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Jan. 17, 2026 - Lionel Nation
15:49
How They're Gaslighting Candace and Us
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Time Text
Manipulating Reality Through Gaslighting 00:14:02
I want you to listen and listen carefully, especially if you're younger and you're new to this conspiratorium world that we live in.
This might be your first rodeo.
You might see what's going on for the first time and think, wait, what do I do?
Why all these accusations of insanity?
Let me explain.
When argument collapses and ridicule and making fun of people tends to replace reason, when evidence runs thin,
labels get real loud and mean and nasty, and when power feels threatened, the fastest weapon, as I've been telling you, is not debate, but diagnosis.
Call them crazy.
Call them unstable.
Call them dangerous.
It's the laziest tactic in politics and one of the most effective.
And this tactic has a name, gaslighting.
I'm sure you've heard it.
Not in the casual internet sense, but in its original psychological meaning.
The deliberate distortion of reality to make a target doubt their own perception, their own sanity, while the surrounding audience absorbs a kind of a manufactured narrative of discredit.
And the term gaslighting didn't originate on social media.
Nay, nay.
It comes from a 1938 British stage play titled Gaslight by Patrick Hamilton.
And the story centered on a husband who very subtly manipulates his wife by dimming the gaslights in their home and then denying that anything has changed.
And over time, over time she's wondering what the hell's going on here.
Over time, he convinces her that she's imagining things and she's losing her sanity.
And the concept became widely known after the 1944 Hollywood film Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer and Joseph Cotton.
Now in that film adaptation, the manipulation is even more explicit.
In that film, the husband rearranges objects, lies about the events, and then repeatedly denies obvious changes in the environment.
All.
All in order to gain control over his wife and to isolate her psychologically.
And the technique was simple but devastating.
You alter reality.
You deny it happen.
And you watch the victim then begin to doubt themselves.
That's not happening with Candace, but that's the intent.
You see, psychology later adopted the term to describe a form of emotional abuse in which one person systematically undermines the confidence of another in their memory and their perception and judgment.
And it appears most commonly in narcissistic and coercive relationships.
You might have seen a friend who's had this happen, or it might have happened to you in a prior affair or relationship gone bad.
And the manipulator, he denies facts, rewrites the events, and then reframes emotional responses as irrational.
And over time, the victim becomes confused and anxious and dependent on the manipulator's version of reality.
They don't know what's real.
They don't know what's up or down.
And what many people don't realize is that gaslighting didn't stay confined to private relationships.
It migrated into mass communication and media narratives and political warfare.
The same techniques work at scale.
You see, instead of one person manipulating another, institutions and platforms and groups and organizations can manipulate millions.
The goal remains the same.
Control perception.
Discredit dissent.
Call them crazy.
And shape reality through repetition.
And this is where Candace Owens enters the picture.
Not because she's unique, but because she's visible.
When she challenges the dominant pervasive narratives on culture or politics or meaning, the reaction often bypasses argument and jumps straight to character framing.
Headlines don't ask whether her claims are correct.
They ask whether she is mentally stable.
That is textbook gaslighting.
And it's coming at her from places, from folks that I'm very surprised.
People who themselves have been crazy before, you think would be a little more sensitive to this, unless they're being paid off altogether.
But who do I, what am I to know?
I don't know.
It just seems like it.
I wouldn't be surprised.
You see, the focus here with Candace shifts from ideas to psychological credibility.
You see, once a person is framed as unstable, this is the goal, then their arguments no longer require any kind of rebuttal because they're nuts.
They can be dismissed without engagement.
She's crazy.
She's the one who brought up the thing about the time travel or the remote view.
She's a nut.
Crazy.
That's the hope.
And this pattern appears repeatedly in political discourse.
Step one is emotional labeling.
Words like crazy, unhinged, extremist, and dangerous are deployed early.
Step two, repetition.
Media outlets, commentators, and online influencers echo the same framing.
And step three is social signaling.
Audiences receive the message that listening itself carries social risk.
Be careful.
Are you listening to that, Candace?
You know she's crazy.
You're not crazy too, are you?
Oh no, you sure now?
Okay, don't let us catch you listening to her.
And step four, isolation.
The target is positioned outside acceptable discourse.
Psychologically, this works because humans, humans rely on social cues to interpret reality.
You see, when one voices, you know, when, you know, when, what am I trying to say?
When voices repeat the same message, the mind begins to normalize it.
It's habituation.
This isn't weakness, it's human wiring.
Social proof is powerful.
See, gaslighting exploits that instinct.
So Candace Owens is not the first to experience this.
Oh, no, no.
Whistleblowers, dissident journalists, independent researchers, and political insiders, or outsiders, I should say, have been treated the same way.
Many of us have.
Believe it, if you do this long enough, you have.
Now, when inconvenient information threatens established power structures, the character assassination becomes even easier, even easier than engagement.
And calling someone irrational is cheaper and easier than proving them wrong.
See, gaslighting also involves emotional validation and invalidation.
When critics say someone is too sensitive, too paranoid, or exaggerating, they dismiss the emotional reaction rather than addressing the underlying issue.
Now, in clinical psychology, this is a hallmark of manipulative behavior.
In politics, it becomes a tool to neutralize opposition.
See, you're not being censored.
You're imagining it.
You're crazy.
You're not being targeted.
You're overreacting.
Take it easy.
You're getting paranoid.
And this shifts responsibility away from institutions and onto individuals.
