Why We Hate

Josh Landy
Why is there so much hate in the world?

Ray Briggs
Is hatred ever morally justified?

Josh Landy
Or does hate just breed more hate?

Ray Briggs
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
…except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy.

Ray Briggs
And I’m Ray Briggs. We’re coming to you from our respective COVID Free homes via the studios of KALW San Francisco.

Josh Landy
Continuing conversations that begin at Philosophers Corner on the Stanford campus, where Ray teaches philosophy, and I direct the philosophy and literature initiative.

Ray Briggs
Today, we’re thinking about why we hate.

Josh Landy
That’s a tragically timely subject, right? We we’ve got a serious problem with hate, and I just think it’s getting worse by the day.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, I agree that we have a serious problem with hate groups and hate crimes. But I don’t think that hatred itself is necessarily a bad thing.

Josh Landy
Really? You’re saying there’s a good kind of hate?

Ray Briggs
Well, yeah. I mean, I hate racism, and injustice, and inequality. And I think it’s good to hate those things. I also hate my toaster and always burn the toast. I wouldn’t call that good hate, but it’s not bad. Oh, and don’t tell me you don’t hate The Bachelor—I know you do.

Josh Landy
Yeah, alright, guilty as charged about The Bachelor. But you’re talking about abstract ideas like racism, or inanimate objects like your toaster. I’m talking about people—hating people, hating groups of people. That’s something we really need to stamp out.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, I’m not so sure. I mean, think of some of the worst people from history, dictators who’ve slaughtered thousand. Shouldn’t we hate those kinds of people?

Josh Landy
Well, we should certainly condemn them. We should fight back against everything they do. But do we need to hate them? I just don’t see how adding more hate in the world is gonna solve anything.

Ray Briggs
Even if you were right, Josh, do we really have that much control over how we feel? Especially how we feel about senseless violence?

Josh Landy
Yeah, I mean, that’s a fair point. We can’t always control how we feel. But but maybe we can control what we do and what we say. Acting out of hate—that’s just never a good thing.

Ray Briggs
Never say never. I mean, don’t you think that our hatred can sometimes motivate us to do good things for the world? Like fighting for change and stopping in justices from happening ever again?

Josh Landy
I’m all for fighting for change. I just think we need to find a way to do that without hating other people. It may be that kind of hatred can start out benevolent and everything but I just worry it’s eventually going to lead to disaster.

Ray Briggs
Oh sure, if you’re hating people for their race or religion, or gender or sexuality, that’s definitely bad. But hating people for being part of a hate group, using slurs, advocating violence, that’s completely appropriate. Those people deserve to be hated.

Josh Landy
Even if they deserve to be hat, I’m just not sure it’s a good idea to hate them. The costs are too high.

Ray Briggs
What costs?

Josh Landy
Well, if you hate, you’re hurting yourself. You’re carrying around a poison that’s eating you up from within.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, that’s great for you, but that lets other people off the hook. Maybe it’s all zen and groovy not to carry around hate for white supremacist groups. But I’m kind of going to need you to take that hit.

Josh Landy
But why? Why can’t I just condemn them fight to change their minds and strive for a society that’s free from their bigotry?

Ray Briggs
Because your very hatred is what’s going to bring that about, They’ve got to suffer a social cost. That’s the only thing that can make a difference.

Josh Landy
I don’t know Ray. I just think all hatred does is sow division and distrust, increase polarization, and make oppression, intimidation, and violence more likely.

Ray Briggs
Okay, so what do you think is the best way to stop the bad kind of hate?

Josh Landy
Well, in just a moment, we’re gonna ask our guest, Berit Brogaard from the University of Miami, whose new book is called “Hatred: Understanding Our Most Dangerous Emotion.”

Ray Briggs
But first, we sent our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Shereen Adel, to find out why some people might actually foster hate in order to find community. She files this report.

American History X
Wo do you hate Danny? I hate anyone that isn’t white Protestant.

