Just my opinion:
While I can’t say that everyone doing this is projecting, generally speaking, that’s the basic definition of it. The concept is this: since everyone is a unique expression of this universe and we cannot ever really know what it’s like to be someone else, the only frame of reference you have to navigate through reality is your own perceptions and experiences. Thus, we tend to project our hopes, thoughts and fears on other people to avoid seeing our own shadow.
The primary way you see it manifest here is people crawling out of the woodworks to accuse us of mind control or occult crap, going to YouTube or TikTok to search for occult stuff to “prove that’s what we’re doing.” Truth is, secretly that’s what they’re interested in and so they project it onto us. Then they will use that as justification to perform all kinds of abuses and take the high road as if they’re being a “hero.” Doesn’t matter if you’re innocent, because the goal is to resolve an internal tension within themselves by externalizing it onto someone else.
Projection has been the cause of so much pain and death in this world. Entire groups of people slaughtered or disenfranchised or marginalized because other, more powerful groups projected their fears on the weaker groups and used that as a means to abuse them.
It’s what “cancel culture” and the obsession with doxing people is. Pure projection. The idea being “if I can destroy you, or reveal you’ve done something wrong, I can continue to hide from my shadow.”
I deal with people projecting A LOT, but my process is very simple: I simply tell them “no,” and if they continue to project, I completely cut them out of my life completely.
It is sometimes a lonely life, but it is quite peaceful.