Click here for Exit the Cuckoo's Nest's posting standards and aims. How do you "fight hate" without feeding it? Answer: You can'tThe very notion is absurd—and dangerous
With the world collapsing into genocidal rage (it isn’t just the Zionists), we often read, see and/or hear people holding forth on the necessity of “fighting hate,” whether it’s (white) racism, anti-semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia or whatever other animus is making news. Faced with such “hate” (since what’s called “hate” is, often, really not), we must, we’re told repeatedly, do all we can to “fight” it (as in the strange command, “Stop Asian hate”). Well, great. We surely should (somehow) oppose the sort of hate that’s breaking out all over, in today’s equivalents of lynchings, pogroms and crusades, as well as everyday discrimination, verbal and/or physical assaults and any other anti-social vitriol. But how exactly do we fight it, without feeding it (in others and ourselves)?Here’s how people have been trying to “fight hate”: “Calling it out”Ex-NY Times editor says he was shamed by HR, colleagues for saying he liked Chick-fil-A during orientation: ‘They hate gay people’February 26, 2024 https://nypost.com/2024/02/26/ California family sue school over 'ridiculous' decision to suspend their son from football team because they called his 'war paint' - blackfaceJanuary 18, 2024
How does it “fight hate” to denounce what people like to call “the haters”? Let’s skip, for now, the problem of that epithet being widely misapplied to folks who are not “hateful” in the least—the same problem that we often have with “hate speech,” which is often actually a dissident or taboo utterance devoid of hate (as in the two cases cited just above). Focusing on genuinely hateful people, whether it’s blacks, Jews, Muslims, gays or (let’s be honest) rural whites, or Catholics, whom they loathe, how does it mitigate or quell that hate to “call it out”? The fact is that it doesn’t—on the contrary: “Calling out” such haters is as likely to make them less hateful as fat-shaming the obese could get them to slim down. Ranting at “the haters” for their hatefulness can only heighten that hostility—as is now happening, big-time, over Trump and his supporters, every “liberal” or “progressive” out there sanctimoniously blasting them for their “hate speech,” as if such “virtuous” condemnation can do anything but make its target angrier—and, crucially, as if such condemnation, all too often, weren’t itself as hateful as its object; Joe Scarborough, Keith Olbermann, Jimmy Kimmel, AOC, Robert Reich and Rachel Maddow (just to name a handful) don’t say hateful things?
Such zealots (all of them “vaccinated,” maybe?) are apparently unconscious of their own belligerence, since what they mean by “hate,” or “hate speech,” is their enemy’s aggression (real of imaginary), not their own. Such unawareness is especially egregious among CRT zealots and others (like Spike Lee) who hold that “black people” can’t be racists (since racism is “systemic,” as in part of the “white system”), and Zionists who claim that they themselves can’t possibly be perpetrating or supporting genocide, that having been inflicted just on Jews. WNBA great says 'Black people can't be racist' as she pushes back on criticism over Caitlin Clark remarksFebruary 28, 2024 St Andrews University rector urged to apologise over Israel 'genocide' claimNovember 25, 2023 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk- We could (and I may well) devote a separate post to all the variants of non-white racism, and still another post to Zionist emulation of the Nazis (as I’m allowed to say, having lost a lot family in the Holocaust). (I ask those “haters” whom that latter clause infuriates to try to hold their fire until I deal at length, directly, with that subject.) “Protest it”This is the collective version of denunciation, targeting not just expressions of (white) racism and Zionist aggression, but “climate change” and other bugaboos as well. Such demonstrations often are (let me be blunt) too stupid to do any good at all—such as those protestors who fling paint at famous paintings, glue themselves to roadways to block traffic during rush hour, dump red powder on the Constitution at the National Archives, and otherwise indulge themselves to no good end. Even if “the science” on “climate change” were “settled” (which it certainly is not), how could such infantile displays move anyone to agitate for “net zero carbon”? And even if it could (which it can’t), what could such newbie agitators do to end the use of fossil fuels? And as for “protests” against “hate,” or against the supreme hatefulness of military massacre (as in Gaza), how could they possibly succeed? The notion that big protests will effect a ceasefire in Gaza (which I whole-heartedly, and even desperately, support) is based on the weary misconception that the student protests in the Sixties and the early Seventies (protests that I joined whenever possible) did much to stop the epic military massacre in Vietnam. In fact, such protests tended only to piss people off—even some who thought the war should end. What made that war impossible to carry on was the intolerable casualty rate among Americans, along with the catastrophic breakdown of morale among out troops (some of which collapse might be deemed anarchic “protest” of a sort). Certainly those anti-war protests (which ended once Nixon et al. shrewdly stopped the draft) did nothing to rein in the US war machine, or curb