Gaslighting

Jiang's label for a biblical narrative move that redirects attention from David's murder of Uriah to the less politically dangerous Bathsheba offense.

Jiang's repeated description of Augustine's rhetorical method: twisting moral premises so listeners accept obedience and passivity.

He says denying a person's thoughts as true is a form of gaslighting because thoughts are constitutive of the self.

Jiang says later Freud reframed female hysteria as attention-seeking and control, turning psychology into gaslighting rather than patient advocacy.

Nathan's parable reframes David's crime from murder to adultery/theft, which Jiang calls gaslighting because it makes readers forget Uriah's killing.

Jiang says bureaucratic gaslighting occurs when the government refuses to acknowledge recession or decline and tells people their perception of hardship is wrong.

Jiang argues that Freud's interpretation of dreams let him suggest new ideas and memories to patients, effectively implanting memories and gaslighting them.

He defines Augustine's logic of empire as power's ability to harm people and then deny the harm, because the powerful control the terms of reality.

Jiang says the idea that AI will free humans for spiritual development is gaslighting, and that the practical future he sees is China-like social control rather than liberation.

Jiang says elite narratives about aliens, demons, and artificial intelligence function as manufactured threats and gaslighting campaigns that the American public increasingly rejects.