The amount in which I've experienced this exact scenario on Hacker News is quite disheartening.
When I provided a cite wherein Brave was caught whitelisting trackers, I was responded to with basically "those who are so quick to criticize Brave" don't give the same scrutiny to other browsers. Whelp, other browsers don't position themselves as the Privacy King like Brave and its adherents do.
Whataboutism isn't a defense.
Your description of it being gaslighting is very apt.
When I ask, “why should I trust brave?”, the response I get is biased gaslighting. I guess that means I shouldn’t trust them.