The Psychology of Fascism - The Shadow of Victim's Mentality

[Emerald]

I just got off of a coaching call with one of my clients about an hour ago. And it shined a bit of a light onto how Fascism arises in individuals... which then coalesces in widespread collective Fascist patterns.

And he brought up that he has been noticing some troubling patterns coming up in himself that he doesn't like. (Which is synchronistic because I've been thinking a lot about the topic of the underlying vulnerabilities that lead to the collective rise in Fascism, and he happened to bring up something highly relevant to my contemplations.)

The pattern he spoke about is this...

He consciously doesn't agree with racism and bigotry and never has. And he was raised in a family with liberal values.

But he finds these emotional reactions arising where he'll feel all this anger and hatred towards immigrants and the LGBTQ community and see them as engaging in victim's mentality and taking what doesn't belong to them. 

And it's creating a fair amount of resistance and cognitive dissonance because it had never been the case prior to the past several months, AND he consciously is a very kind and caring person who doesn't agree with these perspectives.

But there is a more emotional part of himself where feelings of hatred are beginning to arise and intensify in relation to groups that he didn't previously have an issue with.

And upon deeper exploration during our session, it became clear that there is a part of himself that he's been repressing that has childlike and vulnerable parts of himself that are in need to assistance and attention. It's a part of him that needs compassion and care... like a child that needs their parents to care for them and kiss their boo boos.

But because of his strong revulsion towards Victim's Mentality, he doesn't let himself ask for help and meet those needs and he represses the vulnerable parts of himself. And he doesn't let himself seek attention unless he has achieved something that people like or approve of. And he doesn't exercise any sympathy towards himself or seek for it from others.

And it is his "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality and a dedication to a kind of self-sufficient stoicism and personal responsibility and strength that causes him to gloss over the needs of this more vulnerable part of himself that needs unconditional compassion, love, and care.

And now, there are lower Shadowy expressions of this vulnerable part of him arising since he hasn't integrated his vulnerabilities in a more conscious and exalted way.

And the repressed Victim's Mentality is coming up where he is feeling victimized by the presence of these groups of people... and part of himself is reveling in the ability to relinquish personal responsibility and cast blame onto external scapegoats. And he consciously is the type of person who takes responsibility for EVERYTHING.

But this Shadowy expression of Victim's Mentality is happening specifically because he has repressed and neglected to practice self-compassion in order to avoid "playing the victim." 

It's like horse-shoe theory, where his strong revulsion towards Victim's Mentality and hyper-identification with strength and self-sufficiency has caused the Shadow of Victim's Mentality to sneak in under the radar of his consciousness as he feels like a Victim in relation to people he sees as not taking personal responsibility. And because the judgment is about the other person playing the victim and not taking responsibility, that he wasn't realizing his own Victim's mentality at play.

And upon further reflection on what came up in our meeting, there is perhaps even a deep-seated jealous drive because he feels he needs to earn every shred of support that he gets, while marginalized groups are advocating for their rights from the stand-point of rights being something that all people deserve. He only allows himself positive things through doing and earning... while advocating for human rights is all about being and an inherent sense of validity.

And I know that he isn't the only person feeling this. I've been seeing lots of people being pulled towards the siren song of the collective Shadow of Victim's Mentality and getting sucked into Fascism. And this arises as a result of a total rejection and revulsion towards Victim's Mentality. Then projecting the repressed inner Victim onto marginalized groups... and then feeling victimized in relation to these marginalized groups.

It's a common pattern. This client is just more aware than most and more willing to face his Shadows than most. 

But this is how the Shadow works. The more you push parts of yourself away with strong judgments and revulsions, the more Shadowy the expression of those parts becomes. And when people are collectively doing that, we can end up in some "human death spirals" where we end up falling into very maladaptive movements where we very well could destroy ourselves.

So, my plea to you is to be kind and compassionate towards yourself. And if you deny yourself this kindness and compassion, it will lead to a world that denies kindness and compassion to all.

