Supplying Hatred

Writing about web page https://www.facebook.com/groups/2358386395/

It all began with this:

The image originated on a facebook page called “I hate David Cameron.” Then it was shared around until one of my friends liked it. So, on Christmas Day in the evening, it appeared on my facebook home page.

Things like this present me with a social dilemma. I want to keep facebook for friends and family and so I try to stay off politics. However, others don’t. When something like this pops up, I want to respond. Mostly I don’t, but I can’t help thinking to myself that nasty things take over the internet when nobody speaks up against them. So, from time to time I make an exception. This was one of those times. I waited until the original posting had some likes and approving comments and then I stuck my oar in.

Here’s how it went. The characters other than me are F (my friend), FOF (friend of my friend), and other random people whom I’ve labelled X, Y, and so on.

F and 11 others like this.

Comments

X: I disagree. He is not smeling of roses by any means, to put my views politely, but Thatcher was even worse! (26 December at 13:21)

FOF: She's where it all started in the UK. (26 December at 13:40)

X: For our generation, for sure. (26 December at 13:41)

FOF: And RayGun in the USA. (26 December at 14:04)

Y: He does have one of those faces you'd like to slap. Over and over and over and... (26 December at 14:08)

Y: Cameron is still Thatcher in drag (26 December at 14:09)

Z: Thatcher / Cameron. Its a close-run thing. But be prepared for PM Osborne. We have seen nothing yet, I'm afraid (26 December at 15:40)

Me: A shame that the hate speech factory could not observe even a Christmas truce. (26 December at 17:43)

FOF: I don't think that Cameron et al stop for Christmas. (27 December at 02:25)

Me: Yes, but that's not the point. The point is that it shouldn't be normal to spread hatred of anyone for what they are, for their colour or religion or politics or whatever. At Christmas or any other time. (27 December at 12:21)

Z: It should not be normal to blame the previous government for everything. Soon the floods will be Labour's fault, to the Tories. (28 December at 20:14)

FOF: Perhaps I'm not a Christian. (29 December at 13:08)

FOF: or perhaps I am. Would Christ have stopped admonishing wrongdoers just because it was a particular date ... a particular time of year? ... 'Oh. I'd better not throw the moneylenders out of the temple today because it's Channukah.'? (29 December at 13:12)

Me: That's not the point (again). Criticize all you want, but spreading personal hatred of the people you disagree with is wrong. You don't have to be a Christian to know wrong from right, any time of the year. (29 December at 15:29)

FOF: Sorry Mark, no, the statement is not a statement of hate. It is a statement regarding David Cameron and an opinion about him which is only challengeable on grounds of accuracy. The timing of the statement is irrelevant, Christmas, Holi, Purim....etc. (29 December at 15:45)

Me: Now you're being disingenuous. If you were just trying to educate us,, you'd share your sources (and you'd explain how we know how many people hated the prime minister before opinion surveys existed). That's not how it is. You have a partisan goal, which is to push the idea that Cameron is uniquely hated and the idea that political hatred is OK. (29 December at 20:45)

That’s where the conversation stands today.

Just to be clear on a couple of points: First, I’ve got no objection to political commentary, to discussing a politician’s character, or to strong feelings. It’s at the spreading of hatred that I draw the line. I draw it there for both moral and philosophical reasons. The expression of hatred against a person or a group amounts to expelling them from our moral community. It's a step on the road to collective violence.

Hate speech has interested me since I read Ed Glaser’s classic Political economy of hatred in the QJE (2005). Glaser describes a market for hatred. In the market there is a demand and a supply. The demand is stimulated when a society experiences a collective setback and demands explanation. The merchants of hatred are those that identify scapegoats and offer them as objects of hatred. The story often has a bad ending.

One of the interesting things about social media is that it becomes fairly easy to trace the supply chain back through the intermediaries to the originators of the supply of hatred.

Of course there are much worse examples than this one, especially where the victim does not have the social defences of a David Cameron. I picked this one only because it came up between friends.

And second, Robert Walpole was prime minister in the eighteenth century. But what’s a couple of centuries among friends?

A happy, hate-free New Year to my readers.

Mark Harrison : 01 Jan 2016 08:00 |  Tags: Politics |  Comments (2) |  Report a problem