by Carmelo Sant’Angelo
Il “gaslighting” it is a form of subtle manipulation in which false information is presented to the victim with the intent of making them doubt their own memory and perception. The term derives from the title of a play from the late 1930s, in which a husband tries to drive his wife mad by manipulating small elements of the environment, for example by dimming the lights of the gas lamps. The wife notices these changes, but the husband insists that she is misremembering or making things up. This leads the wife to doubt her feelings more and more and become increasingly emotionally unstable.
This is what the Western mass media are doing on a large scale regarding the war in Ukraine: deliberately distort information to cast doubt on our collective memory and perception. The same opinion-makers who, until a couple of years ago, told us that Ukraine is a country far from democracy, with a strong presence of neo-Nazi groups, and with appalling corruption, have been saying since February 2022 that same country he is defending our Western values.
The same television and print media outlets that reported on the misdeeds of the Azov battalion Donbass, on March 25, 2022 they remembered that the brave soldiers of the battalion are a beacon of democracy: “Commander Kuharchuck: ‘I’m not a Nazi, I read Kant to the soldiers. Let’s fight for the nation’” (Republic, 25 March 2022). We certainly misunderstood: in Donbass there were no incursions against the Russian-speaking communities, but only peaceful philosophical disputes between Kantians and Hegelians!
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Without Ukraine the Cossacks will water their horses in the fountains of St. Peter, so war spending will have to reach at least 2% of GDP, despite the fact that in 2022 the USA has spent on defense 811 billion dollars and the Russian Federation – engaged in a war – 72 billion (less than a tenth). Every year the USA spends 39% of global war spending and the Russians 3.5%, but, despite the numbers, European citizens need to feel threatened. The reported passage, for 32 seconds, of a missile in European space has more media coverage than a bombed embassy in a third country unrelated to the conflict.
We were truly petty in wanting to trade our well-being for the priceless values of democracy. “We wonder if the price of gas can be exchanged for peace. Faced with these two things, what do we prefer: peace or staying calm with the air conditioning on all summer?”. I, who wanted both things, felt like a nobody (to put it mildly).
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Now, however, I discover that I am in good company. President Biden recommends to Zelensky not to attack Russian refineries, otherwise the price of petrol will skyrocket and this must not happen in the year in which the American elections are being celebrated. On the east coast of the United States the price of gasoline costs less than a euro per liter; refueling can be done at Lukoil; “smetana” (it is a Russian sour cream) can be bought at Netcost (a Russian supermarket chain) and farmers use i Russian fertilizers (their embargo lasted a week, until Congress included them in the list of goods “of strategic importance”). Perhaps even the American citizen, with the air conditioner constantly on, could make some effort.
Among my new friends there is also the Polish president, Donald Tuskwhich, with the consent of France, Italy and Austria, obtained from the EU Council to deny the Ukrainians the benefits of the free trade. Customs remain open for weapons, but closed for agricultural products and Ukrainian truck drivers. But I’m sure I’m understanding badly, in a few years someone more intelligent will explain to me the cunning plan hatched by the Americans and Poles to humiliate the Broken Army.
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