Category Archives: Hate

Even Hitler was Loved by his Mother

Extremism, Hate, Polarization

 

Mark Edmonson pointed out in a New York Times articles something that is actually quite obvious. He said, “Our culture is amok with binaries.” I have called it ‘My way or the highway’ thinking. This is particularly true in politics but this attitude has seeped into many aspects of modern life. For example, in can still be seen among some religious communities where each thinks they have a monopoly on truth and the “other religions” wallow in ignorance.  Sadly, many Mennonites think that way, though not as many as before.  There is some improvement. For example, my teacher Will Braun, did not think that way. He always worked hard to avoid such binary thinking. He was a Christian but admitted that there is truth to be found in other religions.

 

Sports is one field where binaries still rule and the glaring ugliness of it can be seen there.  At hockey games or football games as soon as the referee makes a call adverse to “our side”, we tend to leap up in with venomous disgust. We can’t stand it.  I have even seen parents jumping and screaming at very young refs of games in which their children are participating. It is ugly enough to tarnish the sport.

 

And really, we must admit that these games and these perceived injustices are really pretty insignificant. Why do I love the North Carolina Tar Heels and hate the Duke Blue Devils? They are both great basketball teams and live about 7 miles apart in North Carolina. But there is a lot of hatred between those teams, and sadly, not all of it is good natured. Some of it is vile and really the differences between the two sides are puny.

 

This is what Freud called the “the narcissism of minor differences.”  And their sole purpose is to keep insignificant binaries alive. Yet, even though I know this is true, when I watch the next basketball game between Duke and North Carolina is will be dying every time Duke makes an unlikely basket or North Carolina misses an easy shot. These small differences to me are very important. My bad.

 

We should not think and see in black and white, nor even gray. We should think and see in colour. Glorious colour.

 

Will Braun’s attitude which he got from his interpretation of the Bible was that we are all God’s children.  My wife Christiane says something similar, also wisely, “Even Hitler was loved by his mother.”

 

 

There is a lot of hate out there

Extremism, Hate, Polarization

At least one thing is clear in this topsy-turvy insecure world. That is that there is a lot of hate out there. Really there is more than enough to feed a dozen worlds.

 

This is how Mark Edmondson put in the New York Times awhile back:

 

“I find hate to be virtually omnipresent in the current culture. Libs hate conservatives, and conservatives hate ’em right back. People hate politicians, the elite, MAGA hats (and their wearers), social media (though they cannot stay away from it). Some hate the rich. Some despise immigrants. People hate the media. They hate corporations. They hate capitalism. They hate woke and cancel culture. They hate globalism and globalists. They hate this president. There is love out there to be sure — for Beyoncé, for Pedro Pascal and, yes, even for this president, but hate trumps love by a mile now, or so it seems to me.”

 

 

I am a college basketball fan. I prefer it to professional basketball. My favorite teams are the University of Manitoba Bisons and North Carolina Tarheels. In North Carolina they take their basketball very seriously. The fans basically get insane about their times and even more their rivals. The hated rival of North Carolina is Duke University only 8 miles away. Those teams, and particularly their fans, hate each other with extreme passion. I remember once on a trip through the deep south of the US, in North Carolina where both of those Universities are located and we stopped somewhere and I started chatting with a woman who was a rabid basketball fan. Like me she was a Tarheels fan. I mentioned to her that it was too bad North Carolina had bad season last year. She was outraged at this comment. How could I say that?  It was true that by their standards they had not won many games, but they had beat Duke. Nothing else mattered. It was a great season because of that one win.  Her fandom was defined by her hatred of Duke.

 

Edmondson mentioned something similar in his article:

 

“One may define oneself — one may define the self — through hate. One day you are a blank slate, a void. But you can become yourself simply through hatred. You define yourself through your antipathies. I hate the church. I hate my school. I hate my parents, hate the administration, hate the president, hate the fascists, hate the communists. And maybe you begin to hate the Red Sox, too. I know any number of people who define themselves at least in part by hating a sports team. Take a bow, Duke University basketball.

Suddenly, you have stabilized the self. Do you want to be somebody? Well, now you are. You are the person with a stunning palette of hatreds. You don’t need to have positive allegiances to define yourself: The negative ones will do. Suddenly, ambiguity and nuance disappear, and you become Someone, with all of whose energies flowing in the same direction.”

