Give Hate a Chance

You don’t have to like anything

“We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes.”

– Paul Laurence Dunbar

I’ve been ruminating on hate a lot recently.

We live in a culture where half the human experience is ruthlessly suppressed. You are scarcely allowed to express how you truly feel about something if it’s negative.

This is especially true in Canada, the Anglosphere at large, and to a lesser extent, Western Europe. Our good-natured politeness and emphasis on respectability, once reserved for better times and better people, have mutated into something else. For many, it serves as an excuse for avoiding necessary confrontation with individuals, groups, concepts, ideas, and anything under the sun. We suppress our true, visceral feelings every day. We give the benefit of the doubt to things we hate, requiring external validation for it to be acceptable. Today, it’s ‘love and light’ faux gurus all over social media. Some call it toxic positivity. Twenty years ago, there was the psyop of ‘World Music.’ This was Neo-hippie garbage, commercialized and packaged for boomers to gaslight their social circles. Nobody remembers this music, other than your school librarian who allegedly loved Africa and listened to it when you and the class were allowed your two minutes’of regime-approved book reading away from the buzzing fluorescent light.

Every day you are bombarded with meaningless, anti-negativity slogans like ‘live, laugh, love’ and ‘positive vibes only.’ Effeminate, impotent self-affirmation. Infinite quotes from figures like Nelson Mandela (“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”), or MLK, dedicated to the vilification of hate or anger (“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”). They’ve been quoted innumerable times over decades as anti-hate preachers of toothless ‘love.’ These are among the ancient saints of people today. People who express dislike for movies, music, TV shows, concerts, and unacceptable public behaviours are deemed ‘haters.’ Unhappy your favourite game franchise caught the eye of the masses, and now the marketers for the developer want to milk them of every last penny? The self-policing, soft-totalitarian environment denies you the right to feel the most basic of human emotions and has been around for a long time.

If you were born in the last forty years, you were told going to school to sit still, shut up, and listen. You are told it’s rude to point out hypocrisy, to question authority, to defy the mantra of the day. The first job you end up working requires you to eat shit with a smile as an alcoholic, divorced middle-aged father of two who lost custody of his kids takes out his impotent anger on you or your friends. He’s taking out his frustration on you because he won’t take his frustration out around the people he knows. He has to maintain the same repulsively fake air of respectability, politeness, and happiness they force onto him. They call it the ‘gold standard’ and ‘service with a smile.’ The boomers set up this service-sector wage slave economy after they gutted manufacturing and impoverished millions. Anyone from retail, to fast food, hospitality, and tourism has to deal with this. Ex-service workers treat service workers with respect and dignity, even if they’re frustrated because they know how it feels. The corporate culture of these places, originating from the values of our polite society, would subject us all to emotional cuckoldry outside of work. You make an off-colour joke at the office to your female colleague and sweat bullets for a week waiting for the HR write-up, or your two weeks’ notice if you’re unlucky. Walking on eggshells all day, every day, as the fat, disgusting, useless slob of a blue-haired alphabet person with a TikTok dedicated to building disability ramps for all buildings in the city waits for an opportunity to pounce on you. They will ruin your life and masturbate to it. You hate her with every fibre of your being, but you won’t say anything as you walk out.

