“Projecting Fascism”

by tristero

Dave Neiwert has, as he has so often, an extremely intelligent post entitled, you guessed it, “Projecting Fascism:”

[John] Dean has hit on exactly what we’ve been observing about movement conservatives and their increasingly ugly tone in recent: it is part of a sometimes conscious strategy to project their own ambitions onto their opponents:

In other words, for a number of the right’s leading rhetoricians, the projection appears to be perfectly conscious: it is a strategy, designed to marginalize their opposition and open the field to nearly any behavior it chooses.

And it is extraordinarily successful precisely because projection, as a trait, is so deeply woven into the right-wing psyche. Those who engage in it consciously set off waves of sympathetic response from their audiences because it hits their buttons in exactly the right spot.

The deep-seatedness of this trait can make it diffidcult, at times, to discern whether the behavior is conscious or not. But it also lends to a certain predictability: One of the best indicators of where the right is heading, I’ve noted previously, can be found in the very things of which it accuses the left.

So when it starts to accuse its opponents of coddling fascism, you can rest assured that the American right is embarking on precisely that path itself. And considering what we know about fascism historically, this shouldn’t be a surprise.

Yep. In the jargon of psychotherapy, projection is a primitive defense mechanism for eliminating anxiety about one’s own self-worth. Let me try to illustrate with an example.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that you are President of the United States. Picking a name out of a hat, I’ll call you George W. Bush. All your life you’ve avoided serious danger, both physically (going AWOL, perhaps from a National Guard Unit) and psychologically (maybe you are a one-time heavy boozer who has replaced cocktails with sycophants instructed to keep all criticism away from you). You have started a war in a Middle Eastern country – any one, but let’s just say it was Iraq – and it’s going badly. You’re afraid to withdraw the troops because you think everyone will learn that you are what you know yourself to be: a deeply terrified coward.

The thought is unbearable and you must get rid of it. But how? You simply “project” those thoughts onto a hated enemy. You deny them in yourself by accusing your political enemies of the failure to commit and focus that, you fear, you yourself, for your entire life, are guilty of.

You may also try to project some of your overwhelming guilt into very revealing jokes. Suppose, for example, you can’t abide people doing things you don’t like. But you know that those who seek to control others are often given the most odious labels your culture can bestow. It makes you uncomfortable because you’re afraid you’re one of those people. So, to relieve the psychic tension, you quip, “It’s a heck of a lot easier being a dictator, as long as I’m the dictator,” just a good natured chuckle that hopefully makes you look like a powerful, responsible person that can laugh at the burdens of power, rather than covet more. Never mind that the grammatical lapses (the tenses) might expose more lust for power than you might like; no one listens that closely anyway to off the cuff laffs, so you’re safe.

Now all this is hypothetically speaking, of course. No one, not even Charles Krauthammer, should try to psychoanalyze anyone by long distance. But while my little crude example may be inapt, it is quite appropriate to note the conscious use of projection as part of the rhetorical strategy of the right. And it is, as Neiwert implies, quite conscious.

The right knows exactly who are behaving like fascists – who are, in fact, fascists: themselves.