Shereen Adel
This is a clip from the 1998 movie American History X,

American History X
Why? They’re a burden of the advancement of the white race. Some of them are alright, I guess. None of them are alright, Danny, okay?

Shereen Adel
They’re making a video to spread their message and recruit new members to their white supremacist group.

Peter Simi
The dehumanizing language is kind of really defining the outgroup.

Shereen Adel
And that’s Peter Simi, Professor of Sociology at Chapman University. He’s been studying hate and extremism for 25 years.

Peter Simi
There’s also this really extraordinarily high level of in group preference. So you see a lot have kind of the opposite language used to describe your your group, right? You’re a special kind of people, you have special qualities.

Shereen Adel
And for these groups, the message might be religious: they were chosen by God, or they believe they’re biologically superior, or—especially recently—that they’re more culturally advanced.

Peter Simi
So you hear a lot of discussion now with like the Proud Boys and whether they’re a hate group or not. I tend to think they are. And one of the things that defines violence as a hate group is their cultural ethnocentrism and superiority.

Shereen Adel
The Southern Poverty Law Center also called the Proud Boys a hate group. It’s one of 940 in the US as of 2019, not far from the all time high of 1020 in 2018.

Peter Simi
2016 had a really emboldening effect on a lot of groups.

Shereen Adel
Simi says one of the main reasons that is, is that the President uses the same kind of language that hate groups do.

Donald Trump
Democrats love open borders. Let the whole world come in, let the whole world—MS-13 gang members from all over the place, come on in. We have open borders.

Shereen Adel
And it really does sound uncomfortably similar to another scene from American History X, that movie we heard earlier,

American History X
Every night thousands of these parasites stream across the border like some piñata exploded.

Shereen Adel
So even when President Trump says he will condemn white supremacists…

Donald Trump
What do you want to call them? Give me a name, give me a name.

Shereen Adel
What he actually says is easily interpreted as a signal of support.

Donald Trump
Proud Boys—stand back and stand by.

Shereen Adel
Though language is central to understanding how hate groups work, Simi says there are other important factors that lead people to join them.

Peter Simi
Anytime there’s a major economic downturn, you get anxiety, you get fear, you get anger, people are looking to scapegoats. And that certainly played a role.

Shereen Adel
But then there are also factors that lead people to leave them.

Peter Simi
It’s a pretty common occurrence because these groups are so demanding in many respects. They have a high burnout rate.

Shereen Adel
In fact, if you look back over many years, you can see that the groups themselves fizzle out and then rise again. And those same years where we see peak hate group activity, like 2011, 2018, and even today, we also see widespread protests against economic inequality, systemic racism, and police violence. For Philosophy Talk, I’m Shereen Adel.

Josh Landy
Thank you for that fascinating report, Shereen. I’m Josh Landy, with me is my Stanford colleague, Ray Briggs. And today we’re thinking about why we hate.

Ray Briggs
We’re joined now by Berit Brogaard, who’s a professor of philosophy at the University of Miami and author of “Hatred: Understanding Our Most Dangerous Emotion.” Brit, welcome back to Philosophy Talk.

Brit Brogaard
Thanks for having me. Happy to be here again.

Josh Landy
So Brit, last time, you’re on the show you were talking about your book about love. Now you’ve got a new book about hatred. So what happened in between?

Brit Brogaard
Oh, that’s complicated. But there was an election taking place, among other things. But more generally speaking, there’s, we’ve seen an increase arising in hatred in America. And since I already dealt with personal hate a little bit in the love book, I thought that I would look into its counterpart.

Ray Briggs
When Josh and I were talking before we actually never defined what hate is. How would you define it, Brit?

Brit Brogaard
Yeah, that’s complicated. There are many different forms of hatred. And you are right when you said that there is such a thing as hating your toaster or hating your MacBook Air, or hitting a certain facts or hating an ideology. But that’s hatred of instances or principles or facts. And in that sense, it means something like strong dislike. And that’s a little bit different from the kind of hate that we want to eradicate. The kind of hate that we talk about is on the rise, which is hate of persons, either, or usually people who belong to a particular group.

