Accusing Others of What We Suppress in Ourselves

I used to write a lot of psychology in the 1990s/early 2000s, and one of the pieces I wrote was called Accusing Others of What We Suppress in Ourselves. I think, nowadays it’s probably even more relevant, particularly with the rise of social media platforms that reward performative outrage and instant moral grandstanding - with the huge influx of people on Dunning-Kruger turbo charge, caught in the cultural contagion of narcissistic virtue-signalling. This evening, I rewrote it in a truncated version for a contemporary age:

Accusing Others of What We Suppress in Ourselves
In human psychology, there's a powerful tendency called projection, where we attribute to others the very traits, desires, or faults we unconsciously recognise but refuse to accept in ourselves. This occurs because certain aspects of our personality - such as aggressive impulses, selfish motives, or sexual desires - may be seen as shameful or socially unacceptable. Rather than acknowledging the socially unacceptable traits as part of our own nature, we repress them. But repression doesn't erase them, of course – it manifests stronger, later down the line. We see them “out there” in others, and predictably react with disproportionate judgement, disgust, or moral outrage to let ourselves off the hook.  Nietzsche believed that outward moral condemnation is frequently a form of inward resentment - repressed envy or hatred - that masks one’s own weaknesses. It’s the classic sleight of hand that Jesus warns against in Matthew 7:3 - blame them so we can avoid looking at ourselves.

The digital age, with its endless scroll of curated identities and ideological echo chambers, has become a breeding ground for the most obtuse narcissistic projection in public form. The very people who shout loudest about tolerance often display the most intolerance; those who claim to defend inclusivity often simultaneously promote tribal narratives riddled with division; and those who shout the loudest about justice readily support policies that foster some of the worst injustices.

And as Dunning-Kruger meets moral theatre, those least self-aware become the most certain, their projections emboldened by mutual reinforcement from like-minded influencers. Virtue-signalling becomes the perfect camouflage for unresolved personal conflict. Rather than confronting one’s inner contradictions, the energy is offloaded onto targets of abuse and frustration - and sadly, the intellect is often outsourced too in the process. It becomes an abject failure of self-recognition - one from which I fear many young people, as they grow into maturity, may not be able to recover. Let’s consider some examples of this manifestation.

We’ll begin with the odious, skin-crawling manipulator that is Andrew Tate. Andrew Tate certainly isn’t popular because he’s wise - if you take what he says to the natural levels, you’d be faced with a pitiful life of emotional vacancy, moral dejection, and existential hollowness. The most remarkable thing about him is that he shows (which most people can see) that acquisition of wealth and material luxury is impoverishing without the presence of true virtue and courage. Even though he’s clearly right about some things, he exhibits a fragile masculinity propped up by material excess, emotional repression, and a kind of brute-force detachment from the parts of life that give life true gravitas, and the individual, true fulfilment, contentment, connection and meaning. If you pay attention, he doesn’t really teach men to be strong; he teaches them to numb themselves into caricatures of strength, mistaking domination for self-worth, hollowness for status, and unjustified confidence for truth. He’s popular because he’s a surrogate for what many young men feel but can’t face – but his whole persona is a projection shield: hyper-masculine, unfeeling, domineering, rich, sexually unconstrained. 

His tweets and videos proclaiming his own invincibility become more and more bombastic, because they are built to distract from what’s clearly buried beneath – intellectual fragility, insecurity, and a desperate hunger to matter but without many of the qualities required to have a positive impact on people (qualities that people like Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and John Lennox do have). Sure, Andrew Tate has developed quite a following – but I’ll wager that if you could delve into their minds, most of his followers don’t admire him because they’re strong; they admire him because they’re weak. He gives voice to their suppressed resentment towards women, toward modern society, toward the discomfort of being unformed in a complex world that rewards truthseeking and responsibility. His medicine isn’t just poison, it’s actually an impossible heuristic because the priority of external dominance is never the path to inner peace - it's one of the most reliable paths to inevitable psychological ruin.