the warlike zeal of its top managers, whether military or civilian, or the defense contractors profiting from all the slaughter. In any case, to “fight hate” by protesting it en masse is ludicrous, since those who thus show up to yell and shake their fists against “the haters” are quite obviously mobilized for war—as we have seen repeatedly with Antifa, which is not a leftist group opposing “fascist” haters, but a faux-leftist reflection of those haters, and therefore utterly incapable of lessening the “hate” that they appear to “fight,” since they are full of it themselves (which makes it more than likely that Antifa is a state charade, devised to deepen our divisions by enflaming hate across the board). CensorshipFor some time now, and especially since 2020, dissident Americans and citizens of other “democratic” countries have been variously silenced—fired, expelled, delicensed, censured, denied service and/or (especially) censored outright—for questioning or contradicting nearly any winning propaganda narrative, to the point that the free speech clause of the First Amendment, and the clause on freedom of the press, are both dead letters (nor are such freedoms now denied routinely only in America). While much of this repression is directed at “disinformation” (now a fascistic euphemism for the truth), just as much of it is aimed at “hate speech,” whether the speech in question is hate speech or not. Some of it is only dissident opinion, while other such verboten speech is biased and/or downright hostile, though not all such speech is actually provocative of violence or discrimination. Medical center warns it may deny care to patients making ‘offensive comments’ about race, gender of staffJanuary 19, 2024 https://nypost.com/2024/01/19/ NPR reporter fired for stand-up comedy routine gets reinstatedFebruary 3, 2024 Jad Sleiman, a radio reporter for the National Public Radio affiliate in Philadelphia, has been reinstated to his position after being fired for a comedy routine deemed inappropriate by his employer. Sleiman, 34, is to be fully reinstated to his position with WHYY after an arbitrator determined that, while the bits posted to social media could be interpreted as “inflammatory,” the organization “rushed to judgment” in its decision to terminate him. The issue began when executives at WHYY discovered clips of Sleiman’s stand-up comedy routine posted on his personal social media account. The routine included jokes about the attractiveness of women and the 9/11 hijackers, among other controversial topics. Roger Waters dropped by BMG over Israel commentsJanuary 30, 2024 https://www.theguardian.com/ Peer suspended by housing association for criticising HamasFebruary 19, 2024 https://news.yahoo.com/peer- Virginia high school teacher ‘not returning’ to work after Israel-Gaza ‘genocide’ rantFebruary 29, 2024 Barnard bans dorm room door decorations after lawsuit claims rampant antisemitism, aims to stop ‘isolating different views’February 26, 2024 Tube driver disciplined over pro-Palestinian chantJanuary 17, 2024 A Tube driver has faced disciplinary action after he led pro-Palestinian chants on a London Underground train, Transport for London (TfL) said. It happened on 21 October, a day when about 100,000 protesteers took part in a pro-Palestinian demonstration. In footage posted online, the words "free, free" could be heard coming from the train's speaker system and some passengers responded "Palestine" - a popular chant at protests. TfL said the driver had apologised. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk- Fury after Metropolitan Police officers forcibly remove anti-Hamas protester from Palestine demo outside Israeli Embassy after mob attacked him for calling jihadi group 'terrorists'February 18, 2024 Jewish Rutgers law student could be expelled for exposing antisemitism: lawsuitJanuary 2, 2024 Universities take action against pro-Israel faculty for inflammatory speech about Israel-Hamas warDecember 1, 2023 Utah Jazz told rabbis to remove 'I'm a Jew and I'm proud' signs during game involving Kyrie IrvingJanuary 3, 2024 Feds to investigate Teaneck, NJ, school district where students held pro-Palestinian walkoutJanuary 11, 2024 Sage Steele: ESPN told me to stop tweeting about trans swimmer Lia ThomasDecember 27, 2023 These are but a few of the dozens of such items in my bulging archive of reports of the now-widespread denial of free speech in the US and elsewhere. Time was when Americans felt free to speak their minds—especially after the Cold War, which made it dangerous to sound (somehow) “communistic.” Following that thaw, (real) liberals often stood up for the precious principle that speech can’t be suppressed or punished just because it might make somebody “uncomfortable”—a principle that was dramatically affirmed in 1977, when the ACLU of Illinois defended the right of Nazis to hold a provocative march in Skokie, home to hundreds of Holocaust survivors. That ACLU has long since morphed into a propaganda mill for “woke” infringements of our free speech rights, as all too many of our fellow-citizens have turned against the sort of candid language long used by artists, satirists and activists to tell hard truths about ourselves—a sort of tactical discomfiture deliberately inflicted on their audience by the likes of Mark Twain, Dick Gregory, Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce and Joan Rivers: a tradition that Dave Chapelle and Ricky Gervais have managed to perpetuate against the flood-tide of mob indignation.
