In the 1944 film Gaslight, Ingrid Bergman's character, Paula, lives in a home where the lamps flicker dimmer each night. Her husband, Gregory, insists it's her imagination, a ploy to erode her sanity, isolate her from reality, and bend her will to his. "You're seeing things," he whispers, as the gas jets hiss lower. What begins as subtle doubt spirals into terror, until Paula questions not just the lights, but her very grip on truth.
Fast-forward to September 10, 2025: Conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk stands before 3,000 students at Utah Valley University, railing against the cultural decay he spent two decades fighting. A single shot from 22-year-old Tyler Robinson ends it all. The crowd scatters in chaos; videos flood social media, capturing the horror in real time.
Within minutes of Kirk's collapse, the gaslighting begins—not from a scheming spouse, but from a vast machinery of media and politics determined to dim the truth.
The context could not have been more politically explicit: Kirk had just fielded a question about rising trans activist violence when a single, precise gunshot ended his life. This was a political figure at a political event, killed by a targeted shot that demonstrated clear intent. Yet, media outlets immediately deployed familiar deflection protocols, with CNN insisting, "We don't know if this was politically motivated," despite the overwhelming contextual evidence.
The absurdity reached peak expression when an MSNBC commentator suggested the shooter might have been a MAGA supporter "firing a gun in celebration," a theory completely divorced from basic firearm knowledge and situational reality, and I believe a symptom of the left-leaning media's unwillingness to acknowledge the rising violence from the left. The commentator was later terminated, not for the ridiculous speculation, but for subsequent remarks suggesting Kirk had it coming.
This immediate insistence on political ambiguity, before details about inscribed bullet messages or the shooter's extensive anti-conservative communications emerged, demonstrated systematic preparation for narrative management. ABC's Jimmy Kimmel, in a monologue after the Governor of Utah confirmed the motive of the shooting, pivoted even harder: "The MAGA gang fails to characterize Charlie Kirk's assassin as anything but their own." Never mind that no evidence supported this claim; in this script, the killer had to wear a red hat.
This is no accident. It's part of The Great Gaslighting, a decade of distortions that peaked with Kirk's blood on the stage, where lies about racists, fascists, and Nazis made violence against conservatives not just possible, but palatable.
The Slow Burn: Pre-Assassination Gaslighting
The foundation for Kirk's assassination wasn't laid in September 2025; it was built over years of systematic manipulation that made half of America question their own eyes and normalized hatred toward conservatives as an existential threat, meaning any act of violence has to come from the right.
Biden's Cognitive Decline Dismissed as "Cheap Fakes"
For years, Americans watched obvious signs of mental decline from the sitting president. Video after video showed Biden freezing mid-speech, confusing world leaders, wandering off stages, and delivering garbled sentences like the infamous "trunalimunumaprzure" moment. Rather than acknowledge what was plainly visible, media outlets and Democrats deployed a coordinated response: these were "cheap fakes" or "right-wing conspiracies," even when the footage came from their own cameras. The message was clear: don't trust what you're seeing. Trust us instead.
Trump's Remarks Taken Out of Context to Portray Him as a Fascist
The Trump treatment became a masterclass in narrative manipulation. For years, clips were surgically edited to transform normal political discourse into something sinister. The "very fine people" comment at Charlottesville was stripped of Trump's explicit condemnation of neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Rally remarks were twisted into "Hitler quotes." Full transcripts that proved otherwise were ignored. This relentless distortion built a narrative of conservatives as existential threats to democracy, the same framework later used to justify Kirk's demonization as a "fascist" despite his free speech and anti-violent stance.
COVID Skepticism Labeled "Anti-Science"
Anyone who questioned official COVID narratives faced immediate branding as a dangerous extremist. Wonder if the virus came from a lab? You're spreading "misinformation." Ask about vaccine side effects? You're "anti-science." It didn't matter if you had legitimate concerns or actual evidence; questioning the approved story made you an enemy of public health. Meanwhile, officials privately acknowledged the lab-leak theory's plausibility while publicly suppressing it. Side-effect reports were buried. The pattern was consistent: observable reality took a backseat to narrative control.
January 6 Framed as an "Armed Coup" vs. BLM Riots as "Mostly Peaceful"
The double standard reached peak absurdity in how political violence was categorized. January 6th, a single afternoon with limited violence, became the defining threat to democracy. Meanwhile, the 2020 BLM riots that caused over $2 billion in damage and dozens of deaths were dismissed as "fiery but mostly peaceful protests." Media outlets amplified unverified claims of a right-wing "insurrection" while downplaying actual left-wing destruction as legitimate resistance. This normalized left-wing violence while criminalizing conservative protest, setting the stage for post-Kirk denials of rising leftist extremism.
These weren't isolated incidents of bias. They were systematic conditioning, training Americans to doubt their own perceptions while accepting increasingly absurd explanations from authority figures. Like Paula watching her gas lamps dim, citizens learned to question their sanity rather than challenge the narrative.
The Shot Heard 'Round the Narrative: Post-Assassination Distortions
On September 10, 2025, the gaslighting machine was revealed to be operating at peak efficiency. Within hours of Kirk's assassination, the same distortion tactics deployed over years of pre-conditioning went into overdrive, this time rewriting a murder in real time.