 

 

Rene Descartes a famous French philosopher wanted to find certainty in the world.  That was tough to do.  He had an interesting way of doing it. He decided he would not take anything for granted. He would doubt absolutely everything he possibly could.  The one thing he found that really must be true and could not be doubted was that he existed.  Even if a malicious super-being was trying to fool him he must exist because he was being fooled. He was thinking, so he existed.   As a result, he concluded, I think therefore I am.

 

Edmundson suggested that perhaps there was something just as certain in the modern age and that was that hate existed. I Hate, therefor I am.

All if know is that I don’t want to be such a person. I don’t want to be defined by hate. Even hatred of Duke. Or Trumpism. There is much more to life than that.

A Mixed Stew of Simmering Hatreds

Extremism, Hate, Polarization

 

Hatred and Extremism go together like love and marriage. Or should I say like hatred and marriage? Or as a friend of mine would say, pea and porcelain.

 

Recently, an Albertan radical posted a manifesto on line in which he said “women’s sole purpose is to reproduce and modern society is marginalizing men.” Clearly, he was aligned with the Incel movement. The Woe is me movement which attracts a lot of dissatisfied men. Besides, women, he also hated real estate developers, elites, pornographers, and Jews hence establishing his credentials as pretty omnibus hater. Perhaps we should call him an egalitarian hater. It surely was a simmering list of hatreds that could only spell trouble. And this is what it did.

 

I think hatred metastasizes. It spreads and brings cancer to everything on which it alights. And eventually, it brings death.

 

After publishing his manifesto on-line he travelled to Montreal to cause a ruckus. He visited the area that contained a number of powerful companies and began an incident in which a Montreal cop and an innocent bystander who happened to be Jewish, were shot and killed. I think I heard the bystander was actually shot by the cop.

 

All this accomplished was making it clear that Canada was home to domestic terrorism too. Perhaps our terrorists are just more incompetent than their American heroes. Certainly, no better.

Hanging on to Hate

Extremism, Hate, Polarization

 

Who are we? Are we hanging on to the hate? Or are we trying to be more forgiving, more generous? Do I want to be on the side of Trump?  Not really. But we have be aware of our natural tendency to wallow in the hate, and judgement. So often that is where we want to go? Is that where we should go? Trump, as we know, cannot resist is impulses.  How about us? I don’t want to follow him down this path (or any other path for that matter).

 

Will Braun, our CMU instructor, said used an expression I have never heard before “hate reading.”  But I immediately thought I knew what he meant.

 

First, most of us like to read things, or watch things, that we agree with. I that is natural, but it is a tendency we should guard against. When I lived in the US I tried to watch Fox News, but shamefully, I found it very difficult to read.  They just seemed to have an entirely different definition of truth. Truth was what the right wanted to be true.

 

Journalist, Amanda Ripley says, “we soothe ourselves with the knowledge that all Republicans are racist rednecks or all Democrats are precious snowflakes who hate America.” Will Braun did not want to do that. He suggested we should guard against too easy feelings of superiority.  As Braun a professed Christian,  said, “Sometimes we move from loving our enemies, to loving to have enemies.” Another mistake.

 

Robert Talisse  an American philosopher, political theorist and chair of the Department of Philosophy said,

 

“People like to complain about political toxicity, and then just blame the other side.”  Isn’t that what toxicity is all about? It was what leaves their mouths; not ours. Talisse also said this: “We are not necessarily more divided, on actual issues but we hate each other more. We like disliking the other side. We like toxicity.” I agree. I don’t like to admit it, but I think I have felt that way. We don’t want to give up the hatred of the other side because we like it so much.

 

This is closely connected to what Braun called “hate reading.” We eagerly read something new when we think it might give us more ammunition against the other side.  If we can add it to the list of stupid things “they” have done, we are pleased. The more outrageous things the others say the better, because it justifies our hate. Again, I admit I do this. I am a sinner. How about you?

 

I have to admit I read a book by Kristen Kobess du Mez from this perspective called Jesus and John Wayne and in it she filled it with stupid things (in my opinion) Christian evangelicals had done and as I read I highlighted them. My bad. I wanted to remember these. They seemed like they might be valuable ammunition in my next encounter with evangelicals. Not really a great reason to read or enjoy a book. Does that make me a sinner?  My only defence, is that at least I never denied being a sinner.

