Gaslighting the whole world
/A friend asked if it’s possible that Putin really doesn’t know what he’s doing in Ukraine and how badly things are going for his troops. He has the internet. He and his advisors have always been world-savvy. How can he just not care that everyone sees his crimes?
Well, now. That’s quite an interesting question.
I know Russia fairly well. I can predict how Putin’s restrictions will play out. Russia is still a country with inadequate access to media and information for most people. It’s also a country with a lot of tradition around the symbol of a strong leader/national father figure.
So, in short, at home he can put it over on a lot of people. Not all of them anymore, hence the brave members of the Russian intellectual and professional classes who have protested once and then been silenced. I root for them, but unless enough of Putin’s closest friends feel the same way, little is likely to change his thinking.
But beyond knowing Russia, I know his "type" all too well.
Putin has a double, you see. Not a physical double in this case, but a psychological double… in my life.
This is a person who is highly intelligent, immensely arrogant, physically self-controlled, consumed with inner anger and contempt for others as well as utterly convinced of his own righteousness. Both Putin and his psychological double in my life have at times claimed their crusade is about spiritual and moral purity. They also both show signs of a kind of hyper-masculine fragility.
Both regularly accuse others of the actions they have either just committed or are about to commit. Both insist that any casualties of their actions are the fault of those they are attacking. Both appear to be immune to all attempts at diplomacy or discussion.
I am sure I’m not the only one with a Putin double handy, but mine has been copying Putin in real time. This is a family member who has been waging a decade-long campaign to tear me down as a parent, much as Putin has nursed his personal grudge against Ukraine for years. First, when my kids were babies, it was always, “She can’t possibly be safe with kids when she’s visually impaired.”
Photo of a room reduced to rubble. Through the wreckage of a smashed television set, we see a gas mask amid other debris. -Image via Pixabay
Sometimes it was stated openly to discredit me in front of others. Other times it was a quiet jibe for my ears only, but in hopes that I would react and bring down the criticism of others for tainting a family get-together with drama.
It would have been irritating enough if this person’s opinion were just an opinion. As it was, it meant that my kids and I were more isolated from the rest of the family because unlike other parents, I was “never to be left alone with anyone else’s kid.”
Need I say it? But ok, nope, I didn’t have close calls in the safety arena. I fished an infant nephew out of a swimming pool before anyone else could react. I prevented a number of possible accidents involving babies and batteries, which I heard clattering in just that particular way that only batteries clatter. My kids were all-in-all physically safer than their cousins and even when I wasn’t allowed to babysit, I still managed to be handy in a few crises.
Then, when that outright falsehood wasn’t as easy to pull over on the rest of the family, the campaign switched to my “overly rigid” parenting methods. As you might already know, my kids were both adopted from Eastern European orphanages and had trauma and health issues as baggage. I went at parenting much the way I go about most things—with research first, exacting planning and then enthusiastic implementation.
I usually had one or two “attachment parenting” books under my arms in the early years and when doctors said, “Routine is so very important to children who have experienced attachment trauma.” I didn’t just blow it off. I first made a plan for meals and bedtimes and stuck to it. I also noticed the chaos that happened when I occasionally didn’t.
The long and the short of it was that both of my kids needed a lot of structure, routine and cushion to be emotionally regulated and healthy. So, there were a lot of family arguments when I insisted I needed to leave an event in time for my kids to be only one hour late for bedtime rather than four hours late, as other parents found acceptable. Or when I insisted that massive doughnuts at 5:30 pm are not a good idea, since I was giving them dinner at 6 no matter how inconvenient it might be.
And yeah, I insisted they not have sweets right before real food. I didn’t just mouth it. I meant it.
This Putin double was always criticizing and rallying others to blame me and my parenting choices for any difficulties.
Well, once my kids got older and my daughter was diagnosed with severe ADHD and a neuro-developmental disability as well as attachment trauma, there was extra fodder for the cannons. Suddenly, the Putin double went from someone who quoted studies to a science denier on child development.
