Psychological projection is a theory in psychology in which humans defend themselves
against their own unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and
negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to
others.
What we are seeing in the latest diatribes issued from the
White House are a classic example of what psychologists refer to as
“projection.” In a tweet dated February 3, 2017, Trump insisting that protesters against him have been secretly paid —
“Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters.” A follow-up to this is
Kellyanne Conway who stated to Andrew Kaczynski in a CNN interview on the same
date, “There’s nothing peaceful and nothing democratic about folks who are out
there just trying to re-litigate the election and protesting things they know
nothing about.”
It is documented
that the students had nothing to do with the black-shirted people who crashed
the protest in Berkeley, and the students were not paid. So the question is,
why would anyone who supported the aims of the protesters cause such terrific
damage and halt what students saw as a legitimate protest to air a grievance?
On the other hand, it would make far more sense for a person or persons
ideologically opposed to such protests to foment such destruction in order to
discredit the legitimate protest, whether they “hired” the black-shirts or not.
Given the rhetoric streaming from Conway’s interviews dating back to last
November, it is clear she is not sympathetic to the aims of anyone who presumes
to protest things “they know nothing about.”
Clearly
it seems that the mis-information coming from the White House is aimed at
discrediting the right of people to peacefully protest, and then blaming them
for a group of people who, in spite of the peaceful nature of the protest as it
was envisioned, destroyed property and managed to disrupt the protest. As far
back as 2012, Bannon commented on the Occupy Wall Street protests and compared
them to Hitler’s Brownshirts (SA) in the 1930s. He stated that “ ‘You see the infrastructure of these
Brownshirts, which essentially they are, and what they intend to do to
intimidate decent people,’ Bannon said of the "professional left." ‘The
victims of this film are some of the most liberal mayors in this country, in
Oakland, and in Portland, and in Seattle, and places like that. People that
tried to work with these people. You'll see the carnage they leave in their
wake. ...The Occupy movement is really a combination of the internet,
the media, and street thugs. Right? It's a weapon of intimidation,’ Bannon said in September 2012. ‘It is the
moral equivalent today of the Brownshirts of the 1930s. It's going to be used
as a weapon of intimidation.’ ” (Andrew
Kaczynski, CNN, February 7, 2017)
This is an eerie
premonition of the violence that happened during the February 1, 2017 exercise
in free speech: Milo Yiannopoulos was given an opportunity to air his views in
front of a large crowd at UC Berkeley, views that normally tend to racist and
misogynistic opinions as befits his position at Breitbart News. A large number
of students took exception to that, and organized a protest after trying to
keep him from speaking and failing at that effort. Yiannopoulos billed his
speech as a call to deny Federal Aid to universties such as Berkeley, and an
article published in Breitbart (by Jack Hadfield 01/31/17) “Backed by
the Freedom Center (Mr Yiannopoulos) will call for the withdrawal of federal
grants and the prosecution of university officials who endanger their students
with their policies, starting with UC President and former Secretary of
Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano and Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks.”
One can easily determine that Breitbart had a large stake in
making their views known, and the protests were billed as an effort to prevent
freedom of speech. Then, as violence broke out, the President took again to
tweeting the next morning, “If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and
practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view — NO
FEDERAL FUNDS?” Nowhere is it mentioned
that those who were protesting had their freedom of speech curtailed by an
organized group of rioters who destroyed property and caused harm to those in
the area.
This is all too reminiscent of Nixon’s dirty tricks efforts,
as well as the spawn of these tricks which played out in the 2012 election by
the Republican Party—set up a right-wing, vitriolic speaker in the heart of a
liberal community, cast the issue as a freedom of speech issue, encourage thugs
to disrupt a protest (thereby denying freedom of speech to those protesting), then
blame the protestors for the disruption while crying all the while about
freedom of speech being curtailed.
This is projection at its finest, that is to say, freedom of
speech should be extended to those who agree with this administration. It is
the hallmark of the communication we are getting from the White House to date.
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