Another common tactic is deflection.
When uncomfortable questions arise, attention is redirected, deflected to unrelated controversies or personal flaws.
The original topic disappears.
The public forgets what was being debated.
And this mirrors personal gaslighting dynamics, where manipulators, in essence, avoid accountability by changing the subject.
Denial completes the cycle.
You know, that never happened.
That was taken out of context.
That's nuts.
That's misinformation, disinformation.
And often these statements are used without evidence.
You see, the goal, I keep saying, the goal isn't clarity.
The goal is confusion.
And confusion, they hope, weakens resistance.
Candace always disrupts the system by refusing to retreat when labeled.
She doesn't bat an eye.
She just moves on to her next topic.
It's like it never happened, which is what a lot of other people should do.
Candace continues speaking.
And that persistence itself becomes threatening to centralized narrative control.
It shows that the tactic doesn't always work.
And it exposes the machinery behind it.
You know, there's also something involved here.
This is a profit motive.
You know, outrage generates clicks and controversy drives engagement.
And social media platforms reward emotional reaction over calm analysis.
You know this is true.
Media outlets benefit financially from conflict.
We want to mix it up.
And gaslighting becomes not just a political weapon, but a business model.
You see, the hypocrisy, the hypocrisy is impossible to ignore.
A whole bunch of folks who ridicule unconventional ideas simultaneously accept abstract ideological claims without scrutiny.
It's weird.
Economic theories that repeatedly fail remain unquestioned.
Political promises with no evidence are treated as gospel.
Institutional narratives are trusted despite long records of being wrong.
And the difference is not truth.
If only that were that simple.
No, no, no.
The difference is social permission.
Approved beliefs are considered irrational.
Unapproved thoughts, unapproved ideas are treated as dangerous.
And this creates artificial consensus.
People remain silent, not because they agree, but because the social cost of dissent feels too high.
And that's what's happening with Candice.
Silence then appears as widespread agreement.
And gaslighting thrives in that environment.
The historic irony is amazing.
The original gaslight story showed how in effect manipulation works inside a home.
Modern political gaslighting does the same thing to entire populations.
Reality is adjusted and tweaked.
Language is controlled.
Memory is rewritten.
It's all tampered with.
And those who notice the flickering lights are told they're imagining it.
And the antidote is awareness.
Once people understand the tactic, once you make them aware of it, it loses the power.
It loses the power it has.
And instead of reacting emotionally, audiences can slow down and then ask very simple questions, which is what they've been trying to avoid the first time.
You're going to ask what claims try to be avoided?
What evidence is actually presented?
And who benefits qui bono qui protest from this framing?
What is not being discussed?
Critical thinking doesn't require genius.
It requires discipline.
Separate emotion is important.
And it also causes you from divide analysis from reaction.
Demand evidence.
That's what this is about.
Look, Candace Owens represents the most important voice right now in political commentary.
She represents one visible case study.
But the issue is broader.
It reflects anybody.
It'll happen to you.
Whether it could be Alex tomorrow, it could be anybody else.
Nick Fuentes, who knows?
But anybody else who challenges centralized messaging is at stake.
That's what we're talking about right here.
And that's all I'm saying.
It's a very, very, very simple thing.
Remember something right now.
Healthy societies, which I hope we are, debate ideas.
Evidence is examined.
Ideas and positions she has, whatever, whether it's Egyptian planes or Fort Wahucha or whatever.
Wachuca.
Sounds like a bug.
Anyway, they're challenged.
But disagreement is normal and unhealthy societies pathologize descent.
And then language becomes weaponized.
What they're doing is very simply this.
They're not winning.
And they're trying to make everything that she is saying crazy.
But it's not working.
You see, gaslighting becomes attempted gaslighting when the victim of the gaslighting doesn't react accordingly.
Gaslighting Victims Don't Respond 00:02:01
And that's what this is about.
When the victim doesn't act respond.
So that's it, my friend.
A very simple thought.
Very simple.
Gaslighting, you hear it all the time.
I've been through it a million times.
When I first started talking about 9-11 or geoengineering or whatever it was, I thought I was just being, you know, responsible because I had evidence.
Didn't matter.
They call me crazy.
Even Building 7, remember that's 5.20 p.m.?
You're crazy.
What do you mean I'm crazy?
I saw this.
Anyway.
Candace is blowing these people away.
Every single day, she continues on her particular path, continues on her vector, unimpeded, uninterrupted, unaffected, like nothing happened.
She doesn't even care, which is the way it should be.
Thank you.
Thank you for watching.
Thank you for being a part of this.
Thank you for liking this.
Do me a great big favor.
Please continue to follow us.
By the way, thank you for following my wife at Lynn's Warriors for her fight, her fight against human trafficking.
I mean that so much.
Also, please hit that little bell so you're notified of live streams and new videos.
And also, like this channel.
We find out that about 70% of the people who actually see us never subscribe.
So we need that.
Put us into the HOV lane so more people can follow us.
I love explaining to you the breakdown of this, kind of like a post-mortem to go through all of the factors.
Because you're going to see this again, whether it's Candace today, it could be somebody else tomorrow.
And those people who are in the business should come to her aid and come to her defense, whether you agree with her or not.
Because let her talk.
Remember, if you don't like what she's saying, don't listen to her.
And I thank you, my friend.
Have a great and a glorious day.
Thank you so very much for watching.
And please, as we always say, by the way, I've got some great questions in the comment section.
I want to see your response.
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