>>3766643The opposite of "gaslighting" is not critical thinking, it's called "validation". It's taking your ball of cognitive bias and running with it further than you ever would on your own. Instead of making you doubt yourself to suppress the truth, it's amplifying and feeding back on the false ideas they want to push to the point that they eclipse the truth.
It's saying "Yes, you're right, that IS a Nazi salute you just saw, never doubt it!". It's playing on your existing prejudices and tendency to explain things according to your present biased understanding of reality, and then exaggerating it in the same direction: Musk is an asshole, so of course he just sieg heiled a crowd of fascists, because he is a fascists, and nothing anybody can tell you can prove otherwise. I mean, isn't it obvious?
It's like the deeply religious seeing god in every mote of dust, which serves to further validate their belief in god that makes them see god in every mote of dust. If someone is on the brink of such belief, you simply egg them on until they fall completely into it – that's "validation".