Disguised Hatred

[Time for change]

One of the most fundamental truths of human psychology is that humans will go to great lengths to justify their behavior no matter how horrible it is. Indeed, the more horrible the behavior the more need for justification. This results in what I sometimes call “the law of opposites”, most famously portrayed in George Orwell’s 1984 by the phrases “War is peace”, “Ignorance is strength”, and “Slavery is freedom”. Examples from U.S. history include: our brutal treatment of Native Americans and black slaves with the justification that they are “savages”; George W. Bush’s Clear Skies Act, which enhanced the “freedom” of corporations to pollute our atmosphere; so-called “tort reform” which primarily places ridiculously low caps on the ability of ordinary citizens to sue corporations for damages; the claim by those who try to privatize or dismantle Social Security that there motive is to save Social Security; and the claim that we invaded and occupied Iraq beginning in 2003 for the purpose of bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq, while killing over a million Iraqi civilians, creating more than 4 million refugees, and utterly destroying Iraq’s infrastructure.

These distortions of the truth serve two major purposes: 1) They make the actions more palatable to those who otherwise might attempt to impede the actions of the perpetrator; and, 2) they make the actions more palatable to the perpetrator himself, so that he can feel comfortable about his actions.


The psychology of self justification with respect to hatred and violence

The psychiatrist and best selling author M. Scott Peck describes this phenomenon in “People of the Lie”. Peck defines an evil person as someone who is totally unwilling to admit fault or to try to understand him or herself. It’s just too painful. So, in order to avoid having to do that, the evil person spends his or her whole life trying to make other people and himself see himself as he would like to be seen, rather than as he really is. That means pretending, lying, killing, or whatever it takes. The bottom line is that no fault of an evil person can ever be corrected because trying to correct it would mean having to admit that it exists.

More specifically, self-justification plays an important role in facilitating most hostile and violent behavior. Once you treat someone badly or unfairly there is the tendency to justify it, which in turn makes it easier to continue. The psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson discuss this concept in their book, “Mistakes Were Made (But Not by me) – Why we Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts”:

The same mechanism underlies the behavior of gangs who bully weaker children, employers who mistreat workers, lovers who abuse each other, police officers who continue beating a suspect who has surrendered, tyrants who imprison and torture ethnic minorities, and soldiers who commit atrocities against civilians. In all theses cases, a vicious circle is created: Aggression begets self-justification, which begets more aggression…

The greater the pain we inflict on others, the greater the need to justify it to maintain our feelings of decency and self-worth. Because our victims deserved what they got (we say), we hate them even more than we did before we harmed them, which in turn makes us inflict even more pain on them…

The same concept applies to prejudice against racial or other minority groups:

Prejudice justifies the ill treatment we want to inflict on others, and we want to inflict ill treatment on others because we don’t like them. And why don’t we like them? Because they are competing with us for jobs in a scarce job market. Because their presence makes us doubt that we have the one true religion. Because we want to preserve our position of status, power, and privilege. Because we need to feel we are better than somebody. Because our country is waging war against them. Because we are uncomfortable with their customs, especially their sexual customs, those promiscuous perverts. Because they refuse to assimilate into our culture…

By understanding prejudice as our self-justifying servant, we can better see why some prejudices are so hard to eradicate: They allow people to justify and defend their most important social identities – their race, their religion, their sexuality – while reducing the dissonance between “I am a good person” and “I really don’t like those people”.

An example: Justifying anti-Muslim hatred and violence

Today it is Muslims who are the most widely targeted group of those who wish to incite hatred and violence. I recently received a scary example of this as an e-mail. I say that the e-mail was scary because it was disguised better than most efforts to incite hatred and violence – as testified to by the fact that I received it from someone who does not typically do this sort of thing.

The e-mail came with the subject line “Please forward for history’s sake”. And it ended with the pleas:

This e-mail is intended to reach 400 million people! Be a link in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world… Do not just delete this message; it will take only a minute to pass this along. Freedom isn’t free…

blah blah blah.

