." In addition to being against logic, it is a crime against common sense.
That's why gaslighting was conceived as a crime against women. To silence them and erase them from the map. According to Frappat, psychological manipulation was designed to hinder their emancipation. After all, that was the mysterious discomfort of women, that "which has no name," and about which Betty Friedan theorized in her famous work, The Feminine Mystique.
The discomfort was the existential void of American housewives in the 1950s. How could they feel bad when their husbands bought them the latest appliances and they lived in the ideal home? Because "the mystified woman," in Frappat's words, "comes to doubt her personality, her intelligence, her existence as an adult human being."
The monotony of daily life, from which they could only expect to raise healthy children and make their husbands happy, plunges them into a state of bewilderment. In the doctors' opinion, the strange fatigue of housewives was something related to nerves. Women's hysteria, as it is known.
Frappat delves into the legend of hysteria to point out precisely that it cannot be separated from the genealogy of gaslighting: "The invention of hysteria is a crucial stage in the marginalization and exclusion of women's voices." The idea that evil originates in the female uterus dates back centuries. Not in vain, the word hysteria comes from the Greek term hystéra, meaning uterus.
As Aristotle stated in his Treatise on the Reproduction of Animals: a woman's high-pitched voice demonstrates her inferiority to men. The Greek philosopher argued: "A deep voice seems to be characteristic of a nobler nature." However, in the face of the disqualification and silencing of the female voice, Frappat suggests using irony. Irony to combat gaslighting. Laughing at the gaslighting scheme to show that we do not believe its plot. And what is not believable, fades away.