Anglo culture is funny

From the States to Canada, from Down Under to Kiwiland and to Britain, we require social permission to do things. We need permission to protest (we have to see others protesting), we need permission to speak the truth (when we see other people trash-talk, we can join in and express disgust), and we need permission to steal food, but we tend not to start it. We feign politeness, kindness, and concern for people we don’t care about. We refuse to take the pastry sitting on the plate until someone else offers, and when we offer, we take no more than one. When you greet someone you know, you hit them with a ‘how are ya?’, they throw you a ‘not too bad, you?’ and you keep walking. If you’re not close, you don’t give a shit about their day and vice versa. Foreigners, rightly dislike this. They correctly identify this as confusing, and dishonest behaviour, but it is what it is. People without a ride to and from work will make endless inferences about how awful it’ll be to walk home in the rain, instead of just being direct. We offer to pay for meals, knowing we’ll be rebuffed as someone insists on splitting the bill. We allow people an out when organizing plans, ending a request to hang out with ‘if you feel like it’ or ‘if you’re not busy.’ When we fire employees, we facetiously tell them we’d rather they resign (if only because they can’t claim Employment Insurance). Many of these are common courtesies to us. Unfortunately, the Anglosphere is woefully unequipped to deal with people and cultures who assert their interests aggressively, especially through violence. The only demographic this doesn’t apply to is the working class and underclass, but even that has changed. I once worked construction. The big, bad foreman called a general assembly on the job site because someone wrote ‘nigger’ in the porta-potty, and as a big, tough, blue-collar conservative man, he wasn’t going to tolerate racism on his job site because he ‘didn’t see race.’ The individual who made the complaint was a sub-contractor. The fat wife of the head painter with a pink hard hat, angrily writing snappy #girlboss comebacks in permanent marker to the trash-talking in the John until she discovered the evil magic word that brought her to tears. It was later revealed, the Indigenous labourer wrote it, who didn’t get fired.

We’ve enjoyed a good-natured, safe culture for such a long time that we’ve forgotten how to express ourselves, going as far as to stamp out anything unpleasant. We speak in allegories, in euphemisms and metaphors. Terminal politeness has paved the way for dishonesty. Our fear, anger, rage, hatred, sadness, and disgust are not to be expressed, and if they are, it has to be funnelled to acceptable targets. You’re allowed to hate high taxes, high cost of living, high gas or food prices, wealth inequality. I sincerely don’t want to make the suppression of basic human emotions a political subject, as this is beyond and supersedes it, but unfortunately, it does manifest this way in day-to-day life. The redirection and suppression of anger and hate is intricately tied to the New Left. You’re allowed to hate low-hanging fruit like ‘racism,’ ‘sexism,’ ‘homophobia,’ ‘transphobia,’ ‘Islamophobia,’ fascism, communism, ‘politicians,’ sports teams, and mouthy MMA fighters. People print edgy shirts that say ‘Fuck Cancer,’ with a big fat middle finger to show your peers how tough they are.

Most of this is a performative substitution for hating individuals, ethnic, cultural, racial, and religious groups because in an alleged liberal democracy, you’re only allowed to be angry if it doesn’t ‘infringe’ on a group’s happiness, right down to the granular individual. Historically, the hatred of haters in these categories is rarely unjustified. Such was the case in times of war, famine, conflict or upheaval in general. You are not allowed to hate the people who hate you, are open about hating you, laugh and jeer about your dispossession, your collective suffering, your disenfranchisement, and increasing poverty, your lack of opportunities. You are not allowed to hate unelected managerial bureaucrats bribed with the most job stability, protective unions, the best benefits, and most generous vacations, who make or break the policies of ostensibly elected governments because this is a conspiracy. You don’t work hard enough; you’re just bitter. Oh, they’re doing better than you? It’s just all their hard work, bigot.

Cancel culture, though it is dying down now, was the peak of this emotional blackmail. As I write this today, that student at Ole Miss in the U.S., who mimicked a gorilla towards an obese black woman filming him at a protest, has been doxxed and kicked out of his fraternity. The very same people who ‘stand against hate’ hate you viscerally. That’s the irony. For the first time since the Second World War, it is socially acceptable to hate Jews, but mostly just because they’re ‘white, western colonizers’ like Ytpipo when they conquered North America, and not because the Jewish Republican Lobby, the ADL, SPLC, or CAHN, or for example the Bronsteins are extremely powerful ethnic interest groups in North American society. Women are only allowed to hate white men. The ‘man vs bear’ question exploding on social media is a reflection of this because statistically, men in general may be marginally more likely to be dangerous, the truth is that non-white men are leagues more dangerous. Women want to signal compassion and also their virtue, but when signalling virtue involves punching down, to oppressed categories they are between a rock and a hard place, so they redirect their criticism upwards to generic ‘men,’ who are mostly white. People tell you ‘just go outside,’ ‘log off,’ ‘work out,’ ‘eat better,’ ‘sleep more.’ All of these are valid solutions, and will help a great majority of people for whom these are the causes of their low moods. The thing is, they should be taking care of themselves anyway. You shouldn’t be looking at self-improvement as an antidote for your unhappiness (wash your penis, bucko), because chances are the hate, anger, and rage you feel is real. It’s not just ‘chemicals in your head’ that you simply need to ‘fix,’ even if the over-pathologizing Regime acolytes gaslight the public into believing it.

