Hate is as natural a human emotion as love, anger, fear, lust, joy or envy. Whether or not it’s an admirable or desirable one is irrelevant. It can only be eliminated (or submerged) by fundamentally restricting our right to be human.
But everywhere in our democracies, we see new laws trying to redefine what makes us human. On gender, global warming, race, immigration, the approach is identical. Discussion is allowed within undefined subjective limits, but opposition or straying beyond those is made synonymous with hatred. Needless to say, applying this approach to literature will completely destroy it as an art form. By making hatred taboo, it undermines one of the most important inspirations writers have.
For centuries, English law correctly concerned itself only with the illegality of making specific threats or incitements of physical violence. Moving from that to policing general ‘hate’ expression is a disaster, since what counts as ‘hateful’ in general expression is subjective and not something that a free society should define. Philip K. Dick type laws pre-empting online hatred (for example, in Canada) can be linked with ‘woke’ attempts to recreate humanity, especially the idea that asserting fundamental biological identity is hateful, whereas recognising someone’s self-proclaimed gender identity is a legal requirement. And very shortly, Starmer’s Government will be following this lead, with the Home Secretary urging police forces to ramp up recording of ‘hateful but legal expression’.
Why wouldn’t people hate this stance? It’s likely the proponents of tyrannical legislation know that response is inevitable. As many have argued, they need to prevent debate because they know their position is utterly indefensible. Small wonder they draw that conclusion. But they’re actively seeking to provoke, to flush out the largely fictitious ‘far Right’ haters they claim threaten society. And now they’ve achieved this, the real free-speech clampdown can begin.
All this is perhaps obvious. My position is that – allowing for the the Common Law restrictions on threats and incitement – hate has to be accepted and sometimes welcomed. Let’s be honest! It’s produced some of the greatest art and without it, we’d probably have had almost no human progress. On its own, hatred is a limiting, negative and exhausting thing. But as a component of other drives, it’s often essential.
Warfare itself, whilst cruelly destructive, has always been a huge catalyst for human invention: would we have had antibiotics, jet engines or nuclear power without World War Two? As for art, some of the greatest writers were enormous haters. Obvious first-rankers are Shakespeare, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Rimbaud, Celine. Not just hate-driven of course. And what about Caravaggio? He produced his greatest paintings whilst literally on the run for murder. Shakespeare’s most memorable characters are usually driven by it – Macbeth, Iago and Edmund being superb examples.
It’s hardly been discussed how Starmer’s approach to free speech will affect creative work at this level. But one look at the sort of anodyne liberal-establishment literature being approved (though barely read) shows how the job may already be done.
How could any Dostoevsky possibly be published now? To use a famous line from Yeats: “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” The best exploration of what I’m discussing is by that greatest of novelists, in Devils. The horrific but compelling character of Stavrogin – a maniacal revolutionary student, devoured by ideology – is guilty of a prolonged and terrifying act of child-abuse, detailed in a confessional chapter which is very often removed from the novel. It leads to the heart-rending suicide of an 11-year-old girl. But censoring this horror completely destroys the purpose of this character.
Dostoevsky’s entire body of work is a wonderful resource, as an artistic exploration of how totalising ideologies and obsessions capture and corrupt individuals, then entire societies. Written prophetically in the mid to late-19th century yet foreshadowing the horrors of the 20th-century, in Russia and worldwide, his warnings are just as applicable to the insane excesses of ‘Progressivism’ we’re now mired in. He was especially farsighted in his suspicion of credentialism and the folly of uncritically following ‘intellectuals’. Needless to say, assessing his writing through the narrowest of Overton windows would destroy it.
Devils should be required reading for anyone dismayed by where we are. This greatest of writers could see how intellectualism, elite arrogance and hatred of the ‘masses’, asserted through lofty claims of the opposite, would play out. Just as with Dickens (from whom he otherwise much differs) the individual is everything. He or she must never be sacrificed for ‘the greater good’ or any other airy ideological claim.
Moving closer to home, Dickens’s novels overflow with preachy ‘liberal’ figures who are in truth selfish, authoritarian hypocrites exploiting the vulnerable – especially children. His message is that ‘progress’ counts for nothing when it ignores the sanctity and essential freedoms of individual life. And that many who claim to be progressive are in fact callous, selfish and dangerous frauds. This doesn’t imply progress is impossible or undesirable, but we need to be endlessly wary of those who claim they and their beliefs embody it, demanding others accept their moral authority and actions as ‘progressives’, however idiotic, cruel and incoherent they are.
And film? The three best 1970s British films (all 1971) are Get Carter, A Clockwork Orange and Straw Dogs – all explorations of hate. Not just of that, but without it they’d be nothing. They’re not celebrations of the emotion, but any honest viewer should admit that the nihilistic violence is enjoyable and artistically essential. Probably the greatest film of the decade – Taxi Driver – is an exploration of corrosive hatred and redemption through violence. No one could claim it’s advocating this, but nor can it be claimed this isn’t the film’s central idea.
