Ressentiment arises when indignation at injustice is coupled with sustained powerlessness and is structurally embedded within the internal logic of democracy—both as a by-product of its egalitarian ideals and as a potential force in their undoing. From a historical-sociological perspective, two formations can be distinguished in which ressentiment is most likely to emerge. The first consists of those who lack the material means or personal capacities to attain what they believe has been promised to them under democratic ideals of equality and justice: the ressentiment of those who feel left behind. The second arises among those who have lost, or fear losing, their advantages of wealth, status, and power, together with their associated identities: the ressentiment of once-dominant formations. From a psychoanalytic perspective, this paper examines the primitive dynamics inherent in ressentiment. It does so through the conceptual frameworks of perversion and destructive projective identification—mechanisms that the political style of far-right movements tends to exploit, amplify, and reinforce. These processes intensify the splitting within individuals, which simultaneously manifests as a collective splitting between parallel realities, each experienced as true by one side and as false by the other, thereby rendering the social divide increasingly resistant to integration or repair.