Ray Briggs
So what’s special about hatred of people as opposed to inanimate objects or concepts?

Brit Brogaard
So everyone, when you hate a person, you can think about anger as a starting point. So if you take anger, then you could be angry with someone who stepped on your toes or stole your lunchbox. So the anger is about something they did wrong. It’s not about their personality or character. Hate is holistic. So it’s a also about mostly about the person’s character, or personality traits. So you’re basically by spite by hating someone, you are holding an attitude towards them that conveys in some way that they have malicious traits of sorts.

Josh Landy
Okay, so what’s the difference between hatred then and contempt?

Brit Brogaard
Yeah, it’s a very good question. And in ordinary speech, we we, we talk about hate mail, for example. And certainly if you said something out of concept to me, in a piece of mail that you sent me, or you said something hateful to me, we would still call it hate mail, and we wouldn’t be good of concept mail. But that’s because there are two senses more than two, but these two senses of hate in the English language, what is a broad sense, where it means hate or concepts, as in hate mail? In hate hate groups might be the same. And then there’s a narrow sense, which is what we talk about when we talk about personal hate. Specifically, we have that in mind. Content, just to add one thing has the disgust elements and disrespect element that that hate in the narrow sense does not.

Ray Briggs
So when you’re saying I can hate somebody without disrespecting them?

Brit Brogaard
Not really, actually. It gets complicated, so that this was backed is actually CIAT in common between hate and contempt. But in hatreds, that we, we actually have some kind of a different kind of respect. It sounds very strange. But let me explain represents respect for the people we hate. What kind of respect do we have? Well, it’s the kind of apprehensive respects it’s the kind of respect you have, if you say, I respect the sea, or, I have respect for for this slope. That’s very icy. So it’s a kind of fear. And you might like to say, just apprehension or fear, but it is showing up in the English language as respect. And that is also the kind of respect that can almost turn to admiration. So if you’ve seen some of the latest Ted Bundy TV shows on Netflix, some of them show that he had a lot of fans at women admiring him. And that kind of admiration is sort of one step up from what I’m talking about, about that. fear or apprehension or apprehensive respect that we have for the people we hate. So it cancels out that his respect a little bit. So you’re talking down to a person when you contact them in some sense, right? If you protect speaking to them, if you’re hating them, you’re sort of you want to punish them or kick them or something like that.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about why we hate with Berit Brogaard from the University of Miami, author of “Hatred: Understanding Our Most Dangerous Emotion.”

Ray Briggs
Is it always wrong to hate? Or are there some people who deserve to be hated? can hate ever serve a good cause?

Josh Landy
Hating haters and strife creators—plus comments and questions from you, our listeners, when Philosophy Talk continues.

Night Club
‘Cause you’re dead to me, dead to me.

Josh Landy
If your enemies are dead to you, can you still really hate them? I’m Josh Landy, this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ray Briggs
…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs, and we’re thinking about why we hate with Berit Brogaard from the University of Miami, author of “Hatred: Understanding Our Most Dangerous Emotion.”

Josh Landy
With COVID having reached the highest office in the land, we’re still pre-recording episodes from the safety of our respective basements, so I’m afraid we can’t take your phone calls today. But you can always email us at comments@philosophytalk.org, or you can come on our website where you can also become a subscriber getting access to our library of more than 500 episodes.

Ray Briggs
So Britt, earlier, Josh was saying that it might be okay to hate inanimate objects or abstract ideas, but that we should never hate other people. And I said that some people are truly hateful and they deserve to be hated. So who do you think is right?

Brit Brogaard
I think you’re right. Yeah. So so that there are people who deserve to be Hate it. Hate, please, the kind of role that you were talking about. That’s actually exactly one of the things I’m arguing in the book. But the thing about suffering social consequences is a function of emotions that are sort of thought of as good moral emotions when they can function that way. But of course, there are constraints on what kind of hatred can function that way.

Josh Landy
So what are the constraints?