“Anyone can become angry — that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way — this is not easy.”

~ Aristotle

Make no mistake, there are endless stories and metaphors, of the destruction that hatred can cause. Hatred is like a slow-burning fire. It’s not healthy to be hateful all the time. What makes it different from anger are its seething intensity and the potential to last long after the object of the hate ceases to exist, or even before it’s appropriate. Stories like Herman Melville’s Moby Dick are cautionary tales. Captain Ahab dies when he finally squares up with the white whale, Moby Dick, which he has obsessively hunted throughout the book. Ahab’s death is marked by a mix of irony and poetic justice. As the Pequod encounters Moby Dick for the final time, Ahab throws a harpoon at the whale, but the rope of the harpoon gets tangled around his neck. When Moby Dick swims away, Ahab is pulled overboard by the line and disappears into the sea. Poseidon laughs as he’s dragged down by the beast he sought to kill. Ahab’s destructive obsession had fatal consequences.

Homer, in the holy Iliad, says, “Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilles that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.” Achilles’ own grudge against King Agamemnon for stealing his love and warbride, Briseis, cost the Greeks countless lives during their siege of Troy. He refused to fight after being slighted, and Hector nearly torched their great ships in a Trojan victory. In Ásatrú religion, the death of Baldr, the god of light and purity, is a direct result of Loki’s hatred and jealousy. Loki’s actions, driven by spite, led to the tragic death of Baldr with a mistletoe spear, the only thing that could harm him. This event triggered the onset of Ragnarök, the doom of the gods and the end of the cosmos as foretold in Germanic belief. In the Christian Old Testament (1 Samuel 18-31), King Saul’s jealousy and hatred towards David, who was favoured by the people and seen as a more suitable king, led Saul to repeatedly attempt to kill him. Saul’s obsession consumed him, affecting his reign and leading to his eventual downfall and death, showing us how hatred can destroy from within. In Celtic religion, during The Second Battle of Mag Tuired between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomorians, particularly notable was the enmity between the king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, Nuada, and the Fomorian king Balor. This battle, while not solely about personal vengeance, involved themes of resistance against oppression and the destructive consequences of prolonged hatred and conflict. The battle resulted in heavy casualties on both sides, emphasizing the high cost of enduring conflicts.

The takeaway from all of these examples is that if left totally unchecked, if allowed to fester and spread, hatred can destroy us all. It doesn’t matter how justified or righteous your cause. There is a threshold where, if passed, there are diminishing returns. Every high culture and heroic society has acknowledged this.

Step into my office, I work in the Hater building.

I am aware of the damage hatred can cause; I’m simply making the argument that it’s a necessary force, a power worth tapping into. I am demonstrating that there are clear risks to giving in to hatred, yet I am a hatred enjoyer. You might even call me a hate connoisseur if you will, a hate advocate. I wake up in the morning and embrace the je ne sais quoi of hate. The joie de vivre of hate. I understand the apprehension people have when embracing anger and hate. I believe in this world where everything is simulacra, I’d rather feel hate than fake my emotions.

Hatred is what you feel when you lose a job for arbitrary reasons. It’s what you feel when you’re cheated on and broken up with. It’s the force that drags your sorry feet to the gym. Hatred is the force you feel when your best friend betrays you, or when somebody cheats in a competition and you lose because of it. The defence of a broken heart, the virile response to injustice. It’s what you feel when lying on your application for college or university, stating you’re brown, results in preferential admission. It’s what you feel when everyone 35 and under is not going to own land or property when the majority of women will be middle-aged and childless by 2030. Hate allows you fight back against those who would do you harm. I don’t want to make this about grievances though because there’s another element to this. It’s the animating force of Themis, the great Titaness, and her sword, thirsty for righteous vengeance. Hatred allowed the French to rally around Joan D’Arc when the Burgundians burnt her alive, and England nearly conquered that entire country. Hatred powered Charles Martel when he beat back the Moors at Tours. Boadicea rose an army of allegedly 300,000 against the Romans when her husband died, she as betrayed, her daughters were beaten and raped by their occupiers, and their Iceni kingdom annexed by the Empire. Hate is neither here nor there. It is a destructive force, surely, but not evil. There is no love without hate.

