Gaslighting is lying to someone's face to induce a sense of paralysis and unreality.

The left knows that the western world, the US included, is not racist. If their targets were actually racist, the response to the charge of racism would be "when did you get interested in my ideological background, and have you read the collected works of Gobineau?" No actual racist considers the charge an insult nor an attack, in other words.

Only people who are not racist and who condemn racism as a morally evil doctrine are remotely susceptible to a charge of racism.

The charge is knowingly, consciously unjust on its face.

It is designed to elicit the reaction that the target is not one of those evil people, has been misunderstood, Akshually sides with the evil person making the charge, and seeks solidarity and agreement on the proposition that racism is morally evil. This counter-appeal doesn't "work" because eliciting it was the entire point of the charge. The evil layer of the charge then refuses to accept the protestation of innocence.

This establishes a moral hierarchy between the evil gaslighting accuser and his innocent victim, in which the innocent victim begs for the unjust charge against her to be withdrawn. The victim has already unconsciously put the accuser into the position of their judge, merely by attempting to correct the injustice of the charge.

This hierarchy mirrors, incidentally, the power relation that exists between a party police accuser and their innocent victims in totalitarian regimes. Totalitarian mass movements institute such unjust replacement "legal systems" with their ideological conformity and "objective enemy" categories in broad daylight, even before they achieve power. They thereby foreshadow exactly how they intend to use state power once they obtain it, and this actually functions as attractive propaganda for those in the movement who share their goals. They are all promised status revenge enacted this way as their "reward" for the success of the movement.

The correct attitude is instead to see the cynicism of the charge and its evil intent. The accused needs to defend not themselves but the entire class of unjustly assailed, instead of separating themselves from that class.

"How dare you call my fine fellow Americans racists you fucking Nazi bigot" - is the correct response. They are not prepared for it. They can only pivot to trying to use you as a foil for third parties at that point, and to silence you, because they cannot face anyone who denies the moral supremacy of their starting position. You cannot want their agreement or approval or to find any common ground with them, because all such desires cede them the right to veto anything you say. That precisely is what you must deny to them at the very first move.

The moral evil in the entire tactic is that it exploits not just the justice of those it assails, but their desire to be reasonable and to find common ground and to get along with one another. It is already on the plane of combat between mortal enemies; it relies on the targets not being comfortable on that plane or willing to "go there", especially not quickly or immediately or before exhausting alternatives. Any attempt to find such alternatives assumes a good-intention on the part of the evil assailant that is not present - and is therefore doomed.