Violence is of course the primary go-to weapon of ambitious fascism, but right behind it is the intentional, systematic reality-warping we now call gaslighting, the sometimes-clever sometimes-hectoring browbeating of the public into believing that X is not X, that Y is actually Z, and that what they know and what they can see with their own eyes is no longer trustworthy but rather in need of interpretation – by very intent people who very, very much want to do that interpreting. A violent, armed insurrection to overthrow the government and install an unelected dictator? You're told its an ordinary tourist visit. A bearded middle-aged man in a skimpy dress wagging his genitalia in the faces of watching four-year-olds? You're told it would be bigotry on your part even to call such a thing sexual, much less predatory. In 2023 the status of gaslighting as a fascist reflex fully filtered down into the publishing world. Got a completely lunatic take on Subject A? Say Subject A is actually Subject Anti-A! And just keep saying it! In an ideal publishing world, editors would step in and prevent this, but as the year's flood of lying books shows, that didn't happen. These were the worst of those books:

10 The Democrat Party Hates America by Mark Levin (Threshold Editions)

Moron barstool grouser Levin here says the Democratic Party is full of “Marxists” who hate everything that makes America great: the nuclear family, white skin, institutional sexism, and dimwitted blowhards with megaphones. And the gaslighting of implying the America-loving virtues of a Republican Party whose members are bankrolled by Putin's Russia and whose cult leader has been promising for weeks to become a dictator … well, it fits right in with 2023.

9 Never Give an Inch by Mike Pompeo (Broadside Books)

A week after Joe Biden's election in 2020, then-Secretary of State Pompeo was still smilingly promising the orderly transition of power to a second Trump administration, and that same gaslighting, done with the same tight rictus face and dead eyes, runs through this entire tinny, servile book.

8 Duck Walk: A Birder’s Improbable Path to Hunting as Conservation by Margie Crisp (Texas A&M University Press) & The Shotgun Conservationist: Why Conservationists Should Love Hunting by Brant MacDuff (Timber Press)

The gaslighting here could scarcely be starker: both of these ridiculous, bloodthirsty books look you straight in the face and say shooting and killing wild animals is an excellent way – maybe the best way – to protect them. You can just hear the respective authors saying, “Now … now hear me out ...”

7 In Defense of the Second Amendment by Larry Correia (Regnery Publishing)

The musket in the hand of the Minute Man on the cover of Correia's ridiculous, bloodthirsty book could fire three rounds a minute. The AR-15s Correia sells when he isn't writing ridiculous, bloodthirsty books fire 40 rounds a minute, and each of those rounds acts like a small hand grenade when it hits human flesh. In 2023, America had more than 630 mass shootings. More than 40,000 Americans died from gunfire in 2023.

6 The Courage To Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival by Ron DeSantis (Broadside Books)

The gaslighting all through this book by Florida's fascist governor is based on his contention that what he's done for Florida would be a blueprint for how he'd give the entire country the courage to be free, just staring straight in the face of the fact that he has curtailed the freedoms of Floridians to a greater extent than any governor in modern American history.

5 Rise of the Fourth Reich: Confronting COVID Fascism with a New Nuremberg Trial, So This Never Happens Again by Steve Deace & Daniel Horowitz (Post Hill Press)

The white-eyed hysteria on every page of this weird, paranoid screed revolves around a kernel of lies trash-compacted into a dense ball of reality denial about things like masks or viruses or vaccines. Never having experienced even a single moment of fascism, the authors solemnly call for rounding people up and putting them on trial for their lives.

4 Crime Inc: How Democrats Employ Mafia and Gangster Tactics to Gain and Hold Power by Vince Everett Ellison (Bombadier Books)

The hypocrisy, the sheer effrontery of the gaslighting, that Ellison does here in describing the Mafia tactics of the Democratic Party is almost breathtaking. It's just possible that the person who planted pipe bombs on the eve of January 6, whoever in Georgia she might have been, was a Republican. It's just possible that the impresario of the January 6 insurrection explicitly compared his tactics to the Godfather and is a Republican. Its just possible that the stochastic terrorist currently on trial for multiple felonies has been gagged by multiple court orders specifically to stop him from threatening the lives of witnesses and court workers – and is a Republican. But no: A is actually Anti-A!

3 Emotional Labor: The Invisible Work Shaping Our Lives and How to Claim Our Power by Rose Hackman (Flatiron Books)

Sitting around complaining and pitying yourself is not work. Simply being present in a workplace is not work. Being present in a workplace and deciding not to be a raging A-hole is not work. Work is work.

2 The Peacemaker: Nixon: The Man, President, and My Friend by Ben Stein (Humanix Books)

Richard Nixon doubled the carnage in Vietnam. Richard Nixon carpet-bombed Laos. Richard Nixon carpet-bombed Cambodia.

1 Spare by Prince Harry (Random House)

Even on a list that calls Richard Nixon a peacemaker or that says killing animals is the best way to save them, the sheer Vesuvius of gaslighting in the publishing world in 2023 must certainly go to this, the worst book of the year, in which the handsome and fabulously wealthy Duke of Sussex works hard (through his ghostwriter, that is) to convince readers that he's a poor little-lamb being victimized, first by his family, then by the paparazzi, and now by the general population of commoners who are snickering at his idiotic whining rather than applauding it.