 

Hate reading is reading for the wrong reasons and I should control that impulse.  I promise to curtail that impulse.

The governor of Utah at the funeral of Charlie Kirk said he would unplug from social media.  I know others have tried this too. That certainly is one way to avoid hate listening or watching or reading. We find the hate or the feelings of superiority entertaining. It shouldn’t be entertaining. This is not our best selves when we do that.

 

To say, and admit deeply, that we are all the children of God, requires hard work. It is not easy to think like this. It is hard. To be Christian, Braun suggests, requires such an attitude. Because I am Christian he said I have to do this hard work of avoiding hate.

 

Braun said he went to a spiritual retreat where most of the day was spent in silence, but each day they said a prayer that went something like this:

“God says we are a work of art crafted in fatherly and motherly care. God welcome us and celebrates us in love.”

 

This is the opposite attitude from that of the Pharisee who wanted to celebrate that he was not like other people.

Can we say that Donald Trump is a child of God? How about Hitler? My wife always reminds me that Hitler’s mother probably loved him. Is Hitler another child of God. Can we really say that? It’s pretty hard.

Braun’s view is that we must all work hard to avoid being judgmental because we are all children of God.

Who ever said being anti-polarizing would be easy?

 

We can’t Speak anymore

Books, Critical thinking, Decline of the west, Extremism, Hate

 

I did not realize it but Carol Off the former host of CBC’s long running talk show As it Happens on his radio network, and the author of a very good book, At a Loss for Words: Conversation in an Age of Rage, has a lot of wise things to say about words. Words and our inability to use them properly. In this respect she follows in the path of that great English writer George Orwell. Of course, Off has experience as she was employed by the CBC for many years to talk to people around the world 5 days a week. She knows how to have conversations from personal experience, not just book-learning.

 

Off points out that in our current age, which she calls, not without justification, ‘The Age of Rage,’ it has become very difficult to hold rational conversations.  People don’t want to talk anymore. They want to yell instead. She believes the reason for that is that our lives have been taken over to a significant extent by extremists.  It often seems like only the extremists get to speak. Only extremists have platforms. The rest of us have to suck socks.  Off put it this way:

 

…we have become incapable of talking to each other. The language we once shared has been co-opted by extremists and we’re reduced to barking and snapping. It’s not just that we dispute what path to take; we no longer agree on the meaning of the words that define our destination. I’m not saying we should be of one collective mind about anything, but surely, we need the vocabulary to coherently disagree, to negotiate our way to some rational understanding, with reasonable  people on all sides. Without an embrace of a shared and logical discourse, we can’t even agree on the facts. Without facts we can’t hope to conclude what is true, and without truth we lose trust. This is not a good position to be in as the planet burns.

 

In the current era, much of the power of words has been unleashed by the power of algorithms that encourage rage, fear and hate because they attract engagement on the internet and multiply its power. Masters of harnessing such language include people like Donald Trump. He knows that by turning  people such as immigrants and Muslims and foreigners into objects of hatred people will pay attention to him. That is how demagogues take power. They are able to persuade ordinary people that they need a strongman, like Hitler, Mussolini, or Trump to control the rabble and bring them peace. Lately this is what is happening on the streets of Minneapolis. Recently, on PBS broadcasting who are working hard to listen to all points of view, they interviewed an intelligent right-wing commentator who really believed that Donald Trump was a moderating voice in Minneapolis bringing peace to quell the rabble.

Words are dynamite in the age of rage. And dynamite is dangerous.

 

 

At a Loss for Words

Books, Critical thinking, Extremism, Hate

There is a book I want to recommend. It was written by Carol Off who was for many years, the host of CBC radio’s As it Happens. I listened to it many times but never thought of her as an author. My bad. She is an excellent writer.

 

By now it is clear to everyone that we are living in an age of hate and political rage. Really, it is an age of extremism. Carol Off in her book At a Loss for Words: Converstaon in an Age of Rage,  nailed the problem on the head:

 

“The political rage that has engulfed us is exhausting, rendering us almost incapable of rational conversations. But that’s the intent of those who are fuelling it.”

In many ways it really is a book about extremism–one of the plagues of the modern world. Some say, the plague.