Brit Brogaard
So I argue that when hatred becomes dehumanizing, then it cannot be justified. And when hatred is associated with retaliation, it cannot be justified. So, I argue that you actually do need to hit Okay, so not only to spark social change, but not in a dehumanizing way and not in a way where you’re seeking retaliation.

Josh Landy
Okay, yeah, that makes sense. And I have to say, you know, it’s speaking in my own voice, I totally see the advantage for society, of people getting called out for stuff. But what do you say to the argument on the other side, according to which hatred is bad for the hater, for the individual that comes at a certain cost? Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King, tweeted just this week, a quote from from her dad hate is too great a burden to bear. And so there seems to be a fairly widespread view at least that, well, maybe it has some good effects, but we’d sort of be better off as individuals without it. It’s it’s not good for me to have that kind of poison inside my soul. What what do you think about that?

Brit Brogaard
Yeah, so it becomes a poison when it’s a form of dehumanizing hatred. I call it the other form of hatred, cuticle hatred. And it can also be a form of poison when you have retaliatory wishes or desires. So that definitely can eat you up inside. But hatred can also be healing in certain circumstances.

Ray Briggs
I wanted to ask about retaliation. So you might think it’s one thing to want to retaliate against somebody, and another thing to actually do it. And so I see why it’s bad to actually do it. But it seems like it’s, it’s often totally fine to want to do things that you shouldn’t do in real life, as long as you keep a hold of yourself and a hold of reality. But it sounds like you think even wanting to retaliate is bad. Can you say more about why that is?

Brit Brogaard
Yeah, so those sorts of thing as cognitive dissonance. And without getting into the details of that it’s basically an uncomfortable contradiction. You have and you’re not necessarily conscious to to you, but say you hate and love the same person. In the case of where you have retaliatory desires, you have a kind of contradiction inside of you. And let me explain why that is. I think that if you are a fairly good person, you are not you will agree with the that we should not use by the people as mere means to an end. But retaliation is in some sense using another person as a means to an end, namely your own selfishness and your own desire to retaliate. So, so in the case where you do retaliate, that would be morally indefensible. In the case where you just have the disait as the desire, we can talk about it being irrational in the sense of there being cognitive dissonance.

Ray Briggs
I think I’m still a little confused about why the desire is wrong because it seems like I often have perfectly okay desires to do things that I shouldn’t do. So I would like to eat a whole chocolate cake. I often feel that way about chocolate cake, and if I did it, that would be I mean, it wouldn’t be morally wrong. Would it be like really impractical because I get a stomach ache? And I would prevent myself from eating more nutritious things that I probably need more. But I’m not sure I’m ready to give up the desire to do that.

Brit Brogaard
Um yeah, if you decided to eat a cake, and it decided to lose weight, or you decided to keep your diet then you definitely have the kind of conflict that might qualify for cognitive dissonance, you could have worse, right, worse contradictions, that says, Well, I want my loved one who is terminally ill to live, but I also want them to die. So their suffering could end. In the case of retaliatory desires, I’m thinking that if you’re these an average person, maybe even sort of a good person, you don’t want to use other people as tools to your set to the satisfaction of your own desires. So you have a desire not to retaliate, because retaliation is using them to satisfy your retaliatory desires, and you also have the desire to retaliate. So that’s a contradiction. So I’m not saying that having the desire is immoral. I’m just saying that it’s irrational.

Ray Briggs
Can I push you a little tiny bit more on this? Because I’m also confused about the means to an end aspect of your answer. So it seems like it’s not obvious to me that if I want to retaliate against somebody, I’m using them as a means to the end of like, my satisfaction. So suppose that they’ve, they’ve hurt a defenseless person that I sort of want recognized and I retaliate on behalf of the defenseless person. Isn’t that about the defenseless person and not about me?

