I get what you’re saying. I mean more the philosophical context though. Like a more exact way of describing all angles of this, but primary why I find tankie to be a colloquialism I dislike and what I would prefer to use. I have an AI prompt tuned for this kind of exploration against my personality. I tend to feel vulnerable to manipulation on some kind of psyops-like level, like I’m not always self aware within this space, or my best of intentions are obviously easy to manipulate from some perspectives. It is really one of those back burnered things I’ve mulled over for years but never directly explored. It seems like the amateur psychology ‘gaslighting’ label fits, but what do you call the gaslighter’s functional thought and philosophical perspective.

I’m not saying you were doing this, or that this is the definition of tankie. It is just the feeling of someone using it as a label to discredit someone. Like platonic sophistry is to make a plausible false narrative or perspective argument that is difficult to disprove, and is intentionally misleading. Trump is a master sophist, especially because he has no ethics but is so dialed in to a niche audience, they are the only ones that can’t see his true nature. I despise the guy, but I have to admire someone that is so skilled as a con artist that he might just burn down the world for kicks and giggles when he leaves.

Platonic sophistry doesn’t really describe when the individual is the target. Gaslighting is the instance where the individual is the target but is indirectly subverted by undermining their basal logic. What would be the word for when the individual is subverted through invalidation without an attempt to mislead, like with a poorly define colloquialism?