I Hate Hate - TTLG Forums

LarryG on 19/9/2012 at 03:14

What can I say. No guns were used?

(http://www.freep.com/article/20120828/NEWS06/120828010/MSU-student-s-mouth-stapled-jaw-broken-in-hate-crime-attack?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE) MSU student brutally attacked

(http://www.inquisitr.com/315708/jewish-student-beaten-and-had-his-mouth-stapled-shut-by-nazi-saluting-attackers-police-say-not-a-hate-crime/) Jewish Student Beaten And Had His Mouth Stapled Shut By Nazi Saluting Attackers, Police Say Not A Hate Crime

(http://www.silobreaker.com/east-lansing-police-have-suspect-in-msu-students-beating-5_2265938546449711240) East Lansing police have suspect in MSU student's beating

So what is a hate crime? According to dear ol' Merriam Webster it is

Quote:

any of various crimes (as assault or defacement of property) when motivated by hostility to the victim as a member of a group (as one based on color, creed, gender, or sexual orientation)

And according to the Concise Encyclopedia:

Quote:

In law, a crime directed at a person or persons on the basis of characteristics such as race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. The concept emerged in the U.S. in the late 1970s, and since then laws have been passed in many U.S. states mandating additional penalties for violent crimes motivated by bias or bigotry against particular groups. Several other Western countries, including Australia, Britain, and Canada, have adopted laws designed to curb violent crime against racial and religious minorities. For example, German law forbids public incitement and instigation of racial hatred, including the distribution of Nazi propaganda.

No surprises there. It's just a crime motivated by hate rather than a desire for personal gain, or personal revenge, or any other personal motivations. It is a crime against a group because of how that group is perceived. It's not for profit. It's not against an individual because of what that individual actually did or didn't do. It is against a group because of what the group is, and is effected by taking whoever can be found who might be a member of that hated group and doing something to that person or persons. The criminals don't know who their victims are, and don't care about that. All that matters is that they think the victim is gay, or Jewish, or an Arab, or a Muslim, or an American, or a Japanese, or ... , and that they are in a position to punish these people for existing.

I just don't get it. How did that hate get to be so overpowering?

demagogue on 19/9/2012 at 03:55

In my experience there is a definite emotional psychology to hatred among social groups, and it's something "in the air" at certain locations that you don't have in other places, where they're just oblivious to it. I think it gets into power relations, sovereignty, sympathy (whether you can see the world through their eyes), ideology, jobs, worldview & what's the "natural order" (if you get into religious or sexual orientation hatred).... But if you went to a place where those issues weren't in play, it's not such a big deal. But the catch is, people can carry the spirit they grew up with with them when they move to another place.

I mean for Americans, we're all too familiar with how many Southerners perceived blacks in the not-distant past ... just this irrational alienation that they were somehow "never really full Americans but these outsiders we tolerate (since we're not going to be able to ship them back to Africa or whatever) as long as they stay in their own neighborhoods & keep their violence to themselves". But just their existence "across the tracks" but still in the US was some kind of affront to "respectable America" that made it intolerable to some people. I think some of that was the perception for the century & a quarter after the Civil War. It's not enough to just educate blacks or have them working better jobs, some bigot would want to restore the established status quo and just bash the direct affront out of existence when they get emotional about it.

Or, to take the homophobic example, they see a gay guy and want to literally bash the affront to the established natural order of "man and woman" out of existence. So they just start punching, clench their teeth, go hrrrrnnng, & can't stop. The emotional perception of some existential affront I think is a key part of it. That's the term I was groping for, "existential threat". I don't know though; sometimes it's hard for me to imagine too. I'm so happy to have grown up in an era & place where that kind of thinking just wasn't around me.

Vivian on 19/9/2012 at 10:43

make yourself feel better about your inadequacies/insecurities by punishing someone else, human nature innit. Gay dudes challenge trad masculinity, and if you are clinging to the idea of trad masculinity as a defining personal feature (lazy, but a lot of people seem to use these internal archetypes instead of actually trying to work themselves out), then you find that threatening. Same with people from different religions, different cities, different countries etc etc etc, if that is what you are using in lieu of a personality (frothing, racist nationalism is usually just a massive case of identity anxiety, I think).

scarykitties on 19/9/2012 at 14:27

I think that folks oversimplify people who are racist, bigoted, etc. It's easy to imagine them as stupid, crazy people who are compensating for a small penis or something, but many, if not most, of them are probably well-adjusted, normal human beings in every other aspect of life. They're probably no more stupid than anyone else and they don't necessarily have some kind of deep-seated emotional or personal issues.