So, here is a video that I made last year about "Victim's Mentality" and the opposite inverted dynamic of "Anti-Victim's Mentality Mentality."

 

[Oeaohoo]

Remember when we lived in a society and not a nursery? Make America Great Again!

Only joking… Since you are interested, let me tell you about a dream I had many years ago:

A key had come in the post. However, it wasn’t just an ordinary key: it was golden, circular and magical. The key came with a letter which said that I had to give this key to a higher authority. I was going to just take it to the local council*. However, as I was going out to do this, my mother’s radio** was on and it announced that Donald Trump was staying in my home town. Since I had to give the key to a higher authority, I decided to give it to Donald Trump. I went to the house where he was staying and when I got there the door was already open, so I just let myself in. There didn’t seem to be anybody in there, so I called out and said: “Hello? Is anybody there? I’m here to give you my key.” From behind a closed door, an authoritative, quasi-religious male voice said: “You should knock before you come in”. That door then opened and Melania Trump came out. I said: “Oh hello, I’m here to give you my key.” To which she said, angrily: “What are you talking about? What key? Get out of my house.” To which I said, pleadingly: “Oh no, it’s really important, I’ve got to give you this key.” She said, “No, no,” and our argument became more and more heated. Finally, it ended… as a wet dream with Melania Trump!

*I live in England.

**At this time, my mother used to listen to a radio show which blamed all of the world’s problems on Brexit, Trump and Putin. Naturally, I didn’t agree with this…

What do you think this means?

[Oeaohoo]

By the way, I don’t really agree with your post because a lot of the modern Right (what you call “Fascism”) is rooted in a victim mentality. The most obvious example of this is the Anti-Woke movement, in which right-wing grifters make a living whining about the latest woke cultural product. Another example is white nationalism, which bemoans the feeling of becoming a minority in one’s own land, being culturally marginalised by other groups, being left behind and looked down upon by the ”cosmopolitan” and political elite, and so on. They aren’t afraid to be victims at all; in fact, a lot of them love it…

[Emerald]

38 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

Remember when we lived in a society and not a nursery? Make America Great Again!

Only joking… Since you are interested, let me tell you about a dream I had many years ago:

A key had come in the post. However, it wasn’t just an ordinary key: it was golden, circular and magical. The key came with a letter which said that I had to give this key to a higher authority. I was going to just take it to the local council*. However, as I was going out to do this, my mother’s radio** was on and it announced that Donald Trump was staying in my home town. Since I had to give the key to a higher authority, I decided to give it to Donald Trump. I went to the house where he was staying and when I got there the door was already open, so I just let myself in. There didn’t seem to be anybody in there, so I called out and said: “Hello? Is anybody there? I’m here to give you my key.” From behind a closed door, an authoritative, quasi-religious male voice said: “You should knock before you come in”. That door then opened and Melania Trump came out. I said: “Oh hello, I’m here to give you my key.” To which she said, angrily: “What are you talking about? What key? Get out of my house.” To which I said, pleadingly: “Oh no, it’s really important, I’ve got to give you this key.” She said, “No, no,” and our argument became more and more heated. Finally, it ended… as a wet dream with Melania Trump!

*I live in England.

**At this time, my mother used to listen to a radio show which blamed all of the world’s problems on Brexit, Trump and Putin. Naturally, I didn’t agree with this…

What do you think this means?

The dream makes me think of this...

Another dynamic that makes authoritarianism run is the sense that we are not ourselves an authority over our own life. And so, we need to find some external authority figure to make decisions for us and govern our behavior.

When, we are connected to our sovereignty, we have no need of a king to make decisions for us. But if we are not connected to our sovereignty, we will look for a king.

And sovereignty over ourselves and ability for self-governance has to do with the Queen Archetype while leadership over others has to do with the King Archetype.

And if we are not integrated with the Queen's internal sovereignty, we will look to the leadership of external Kings to give up our freedoms to in hopes that they will lead and govern us... and that we may absolve ourselves of personal responsibility for our actions by just following the king's orders.