Another example illustrates the same mechanism. Take the current rhetoric surrounding Israel and Gaza as another good case in point. Many left-wing activists accuse Israel or its supporters of being colonial, oppressive, and (most ridiculous of all) genocidal. And yet, in the very breath of claiming moral superiority, they often ignore or even justify acts of terrorism, authoritarian control within Gaza itself, and anti-Semitic rhetoric in their own ranks. In their faux-outrage against perceived colonialism, they’ve adopted the very mindset of dehumanisation they claim to oppose - endorsing one narrative so that opposing voices are demonised.

Or consider the right-wing obsession with ethno-nationalism, especially in its online forms – it is riddled with projection masquerading as cultural pride. The constant accusation is that immigration, multiculturalism, or globalism is diluting identity, destroying tradition, and replacing the native population. But in the most extreme cases, beneath the surface lies a deep self-loathing - of decline, of perceived cultural emptiness, of one’s own failings and mediocrity – all of which is projected outward onto “the outsider.” Rather than reckoning with how their own culture became complacent, commodified, or spiritually vacant, they offload that anxiety onto migrants or minorities. I’m not saying there are no justified concerns of mass immigration – far from it, as I outline in this blog post – but there’s no question that in the cases of the hatred of the “other”, it is often a disguised hatred of the self; of weakness, of failure, of not having lived up to the ideals they claim to defend. And so, ironically, they become shrill gatekeepers of a culture they neither embody nor understand.

Or look at the endorsement of socialism, especially among younger people. The critique is aimed at capitalism; it’s greedy, self-serving, and exploitative, they’ll tell us. And yet, many of the loudest voices championing socialism do so with a kind of moral and material entitlement that is as ugly as it is ungrateful and self-serving. Ironically, the free market is the greatest driver of human material progression the world has ever seen, yet socialists advocate policies that are economically counter-productive, detrimental to progress, and require a constant flow of resources from others to themselves, with little acknowledgement of where responsibility lies or who foots the bill. It becomes a kind of reverse extraction, couched in ungrateful, entitled language that avoids personal accountability and expresses envy and malice towards those who’ve actually taken responsibility for themselves and created value (and jobs) in society. Dependency is lauded, but it’s always someone else’s responsibility.

In climate change activism, the projection emerges in the simultaneous language of crisis and moral purity. Critics of environmental inaction are denounced as lazy-minded, ignorant and selfish - but many climate alarmists themselves live lifestyles steeped in the very consumerism they condemn - travel, tech, fashion, and other industries that quietly fuel the carbon economy. The irony would hit them square in the face if they were ever perspicacious enough to notice. That’s their narcissistic, entitled narrative; the enemy is external – the industries that everyone relies upon - and the faux-outrage, again, works to absolve the self by offloading guilt onto abstract villains, while participating in the same structures they claim to fight.

Lastly, the social justice movement falls by similar standards, especially in its most institutionalised form, and especially online or in crowds, where you’ll see some of the most despicable behaviour. It’s one of the biggest ironies in contemporary society, actually, that those whose focus is ostensibly on things like equity, fairness, and compassion are some of the most squalid agents in society. Its methods usually involve ruthless division, ostracism, public shaming, mob mentalities, deplatforming and a perverse claim to victimhood that’s weaponised with hostility. But, again, the fight against the so-called bigoted, intolerant, or oppressive external forces are battles against what they suppress within themselves. The means by which this ‘justice’ is called for or enacted frequently reflect the very dynamics of oppression it aims to dismantle, which is silencing, exclusion, and social control - fighting against perceived oppression while wielding power in ways that humiliate and dominate. If you want to see moral sadism, cloaked in righteousness, go to a social justice event (as I have several times before, to try to get the measure of them).

The upshot is, when you watch how people behave – be alert to the tendency to accuse others of what we suppress in ourselves – and we mustn’t preclude ourselves from this evaluation either. In a world now where anyone turning on their phone or keyboard can be heard on multiple platforms, projection has become a cultural epidemic. And I do genuinely believe (and fear) that in this era of curated identities, the capacity for wise self-recognition is becoming more and more endangered.