An Ideology of Projection and the Party of Dissimulation
It is amazing just how mendacious much political advertising (propaganda) is. When thinking about “unhinged”, I think of people running over peaceful protesters in the streets, tiki-torch-carrying white supremacists marching through a college campus, putting children in cages after being separated from their parents, showering murderous dictators with fawning praise, punishing our allies with tariffs and threats of disbanding NATO, a paranoid narcissist still talking about the 2016 Electoral College vote and endlessly tweeting lies and delusions… But alas, such is not the case.
The “unhinged Left”? Yes, in yet another self-fulfilling, self-reinforcing, self-referential prophecy of projection, put forth by neo-fascists: 1) level accusations against your enemy that you are yourself engaged in; 2) enact policies that will inflame your opponents’ ire and your supporters’ passions; 3) taunt, troll and torment your enemies further; 4) pounce on each and every instance of your opponents’ actions that divert attention from your own self-same actions that initiated the response in the first place; 5) usurp the criticism and arguments of your enemy, and reverse them to obscure the chronology and evolution of the conflict itself.* Through some Machiavellian alchemy, it is now the “Left” that is at fault. It is the “Left” that is a danger to law and order. It is the “Left” that is full of hate and intolerance. It is the “Left” that is the tormentor of good, innocent Americans. It is the “Left” that is the cause of ALL OUR PROBLEMS! The LEFT that is EVIL and OUT TO GET YOU! IT IS THE LEFT! THE LIBERALS! THE DEMOCRATS! THE BLACKS, THE IMMIGRANTS, THE ATHEISTS, THE UNIONS, THE COASTAL ELITES, THE ENTERTAINERS, THE GAYS!
The comments posted to this piece of GOP agitprop speak volumes.
On and on and on and on it goes, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
We see this not only from Trump and his talking heads, the GOP and RNC, but the NRA. The exact same tactics used to scramble the minds of its members, convincing them that they are victims. That they must ARM themselves against the marauding hordes invading the virtuous and pristine cultural traditions of “true”, patriotic Americans.
These two ads by the GOP and NRA are revitalized, refurbished updates of the two most insidious tactics of Karl Rove’s “playbook” described in an analysis titled “Deciphering Karl Rove’s Playbook: Campaign Tactics and Response Strategies”:
Tactic #3: Accuse Your Opponent of What He/She is Going to Accuse You Of
Tactic #4: Go Negative, Then Cry Foul
Once again, we are witnessing the psychological projections of an ideological cult of personality that is gaslighting adherents into dehumanizing and demonizing their perceived persecutors.
Narcissists are renowned for using psychological projection to blame other people, even when it is entirely apparent that they are the ones in the wrong.
Whichever way they can, they will project the blame, stating that the other person made them do it, was responsible for their own bad behaviour or simply did not do what they asked.
[Added 12/12/2018] We have seen two egregious examples of this exposed once again. The constant drumbeat of “voter fraud” leveled against states like California (read Democratic and full of illegal immigrants). In reality, however, we see in North Carolina actual election fraud.
Add to this new revelations about Trump’s Labor Secretary, Alexander Acosta, who now seems to be directly implicated in a cover up of crimes while a Federal Attorney in Florida. Recall “Pizzagate” and the accusations that Hillary Clinton and others in her campaign were running a pedophile ring in the non-existent basement of the Comet Ping Pong Pizza building? Now we find out that one Jeffrey Epstein was involved in the sexual abuse of underage girls for many years.
Long before #MeToo became the catalyst for a women’s movement about sexual assault — and a decade before the fall of Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and U.S. Olympic gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar — there was Jeffrey Edward Epstein.
Epstein, a multimillionaire hedge fund manager whose friends included a constellation of entertainers, politicians, business titans and royalty, for years lured teenage girls to his Palm Beach mansion as part of a cult-like sex pyramid scheme, police in the town of Palm Beach found.
Acosta signed off on a “deal” that essentially put Epstein in a “private wing” of county jail for a thirteen month sentence for a crime that would have gotten him life in Florida!
In 2007, despite ample physical evidence and multiple witnesses corroborating the girls’ stories, federal prosecutors and Epstein’s lawyers quietly put together a remarkable deal for Epstein, then 54. He agreed to plead guilty to two felony prostitution charges in state court, and in exchange, he and his accomplices received immunity from federal sex-trafficking charges that could have sent him to prison for life.
He served 13 months in a private wing of the Palm Beach County stockade. His alleged co-conspirators, who helped schedule his sex sessions, were never prosecuted.