And in this dream, the key relates to your own sovereignty and freedom. And you are instructed (by some external authority (King) who wrote the letter) to give this key to a higher authority (King). And you are choosing Donald Trump to play that role in the dream.

And this is largely why Trump is popular.

He's playing the role of the big floating green head in the Wizard of Oz that claims to be Oz the Great and Powerful with absolute certainty. But of course, all kings are just the man behind the curtain. External leadership is always a game of pretend. The only real authority can be found within at the deepest depths of our personal sovereignty.

And the true King only arises within us when we integrate the Queen at the deepest of depths that it can be integrated. 

And given that you go to find the King (Donald Trump) to give your key (your freedom, power, and sovereignty) to... this could show you that you are looking for an external authority figure to submit to so that they make decisions for you. And you can relinquish your power and responsibility to so that they can be the father and you can be the child.

But when you go looking for the King (Donald Trump)... you instead find the Queen (Melania Trump).

And she angrily refuses your key as she is angry at you for disowning your sovereignty and rejecting your inner Queen.

And she's trying to kick you out of the house of power... because you are trying to find an external King archetype to relinquish your power to in the form of the key.

And the Queen (who represents your own sovereignty) rejects you and tries to throw you out of the house of personal power and sovereignty because you have kicked out your own Queen in favor of the illusion of external leadership figures.

And then you have some kind of sexual interaction with her, which likely represents integration of the Queen Archetype. And the desire is probably there because there is also a clamoring to reclaim your inner Queen (sovereignty and self-governance.)

So, I see this dream as a reflection of a tendency within yourself to look to external authority figures to follow and to submit to... and to relinquish your sovereignty, power, and responsibility to. And this is a childlike stance that comes from self-doubt and uncertainty.

And it shows you that, when you're in this frame, the Queen (your personal sovereignty and power) rejects you until you decide to integrate with this element of your Feminine side.

My advice is to watch the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy is a great representation of the sovereign Queen archetype who never gets cut off from her instincts (Toto), while the Wizard of Oz is a representation of the positive and negative sides of the King archetype as well as the powers and limitations of the King.

 

[Emerald]

40 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

By the way, I don’t really agree with your post because a lot of the modern Right (what you call “Fascism”) is rooted in a victim mentality. The most obvious example of this is the Anti-Woke movement, in which right-wing grifters make a living whining about the latest woke cultural product. Another example is white nationalism, which bemoans the feeling of becoming a minority in one’s own land, being culturally marginalised by other groups, being left behind and looked down upon by the ”cosmopolitan” and political elite, and so on. They aren’t afraid to be victims at all; in fact, a lot of them love it…

They do enjoy being the victim. But they genuinely don't recognize their victim's mentality. 

Others can see it clearly, as is always the case with the Shadow. But they do not.

It's easy to see the mote in someone else's eye, while being totally oblivious to the log in your own.

Most of these people who are falling into Fascist ways of thinking HIGHLY value personal responsibility as part of their ideology... and they believe that themselves and the in-group are the only ones taking personal responsibility.

They just don't recognize the ways that their scapegoating and grievances are a means to relinquish personal responsibility. They do not see that their finger is pointing back at them.

The Shadow operates in the unconscious this way.

[Oeaohoo]

Thanks for your interpretation!

35 minutes ago, Emerald said:

My advice is to watch the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy is a great representation of the sovereign Queen archetype who never gets cut off from her instincts (Toto), while the Wizard of Oz is a representation of the positive and negative sides of the King archetype as well as the powers and limitations of the King.

I’ve been meaning to for a long time. David Lynch loves it and I love his films.

[Schizophonia]

@Emerald Neurosis participates to the constitution of any persona, including liberal, marxists, even ecologists ; You can find studies who demonstrate that people implied in charity are more neurotic that the average.

 

People vote Trump because among other reasons mass immigration pose security and economico-cultural issues for locals including and especially for integrated descendant for past generations of latino immigrants.

Nobody, think that "it's all the fault of immigrants", lol, except maybe some retards and/or full of ego people ku kux klan member that nobody cares about.