Brit Brogaard
It might be in that in that particular case, but if you set up the case, the way that you want it to be that yet then you don’t have if you really just work as as in the service of the other person, you don’t have to have a retaliatory desire, you are doing you’re retaliating but you’re not really retaliating you’re doing it for the other. So if the other person was retaliating through you, you know, you’re like kind of like the Hitman right? So there might be another thing that you’re doing. That’s wrong. But it’s it’s it’s the real person who has a retaliatory desires, the one who’s setting you up. If you are Vitaly evaluating, even if it’s like as, as small of an issue as asking your classmate to give you back the book that you let them because they did something to you that you think is really bad. That’s that’s retaliation. Right? And, and, and that’s not something that can be justified. If you agree with me that we should not treat people as mere means to an ends. So we get three people as a means to an end, but not as a mere means to an end.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re thinking about why we hate with Berit Brogaard from the University of Miami, author of “Hatred: Understanding Our Most Dangerous Emotion.” And we have a comment from Alfredo who wrote on our website, philosophytalk.org. More than 70 years after World War Two few topics are such heated conversations in France as the collaborator versus resistant debate. In 2008, the Biblothèque de Paris hung the work of Andre Zucker on its walls. The picture pictures depicted ordinary Parisians going about their daily lives under the occupation. It was a scandal, it seemed the passive citizen drew almost as much hate as the collaborative. So what do you think there? It should, should we hate bystanders as much as perpetrators?

Brit Brogaard
I think we should hate them as much I think that they are accountable. But that accountability comes in degree of accountability or blame rather, is a part of a hatred actually, as I define it. So I think that I agree that we should, we should we should hold both accountable argue that in the book, a passive bystander is, is still so should still be held accountable for for things that go on in front of their noses.

Josh Landy
That makes sense. And I have to say I really like the sort of distinctions you were making earlier. You know, trying to sort out what’s the good kind of hatred the bat from the bad kind, don’t dehumanize? Maybe don’t retaliate. Make your hatred sensitive to reasons things like this thing that you talked about in your book? I want to come back though to your really interesting thought about the healing kind of hatred. You had this lovely passage in your book about double consciousness and am I understanding you right that the thought is something like look if if you don’t hate your oppressor if you react to your oppressors hatred of view with just okay, or, well, I see what you mean or something short of full blown hatred. Maybe you’re not doing everything you can to assert yourself respect is a kind of a funnel style. Thought here I’ve got a hate Your oppressor? Yeah. In those conditions, hatred is not only warranted, but good, good for the oppressed person.

Brit Brogaard
Yeah, it’s interesting, because actually, a lot of civil rights activists made that very point without necessarily naming it as hatred. But James Baldwin, for example, in some of his short stories, where he brilliantly sets up the racist as the character, right, that you normally should emphasize with what is that you’re feeling, some kind of disgust. But that’s one scene and going to meet the man one of his short stories where, where finally, some of those civil rights protesters, they’re standing up to this white devotee racist, and looking at them with hatred in the eyes. And that’s exactly what you’re what you’re talking about. And that I think, is important. When you leave out the violence, and when you leave out the dehumanization, and when you leave out the retaliation, you simply just in that particular situation. Yeah. reasserting your status.

Ray Briggs
So how do you keep this healing kind of hatred from turning into the bad or dangerous or corrosive kind of hatred?

Brit Brogaard
Yeah, that’s difficult, right? We, Martin Luther King, Jr. said that all the time that you have to really work on protesting without violence, right and speaking up, but don’t, don’t, don’t kill or don’t hit people, and so on. So the good trouble is something you have to work on, it’s definitely difficult to, to hate without feeling the desire to retaliate. Sure, we all slide into that all the time, if we hate some someone, especially if it’s that like a personal kind of hatred.

Ray Briggs
You said something earlier, I think about the possibility of love coexisting with hatred. Is that related to to avoiding the desire to retaliate?

Brit Brogaard
That’s interesting. I think that if the fact that it does coexist in the book, I sort of consider can it coexist? And I’m considering live in this case, not as kind of new, romantic love infatuation, but more like the kind of love you have for a long term partner, or a friend or a child or something like that. And then can you also have hatreds at the same time? Or is that actually also an inconsistency? Is that irrational? And it turns out, yes, it is. Irrational, because the kind of love that I describing in the book is the kind of love where you want to promote the other person’s interests. But in hatred, even if you don’t want to stand in the way of the other person’s interests, you don’t exactly want to promote the other person’s interest. So there’s a class.