“There is no dis-ability. Arie is pathologizing her kids. There is trauma behind these kids’ terrible behaviors to be sure. Trauma she created through bad parenting.” That is a lot more concise than the lengthy, berating, yelling lectures this Putin double regularly delivered, but it uses all the key words and phrases.
When asked what exactly caused this “trauma” or what was the “bad parenting,” I’m told it is things like “using the wrong tone” or “not setting enough limits” or “making an assumption.” Because the internet is full of a blame and shame culture, it’s dangerous to repeat this sludge, but I trust that even just reading about my parenting journey has given my readers some context for this.
Yeah, I’ve had my parenting moments. Who hasn’t? I guarantee you that no one parenting kids with attachment trauma and FASD can claim to have never used a harsh tone they regretted. When a neuro-diverse kid has an “executive functioning disability” as in this case, consequences and behavior modification methods don’t work the way they do with other kids.
A lot of consequences still happen anyway, but getting mad at the child because the standard methods don’t work on them isn’t really helpful. But there is no one I’ve ever met who can truly manage to never get mad when an otherwise reasonably healthy twelve-year-old colors on freshly painted walls again or throws a two-hour fit about brushing their teeth for the tenth night running.
But I digress… The heart of this post is about Putin and the kind of thinking that allows someone like my difficult family member to take things to open war “and devil take the civilian casualties.”
I guess the civilians in this case are the kids.
Putin spent the winter sending tanks crawling across Russian grasslands toward the Ukrainian border. His double spent the winter criticizing my tone of voice or yelling at me over conversations he misheard from the other room, since I’ve relocated back to his neck of the woods. Both were warned. Both claimed innocent intent.
“Just training exercises. We have a right to develop our defenses,” said Putin.
“I have a right to an opinion. I’m just giving valuable parenting advice,” his double said.
My eleven-year-old son who was adopted from an Eastern European orphanage had a hard time getting attached to our family when he was little. Hearing this constant criticism of his primary parent really confused him. He started repeating the same words, yelling at me, insisting he didn't have to follow any rules or do his homework because I am “bad at parenting.” Kids that age don’t generally use the word “parenting,” but they do repeat what they hear.
Then in February, Putin sent his troops storming into a sovereign country, a nation that had long thought of the Russians as their friends and called them “brothers.” They started bombing schools, hospitals and residential buildings as well as “legitimate” military targets, if such a term can be applied to an unprovoked war.
The Putin double near me started lecturing my easily manipulated neuro-diverse kids behind my back about how my parenting is “rediculous” when he took them and cousins on “fun” outings. He encouraged them to disregard any instructions I gave. He spoke of me and to me with contempt and hate. He yelled and demeaned me in front of the kids because I asked my son to look through a pile of cast off socks to pick out his.
The criticism, shouting and covert attacks on my children’s relationship with me was very much like bombardment. And while it didn’t kill, it wreaked havoc on my children’s psyches.
The world said “no” to Putin and demanded that he cease hostilities and stop wantonly killing civilians. Putin obfuscated, denied, twisted facts and blamed the victims of his aggression. He said the civilians were “human shields” because they had not left the war zone quickly enough. Then he closed humanitarian corridors for fleeing refugees, trapping them so that they could not escape. And when some did, his troops shot and bombed them.
Meanwhile, my family united to demand that Putin’s double stop the harassment. And the double obfuscated, denied, twisted facts and blamed the victims of his aggression. I supposedly wasn’t sensitive enough when my son said he didn’t want to sort socks. My kids’ have learning disabilities because I must not have used the right “behavior modification methods.” He had to step in because his conscience demanded he let “the truth” be known. If I said anything, he shouted over me, never allowing a word or phrase to be heard through the barrage.
And the children saw that a loud voice and a large, male body is what wins. They saw their mother shamed, treated with contempt and shouted down for no particular reason. And they learned from that. They learned what a mother is worth in this patriarchal world. They didn’t die, but they lost something immensely valuable as they repeated his words and screamed, “I hate you! I want a real mother! You’re disabled! You’re a bad parent!” for days after each family gathering with the Putin double.