Edited November 12 by Schizophonia

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Oeaohoo said:

America is a corpse being devoured by maggots. Republicans defend the corpse, Democrats defend the maggots.

A little tangential, but am I right to infer that your signature is referring to the corpse being the country (and its borders) and the maggots being the "problematic" immigrants (and other less virtuous citizens "not carrying their own weight")? May it also be the case that Republicans are defending a corpse because they are willing to let a "corpse" of a president (Trump is not young, nor quite fully "human") threaten the democratic values of the Founding Fathers that lies at the core of the country, draining its life force to the point where it can nearly be called a corpse? Pardon me for not chopping up my sentences. I couldn't give a fuck.

[Schizophonia]

1 hour ago, Emerald said:

The dream makes me think of this...

Another dynamic that makes authoritarianism run is the sense that we are not ourselves an authority over our own life. And so, we need to find some external authority figure to make decisions for us and govern our behavior.

When, we are connected to our sovereignty, we have no need of a king to make decisions for us. But if we are not connected to our sovereignty, we will look for a king.

And sovereignty over ourselves and ability for self-governance has to do with the Queen Archetype while leadership over others has to do with the King Archetype.

And if we are not integrated with the Queen's internal sovereignty, we will look to the leadership of external Kings to give up our freedoms to in hopes that they will lead and govern us... and that we may absolve ourselves of personal responsibility for our actions by just following the king's orders.

And in this dream, the key relates to your own sovereignty and freedom. And you are instructed (by some external authority (King) who wrote the letter) to give this key to a higher authority (King). And you are choosing Donald Trump to play that role in the dream.

And this is largely why Trump is popular.

He's playing the role of the big floating green head in the Wizard of Oz that claims to be Oz the Great and Powerful with absolute certainty. But of course, all kings are just the man behind the curtain. External leadership is always a game of pretend. The only real authority can be found within at the deepest depths of our personal sovereignty.

And the true King only arises within us when we integrate the Queen at the deepest of depths that it can be integrated. 

And given that you go to find the King (Donald Trump) to give your key (your freedom, power, and sovereignty) to... this could show you that you are looking for an external authority figure to submit to so that they make decisions for you. And you can relinquish your power and responsibility to so that they can be the father and you can be the child.

But when you go looking for the King (Donald Trump)... you instead find the Queen (Melania Trump).

And she angrily refuses your key as she is angry at you for disowning your sovereignty and rejecting your inner Queen.

And she's trying to kick you out of the house of power... because you are trying to find an external King archetype to relinquish your power to in the form of the key.

And the Queen (who represents your own sovereignty) rejects you and tries to throw you out of the house of personal power and sovereignty because you have kicked out your own Queen in favor of the illusion of external leadership figures.

And then you have some kind of sexual interaction with her, which likely represents integration of the Queen Archetype. And the desire is probably there because there is also a clamoring to reclaim your inner Queen (sovereignty and self-governance.)

So, I see this dream as a reflection of a tendency within yourself to look to external authority figures to follow and to submit to... and to relinquish your sovereignty, power, and responsibility to. And this is a childlike stance that comes from self-doubt and uncertainty.

And it shows you that, when you're in this frame, the Queen (your personal sovereignty and power) rejects you until you decide to integrate with this element of your Feminine side.

My advice is to watch the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy is a great representation of the sovereign Queen archetype who never gets cut off from her instincts (Toto), while the Wizard of Oz is a representation of the positive and negative sides of the King archetype as well as the powers and limitations of the King.

 

It's a super Jungian Dream analysis.

Is this your passion/work ? 🤔

Edited November 12 by Schizophonia

[Oeaohoo]

8 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

A little tangential, but am I right to infer that your signature is referring to the corpse being the country (and its borders) and the maggots being the "problematic" immigrants (and other less virtuous citizens "not carrying their own weight")?

Yeah. Somebody tweeted that out a while back and I thought it was an excellent metaphor. Just like a decomposing body loses its immunity and the ability to discriminate between its own cells and foreign pathogens, America has lost any sense of itself. The basic structures which make up American society are dissolving just like those of a dying body.