Josh Landy
Okay, so, yeah, I’m a literature person. So I you know, as soon as you say can love and hate coexists. I’m like, Yeah, every sonnet I think especially of Shakespeare, sonnet 35, where the speakers boyfriend has betrayed him, perhaps sexually, it’s not clear. And he describes this as love and hate such Civil War is in my love and hate is it could not be rational a certain way, right? You know, you love the person and your love doesn’t just magically go away, because you were betrayed. But on the other hand, you got betrayed? And like, yeah, yeah, it’s okay. You know, isn’t it doesn’t it kind of fall into the kind of definition we’re saying earlier, you respect the person, and yet you see something a bit dubious in their character, and right, and you target a certain kind of negative emotion that way, what do you think?

Brit Brogaard
I mean, we can understand it. And it may also be that it’s rational in the sense of being in your own self interest. So Prudential. So that’s, that’s one sense of rational that that something is in your own interest. But if you’re, the content of your mind is contains a contradiction contradiction about something that matters to you. Then we would say, and he’s into philosophy, we would say that you are irrational.

Ray Briggs
So if I love and hate some But at the same time, should I stop loving them or stop hating them? Or does it depend on what they did?

Brit Brogaard
I think it definitely depends on what they did it, it also depends on. So that’s another way that hatred can be irrational. And that’s it if it doesn’t fit the world of the circumstances. So if you were wrong about hating the person, if you’re just taking something that that person did and attributing that to their bad character, then you’re wrong and you start hating. So it also depends on you, as well as of course on what they really did.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about why we hate with Berit Brogaard from the University of Miami, author of “Hatred: Understanding Our Most Dangerous Emotion.”

Ray Briggs
What can we do to stem the tide of hatred? Do we need stiffer penalties for hate crimes? Better education? Are there changes we can make to the political system?

Josh Landy
Abating hate—plus commentary from Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher, when Philosophy Talk continues

Taylor Swift
I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake—shake it off.

Josh Landy
If Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate—aren’t there better solutions than just shaking it off? I’m Josh Landy and this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ray Briggs
…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs. Our guest is Berit Brogaard from the University of Miami, and we’re thinking about why we hate.

Josh Landy
And we have an email from Carl in Portland, Oregon. Carl says hate is much different than simply intensive version, it’s really a hidden fear based reaction to stimuli that may even be unconscious for the Creator. Thanks for that really great thought, Carl. Yeah. Now, I think we can all agree that the proliferation of hate groups is a really terrible and worrying development. But it’s hard to know how to combat that. Do you have any suggestions for the changes that we can make?

Brit Brogaard
Yes, I think that we should consider a different kind of hate speech legislation than what has been on the table and has been rejected. And it’s a different form from the word, the one that you see in in Europe. So that’s one proposal I have. But hate speech. Legislation is only going to take us so far. I think that another thing that we should do is that we should change our voting system. So there are other voting systems that some are already actually in effect in smaller areas of the country. One is called a rank choice voting. And then there’s another system that I’m working on developing with a psychologist. That would be a little bit different from our current voting system.

Ray Briggs
So can you say a little bit more about the connection between voting systems and hate?

Brit Brogaard
Yeah, so the way that the voting system is set up, at least in at the federal level, in the presidential election, for example, you have a you have a vote, right, and you vote for one candidate or the other. So the candidates just need to cater to, to their base, and maybe to the swing voters. But when you have rank choice voting, so that would be say that it works a little bit better with more candidates, but so you had five candidates, and you can put 12345 down or maybe the more but you can rank your top five. In that case, the candidate, one of the candidates may win on the basis of the second choice votes, or the third choice votes, and so they can’t just cater to their own base. In fact, they might have to cater to second choice voters. third choice voters was choice voters. And so you don’t see the kind of polarization I would think that you actually see today in politics. And we know that that is definitely encouraging some of the hatreds in the population some of sometimes it’s also encouraging the hate groups in in becoming more polarized.