As the weeks dragged on Putin accused Ukrainian forces of using chemical weapons. By now, many world leaders were savvy to his mind games and hazmat forces went on high alert. With no evidence that his accusations were anything but wind, another reason for those accusations was apparent. He was covering for and confusing the discussion about his own chemical attacks. And evidence of the use of white phosphorous by Russian troops has already emerged.
At the same time, Putin’s double fell in love with the word “abusive,” screaming the accusation at me over and over again. Allowing no word about actual events in edgewise. To confuse the discussion and to cover for his own abuse, the easiest angle is to accuse others of the actions he himself has committed.
Why do I belabor this point of comparing these two men?
Partly, it’s simply because they took their actions at the same time, and that made the comparison striking. I, like many who thought they knew Russia, was taken in for much of the winter by the insistence that while the criticism from Putin’s double was irritating and insulting, it was basically harmless, just an abhorrent and insulting opinion. Then, I got a rude awakening when my son started screaming hate at me, throwing objects and even pummeling me with his fists. We’ve already had to call the police twice to help him calm down and keep everyone safe, including him.
But more than that, with these two situations side by side in my life I can see them both more clearly. Putin’s actions are not just those of a war criminal. That is plenty bad, certainly. But it is important to understand that he is also gaslighting the whole world, engaging in a campaign of psychological warfare.
At the same time, every abuser who employs the tactics of gaslighting and psychological abuse is as dangerous to the people in their life as Putin is to the people fleeing his bombs. More than ever before, I have come to understand the pleas of organizations helping victims of domestic violence, asking that we take psychological abuse as seriously as physical abuse.
My family and I waited too long to act decisively. We are acting now. You need not fear for my children’s safety or call up an intervention on their behalf. But I see now that I didn’t act when I should have. As a result, my children suffered a retraumatization of the early terror they lived through when they were tiny infants in a faceless orphanage system.
I let an untenable situation go on too long, partly because I was distracted by volunteering to organize evacuations of refugees from Ukraine. I didn’t realize that while I was off putting out blazes, my own house was on fire.
I hope people hear me on this one. Please take psychological abuse seriously. If you are experiencing a barrage of verbal attacks, gaslighting, manipulation, twisting of facts, a campaign of denigration and contempt, these are classic signs. It can be very hard to take action when the relationship is close and there is often a cost of setting firm boundaries. We often love those who engage in this abuse and our children do as well.
If you see someone else under this kind of onslaught, I hope you will remember not only that but also how easily victims are blamed and issues are obfuscated by psychological abuse. There is often a sketchy narrative in which “both sides” are apparently guilty of misdeeds, but in reality, the misdeeds of one side far outweigh those of the other.
Putin alleged discrimination against the Russian-speaking minority in Ukraine and western support for right-wing groups to justify this war. There is some legitimacy to these claims. Still, while those may be concerns that need to be addressed, they are not war crimes that slaughter thousands upon thousands of people.
Putin’s double also accused me of raising my voice or being overly persistent in a rule with my kids. And for a time, my family was taken in by this and insisted that this was a conflict between two people who had both made mistakes. I even admitted that I had raised my voice and that it wasn’t good.
But finally, my family came to realize that the times I succumbed to frustration or exhaustion were a tiny fraction of my parenting, which has been almost entirely calm in the face of much difficulty, and even my worst parenting moments are not the kind of actions that create the type of internal trauma my children were acting out.
It is not easy to set limits on Putin’s double. For now, he has free rein at the extended family home and while he’s been asked to leave by the legal owners, no one is willing to force the issue in a way that could be traumatic for any of the kids, including his. For now, my kids may miss some family gatherings in order to be kept safe. We will have to find more things to do in our little basement apartment on weekends and we’ll miss the beauty of this spring in the mountains until Putin’s double either leaves or shows signs of working through his issues.
I only wish it was this easy to put limits on Putin, and despite the ordeal I’ve been through, I’m so grateful his double doesn’t have nuclear weapons.