13 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

May it also be the case that Republicans are defending a corpse because they are willing to let a "corpse" of a president (Trump is not young, nor quite fully "human") threaten the democratic values of the Founding Fathers that lies at the core of the country, draining its life force to the point where it can nearly be called a corpse?

Well, I understand the tweet as referring to the GOP more generally. To an extent, Trump breaks that formula since part of his appeal to people disaffected with the whole system (of which there are many nowadays) is being neither a neocon nor a neoliberal, which is all one has come to expect Republicans and Democrats to be. In that way he actually is reminiscent of fascism as a “third way” outside of the dialectic presented by the system.

I also don’t believe that many people on the left in America care about the Founding Fathers or their vision. It’s just empty rhetoric, in the same way that appeals to “liberal democracy” more generally are. Modern Western society is neither liberal nor democratic, at least not in the sense that people used to understand those terms. The Founding Fathers would be tearing their hair out if they could see what America has been turned into.

It reminds me of this funny meme:

 

[Emerald]

34 minutes ago, Schizophonia said:

It's a super Jungian Dream analysis.

Is this your passion/work ? 🤔

Thank you! Yes, it is. 

I am a huge fan of Jungian depth psychology, and have incorporated dreamwork into my life and into my practice as a life coach.

[Oeaohoo]

49 minutes ago, Schizophonia said:

Neurosis participates to the constitution of any persona, including liberal, marxists, even ecologists ; You can find studies who demonstrate that people implied in charity are more neurotic that the average.

 

People vote Trump because among other reasons mass immigration pose security and economico-cultural issues for locals including and especially for integrated descendant for past generations of latino immigrants.

Nobody, think that "it's all the fault of immigrants", lol, except maybe some retards and/or full of ego people ku kux klan member that nobody cares about.

Exactly, you can psychologise anything if you want to. And of course, if you are a psychologist then you will always see the psychological aspect of things…

One can just as well say that environmentalists are projecting their mother onto Mother Earth, liberals are just turning their internal psychological drive towards freedom into a political stand, feminists are projecting their shadow onto men, or whatever else.

One chooses to psychologise as a way to reduce one’s opponents position and bolster one’s own.

[Emerald]

47 minutes ago, Schizophonia said:

@Emerald Neurosis participates to the constitution of any persona, including liberal, marxists, even ecologists ; You can find studies who demonstrate that people implied in charity are more neurotic that the average.

People vote Trump because among other reasons mass immigration pose security and economico-cultural issues for locals including and especially for integrated descendant for past generations of latino immigrants.

Nobody, think that "it's all the fault of immigrants", lol, except maybe some retards and/or full of ego people ku kux klan member that nobody cares about.

Yes, all political movements are macrocosmic expressions of individual neuroses to some degree. And this is true in any way that our politics is out of alignment with human well-being.

And one of the common neurosis-based patterns in politics (left, right, and center) is the projection of personal psychological patterns onto broad-scale macrocosmic patterns. And so, the internal psychological patterns get transferred onto large-scale geopolitical issues.

And I have said for many years now, that 80% of what happens in politics is just a collective expression of widespread collective trauma patterns that impact individuals. 

But a person need not even consciously think "It's all the fault of the immigrants" to be operating unconsciously from that belief. A person can consciously reject that notion while unconsciously being deeply influenced by it. 

The client I was mentioning was in cognitive dissonance because consciously from the more developed adult version of himself, he could see that he wasn't correct about that. But this other semi-unconscious part of himself that was operating off of a more emotionally driven and childlike part of himself, there was a genuine belief in that paradigm.

That said, there really are people who are consciously convinced that their lives would get better if they were living in an ethnostate with everyone that looked just like them. And they don't even have access to that other perspective as it just feels true for reasons that relate to their emotional state, their vulnerabilities, their general worldview and how much they operate off of the agrarian mindset, their level of critical thinking skills, and other things.

So, I wouldn't even say that someone who consciously believes that is stupid. It is in labelling these people as uniquely bad, stupid, evil, etc. that we ourselves can fall into the traps that they have fallen into.