Ray Briggs
So I have I have a question, I guess about the, the possibilities and limits of that. So I spent some time in Australia, and I was living in Queensland, which is the home of racist MP Pauline Hanson. To pick on one notable Australian racist And so I guess I’m a little. So it doesn’t like it doesn’t seem like rank choice voting eliminates hatred, which is not what you said you said it would it would make the problem better. But I guess I think I’m a little bit like, unsure about how, like how much of a solution it is, especially in a country that also has like real power differentials between like, white people and other minority groups.

Brit Brogaard
Yeah, it’s definitely going to be difficult to I’m not even talking about eliminating hatred, I’m talking about preventing it from increasing more. But even then, it’s going to be difficult as another thing called group realization, which is, in a nutshell, really, that in a big group of people that devoted to the same cause passionately, they if they deliberate or debate over a certain amount of time, they might start out with moderate viewpoints, say they might sort of dislike immigrants. But then after they have taught for a certain amount of time, every single one in the group will be more radical than anyone in the group was when they started. So that’s sort of the one of those interesting, unpredictable findings, about groups that that actually occurs. But it only occurs when people are devoted to a cause that they’re very passionate about. Or they are very similar minded in some other way. So if we could actually break up of these forums where similar minded people get together to debate the same causes that they’re very passionate about. That might help to, of course, we can’t completely break them up. But maybe we could do something about breaking them up. And I’m thinking mostly online in this case.

Josh Landy
Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. I mean, that brings me to a slightly more general question, not just how can we tackle it? But what are the causes of this? You’ve pointed to one very plausible cause, which is the kind of this kind of silo ation, right? These filter bubbles echo chambers, that people find themselves in one of the things I love about the way you write about hatred is you don’t buy into the banality of evil claim you don’t you don’t believe it? I don’t believe either. Yeah. Right. We’re all the same, we’d all become murderous killers, just put us in that situation. So your thought, isn’t that look, this is just how humanity is your thought is more? This is these are this. This is being artificially manufactured by, by propaganda by by badly functioning social media. What are some other features of our current landscape that are contributing to this terrifying rise of hate?

Brit Brogaard
Both. So that goes into politics, again, a little bit, but we that’s a tendency to romanticize the past, but our past, is a white supremacist past. So if you romanticize the past us, you romanticize white supremacy. Make America Great Again. Well, what kind of past was that? What is what kind of past that we’ve been trying to? In doing that? So so that would be something that I call it the American fantasy with PAH for various reasons, but But it’s sort of that very idea. But in addition to that, that there’s a lot of propaganda, political propaganda. And now you might think, of some posters during the years before the Second World War in Germany. When I say propaganda, but propaganda actually, is everywhere. It can be as subtle by us, as a claim made about a certain rally. So for instance, the Charlottesville rally, when Trump was talking about that both sides of both the white supremacist and and the counter protesters that they were both to blame. Oh, that’s, that’s, that’s very subtle. But it’s, it’s quite a sense of a mess. It’s and it’s kind of like part of propaganda. And I could mention a lot of other examples of, of novels and so forth that have inspired the current administration.

Ray Briggs
So I I agree with the points you’re making about the connections between white supremacy and Hate and propaganda. I’m wondering if you have used on like, how much of white supremacy can be explained by hate because you often hear this like, well, I’m, I’m not prejudiced because I don’t hate the group that I’m supposedly prejudiced against. So like, I’m, I’m not a racist, like, some of my best friends are black or like, I’m not sexist, I love women. Um, is that is that because there’s more to two things like white supremacy and misogyny than than hate?