Begin with a valid and important issue – the Holocaust, for example
One of the keys to creative and convincing lying and distortion is to mix in some stuff that is genuine. There are few historical events that contain as genuinely important lessons and evoke as much horror as the Holocaust. I have relatives who were its victims, and I have written about it myself, as in an article titled “Holocaust Denial”.

The e-mail I received is sprinkled with vivid pictures of the Holocaust designed to evoke horror (as well they should), such as this one:



It quotes General Eisenhower as saying:

Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.

I have no idea whether Eisenhower actually said that. And it doesn’t matter if he did or not. If he didn’t say it, he should have said it – or at least someone should have. So far so good. There is nothing wrong with recounting the horrors of the Holocaust or emphasizing the importance of remembering it. Starting the message with a genuine issue gets people to lower their guard and distracts them from the real reason for the message.

Blame it on the target group – without appearing to do so
The next step is to blame the evil event on the target group, but without appearing to do so. If it becomes obvious that the propagandist is trying to blame a particular racial or religious group, he risks being exposed as a liar or a bigot or both. So the strategy is for the propagandist to appear to be motivated solely out of outrage over the genuine event. In this particular message, the propagandist attempts to elicit hatred of Muslims by associating them with the Holocaust.

This week, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet… However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it….

Comment: First of all, Muslims did not perpetrate the Holocaust – It was Hitler and his Nazi henchmen, supporters and followers.

Secondly, it is highly doubtful that the event depicted here occurred. Thirdly, even if that particular event did occur, it is not at all representative. Western nations today are not removing Holocaust teaching from their school curricula. And if they did, the last excuse they would give for it is that it offends Muslims. Few if any Western politicians today are the least bit worried about the political consequences of offending Muslims. Quite the contrary.

And fourthly, Holocaust denial is not a phenomenon that is confined to Muslims. Yes, there are some prominent Muslims, such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who are Holocaust deniers. But Christians too, such as Patrick Buchanan, deny the Holocaust. And Buchanan appears regularly on corporate media talk shows in the U.S. as a typical babbling head. Holocaust denial may or may not be more common among Muslims than it is among other groups. If it is, that should undoubtedly be attributed to the long-running enmity between Israel and Palestinian Muslims.

Tie in an event closer to home that was in fact perpetrated by radical members of the target group
Then to rub it in, tie the whole thing up with a very high profile event that actually was perpetrated by radical members of the target group. This particular message accomplished that task as follows:

How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center 'NEVER HAPPENED', because it offends some Muslim???

Comment: The probability that 9/11 will be forgotten in the United States in the foreseeable future is about as close to zero as one can get. And if it is forgotten, the probability that the reason for it being forgotten would be because of worry about offending Muslims would be less than zero if that were possible.

Furthermore, I’m sick and tired of hearing people say, in their attempts to stir up anti-Muslim hatred, “THEY did this and THEY did that”. Whoever it was in the airplanes that hit the World Trade Centers are long dead. The vast majority of the world’s Muslims had nothing whatsoever to do with it – just as the vast majority of Christians had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.


The bottom line

The purpose of the person or persons who wrote and attempted to distribute the e-mail message that is the subject of this post was NOT to help people to remember the Holocaust. The purpose was to associate the Holocaust with Muslims, and thereby stir up virulent anti-Muslim hatred and violence. In so doing, they probably will be successful in inciting the murders, torture, and other abuses of unknown numbers of Muslims throughout the world. With some luck (from their point of view) they might even help to incite massacres and wars.

The “blood libel”, in which it was alleged that Jews murdered Christian children, was just one of many lies that were used by the Nazis (and others) to incite hatred and violence against Jews. That culminated in the Holocaust.

The supreme irony of the e-mail that is the subject of this post is that the event that the author(s) purported to be outraged about (the Holocaust), and which is the main subject of their message is precisely the same type of event that they themselves hope to incite. The only differences will be in the magnitude of their success (which hopefully will be orders of magnitude less) and the identify of the target group.