And that's because we think "That person fell into that trap because they're dumb. But I'm smart, so that will never happen to me." OR "That person fell into the trap because they're evil. But I'm good, so that will never happen to me."

[Carl-Richard]

24 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

Yeah. Somebody tweeted that out a while back and I thought it was an excellent metaphor. Just like a decomposing body loses its immunity and the ability to discriminate between its own cells and foreign pathogens, America has lost any sense of itself. The basic structures which make up American society are dissolving just like those of a dying body.

I see. But to bring it back to the Republicans questioning the democratic establishment, this would be akin to a cancer, where the once native cells defect from the united telos of the overall organism, eventually infecting its various vital functions (institutions of power) until it dies. That's just another metaphor I thought of.
 

 

24 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

I also don’t believe that many people on the left in America care about the Founding Fathers or their vision. 

Probably more so the leftists that refuse to vote.

 

24 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

It’s just empty rhetoric, in the same way that appeals to “liberal democracy” more generally are. Modern Western society is neither liberal nor democratic, at least not in the sense that people used to understand those terms.

In what way would you say it's not democratic?

 

24 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

The Founding Fathers would be tearing their hair out if they could see what America has been turned into.

It reminds me of this funny meme:

 

😂 Good meme.

Edited November 12 by Carl-Richard

[Emerald]

5 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

Exactly, you can psychologise anything if you want to. And of course, if you are a psychologist then you will always see the psychological aspect of things…

One can just as well say that environmentalists are projecting their mother onto Mother Earth, liberals are just turning their internal psychological drive towards freedom into a political stand, feminists are projecting their shadow onto men, or whatever else.

One chooses to psychologise as a way to reduce one’s opponents position and bolster one’s own.

Certainly this perspective could be used this way.

But it's also important to recognize how people use politics as a projection screen to externalize their inner turmoils. And that's true in varying degrees of all political viewpoints.

But when it comes to patterns that don't serve human well-being or the sow chaos and hatred in the world, it is wise for us to especially be attuned to the deeper psychological vulnerabilities that make those patterns run.

When you actually address the deeper vulnerabilities in people, there is less of a tendency towards maladaptive political behaviors like violence, division, hatred, destruction, etc.

[Oeaohoo]

56 minutes ago, Emerald said:

But it's also important to recognize how people use politics as a projection screen to externalize their inner turmoils. And that's true in varying degrees of all political viewpoints.

Yes, fair enough. Though I also think that, since the system today is so invasive in all aspects of life, this line is somewhat blurred.

56 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I see. But to bring it back to the Republicans questioning the democratic establishment, this would be akin to a cancer, where the once native cells defect from the overall united telos of the overall organism, eventually infecting its various vital functions (institutions of power) until it dies.

Sure, that works. Maybe Trumpist anti-democracy is one of the cancerous growths ravaging the dying body which is America…

56 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

In what way would you say it's not democratic?

As a concrete example, here in Britain the Conservative Party were repeatedly elected on a program of reducing mass immigration to tens of thousands. Of course, they did less than nothing and immigration went on increasing. This lead people to vote for Brexit which also changed nothing. Having been in power for fourteen years, under the last two years of the Conservative government under Rishi Sunak, over 3 million people were imported into the country. This doesn’t seem very democratic to me… Probably why voter turnout was only 60% at the last election!

As to the broader point of what constitutes democracy, it’s something I need to think about more.

[Jacob Morres]

Damn. Great post

[Emerald]

3 minutes ago, Jacob Morres said:

Damn. Great post

Thank you!

[Spiritual Warfare]

[Schizophonia]

21 hours ago, Emerald said:

Thank you! Yes, it is. 

I am a huge fan of Jungian depth psychology, and have incorporated dreamwork into my life and into my practice as a life coach.

Eheh.

Some months ago i noted some dreams, sometime very detailed and enigmatic, but my tentatives to analyse them was wobbly and it was rather from a Freudian/Lacanian pov.