 Americans, in other words, have (catastrophically) abjured the old Voltarean assertion of free speech—“I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”—in favor of the prissy plaint that “Sticks and stones may break my bones,/ But words can HURT MY FEELINGS!” Thus the USA feels ever more like those authoritarian societies where you can go to prison for “offensive” language: British tourist facing 3 months in Dubai prison after “using very bad language” with airport staffDecember 5, 2023 In any case, such rampant censorship is, to put it mildly, a preposterous way to “fight hate,” since it’s not only certain to intensify the hate (if any) in question, but it also bolsters hateful types with the grandiose illusion that their statements are taboo because they’re true. ProsecutionOf all the means of “fighting hate,” this is the most drastic, and most dangerous, since it takes the all-important power of counter-argument away from We the People, and has the state take care of it. In this way, We the People, both in the US and throughout the West, are following the lead of Germany, which long sought to “fight hate” by outlawing Nazi thoughts and images—much as the Nazis made it a criminal offense to criticize the Fuehrer or the NSDAP. Recently this way of “fighting hate” reached its reductio ad absurdum with the federal prosecution (and, thank God, acquittal) of C.J. Hopkins, for his satiric use of the swastika on the cover of his book The Rise of the New Normal Reich, which cleverly harks back to William L. Shirer’s classic The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, that swastika—superimposed on a face-mask— quite obviously meant as a critique of the totalitarian dimension of the “COVID measures” forced on nearly all humanity.
That the authorities could treat that obvious satiric shot as an attempt to propagate the Nazi creed is both an indication of how (forgive me) dumb they are, and a staggering example of how perilous it is to let the state adjudicate such matters; for the state could not care less about “inclusion” or “diversity” or “tolerance,” fixated, as it is, on growing its own power. The only proper way to “fight hate” or “misinformation” is to let the people hash it out, as the Framers clearly understood, and as Norman Rockwell showed in his famous painting “Freedom of Speech,” a wartime affirmation of the sort of open democratic discourse we were (said to be) fighting for:
Certainly (real) “hate speech” is foul; but prosecuting it—to make the point again—can’t “fight” the hate in question, any more than you can douse a fire with gasoline, while putting all dissident expression at grave risk. A trial can set the record straight, as to the truth or untruth of a hateful lie, as happened with the Berne Trial in the early Thirties, where it was proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was, in fact, a forgery who claims were variously plagiarized and twisted to promote the Nazis’ war against the Jews. But there is no such edifying purpose to the trials of “hate speech” taking place today, since their sole purpose is to chill—and thereby kill—free speech, so that the state, and its affiliated institutions, can dictate not just what’s “hateful” but what’s “true,” J.K. Rowling Reported To Police By Former ‘Big Brother’ Contestant Over “Transphobia”; Rowling Says She Has Harassment Claim Against PresenterMarch 7, 2024 https://deadline.com/2024/03/ Man sentenced for federal hate crimes against Idaho LGBTQ+ communityNovember 2, 2023 Former Obama administration official arrested after video shows Islamophobic language spewed at food vendorNovember 23, 2024 https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/ Finnish parliamentarian found not guilty of ‘hate speech’ for Bible tweet, other expressionsNovember 14, 2023 Iowa court affirms hate crime conviction of man who left anti-gay notes at homes with rainbow flagsNovember 23, 2023 https://apnews.com/article/ The problem of such rampant prosecution is twofold—just as it was with the (second) Red Scare, when, from 1947 to 1960 (and beyond), “communists” were targeted as “anti-vaxxers” are today. First, many smeared as “commies” were not communists, but liberals, labor activists, anti-Soviet socialists and others on or toward the left; nor, secondly, for all the “patriotic” bull used to promote it, persecuting those who actually were communists was a betrayal of the Bill of Rights—some might even call it “un-American”—since punishing a dissident belief, interest or world-view, or any peaceful