When we are consumed by rage truth becomes impossible. We are, as they say, blinded by rage, and that is exactly the problem. We lost the capacity to think. We only feel and what we mainly feel is rage. This is what the age of anger and rage is all about. Destroying our ability to think.

 

There is ample evidence in the language they use, that Americans and Canadians have lost the capacity to think. Here are some examples Carol offered up in her book:

 

“White men claim they are not privileged but persecuted. Politicians are devils, and some people disparagingly regard government—the system with which we organize our societies—as hell on earth.  One side insists liberals are really communists and the other argues that all conservatives are fascists. Teacher and librarians are alarmed to find themselves redefined as “groomers,” not to be trusted with children. “Feminist” is often hurled as an insult. After decades of struggling for dignity, queer is once again demonized. Words like antisemitism and genocide are used to shout down debate concerning Israel. Policies supporting social justice are branded as the cynical workings of the “deep state.”  And the climate crisis is vilified as a conspiracy to destroy our jobs and way of life.”

 

In her wonderful book, Off recognized that she could not possibly cover all cases of dead thought, so she selected some key words that she believed were hijacked, weaponized, or semantically bleached. She devoted a chapter to each of the following: Freedom. Democracy. Truth. Woke. Choice. Taxes.  An interesting list with some surprises, at least to me. But I assure you each chapter is interesting and worth the read.

Yugoslavia: No Stranger to Extremism

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Croatia, Decline of the west, Extremism, Hate, History, Serbia

 

Those who are still with me on this journey will be happy to know we are nearing the end. Only one country left to go and I have been talking too long about Yugoslavia. I am almost done. I have taken so long because I think Yugoslavia and the countries that emerged when it broke up are so important.  And all of the problems, I believe, relate to one very important issue. That is an issue that is get increasingly important in the modern world, including, of course, Canada and the United States. That is the rise in extremism.

 

By now it is obvious that extremism was rampant in Yugoslavia when it splintered in the early 1990s.  As a result, I think Yugoslavia is a country to which more of us in the west should pay attention.  Why is that? Because it can be a lesson to us all. Perhaps, we can learn enough to avoid their painful mistakes. The key lesson is, that it is incredibly dangerous to turn our country over to the extremists in our midst.

 

In Yugoslavia, people of various ethnicities lived together in relative peace for many decades. And peace is like health, if you take it for granted you are not appreciating it properly. It is too easy to forget how vital peace is to the good life. Canadians and Americans both take them for granted, at our peril.

 

In Yugoslavia after their charismatic leader, Tito, died, literally all hell broke loose. The dogs of war were running free and wild after he died. As soon as Tito died, the country became polarized all over again.  People moved to the extremes. The centre was hollowed out. People began to see other people who had different political or religious viewpoints from them, as enemies, rather than opponents. And this happened quite suddenly. From neighbours to enemies in 60 seconds. People could no longer live together with their foes. Some wanted to live separate and apart. Friendship turned to hatred. And the hate curdled and turned to violence.

 

In Canada, I shuddered when I first saw the Truckers’ Convoy that got international coverage carrying signs on their trucks that said, “F**ck Trudeau.”  I saw the same signs in Ottawa, and Steinbach. Trudeau was very popular, until he wasn’t and with amazing speed he  was hated when many Canadians considered him their enemy. It seemed like there was no room in the country for calm reasoning, or a middle ground. The extremist voices were the loudest. Some Albertans wanted to separate from Canada. Some still do. If these voices win the day, what makes us think that the violence that happened in Yugoslavia won’t happen here too. Albertans think they can no longer live with people in Quebec. Many in Quebec have felt that way for decades. What went wrong? Why do so many of us turn towards the loudest voices? Why are so many of us so quiet? Why do so many of us hate the other side? Even our leaders seem to turn to the extremes. Our Member of Parliament in Steinbach offered coffee and treats for the Truckers’ Convoy when it passed nearby. He found time for them, but never found time for the Pride Parade. He clearly admired the extremists. The LGBTQ* community not so much. This was during the time of Covid-19 when we were all on edge. Many hated Covid restrictions. Many of the truckers thought that freedom meant they could do whatever they wanted. They wanted a country without rules or regulations.

 

We in Canada, and even more in the US, are deeply polarized. Yugoslavia can show us what can happen in such circumstances. It is not pretty.

