"Shadow projection relies on dehumanizing the recipient of the projection through seeing the worst in them, which justifies hatred, oppression, violence—even genocide—against those perceived as “the other.”
Our leaders can—and often do—manipulate our unconscious propensity to project the shadow outside of ourselves to feed their dreams of power. Manipulating the shadow projections of the masses is one of the most powerful tools of collective mind control used by the power elite. Collective shadow projection is the unmediated acting out of the darkest aspects of the shadow in an expedient and politically correct form that reinforces one’s group identity in opposition to some other group that is vilified. War—be it between people, nations, or within our own psyche—is the result. Jungian analyst and scholar Erich Neumann writes, “No war can be waged unless the enemy can be converted into the carrier of a shadow projection.”
