A town square of Gessler Hat lies to which we are all supposed to bow in obeisance.

Gessler's Hat Effect?  What the heck is he talking about.

The Gessler's Hat effect may be a factor. There might never have been a William Tell (or the Lone Ranger) if they didn't make people bow to the Hat.

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) January 17, 2024

Oh, that Albrecht Gessler.  From Wikipedia:

Albrecht Gessler, also known as Hermann, was a legendary 14th-century Habsburg bailiff (German: Landvogt) at Altdorf, whose brutal rule led to the William Tell rebellion and the eventual independence of the Old Swiss Confederacy.

According to the Chronicon Helveticum by Aegidius Tschudi (1505–1572), in 1307 Gessler raised a pole in the market square of Altdorf, Uri, Switzerland placed his hat atop it, and ordered all the townsfolk to bow before it. Tell, whose marksmanship and pride were legendary, publicly refused. Gessler's cruel wrath was tempered by his curiosity to test Tell's skill, so he gave Tell the option of either being executed or shooting an apple off his son's head in one try. Tell succeeded in splitting the apple with his arrow, saving his own life. When Gessler asked why he had readied two crossbow bolts, he lied and replied that it was out of habit. After being assured that he wouldn't be killed, Tell finally admitted that the second was intended for the tyrant if his son was harmed.

Gessler, enraged, had Tell arrested and taken by boat across Lake Lucerne to Küssnacht to spend the life he had saved in a dungeon. A sudden fierce storm made the crew terrified and, since William Tell was a better sailor, they handed the wheel to him but, instead of heading towards the dungeon, he escaped to shore. There he ambushed and killed Gessler with an arrow, launching the young Confederacy's rebellion against Austrian rule.

Kind of the inverse of the Streisand Effect.  From Wikipedia.

The Streisand effect is an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where the effort instead backfires by increasing awareness of that information. It is named after American singer and actress Barbra Streisand, whose attempt to suppress Kenneth Adelman's website publication of his photograph of her cliff-top residence in Malibu, California, taken to document California coastal erosion, inadvertently drew far greater attention to the previously obscure photograph in 2003.

With the Streisand Effect, the desire to hide information leads to actions which inexorably publicize the information, the very opposite of the intended outcome.

With the Gessler's Hat Effect, the desire to receive to receive demonstrated acquiescence leads to actions which inexorably incite resistance, the very opposite of the intended outcome.

The Gessler's Hat Effect is also closely related to an old Soviet stratagem, often used by authoritarian and totalitarian states.  The population of the Soviet Union in general and the population of Eastern Europe (under Soviet control) in particular were routinely subjected to such outrageous untruths that it strained credulity.  Communication was not intended to convince people with evidence but to beat people into cognitive submission.  The more blatant the lie people were forced to accept, the better.  The submission to the lie was the whole point.  See George Orwell and George Kennan.  

Wretchard The Cat makes a good point but I think it is pertinent beyond the only the context of the 2024 election.

When you begin to focus on the number of lies people have been forced to bow before, it is rather remarkable.  A very incomplete list of patently obvious lies, in random order, which people have been told were lies and yet which were true.

Less policing does not cause rising crime.

Higher taxes do not reduce economic activity.

More regulations do not lower productivity.

Hunter Biden's laptop was not his.

Covid-19 was not manmade.

Covid-19 was not a lab leak.

Covid-19 vaccines were well tested, perfectly safe, and stopped the spread of the virus in its tracks.

Social distancing worked.

School shutdowns worked and came with no learning loss.

Masks worked to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

Inflation is transient.

Giving money to Iran will not increase their weapons work.

The US is a hotbed of racism, the worst in the world.

Islam is the religion of peace.

Mostly peaceful riots.

George Floyd was murdered.

Trayvon Martin was murdered.

Michael Brown was murdered.

Police disproportionately murder African Americans.

White supremacists are a bigger threat to American security than anything else.

Anthropogenic global warming is conclusively and certainly a real threat and controlled solely by the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

US temperatures in recent years are abnormal for US historical conditions.

Hurricanes are getting more powerful.

Antisemitism among the Mandarin Class is not real.

OK, that is an unconsidered list conjured in ninety seconds.  I pause to check to what degree these stream of conscious examples are actually known lies which people were forced to accept and I realize that I could go on ad infinitum.  The list is an incredible compilation of Gessler Hat lies to which we have been expected to bow.  

The Mandarin Class, the Chattering Class, the Elite, the Nattering Nabobs of Negativism, the Socialists, the Marxists, the Academics, the Woke, the Intersectionalists, the Social Justice Warriors,  the Postmodernists, the Race Mongering Critical Race Theorists, the Feminist Theorists, the Multiculturalists, the Anarchists - call them what you want, just don't say that they are seekers of of purveyors of Truth.  

They have been cluttering the market square with lies and untruths and demanding we bow in obeisance to each and every blatant Gessler Hat of lies.  

Time to rise up against the untruths of the Albrecht Gesslers of the world.