Hatred by Willard Gaylin (best autobiographies to read TXT) 📕

A culture of hatred is not necessarily a culture of haters. At least it may not start out that way. Even were every German an antisemite, which we know was not the case, prejudice is still not hatred. The typical antisemite is not an active Jew hater. Like any typical racist, he is relatively unconcerned about the disdained population. He stereotypes them, denigrates them, and for the most part ignores them. He may be a bigot, concerned with protecting himself from the contamination of the pariah population in his clubs and community, even in his schools. He may take pleasure in their humiliation, but he is not preoccupied with them. He wants less involvement, not more. His sin is in his exclusion of an individual from his concerns and compassion on the basis of his prejudice. But a bigot is an easy mark and a ready follower of those who hate. The immense value of Goldhagen’s book is in its demonstration of the capacity of a paranoid leadership to convert a mass population to “willing executioners.” All that such leadership needs to expedite its purposes is the absolute power of dictatorship and the precondition of a prejudice within the population.

The Nazi battle against the Jews illustrates another danger that the autocratic state poses for the world at large. Anti-semitism was endemic in Europe and much of the rest of the world. For centuries it was actively encouraged. Before the Nazis indicated the malevolence that could be unleashed by such latent bigotry, most people tolerated—some enjoyed—the smarmy statements of prejudice and occasional brutal acts of individual bigotry. Until the Holocaust, we were unaware that a determined cadre of haters could ignite latent prejudice and bigotry into a conflagration that might consume us all. But now we see how such bigotry has been used by despots in Iraq, Libya, and Cambodia to consolidate their tenuous hold on their subject populations. They displace the authentic resentment of their deprived populations and divert it to manufactured enemies abroad. This technique—mastered by Saddam Hussein, Muammar al-Khadafy, Pol Pot, and their ilk—to subjugate their own people now threatens the security of the entire world. Such leadership must be confronted by the more civilized nations of the world.

But now there are enemies beyond the traditional national ones, occupying communities without boundaries. Osama bin Laden is the leader of a community of haters, Al Qaeda. But where can we locate either bin Laden or his community?

13

A COMMUNITY OF HATERS

Germany is a country with boundaries, a history, culture, and a common language. In other words, it is a nation. Its national characteristics differ significantly from that of other cultures. This is apparent after spending even one night in Tokyo and Berlin. The people look different and comport themselves differently. Cultural attitudes differ significantly even among such neighboring countries with overlapping ethnicity as France, Italy, and Switzerland. Even within the borders of a single country there are subcommunities whose occupants display different forms of behavior, dictated by that subculture. The fast pace and aggressive attitude one finds in New York are significantly different from the laid-back style of Santa Fe. While there is an American culture that binds us in familiarity, these subcultures shape multiple variants of the American character. I certainly experienced a sense of cultural confusion on first moving to New York from the Midwest.

A community of haters, on the other hand, is not a community in the traditional sense of a group defined by a shared geography, politics, or culture. It is an affinity group brought together and emotionally bonded by the shared passion of its members. Formed in different ways, a community of haters operates under different conditions. The culture of hatred is a culture converted to hatred in order to serve the political agenda of its leadership. The community of haters is a group of disparate individuals who find one another and band together because of their shared passion.

Joined in a Web of Hatred

The Aryan Nation in the United States and its ideological counterparts in Europe, the skinheads, are affinity groups. They are communities of haters. Earth Liberation Front is such a community. To a significant degree, so is Al Qaeda. These people are joined one to the other by a common passion. The members of Al Qaeda, for example, form a transnational community of poverty, feudalism, and despair. The frustration at their stagnant and depressed state in the face of rapid progress of neighboring communities must be controlled by their leadership. It is handled by diverting their anger from their national oppressors and directing it toward a scapegoat—the international Jewish and American conspiracy.

Al Qaeda is a classic group defined by its beliefs. It makes them a community in ideology, if not geography. And it is a dangerous community. It has demonstrated that once the community of ideas has been created, it is easy for smaller terrorist cells dispersed geographically to be mobilized to carry out common policies of the larger network.

Nothing facilitates the identification of like individuals and their merger into groups as the modern technologies of communications, from radio to the worldwide web. Technology has made possible the creation of global communities of ideology. The rapid changes that marked the latter half of the twentieth century were almost exclusively in the area of communications. These advances have dramatically shrunk the geophysical world, creating one massive interconnected community, ripe for the transmission of ideas and capable of calling to action similar-minded people in disparate and unlikely places. It has made possible ideological communities that cut across national boundaries and interests.

There is a tendency to miss the singularity of this brave new world of ideology, which creates communities without borders. The spread of cellular telephones, global television, Internet access, and the common languages of computers allows ideas to suffuse the globe in moments. These days, the universal word that everyone seems to understand is not the word of God—who seems to whisper different messages into