 

Eric Hobsbawn, another brilliant British historian, wrote about extremists in his series of history books on Europe. He pointed out how

 

“in the period from 1880 to 1914 nationalism took a dramatic leap forward, and its ideological and political content was transformed.  It’s very vocabulary indicates the significance of these years. For the word ‘nationalism’ itself first appeared at the end of the nineteenth century to describe groups of right-wing ideologists in France and Italy, keen to brandish the national flag against foreigners, liberals, and socialists, and in favor of aggressive expansions of their own state which was to become so characteristic of such movements. This was also the period when the song ‘Deutschland Über Alles’ (“Germany above all others) replaced rival compositions to become the actual national anthem of Germany. [Sort of like America First] Though it originally described only a right-wing version of the phenomenon, the word ‘nationalism’ proved to be more convenient than the clumsy ‘principle of nationality’ which had been part of the vocabulary of European politics since about 1830. And so it came to be used for all movements to which the ‘national cause’ was paramount in politics: that is to say for all demanding the right to self-determination, i.e. in the last analysis to form an independent state, for some nationally defined group.”

 

Love of country can be a beautiful thing. Who after all does not love her country? But when it turns to hating the other country, the rival,  it can turn powerfully ugly. This is what all nationalists must guard against, whether they are Adolf Hitler or Donald Trump.  As Hobsbawn wrote,

 

“The basis of ‘nationalism’ of all kinds was the same: the readiness of people to identify themselves as emotionally with ‘their’ nation and to be politically mobilized as Czechs, Germans, Italians, or whatever, a readiness which could be politically exploited. The democratization of politics, and especially elections, provided ample opportunities for mobilizing them. When states did so they called it ‘patriotism’, and the essence of the original ‘right-wing’ nationalism, which emerged in already established nation-states, was to claim a monopoly of patriotism for the extreme political right, and thereby brand everyone else as some sort of traitor. This was a new phenomenon, for during most of the nineteenth century nationalism had been rather identified with liberal and radical movements and with traditions of the French Revolution.”

And extremism and nationalism go together like rum and coke, but they don’t taste as sweet.

Throughout the Balkans, after World War II this became a big problem. Whether in Romania, Bulgaria, Bulgaria, Serbia, or Croatia, this became a big problem. It is becoming a big problem in the United States today.  Canada seems to be following its big brother into troubled waters. Hitler exploited it. Now Trump is exploiting it. Poilievre would like to exploit it. That’s how the world turns.  But we must be careful.  Look at Yugoslavia to see what could easily happen.

 

Has the newest American Civil War started?

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Croatia, Death of Democracy, Decline of the west, Extremism, Hate, Pluralism, Polarization

 

 

Ignatieff pointed out when he first published Blood and Belonging in 1993 that federal states were all having trouble remaining unified.  He mentioned of course, Yugoslavia which was in the act of breaking up violently.  It actually had 5 Civil Wars in quick succession. All of them violent. But he also mentioned Canada which was facing strong chances of breaking up with the rise of Quebec nationalism. He also mentioned that most other federal states, such as India, Belgium and the former USSR were also facing challenges to thier  federal system.

 

Of course, since then things have got worse. Canada is now facing a threat to its union by Alberta in addition to Quebec. More importantly, the United States which is also a federal state but was not on his list of trouble federal states is now clearly in that camp as many of its so-called red states and blue-states seem to find living together increasingly difficult. Federalism is a political system designed to permit people to live together even though they have some pretty big differences without breaking up.  Such a system did not allow Yugoslavia to stay together. I would add another factor that is challenging federal states, and this is the rise of polarization. Polarization is clearly affecting federal states by driving its elements apart.

 

One of the regular political commentators I read, even though I often disagree with him, is Thomas Friedman, who has won 3 Pulitzer prizes.  That is pretty outstanding for a journalist. I read an article by him this week in the New York Times  in which he said this about his country, “in my view, we are in a new civil war over a place called home.” He thinks the United States is already in the midst of Civil War!   Last year I watched a film called Civil War, about an imagined Civil War in the United States. It was horrifying. Is that what the US is facing?  Even if it is not that kind of a break-up we have to ask, ‘What is happening to the United States?’

It’s horrifying about sums it up.