Institutional Gaslighting: Contradictory Orders

Institutional Gaslighting: Contradictory Orders

Berlin, August 1939. Arthur Koestler was part of a clandestine communist cell when Moscow announced its pact with Hitler. One comrade could not process the shift—from fifteen years of mortal enmity to alliance—and stood catatonic in a corner, according to Koestler's account. This scene serves as the starting point for an uncomfortable hypothesis: that contradictory institutional messages are not clumsiness, but a method. Their intended effect is that of a psychological abuser: to make the victim stop trusting their own memory and obey the next order, however absurd it may be.

Open windows in December, closed in August

The clearest case is ventilation. In December 2021, the recommendation was to open doors and windows against the bicho. Eight months later, in August 2022, the directive was reversed: close them, this time under the energy-saving decree. Same country, same population, same window.

The catalog fits on a single page. In the days leading up to the 8M march in 2020, it was warned that saying there was an epidemic was a crime; after the demonstration, that denying it was. Masks were first counterproductive and then mandatory. In 2021, vaccines were safe and the four approved by the EMA; in 2022, new adverse effects were announced—tinnitus, cardiomyopathy, thrombosis—and two were withdrawn. In 2021, the full schedule provided herd immunity for 70% of the vaccinated. In 2022, that same schedule was renamed "initial." Full and initial are contradictory words. And so on: the list of U-turns is now longer than the memory of those who lived them.

Informed consent for a tooth, not for a shot

The normative asymmetry deserves its own chapter. To extract a tooth requires written informed consent, recorded in the Official State Gazette. To get vaccinated: no. It was enough to show up, invoking "implicit consent" simply by attending the vaccination point. Advice on antibodies trinc the same direction. Do not get antibody tests, neither before nor after, say the authorities; drink heavily, repeat those same authorities for everything else. If antibodies measure immunity and immunity justifies the shot, measuring them should be useful. Unless the result is inconvenient.

Discriminating against the unvaccinated and not discriminating against anyone else

The ELbichito passport was requested, excluding the unvaccinated and labeling them as potential carriers. In parallel, the same ecosystem denounced the stigmatization of monkeypox patients. And on December 1, 2021, World AIDS Day, testimonies from HIV carriers complaining of discrimination were issued, right in the middle of the campaign against the unvaccinated for "being able to carry the bicho." That day captured doublethink.

"Alone and drunk" and the flight to New York

Not everything happens in a health context. An institutional campaign encouraged going home alone and drunk—and sold it as modernity—while another ministry from the same party warned against alcohol. Old cars were excluded from low-emission zones due to climate emergency, and in that same city, a new flight to New York was celebrated as great news. In January 2022, inviting unvaccinated people for Christmas was a risk; in March 2022, crossing half of Europe in a van with five refugees was a gesture of solidarity.

Method or simple incompetence?

Here the analysis splits. One current holds that there is no plan: each decision responds to the convenience of the moment, allied media amplify, and a mass educated in obedience swallows without complaint. Another goes further and speaks of deliberate intent: chaos would break the psyche and make the subject more manageable. Between the two lies an observation that does not depend on intent. When the same word is used in contradictory statements, the term is deactivated, parked, and conversation dies. Isolation. Official version prevails. With or without a plan, the result is identical.

The concept of "menticide," the systematic destruction of free thought, is cited; Solzhenitsyn and the humiliations that debased the soul so that no one had the courage to rebel; Orwell and doublethink; and the contradictory claims already enumerated by Olavo de Carvalho. The Trudeau case closes the circle: according to a message spread on social media, the Canadian prime minister stated that he did not force anyone to get vaccinated and, at the same time, that there were people who probably became seriously ill because of the vaccines.

That is the disconcerting fact. It is not necessary to decide if the shepherd is clumsy or evil to check that the sheep end up eating from his hand.