Since 2015, it has become standard fare for the left to accuse President Trump of “Gaslighting,” meaning that the President uses his position of power to provide false data to confuse and therefore dominate Americans. The term originated from a 1930s Broadway play which was made into a movie “Gaslighting” in 1944 staring Ingrid Bergman. In the movie, the husband convinces his wife that she is insane by secretly diming the gaslights in their home and, when she complains, telling her she is hallucinating, “nothing has changed.” Gaslighting is a deliberate attempt by someone in a powerful position to deceive and dominate someone in a weaker position, causing the weaker one to question their perception of reality or truth. It is an effort to convince an individual to reject their version of truth and accept a falsehood proffered by the evil gaslighter. Gaslighting causes an individual or group to question and reject their own perception of truth and reality. The left’s claim that Trump is gaslighting America fails because his claims are rebutted by a very effective and vocal opposition—something victims of gaslighting do not have. Trump’s leftist opposition has a virtual monopoly on America’s institutions of social and political influence. The South has no such mechanism to rebut false allegations made by the Yankee Empire’s centers of propaganda.
Individuals or groups targeted by the gaslighter often do not realize what is happening because it occurs slowly. In the political world gaslighting is used to control people who would otherwise resist the gaslighter’s oppressive domination. Gaslighting is common in political systems where there is a major imbalance of power. The gaslighter will slowly undermine the targeted group’s confidence, their sense of pride in their native group, while slowly replacing group pride with group shame and guilt. Gaslighters do this because it makes the targeted group easier to control. In a recent article in the Buffalo Law Review the author noted that political gaslighting occurs when those in power use lies, denials, or slander to control people.[1] Another article noted:
Victims of gaslighting are deliberately and systematically fed false information that leads them to question what they know to be true, often about themselves.
[The group is] targeted at the core of their being: their sense of identity and self-worth. Manipulative people who engage in gaslighting do so to attain power over their victimsA gaslighter will initially lie about simple things, but the volume of misinformation soon grows, and the gaslighter may accuse the victim of lying if he or she questions the [gaslighter’s] narrative.[2]
The key to successful gaslighting is the power imbalance between the gaslighter and his target. In 1787, Patrick Henry and other Southern Patriots warned the South about the danger to liberty posed by joining a union with the numerically superior North.[3] Even as early as 1787, they saw the unfair power imbalance—an imbalance that would eventually allow the Yankee Empire to dominate and exploit the colonized South.
Since Appomattox the people of Dixie have been “deliberately and systematically fed false information” that, today, causes them to question the truth about their ancestors and their Southern homeland.[4] Southerners were once lauded for our post-Appomattox patriotic devotion to the United States and were allowed to celebrate our Confederate heritage—even the federal government joined the celebration of Confederate heroes. But that day is no more.[5] The Yankee Empire and its sycophants in the media, academia, the entertainment industry, and the national political status quo are in the power position. They have decided it is time to rid their nation of all honorable mention of the South and its Confederate heritage. The people of the South have no effective way to resist—Southerners are powerless because we are stateless.
What does it mean to be a stateless people? The genocide of Armenian Christians by Turkish Muslims is an example of what happens to a stateless people. In the 4th century Armenia became the first country in the world to make Christianity its official religion. Eventually, Armenia was invaded and occupied by Turkish Muslims. Upwards of 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered by the Turkish government. Turks claimed that the slaughter was a “necessary war measure.” This Turkish excuse should sound familiar to Southerners who know the truth about the Yankee Empire’s invasion of the South. The cultural genocide of Native Americans is another example of what can happen to a people who do not have a government to defend their native interests. The Jewish people in Nazi Germany are another example of what can happen to stateless people. The English Empire’s treatment of conquered Scotland is an example of what happens to stateless people. After conquering Scotland, the English Empire conducted a campaign of cultural genocide against the stateless people of Scotland. The English prohibited the display of symbols (flags and monuments) and outlawed the celebration of festivals honoring traditional Scottish heritage. Stateless people are at the mercy of those who control the state. John C. Calhoun said it best when he wrote, “Only power can counter power, only tendency can counter tendency.” Stateless people are powerless people and therefore easy targets for genocide.
