In recent years, the term gaslighting for the attempt to undermine someone’s perceptions has migrated from private life, where it’s most often about a man bullying a woman into losing confidence in her own perceptions, into what demagogues do to whole societies. Sissela Bok, in her landmark book on lying, writes, “Deceit and violence—these are the two forms of deliberate assault on human beings. Both
Gaslighting
