The bolder the lie, the stronger the control
Whether it's gaslighting or Russian propaganda, ridiculous lies serve a purpose
As Russia prepares for what appears to be a devastating blow against the country of my birth, Ukraine, my days are a bright, painful patchwork of fear and grief. What do you do when the sword of Damocles is hanging over the people and places you love?
In my case, Iām working. Or trying to, anyway.
Earlier this year, a friend of a friend came to me with a problem. She wanted me to double check her geolocation efforts with regard to a few pictures of her soon to be ex-husband. She believed that he had rekindled an affair with a former mistress while still forcing her to go through what she described as a ājokeā of a marital counseling effort, and some pictures of him that wound up on Facebook seemed to be part of the proof.
The woman, letās call her Lucia, had done some very good work analyzing the background of the pictures. I double checked it, and confirmed it for her. Her husband had been pictured in his mistressā hometown, a small place he had no other ties to, while he had claimed to be in a completely different part of the state. Lucia wanted this confirmed for her own sanity. Living with a pathological liar means having to deal with a constant assault on your reality.
Shortly after we first spoke, Lucia was contacted by the mistress, whom Iāll call Sadie. Sadie wrote to Lucia and said, āI think heās playing us both.ā
Sadie said that Luciaās husband had insisted that their marriage was āopen,ā that they hadnāt intimate in years, and even offered cropped photos of Lucia at social events to claim things like, āOh, thatās my wife actually standing to one of her boyfriends. See? This isnāt cheating, Sadie. I just want to be with you.ā The text messages that Sadie provided confirmed this ā and I mean, she literally handed her phone to Lucia, as opposed to sending screenshots, which can be less reliable, depending on the source they come from.
Then, it magically got WORSE. Sadie let on that the husband was seeing a third woman, whom weāll call Katie. Sadie was insisting that this man had conned her out of money in order to lavish Katie with gifts. Lucia had also noticed financial irregularities in the run-up to divorce proceedings. Some of Luciaās jewelry was also missing. Sadie said, āI had a ring go missing and I donāt think itās a coincidence.ā
Katie, meanwhile, remains completely under this conmanās spell, and believes that Lucia and Sadie are just vengeful, bitter women who had mistreated him.
You see a pattern emerging, donāt you?
Lucia was really rattled when she spoke to me again. She and her husband had been married for years, a time in her life she was bitterly regretting. She couldnāt understand why he had been such a brazen piece of garbage. It felt like a slap in the face.
What I told her is something that I want to tell all of you as well:
There is a purpose behind brazenly manipulative and dishonest behavior. Itās a way to assert your power.
Think about it this way: Just as Soviet propaganda used to, Russian propaganda is built on mixing the truth with outlandish, incredible lies. Itās done to humiliate the audience. Most of them know theyāre being lied to, but being under threat, they submit anyway. Humiliation makes us weaker, and it also makes us feel as though we are complicit in our own suffering. Itās a darkly brilliant form of manipulation.
When Luciaās husband first cheated on her with Sadie, he had manipulated them both. He didnāt do a great job of hiding the affair. He had also told Sadie horrible things about Lucia. Then he decided to āwise up and be a family man,ā and left Sadie for a while, while making Lucia feel perversely grateful for his effort. At the time, Lucia was trying very hard to work on their marriage, and this was her way of giving him a chance.
How did he repay this effort? He basically started robbing his wife. He then tried to rekindle his relationship with Sadie, playing the āI am in an open marriageā card, and also scammed and robbed her. But Sadie was beginning to grow wiser. So he got a third woman, Katie, who was completely under his control. Heās a charming, handsome man who seeks out insecure women who tend to be much younger. Itās always easy for him ā at least at first.
How much do you want to bet that when the husband moves on from Katie, he will badmouth her to the next woman? And how much do you want to bet that money and jewelry will wind up mysteriously āmissingā from Katieās place?
āDeny, deny, denyā is the credo of the manipulator. It works on the personal level. And it works on the geopolitical level too. And we donāt like to admit it when we first fall prey to it. Itās embarrassing and gross.
I canāt stop Putin from doing what heās doing and lying his ass off about it through his troglodyte ministers and thuggish staff. But what I can do is tell you that liars are all the same underneath ā slippery, vindictive, and vampire-like.
And thatās what Iām thinking about as I sit here, waiting for the dogs of war to start barking in the night and all that.
Natalia, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I just subscribed after hearing your interview on WTF Nation Radio today. I look forward to reading more of your work. Please stay safe!
Best regards,
Jeno