Teaching English at A-level, I found both Easton Ellis’s American Psycho and Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night worked superbly, as novels. Both are frenzied and hate-filled, but (in differing ways) use this to create great pieces of literature. It’s true that the former provoked parental complaints, but I found explaining the serious purpose (and Ellis’s use of factual accounts) satisfied them. And needless to say, most pupils found the progressive equivalents – books like The Colour Purple or Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – dull and obviously preaching what students already constantly hear. There’s no challenge in them; they effectively say nothing.
No doubt these views may provoke hatred! As long as that’s genuine and not performative outrage, I’d welcome it.
Paul Sutton can be found on Substack. His new book on woke issues The Poetry of Gin and Tea is out now.
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Philip K. Dick type laws pre-empting online hatred (for example, in Canada) can be linked with ‘woke’ attempts to recreate humanity,
This is the heart of the matter. For two centuries the Western Left has been casting about for a subservient client group that will give the self-enobled middle-class “radicals” the revolution they believe they’re entitled to. For a long time the Left thought that the working class would do it. When that didn’t work, the middle-class radicals relabelled the white working class as “the trash people”, and appointed brown-skinned third-worlders as the radicals’ saviours. Unfortunately for the radicals, even they are realising that their “saviours” are anything but. Thus, it’s the realisation of failure that pushes the Left towards the next solution: the ultimate total-control project of remaking humanity by “deleting” parts of people’s essential natures. Of course the project is mad, and can only end in failure. And this is the great danger, because failure may push the “radicals” towards despotism and mass-murder.
It’s ironic that the vast majority of third world migrants are far more socially conservative than the indigenous working class.
But then I don’t think that’s the point anyway. The bourgeois ‘left’ don’t want revolution as they are more than happy with their economic privilege and access to public funds for social status, nest feathering and lucrative pensions, and will go along with any fad ideology to maintain it. What they want is an underclass that at least mouths how grateful they are for handouts, and the indigenous working class didn’t fit that role.
I would distinguish between anger and hate. Anger can certainly be positive. Like St Augustine said, hope has two beautiful daughters: anger and courage. Anger at the way things are and courage to see that they do not remain as they are. Hate is in my view more of an inward emotion. It isn’t good for your heart to remain in that state for a long time. It is more about how they aggrieved you than the affront to universal moral values. It is like jealousy in that regard.
Government intervention occurs about a generation after the cultural shift as they need to ensure that the plebs are sufficiently relaxed with the agenda. If you want to know the origins of totalitarianism then look in the mirror. We have behaved contemptuously and entirely without vigilance to the point of a joke. You think it just carries on in a cushy way forever because it has been like that in your lifetime so far. This is like a fat guy eating biscuits until he dies or he has to be winched out of his front room by removing the entire window pane and calling the fire brigade. You have to get real about what you have put in and what you expect to get out.
It is perfectly moral to hate evil.
I think this is not so much about going against hate but about silencing criticism and dissenting opinions in a way that’s very similar to the addiction and -ophobia tricks: Instead of addressing whatever happened to be said, it’s asserted that the content of the statement doesn’t matter because it’s really just an outburst of an intense, negative emotion way beyond the ability of the person who said something to control, or, in short. “These are but the utterings of a dangerous lunatic!”
This is not only disingenious but also logically invalid: Hatred for XY may well motivate someone to make perfectly trueful but not exactly complimentary statements about it: Someome who complains about a noisy pride-parade may well be driven by hatred for gays but this doesn’t mean the parade wasn’t a noisy nuisance, say, because of lots of people using compressed air horns all the time. The (usually unprovable) conjecture that such-and-such a thing was secretly driven by ‘impure’ motives doesn’t necessarily invalidate it.
Noteworthy: This is also emblematic of the puerility underlying the whole woke-thing. “You all just hate me!” she cried, storming out of the room and violently slamming the door behind her. is a classic, if not even hackneyed, rendering of a puberty trantrum. Grown up people are said to remain rational even in face of strong emotions. The woketurds don’t want to grow up.
If there is one lesson that can be discerned by looking at the neuroses of our time it is to not be self-conscious. You cannot operate in this way at some point you will malfunnction. If you have a whole society operating in this way then it is completely lacking in purpose and vigour and will be destroyed or taken very quickly. That is the fundamental point. Nobody gives a toss about you or your emotions, nobody cares how you look. Either focus on the important things or die.
Funny you should mention this title. Today I put a sign outside.. ‘Hate Speech (is) Free Speech!’
The emphasis on hate is simply a pretext for shutting down dissent.
No further analysis required.
Who said hate is taboo.
It’s not taboo at all.
You van hate Putin. You can hate “racism”. You can hate “transphobia”. You can definitely hate “the far right”. It’s encouraged actually.
Hate has never been more fashionable. You just need to make sure it’s directed towards officially authorised targets.