effort to promote it, was a milder version of the very state repression it was said to “fight.” While espionage and sabotage are crimes, one’s thoughts, beliefs and feelings are one’s own, the democratic state enjoying no right to police them. Like those non-communists—and even anti-communists—attacked as “communists” back then, those tried for “hate speech” nowadays are often “guilty” not, in fact, of any animus against this group or that (as if that, in itself, were criminal), but of speaking out against some winning propaganda narrative. Thus the charge of bigotry effectively wipes out dissent, however just and rational it may be. Charge Israel with massacres, and you’re an “anti-Semite” (or “self-hating Jew”); object to the mythology of Critical Race Theory, or the lavish cult of BLM, or the riots in its wake, and you’re a “racist”; question the “science” of transgenderism—or the policy of housing born males in women’s prisons, or letting them compete as “female” athletes; or the highly profitable racket of enabling children to “transition”—and you’re “transphobic”; decry the use of our tax dollars to maintain the (so-called) migrants’ “free” new lives, without expecting anything from them (not even knowing the Constitution, or obeying the law), and you’re “xenophobic.” In short, all such “liberal” counter-strikes are variations on the charge that any criticism is a form of “hate.” And yet, just as, during the Cold War, there certainly were communists who served the Kremlin (though that commitment varied), so (of course) are there now countless people—multitudes, in fact—who simply hate the Other, whichever that might be, and vent that hate through issues of the day. Thus, to some extent, the Zionists have a point, since all too many who purport to be “pro-Palestinian” actually could not care less about those people, but simply hate “the Jews”—just as the screaming heads at MSNBC are right, to some extent, about the racist edge of Trump’s appeal, the xenophobic aspect of the anti-“migrant” backlash, the murderous hostility against transgender people, and so on. Now that the two blocs have largely split apart, “liberals” and Zionists exaggerate such hate so that dissent is literally unspeakable, lest you, for disbelieving the official propaganda narrative, and pointing to the evidence of some state crime, are smeared and harried as a criminal yourself./ Thus such rampant prosecution, along with all the censorship, effectively repeals the First Amendment. What else does it accomplish? Does it, or can it, do anything at all to help “fight hate”? No one in this nominal democracy should have to be informed that hate per se is not a crime, but an emotion, and (of course) an all-too-human one at that. You have every right to feel however you may feel about the Other, whichever it may be. Whites have as much right not to like black, brown and/or yellow people as the latter have to “hate” the former—and they all have every right to vent it, too, unless they’re actually inciting violence. Far from “fighting hate,” in fact, such punishment just drives it underground, and makes it more intense; whereas the only way we can “fight hate” is enable us to talk about it openly, which means we have to let it have its say, so that others can then answer it, not just by barking at it—which also only makes it worse—but by correcting its simplistic premises; providing the essential history that the “haters” never learned, or want us not to know; enabling us to take that crucial walk in Others’ shoes; explaining how that hate helps hurt us all, by benefiting our real enemies; and otherwise responding in a way that won’t just make things worse. Here it may relevant to quote this famous passage from John Milton’s Areopagitica, opposing censorship: I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. In short, we can’t “fight hate,” or fight for truth, without free argument, which will, necessarily, “offend” somebody, if not everybody (especially at first). To have the state decide what’s “hateful” and what isn’t, and/or take on the all-important task of telling truth from lie, is to empower it just as the Nazis and the Bolsheviks both did—both of them having forged mass movements, driven by the same ferocious animus that we now see all around us in this country, We the People having been so brilliantly manipulated into a new civil war between two continental lynch mobs, chanting hatefully—and, therefore, impossibly—against the Other’s “hate.” |
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