[H2O Man]

1. Way recommended.

Throughout the past 2000+ years of human history, dictators have recognized the power of hatred and fear -- which are, of course, but two sides of one coin. As long as a tyrant can keep the general population focused on a fear and hatred for an "enemy," that population will willingly forget their own low level of being, and become ripe for an increased exploitation.

[Time for change]

3. Yes -- and it seems that the vast majority of Congressional Republicans use hate and fear as

the weapon of choice.

I believe that if Democrats did a better job of separating themselves from Republicans they'd have a much better chance of holding on to the House this year.

[Land Shark]

5. +1

[bleever]

2. "Love thine enemy" is a straightforward edict,

and yet in the name of Jesus, people do the opposite.

If he does come back, he's going to be really pissed at a lot of people.


K&R, of course.

[Time for change]

4. Yeah, they do the opposite, and then they brag about how devoted they are to Jesus

One more example of the law of opposites.

[wookie72]

7. I am not someone who believes in a literal Second Coming

But I would love to see JC come down right in the middle of the rally today and do battle with the Antichrist. Because if anyone fits that bill today, it's a certain sweaty, tearful Fox News commentator.

[Karenina]

6. bttt!

[molly77]

8. Fascinating Post

Did you read the book The Kite Runner? It had some interesting thoughts on guilt...which to me leads down the same path as your post..resentment..hatred ..and violence. This is my reasoning for so much hatred in fundamentalist christians..Any religion or branch of a religion that sets tremendously high/ stringent expectations in order to be thought of as "good" produces guilt.Never being quite good enough.

[Time for change]

9. Thank you. I didn't read The Kite Runner

I think that the problem is not so much high expectations, but silly and meaningless expectations -- like for example strictures against homosexuality, or demands that one's beliefs follows strict dogma laid out by the church authorities. They try to fit morality into silly confines like that, rather than emphasizing things like kindness to one's fellow humans.

[molly77]

12. Silly and meaningless expectations

So true. I used to be a fundy. My family was..didn't complete High School and everybody I knew believed the same way. It wasn't until I got kicked out of numerous churches..went back to school in middle aged...that I could agree with you..Silly expectations. Still , will always know where the fundies are coming from. It seems like mind control now.

[Time for change]

13. It's refreshing and inspiring to see someone who has the independence of mind to

break away from ingrained thought patterns later in life.

[bbgrunt]

10. I would add that religions

that sanctify suffering as a value which helps purify the soul create a good part of the problem. When suffering is seen as a forge to expiate the wickedness of human nature, then suffering of "the other" is justified as a religious mission. Those who suffer (the poor, the infirm, the outcasts) are seen as deserving their fate.

[MsPithy]

11. This is an incredibly important point!

Why do we have to keep fighting these battles over and over. I thought these issues were put to rest during THE ENLIGHTENMENT! The fact that the same arguments are being employed to justify the prejudices of the religious right and tax cuts for the wealthy in this day and age is kind of discouraging.


"They (enlightenment thinkers) believed that human reason could be used to combat ignorance, superstition, and tyranny and to build a better world. Their principal targets were religion (embodied in France in the Catholic Church) and the domination of society by a hereditary aristocracy."
-first set of parenthesis mine-

Does this sound familiar to anyone?


http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/enlightenment.html

[The Wizard]

30. The appointment of George W. Bush

cast a long shadow over The Enlightenment.

[Larry Ogg]

31. Absent from human understanding during periods of enlightenment

was an in-depth understanding of psychology, in particular that of the inter species predator know as psychopath; that didn’t come until the early to mid 1900’s, since then there has been a great deal of research on the subject, and a growing consensus among psychologist that believe psychopaths rise to the top of political power, start wars and build empires that eventually collapse into ruin. So goes a viable explanation behind the rise and fall of empires, and America is on the path to be swallowed up by the New World Order of which psychopaths believe will be immune to the fate of past empires, of course, like their predecessors, they have to eliminate everyone who stands their way. They accomplish this by various methods, such as turning different ethnic groups, cultures, religious and political ideologies against each other.