Toxic masculinity, white privilege, colonial heritage, populism…
“Hateful but legal”: an extremely useful, versatile and flexible legal tool to censor, ostracize and punish any opinion and person that the government does not like and to intimidate the population in general.
That’s about it in a nutshell.
Whether a statement is considered “hateful” is therefore entirely decided by the government.
”A man cannot become a woman”: hateful.
”Tory scum”: not hateful.
I saw some guy on Youtube talk about how he was visited by the Police who wanted to “check his thinking” when apparently he said he identified as a fish (or something like that). This was seen as a non crime hate incident when what most people would say it was, was staking the piss. —–As if the Police never had enough to do with all the knife crime etc it is now with in their remit to try to intervene when people “take the piss”…The left keep saying there are “not enough Police”, but if they keep adding more and more silly stuff to their work load there will never be enough. Meanwhile I see machetes are very popular at the moment
Think you are talking about the ex copper whose name i forget. He won his case against the Police not that is has stopped the Woke juggernaut. He mentioned to the copper who phoned to ‘check his thinking’, Orwell 1984 was a warning, not an instruction manual. That would be lost on most of the Woke paramilitary coppers of today.
Well here’s a man who knows a thing or two about being hated. Look at this crock. You can almost hear them sharpening their pitchfork, knives at the ready, salivating with glee because they’ve all got their protected victim status in place and know exactly whose side the law is on. Is Tommy even going to be able to attend his own rally next month?
”Muslim community leaders and anti-racism campaigners are calling for Tommy Robinson to be arrested “as soon as he steps foot back on UK soil” after the far-right activist announced he was returning to Britain from mainland Europe in October.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Laxley-Lennon, has told supporters he is prepared to go to prison as he plans to return to the UK to lead a rally in central London in late October after being overseas for more than a month.
Zara Mohammed, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, told i the British authorities must try to stop the spread of far-right hate, and hold to account all those responsible for inciting hatred.
She said Robinson should be subject to the law “just like the other people who were arrested and convicted of inciting racial hatred online”.
She added: “The police should have the handcuffs ready for him as soon as he steps back on UK soil. It’s very evident that he played a very prominent role in inciting hatred and stoking the flames of these extreme far-right riots, which led to terror on the streets of Britain.
“One of our calls to action for the Government is to also hold Tommy Robinson to account. Others have been put in prison for inciting racial hatred, so why should he not be treated in the same way.”
https://inews.co.uk/news/tommy-robinson-faces-calls-for-immediate-arrest-after-plans-to-return-to-uk-3269976
Tommy’s response to this article. Seems he’s a better journalist and more informed than the author of the hit piece.
”THE MUSLIM COUNCIL OF BRITAIN IS A FRONT FOR THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD
I will not accept a ‘new and pretty progressive female face of Islamism’ calling for me to be arrested without calling her and her organisation out @ZaraM01
In 2015 a final report by by the Jenkins Commission (some of which is still classified) concluded the Muslim Council of Britain has its roots in the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The MAB (Muslim Association of Britain) which is absolutely a front of the Muslim Brotherhood essentially founded the MCB. The MCB has a sordid and very public history of support for terrorism and terrorists.
The Muslim Council of Britain’s former Deputy Secretary General Dr. Daud Abdullah signed the Istanbul declaration which legitimised jihad attacks on the British Navy.
I call on the Muslim Council of Britain to be proscribed with immediate effect, they are a CANCER within our great nation.
The fact that the i Paper gives this woman and her organisation the time of day to spew their hatred and intolerance dressed up as virtue makes me sick, shame on you.”
He’s been getting some ‘lovely’ messages to his Twitter page, I see;
”This little rat will be in for a surprise when he comes to the UK. He will go straight into Belmarsh HMP, where the lads will be waiting for him. Get ready to be someone’s b*tch for a few years.”
I don’t know how Tommy copes. The sheer bravery of the man is off the scale.
Yes, agreed. I worry that his legal team aren’t always going to be able to save him. With the state of the judiciary, and especially after what we’ve been recently seeing, Tommy is basically the big prize they’ll all have their sights on. If people are being sent down for 2+ years for some petty, trumped up rubbish what on earth sort of sentence would they like to give him if they are able? And is he meant to serve that in solitary, to keep him safe from the Muslims who’ll be after him, which is a different kind of psychological torture? He’s basically martyring himself.
If we had a 2nd amendment, we could end this!
Without Hate how could we ever recognise Love? The only form of Hate that is not positive is Ideological Hate; the irrational hatred of a group, or groups, purely because dogma demands it of the adherent. We see this in Starmer’s vicious demonstration of hatred towards Pensioners which is driven by the fact they are the group that did most to keep Labour out of power. We have all read of Rayner’s foul mouthed rants about Tories; not because they are awful people, simply because her ideology demands she hates them.
Indeed, one cannot have love without hate any more than one can hear the sound of one hand clapping.
“Hate speech” is a deceitful misnomer. It is not against hate. It is against certain kinds of hate, defined very selectively to the benefit of the government.