All it takes is for paranoia or a trusted figure to plant the seed of mistrust, which grows into hatred over time and through a lack of personal contact with individuals of the mistrusted group. It could happen to anyone, and it's the same process that makes you go from disliking to hating anything.

So if you've had a case where you were told about some new food that sounded rather disgusting, then you tried it and found it to be distasteful, and then grew to hate it as you were forced to try it again and again, you've experienced a microcosm of what happens in the mind of someone who commits a hate crime.

Hating groups of people who are different than you is the natural way of things. It's the ability to force yourself to overcome those feelings and get along nonviolently that is unnatural, albeit necessary for a healthy society.

Vasquez on 19/9/2012 at 16:16

Quote Posted by scarykitties

They're probably no more stupid than anyone else and they don't necessarily have some kind of deep-seated emotional or personal issues.

I don't entirely agree. Having a cautious or even suspicious first reaction to people who are "different" or strange is natural, but imho it's a form of stupidity (and/or mental disorder) if someone allows mere personal thought and emotion to lead into full-blown, chronic, open hatred. It might in many cases be the kind of stupidity that can be cured with education, but stupidity nevertheless.

Jason Moyer on 19/9/2012 at 16:23

Of all the good reasons to beat the crap out of someone, color, creed, and sexual orientation aren't even in the top 10 and gender just sneaks in there.

scarykitties on 19/9/2012 at 16:29

To Vasquez: depends on your definition of "stupidity," I suppose--whether you mean "ignorance" or actually being mentally challenged.

I would certainly agree that ignorance is part of it, but being lectured about how wrong they are isn't necessarily going to fix that. What they need is to have friendly, personable connections with people of whatever minority it is that they mistrust. I'd say that it would be pretty tough for one to be bigoted against gays if they had a really close lesbian friend.

Hate from mistrust stems from fear driven by ignorance, as fear usually does. It doesn't help if one lives in an environment that promotes that ignorance and those feelings of hate. It's part natural, part one's peers, and part oneself. I'd say that one's peers have the greatest influence.

Pyrian on 19/9/2012 at 17:27

1) One or more people do something bad. Those people belong to various groups; gender, ethnicity, religion, whatever.

2) The individuals get conflated with their most prominent grouping; it's not "these individuals" did this, but "these A's" did this. That in turn gets shortened to "A's did this" and before long it's "all A's do this", even if the fact is that the vast majority of A's do not do anything of the kind. These are the key steps. Basically, we're looking for an over-simplified sense of causality, as we're wont to do. I'll call this the (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140025&page=3&p=2142570&viewfull=1#post2142570) LarryG effect.

3) Once we've concluded that all A's do something bad, punishing all A's seems like a perfectly natural response; all you need is a trigger, say, a new crime committed by an individual in group A. If you can find that individual, punish them, and if you can't, well, any A will do.

So, in conclusion? (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140025&page=3&p=2142608&viewfull=1#post2142608) You are the Daemons, LarryG. You may not personally go around being a hater, but you cross the biggest gap between reasonable behavior and unreasonable, violent hate.

Kolya on 19/9/2012 at 18:09

It's not quite fair picking out Larry like that. That whole Prophet and Loss thread is basically a bunch of secular white guys wondering what the hell is going on with "these Muslims". I'm wondering that myself. And since none of us seems to know any Muslims you can see stereotypes at play there, a mixture of fear and uncertainty. Of course that doesn't keep any of us (incl Larry) from despising hate crimes. In fact it's probably the same emotion. The lesson to be learned here is that you got to be careful about getting carried away by (negative) emotions, especially if you don't know the people who you apply them to.

scarykitties on 19/9/2012 at 18:16

It's not bigoted if you think all religions are equally stupid, misleading, and terrible, right?