The Projection Project: Object Lesson

Here's a perfect little lesson in applying concepts like projection and denial to the political realm. Republicans shouting "class war" at anyone who deigns to question their class war should have been Wednesday's example, but there's another good one.

Norman Solomon has written about a perfect example, although he doesn't call it projection. In political and journalistic parlance, it's a double standard, or evidence of hypocrisy. He's writing about the response to the torture and brutal murder of two young American soldiers in Iraq:

"The story really takes us back into the 8th century, a truly barbaric world," John Burns said. He was speaking Tuesday night on the PBS "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," describing what happened to two US soldiers whose bodies had just been found. Evidently they were victims of atrocities, and no one should doubt in the slightest that the words of horror used by Burns to describe the "barbaric murders" were totally appropriate.

The problem is that Burns and his mass-media colleagues don't talk that way when the cruelties are inflicted by the US military - as if dropping bombs on civilians from thousands of feet in the air were a civilized way to terrorize and kill.

Solomon makes the appropriate points about double standard in journalism:
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Based on the available evidence from Abu Ghraib to Afghanistan to Guantanamo, anyone who claims that US foreign policy does not include torture is disingenuous or deluded. Reporters for the New York Times and other big US media outlets would not dream of publicly describing what American firepower does to Iraqi civilians as "barbaric."

But here we've also got an example of both projection and denial, and how they reinforce each other.

In this case, projection works like this: As Americans and therefore the Good Guys, the violence we do is justified and moral. Because we stand for good, we have no evil in us. But the Others are against us, they stand for evil, and they therefore are totally evil.

Therefore, they are brutal and we are not. Killing people by beheading them is shocking and evil, but killing people by blowing them apart with bombs is justified as an instrument of good, and therfore not brutal. They torture, but what we do is aggressive interrogation, and other acts justified by the ends, or because we know these people are evil.

It comes down to this, though no one will consciously admit it: we are Good, therefore EVERYTHING we do is justified, is Good. They are Evil, therefore EVERYTHING they do or say is Evil. Every reason we have for fighting them is correct. Every reason they propose for why they are fighting us is incorrect and further evidence of their Evil.

By projecting any evil within us onto our enemy, we turn them into hateful symbols, which increases our fear and hatred of them. This has all kinds of consequences, from blinding us to operational realities, to making some sort of settlement--which inevitably must occur--more difficult and farther off in time. Time that is paid for by more blood and suffering of Our people and Theirs.

The endless cycle of attack, outrage, calls for revenge, reprisal, outrage, reprisal that has become the history of the Middle East for our lifetimes is a predictable outcome. It's not the whole story, but it's part of the story.

In the Cold War, projection created an image of the Soviet Union--an evil and powerful monolith--that yearly became more detached from reality, so we were totally unprepared for the Evil Empire suddenly showing itself to be a house of cards. Even though, as Daniel Patrick Moynahan once said, any cab driver in Moscow could have told you what was coming.

By projecting outward onto somebody else this evil that's in us, we blind ourselves to its presence within us. Therefore we cannot possibly believe we do anything bad. Not us individually, not our soldiers and not our leaders, for they are all extensions of ourselves.
So anyone who questions our actions must be on the side of the evildoers. This serves the interests of some, but delusions never serve the whole for very long. Opportunities for settling differences are lost, and the longer conflict continues, the more we morally corrupt ourselves because we can't correct anything if we can't admit to doing anything wrong.

This leads to denial--we deny that we torture, we deny that we're doing such enormous violence to the people, the society and the ecosystem of Iraq. Even if this war was justified, it is unhealthy and unrealistic to deny the realities of this violence.

All of this comes from the unconscious, and because it does, we resist admitting to it. So nobody is going to admit to motivations that are so irrational. They will find ways to rationalize it.

This is where it gets tricky. Refusing to admit that your motivations are unconscious is not proof that they are unconscious, or that your reasons aren't conscious and valid. The trick is to ask yourself the question, is this reason I'm giving really the source? Especially if there is a lot of emotion. Knowing the characteristics of projection or denial helps you make that self-analysis. It helps you explore the answer to the question. It helps you be real. And it can help our political culture and society be truly "reality-based."

Apart from the application, the concepts themselves aren't that difficult, but the whole process seems well beyond the major dialogue of our society, even a century or more after these concepts became available.

But if young people begin to absorb these ideas, use them, and learn these and other skills of peace, a better world is possible.