The deal, called a federal non-prosecution agreement, was sealed so that no one — not even his victims — could know the full scope of Epstein’s crimes and who else was involved. The U.S. attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, was personally involved in the negotiations, records, letters and emails show.
[Added 10/10/18] The psychological projections, gaslighting, reversals of reality, mendacity, cognitive dissonance, duplicity and outright manipulations by the Trump Administration and the GOP are truly staggering and utterly terrifying. The rhetorical depths to which they will continue to sink have no limit. They have become nothing more than a fascist propaganda machine of lies and deception to maintain their tenuous grip on power at any and all cost. They have become a clear and present danger to the Republic and the very idea of democracy itself. They have become consumed by an irresistible and unquenchable and deadly demagoguery. They are a kind of Fourth Reich bent on establishing eternal rule over the minds of their naive and bellicose followers, who seem to be willing to swallow anything regurgitated from their foul mouths. Everything I imagined could happen, has happened, and in spades. Let us all hope that reason will be victorious over the sheer lunacy of these decrepit, despicable wannabe despots.
The appeal to victimhood is a LONG established tactic of FOX "News" (and the Nazis), which has been re-engineered by Trump in an uninhibited, unrestrained and unrepentant way, and has now been wholly adopted by the GOP.
(The public’s) goal should be to recognize fallacies for what they are — the dirty tricks of those who want to gain an advantage. You will withstand their impact more effectively when you know these fallacies inside and out. When you are inoculated against fallacies, your response to them is transformed. You ask key questions. You probe behind the masks, the fronts, the fostered images, the impressive pomp and ceremony. You take charge of your own mind and emotions. You become (increasingly) your own person. ( The Thinkers Guide to Fallacies: The Art of Mental Trickery and Manipulation )
We are living in a vast new world of projection, where in the process of leveling an accusation against another, people engage in the very act being alleged. While accusing another of fomenting division and insisting that it cease immediately, one perpetuates the divisive discourse and reproduces the conditions that one ostensibly seeks to quell. People cry out about their victimization, the very act of which victimizes others. We seem to be in the grips of a severe, collective manic episode, paroxysms we have as a nation/people experienced many times before, and for which there may be but one remedy, complete and total cultural exhaustion. A new form of mutually assured annihilation.
[10/22/18]
[Added 10/29/18] The past few days have seen a dramatic flourishing of "both-siderism" (repackaged “Whataboutism”) that seeks to appease the “right” by acknowledging “hatred” or violence coming from the “left”, hoping to quell the intensity of emotion. It is like a bully who taunts someone incessantly, and is shocked when there is retaliation, and then calls the victimized person a bully for reacting. It is precisely the same mentality of a domestic abuser, who gaslights and victimizes, and then plays the victim. This is Karl Rove's "Go Negative, Then Cry Foul" ploy (what I call “Victimize, then Play the Victim”), used over and over again. It is a tactic by which the perpetrator is rendered blameless, while at the same time creating a false equivalency of victimhood. It is insidious and designed to incite a self-same response of hatred, anger and violence. The bellicose intent is to foment a "war" between two "sides" that have been manufactured by the actions and words of political rhetoric engineered to divide. It has a LONG lineage: From the "Lost Cause" discourse to Lee Atwater, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Roger Ailes and FOX "News", Steve Bannon/Stephen Miller, and Donald J. Trump, et al. It is a sadistic methodology conjured up and employed by sociopaths.
[Added 2/23/19]
Another example of the tu quoque or projection over the past two years has been documented by Media Matters around the accusation by Fox news of a “coup” against Trump and his administration. While it would seem plain to most that if there has been any kind of coup, it has been perpetrated by Trump et al against the American justice system, federal law enforcement, National Intelligence, democratic institutions, governmental departments such as the EPA, so on and so forth. But the manufacturers of alternative realities at Fox are most certain it is Trump who is, once again, the VICTIM.
This works in lock-step with the warnings of a civil war and the need to buy guns for the inevitable violence to come (that Fox, not so ironically, is itself fomenting).
FOX and Trump and the GOP and Rush Limbaugh and Breitbart and Sinclair Broadcasting have become an organized dissimulation machine, repeating over and over and over the same messages and accusations and scare tactics to convince the "low-information" voter to support the autocratic "regime" of Trump and the cabal that has coalesced around him.
[Added 5/17/19]
End (for now).
One of the most obvious and obscene examples of this kind of “reversal” is Mitch McConnell’s hypocritical accusations of Democratic obstruction over the past decade.