[Larry Ogg]

14. "The Law of Opposites" goes hand in hand with terms like

reverse reality, reversive blockade and conversive thinking etc… It’s also important to know how paralogisms such as para-appropriate, para-moralism, para-acceptable etc. are used as another tool by unscrupulous leaders too seduce, subdue and reduce the inherent values of human conscience, too gut and or alter religious and political ideologies, too mislead their followers into harming others, too blame the innocent and too justify really bad behavior.

The methods to literally distort the perception of reality in others is a language unto itself and it is the language predators, and it is heard through outright lies, omission and censoring of objective facts, and it creates a false reality on the premises of delusional and sometimes psychotic fantasy for the naïve, this is of course quite rewarding for those who are free of conscience; it seems a simple task to convince their eager followers that nothing is objective except for the opinion of certain or specific authoritarian leaders. And what luck for such leaders and faux news that authoritarian followers should follow the path of least resistance, because for them, believing a great big lie is much easier than digging up the truth, much easier than allowing the truth to be heard, much easier than examining their own conscience, much easier than looking into a mirror for the guilty, and much much easier than loving thy neighbor.

Oh and by the way, you forgot to mention the “Healthy Forest Initiative,” which was also known as the “Leave No Tree behind Act”

K&R Dr. Dale
Larry

[Time for change]

17. Thank you Larry -- Your discussion about taking the path of least resistance reminds me a lot of

M. Scott Peck's "People of the Lie". If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. It's one of the most interesting books I've ever read.

[Larry Ogg]

20. You've quoted from "People of the Lie" before and it's on my books to read list.

Would you say that it's another perspective on authoritarians or what? I'm asking because I live in the republican dominated state of Arizona and most people I run into are clueless fox news Rush Limbaugh fans that have bought into the right wing boogieman propaganda hook line and sinker, and not having a clue seems to be the state religion, which is why most people here put the evil immigrant farm workers from Mexico in the same hijacked planes that the evil Muslims from Iraq used knock down New York city which of course threatened the father of the best unelected President we ever had with jihad, but that's OK because were going to build a bigger and better wall than China did...

[Time for change]

21. People of the Lie

It's not another perspective on authoritarians, and in fact I don't recall that the word authoritarian is even mentioned in it. However, I do believe that there is a certain amount of overlap.

People of the lie is about evil. Peck equates "People of the Lie" with evil. He is a psychiatrist, and he goes into great detail about how evil people use lies routinely as part and parcel of their evil character.

One thing that I found a little confusing about Peck's book is that he sets a very high bar for evil. Altemeyer's definition of the authoritarian leader, as I've noted in some posts, is almost identical to the psychopathic personality. I've always considered that psychopaths are evil. I mean, how lower can you get than to have no conscience? But for Peck, most psychopaths don't quite meet the bar for evil. I didn't quite understand that reasoning at the time, but the book was so well written and interesting that I kind of accepted Pecks thoughts on that. However, over time I've come to question that more, and I really do believe that psychopaths are evil.

[H2O Man]

24. It sounds interesting.

I will definitely get the book. Thanks.

[Martin Eden]

15. "The purpose of the person or persons who wrote and attempted to distribute the e-mail message"

First, I want to say BRAVO -- that was a brilliant psychological analysis of the most despicable political propaganda at work in our country today. :yourock:

The question I want to raise with the subject title of my post concerns the motives behind the attempts "to associate the Holocaust with Muslims, and thereby stir up virulent anti-Muslim hatred and violence." The question is, who benefits from stirring up such hatred & violence and what is their agenda?

[Time for change]

18. I believe that there are two major reasons why people desire to stir up hatred and violence

One is that they themselves are filled with hatred, so they want others to support them in their hatred and satisfy their hatred through violence. That is reminiscent of what Bob Altemeyer calls "authoritarian followers".

The second major reason is political gain. Our leaders gain enormously when they stir up hatred. it divides the people against themselves and distracts them from how our elites are screwing us. 9/11, for example, has served to make our population much more docile with respect to being willing to hand over ever more power to our leaders. These are what Altemeyer refers to as the "authoritarian leaders".

