Nathan Radke

But as this was going on, the state media and the Soviet Union was going on and on about how tireless he was, how energetic he was, how engaged he was in the decision-making process.

But if we want a real masterclass in some next-level political gaslighting, we'll stay in the Soviet Union, but we need to go back to the 1950s.

I mean, that's tricky, right?

In order to pull off gaslighting like that, you've got to be like Olympic level.

You've got to be professional level.

And we do have an amazing example of this.

So in the Stalinist Soviet Union, which is always a terrible way to start a sentence, the head of the secret police was just an absolute piece of garbage named Lavrentiy Beria.

And amongst other things, he's the guy in charge of rounding people up out of their homes and putting them in gulag prison camps, carrying at mass deportations, an uncountable number of executions.

And Beria, just as a person, just a terrible, awful human being in a bunch of different ways.

But, of course, in Stalin's Soviet Union, the state's the one who gets to decide what reality was.

And so nothing is real except that which is allowed by the state to be real, even when the truth is clear for everyone to see with their own eyes.

You'd be told there was plenty of food where your cupboards were bare.

You'd be told the leader was great and wise and kind when you knew the opposite was true.

And even if the state made an abrupt U-turn regarding what everyone was expected to believe, you're supposed to, like, get on board with that ideological whiplash instantly and go along with a new approved reality as if it had been true all along.

So under Stalin, this guy Beria, the head of the secret police who wasn't a monster, he's a great and noble hero of the Soviet Union.

And they put out an official state encyclopedia.

And in that, there's a large entry talking about Beria's heroism and his devotion and his many accomplishments.

But here's the thing about tyrants.

They tend to end poorly.

And so after Stalin died, his reality dies along with him.