Opinion polls have documented that between 60 and 70 percent of Southerners want to keep symbols of their Confederate heritage. Yet, across the South, neo-Marxist mobs (actually they are the neo-Marxist shadow government’s storm troopers) have been allowed to deface and destroy monuments to our Confederate ancestors. Local and state Republican officials remained silent, or they actually joined the neo-Marxist in demanding, or submissively allowing, the removal of Confederate monuments, banning Confederate flags, and local Confederate re-enacting units from public parades. In Congress Republicans joined Democrats in voting to remove Confederate images from the U.S. capitol and voted for legislation containing language requiring the renaming of military bases named for Confederate officers.[6]
Perhaps the best example of Southerners being a stateless people is how the Republican controlled legislature of Mississippi nullified the will of Mississippi’s people by holding a special session to replace the state’s flag. The people, in a special ballot initiative, had previously voted to keep their flag. Republicans in the state legislature, and the Republican governor, nullified the will of the people. In a rogue session, specially designed to overthrow the will of the people, the “special” session voted and the governor then signed a bill to replace the state’s flag. The majority of Mississippi’s citizens are in fact stateless—they have no political entity to protect and promote their interest. The existing state government, elected by these same people, is nothing more than the Yankee Empire’s puppet government. As a puppet government it obediently did the will of its master—the Yankee Empire’s ruling elite and its politically correct shadow government. This is true not only for the people of Mississippi but for all Southerners—traditional conservative Southerners are a stateless people. “We the people of Dixie” are compelled to allow our interests to remain secondary to the will of the supreme federal government and its neo-Marxist shadow government that can muster riotous mobs to intimidate wimpy, Southern officials.
Stateless people are grist for the mill of cultural genocide and eventually actual genocide by death or replacement by re-population with foreign people who have no connection to the native culture. Repopulation was a major effort of the USSR during its occupation of the Baltic States. At one time there were almost as many “voting” Russians living in Estonia as there were native Estonians. The Chinese Communist are currently attempting to do the same thing in Tibet. Empires, including the Yankee Empire, know how to control a conquered people. Vae Vectus—woe to the conquered.
The gaslighting of Dixie will continue until the vast majority of Southerners have been conditioned (brainwashed) into feeling ashamed of their heritage. Two terms of Ronald Reagan did not save us, Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America” did not save us, and one or two terms of Donald Trump will not save us! If the traditional, conservative, Bible-Belt South is to survive, it will survive because Southerners took an audacious stand and initiated a social, moral, and political revolution.[7]
[1] Sinha, G. Alex, Lies, Gaslighting and Propaganda, Buffalo Law Reviews Vol. 68, Number 4, August 2020, 1088, 1089 & footnote 145.
[2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/gaslighting accessed 9/22/2020.
[3] Kennedy & Kennedy, Yankee Empire: Aggressive Abroad and Despotic at Home (Shotwell Publishing Co., Columbia, SC: 2018.), 156-8.
[4] Kennedy & Kennedy, Punished With Poverty-the Suffering South, 2nd edition (Shotwell Publishing Co., Columbia, SC: 2020), 140-6.
[5] Kennedy, James Ronald, When Rebel Was Cool, Confederate Veteran Vol. 78, No. 5, Sept./Oct. 2020, 16 et seq.
[6] https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/07/23/republican-controlled-senate-defies-trump-passes-defense-spending-bill-removing-confederate-names-from-military-bases/#18c218e5156f accessed 8/25/2020; https://nypost.com/2020/07/23/senate-passes-bill-stripping-confederate-names-from-bases/ accessed 8/25/2020. Also see, https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/07/23/the-list-72-republicans-vote-with-democrats-to-remove-civil-war-era-memorabilia-from-u-s-capitol/ accessed 7/24/2020.
[7]See, Kennedy, James Ronald, Dixie Rising-Rules for Rebels (Shotwell Publishing Co., Columbia, SC: 2017).