The motives of some people are a combination of the two.

[Martin Eden]

19. Blind Hatred, and Harnessed Hatred

The "authoritarian followers" are filled with Blind Hatred and want others to join their cause. My guess is that most of them feel threateaned by those they hate because the "authoritarian leaders" have done their utmost to foster that fear and hatred.

For political gain, yes; for a broader agenda, most certainly.

This Harnessed Hatred serves their interests -- be it wealth, power, ideology -- or a combination of the three. This was IMO epitomized by the Bush administration's marketing campaign to sell the war in Iraq. The corporate interests and the neoconservative Project for the New American Century had a confluence of interests that required harnessing the strong emotions engendered by 9/11 (including hatred) and employing disinformation with psychological manipulation to achieve their ends.

They are now out of power, so their goal first and foremost is to regain that power. They are pulling out all the stops, and if we (relying principally on the Democratic Party) don't find a way to stop them I fear we are in for a bigger shitstorm than what we have seen over the last decade.

Your post laid out the psychological underpinnings of such irrational hatred, but unfortunately we're dealing with a public that for the most part has neither the inclination nor the attention span to digest any lengthy analysis.

I guess the biggest question is how do we conquer thgis hatred?

[Time for change]

22. How do we conquor this hatred?

If I knew I'd post about it, even if it took a hundred pages.

I think that the number one thing that we can all do as individuals is set an example for others. Decency and morality are contagious, as is hatred. The more people who set an example by living exemplary lives, the more others will follow.

One example from my own life is that my wife and I used to fight a lot. She'd yell at me, and I'd yell at her, and we both thought we were in the right. I've learned over the years that the only way I could make her less aggressive towards me was to be less aggressive towards her -- regardless of whether I thought the fight was her fault in the first place. Today we fight a hell of a lot less than we used to.

But each individual only has limited impact in that respect, regarding their impact on the world, obviously.

[Martin Eden]

28. You and H2O Man had essentially the same answer to my question

Time for change:
I think that the number one thing that we can all do as individuals is set an example for others. Decency and morality are contagious

H2O Man:
How do we conquer hatred? The best minds in human history have agreed that the most effective weapon is the power of love .... not a weak love, or romantic passion. But a love of humanity that nurtures the seeds of our positive potential.


What I take away from this is that no matter how outraged we feel at the authoritarians and their followers -- no matter how exasperated we become at the Teabaggers and are tempted to treat them as beneath comtempt -- we do not help our cause by treating them as beneath contempt because they are our neighbors and coworkers and relatives and fellow citizens.

If we play the role the RW hatemongers would have us play -- at each others throats with our fellow citizens -- we will never persuade them of their folly and we will fall into the trap of divide-and-conquer that this is at the core of the authoritarian strategy. A house divided against itslef cannot stand; nor can a citizenry divided against itself stand together for their own best interests.

We need a more effective strategy for prying the authoritarian followers away from the authoritarians.

Our interests are in common, and that has to be made clear to everyone.

[H2O Man]

23. Right.

That is the essential question. "Hate" only exists in humanity's conscious minds. Yet there is no question that the tryant/dictators appeal to subconscious fears that are the seed of hatred.

How do we conquer hatred? The best minds in human history have agreed that the most effective weapon is the power of love .... not a weak love, or romantic passion. But a love of humanity that nutures the seeds of our positive potential. Masters such as Gandhi and King recognized that this must, by its nature, involve sacrifice and even suffering. Our very best efforts may not resolve all of the hatred that infects human beings, but it can surely reduce the sum total to a level that doesn't pose such a threat to human life on this planet.

[Raksha]

16. K & R

[Blue_Tires]

25. bookmarked...thanks for this...

[Violet_Crumble]

26. Excellent post. I hope everyone at DU reads it n/t

[Overseas]

27. K&R! //nt

[lunatica]

29. I can't rec anymore but I'll gladly kick this thread

It's ironic that some people simply don't see their hatred as being exactly the same as the hatred of the people they despise. It's as if they refuse to see their shadow side. They feel their hate is justified because it's theirs.