WIRED: The Shell Game Of Fascist Gaslighting
This (tl;dr) is about everyday people of the Republican Party. Those who our beloved kentuck rightly calls the enemy. What's been obvious to us still bears repeating, however.
The other important thing here is about how we respond from today forward -- remember New York City.
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/06/20/the-shell-game-of-fascist-gaslighting/
"... The game has three moves, executed simultaneously:
First, speak directly to your base using unmistakable authoritarian language. “REMIGRATION.” “Mass Deportation Operation.” “Radical Left Democrats who hate our Country.” The signal is clear: we are at war with internal enemies who must be eliminated. The base hears this loud and clear.
Second, implement the policy exactly as described. Deploy federal troops. Conduct mass raids. Target political opponents. Separate families. Use the state apparatus to terrorize designated enemies. The action matches the rhetoric precisely.
Third, gaslight everyone else into thinking the language doesn’t mean what it obviously means. “He’s just being tough on immigration.” “It’s political rhetoric.” “You’re reading too much into it.” The goal isn’t to convince—it’s to create enough confusion that resistance seems like overreaction.
This allows the regime to operate in plain sight while maintaining plausible deniability.
Supporters get to cheer ethnic cleansing while pretending they’re just supporting “law and order.”
Enablers get to collaborate with fascism while telling themselves they’re being reasonable about complex issues.
Critics get painted as hysterical for accurately describing what’s happening in front of everyone’s eyes.
Stop playing along...
These aren’t good people trapped in bad information ecosystems.
These aren’t confused souls who need patient explanation.
These are people who’ve decided that maintaining their social comfort matters more than opposing ethnic cleansing.
The version of them that you could reason with—the one that shared basic democratic values, that would be horrified by mass deportations, that understood the difference between immigration enforcement and political warfare — that person is gone.
What remains is someone who’s chosen tribal loyalty over moral truth.
Stop waiting for them to snap out of it. Stop giving them the benefit of the doubt they wouldn’t extend to you. Stop pretending their “concerns” about immigration justify support for ethnic cleansing.
Stop treating their gaslighting as good-faith disagreement about complex policy questions.
They know what they’re supporting. The language is explicit. The implementation is visible. The historical parallels are unmistakable. Their choice to defend it isn’t based on ignorance — it’s based on preference.
Some people, when forced to choose between democracy and authoritarianism, choose authoritarianism.
Some people, when forced to choose between human dignity and tribal dominance, choose dominance.
Some people, when forced to choose between moral clarity and social comfort, choose comfort.
The most dangerous lie you can tell yourself is that they don’t really mean it. They mean every word. They just want you to pretend they don’t so you won’t resist effectively.
This is fascism. They support it. Act accordingly.
Remember what’s real."
Remember New York City.