You may have logical reasons for that feeling in your gut. You know the one I’m talking about. It makes you scowl and squint. When your colleagues and yourself are roped into a meeting at work to learn about the fun new ways you’re all about to be micromanaged. When you’re in the theatre and somebody yells at the screen or talks to the characters.

You’re not safe to express your visceral discontent though. Somebody will always come at you. In haste and indignant fervour, you always move to explain yourself.

You can explain crime statistics until you’re blue in the face. Yes, they commit 52% of all violent crime despite being 13% of the population. They’re 21 times more likely to assault you than the reverse. Their music sucks and is rarely good; their ‘cooking’ is disgusting, their idea of seasoning is not a pinch of salt, but an entire bag of dehydrated garlic over fresh ingredients, or they wash their greens in the bathtub with dish soap. They wash chicken that way too. You can explain how others are barbaric and savagely cruel to innocent animals. The repugnant rituals where they smear feces all over their bodies. You can explain that they abuse women, treating them like cattle, or dress little boys up as girls and defile them. You can explain you dislike that they’re loud in public, disrespectful of the silence, antisocial and violent, vulgar and crass. Yes, maybe they circumcise their infant boys with their teeth.

Your reasonable justifications, your good nature, your benefit of the doubt for their group behaviours slowly turning into an indiscriminate disdain. Over a long time, you grew to accept that individuals were not equal among themselves, nor were men and women, or races and ethnicities, cultures or religions. You knew that technically this made you a racist and sexist, but you didn’t care because you weren’t prejudiced or bigoted, and that was the real sin. Isms mean nothing. In our culture, they mean you’re a morally bankrupt person, a mean person, and nothing more. It’s an accusation of dishonesty, a refutation and disrespect of your well-meaning sincerity. Acknowledging the very real strengths and weaknesses of whole population groups was just being honest, if a little grim and callous. Your reasoning was educated and sound. You’re really into anthropology and evolutionary psychology. You’ve travelled abroad and witnessed the differences with your own eyes. You’ve spent so much time in and around multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multiracial cities. You understood that these differences, in their own separate contexts, were acceptable, and held no personal grudges. You could speak with confidence because you have the experience. This is emotionally exhausting and unreasonable. All of this may very well be true, but coming to terms with the fact you ‘just don’t loike ‘em, simple as’, is hard.

You don’t need to loike ‘em. You don’t need to pretend their third-world slop is good food, that their unibrows are distinguished, or their lack of hygiene is quaint. You don’t need to pretend their repugnant behaviour is quirky, their debauched indecency, their profligate attention-seeking or their total disregard for all things beautiful is edgy or cool. You don’t need to pretend you like their thrifted baggy clothes, their infantile obsession with Funko Pops, Zendaya, or Star Wars. Their music tastes, their idolatry of symbols like the hammer and sickle, or the raised black fist. Their sagging gunts, their disgust of the natural, noble and beautiful. Their disdain for the strong and healthy, their desire to destroy the world in their self-hatred. You don’t need to like the fact they work 8 consistent hours a day in an air conditioned office doing absolutely nothing for triple your salary, with a degree irrelevant to their position. Their non-stop whining, crying, and demands that you pour out every last drop of empathy you have to something 8000 kilometres away.

You have been gaslit over a lifetime into believing that you’re not allowed to hate and you need justifications for everything. Our culture has captured and monopolized hate, and wielded it against us. In the end, your nuance only counts to a select few of equally self-aware and conscientious people. Does it really matter if you’re a bigot?

Perhaps the most important person you’re trying to convince is yourself?

Feelings don’t care about your facts, and intuition trumps reason.

Embrace the scalding fire in your heart. You’re hot-blooded and indomitable. The power of life flows through your veins, the power of action. Ready to take on anything. The sweet cathartic release of fury. A primordial spirit, one of man’s earliest friends.

You will be free when you abandon the pretense that you need justifications for hate.

Give hate a chance