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The mechanism of projection plays a large part in the unconscious reactions of the single individual as well as of the masses. Fenichel (1) has shown this in his paper “Psychoanalysis of Anti-Semitism.” You accuse the scapegoat, that is, the object of the projection, of your tendencies and wishes which are unbearable to your consciousness and in this way you get rid of the threatening internal pressure. After the projection has been performed you might even risk going after the realization of your wishes. You feel that they have almost lost their properties of causing anxieties.
The national socialistic newspaper “Der Stuermer” furnishes an excellent example of a projection. Its editor, Julius Streicher, was one of Hitler's closest collaborators. In this newspaper appear day after day pornographic stories about the criminal sexual life of the Jews. The articles are illustrated by crude drawings. The staff members have projected into the Jews their own phantasies, desperately similar to those of drunken brothel customers. On a somewhat higher, but, as to mechanism, very similar level is the oratory of a Hitler adherent who had been an officer in the imperial army and after his retirement had devoted his time to historical studies. He tried to convince me that the Jews had founded the Catholic church, that there was not one Pope who had not been led invisibly and most efficiently by Jewish advisors. Without knowing it the Catholic church was making the world ready for Jewish domination that inevitably would take place unless the German race would get up and fight. We find similar ideas in the books of Paul Von Lagarde and Houston Stuart Chamberlain, both being, so to speak, bibles in present-day Germany. The Germans accuse directly the Jews and more indirectly the Catholics of striving for world domination. They then claim the right to destroy them both. Of special importance in this connection are the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in which the megalomaniac wish of t