Brit Brogaard
Yeah, I mean, first of all, this goes back to what we started out talking about. It could be manifest as contempt that where you’re thinking, Oh, they’re not quite as good as you write that. So that doesn’t take about without brought about? Can it be another way of looking at other people? Sure. You might have a form of contempt that will be discussed, that would be one, one down from from contempt. You might be disgusted by some people. You but but but clearly, yeah, there’s more. There’s more to it, you also have to hate them for a reason. That’s unreasonable, right? You’re repeating them, say because of their skin color, or because of their gender, or because of their sexual orientation, or because of their cultural traditions or their religions or something like that. And so you’re not hating them? For a reason that could possibly motive, I mean, rationally motivate hatred.

Ray Briggs
I wanted to hear more about your hate speech legislation proposal, actually, what you mentioned briefly, what kind of laws would do a better job of combating hate speech?

Brit Brogaard
That’s a hard question. I, I devote a whole chapter more or less to that. And I sort of engage with the idea that, that has inspired a lot of the hate speech laws in Europe, and is also defended by Waldron, in legal theorists, who has a book defending hate speech as being a kind of defamation or liable. So the the typical defamation case, that libel case that you might have would be that someone writes to some crime to you falsely, in in a newspaper, for example, or elsewhere in some public place. And that would be a typical defamation or libel case. And so he argues that it should be group liable and a lot of the laws in Europe define hate it not define hate speech, but take hate speech to be your kind of group liable and base that to the laws on that. But I what I’m arguing is that most of a lot of hate speech is not really at all liable, or any form of liable because for something to be deformation, it has to be something that’s factual. That’s true or false. But if I call someone the slow, I have hardly made some factual claim, false or true. So that that doesn’t work. But they’re also much more subtle cases as Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial. Doesn’t sound like defaming anyone, but maybe if you took it, you would really have to stretch it. Right. But it may be put in terms where it’s not defaming anyone but it’s still hate speech.

Josh Landy
Yeah, right. We’re getting towards the end of our time. But as a avid football, which means soccer fan, I can’t let you go without asking one final question. Is it warranted for me to hate another team? I want you to say yes, I mean, especially if it’s a team whose players cheat, and their fans endorse it. I won’t name names. But surely, it’s rational for me to hate that team. What do you think, Brett? I think that, though, I know, I know. You’re right. I know you’re right. And you’re right about everything else, as far as I can tell. And I hope that your proposals are adopted, and that we enter a better a better period for our country and for the world. Thank you so much for joining us today, Brit.

Brit Brogaard
Thanks so much for having me.

Josh Landy
Our guest has been Berit Brogaard, professor of philosophy at the University of Miami, and author of “Hatred: Understanding Our Most Dangerous Emotion.” So Ray, what are you thinking now?

Ray Briggs
Well, that discussion of hatred in the US was really deep and horrifying. And I’m ready to go watch some classic movies and relax. I’m going to watch movies about couples who hate each other, like, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and like closer. I wouldn’t want to live any of those stories. I don’t want to give any kind of hate story, but I do love the snappy dialogue.

Josh Landy
Yeah, have fun relaxing with those, Ray. Those are great suggestions. We’re gonna put links to everything we’ve mentioned today on our website, philosophytalk.org, where you can become a subscriber and you can get access to our library of more than 500 episodes.

Ray Briggs
And if you have a question that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, we’d love to hear from you. Send it to us at comments at philosophytalk.org and we may feature it on our blog. Now, a man who’s got no time for hate: it’s Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales… Maybe it’s just me but actual hatred has always seemed to be a fleeting thing. I can hate my Mom because she won’t give me a quarter for the movies, but then she does and I love her again with tears of gratitude, even if I wind up hating the movie. Hatred is rare but intense! When Iago says of Othello, “I hate the Moor,” for instance, I don’t think he does. It could be simple racism, I suppose, which is focused hatred as a kind of targeted hobby. But in Iago’s case, I think his hatred is an attempt to attach a recognizable human emotion to a psychotic whim, thus giving us the tragedy of Othello, which, ironically, many people love. Thinking about this, I’ve tried to remember if I’ve ever felt hatred, and I don’t think so. What seemed like hatred was usually extreme anger, once at a friend who had made me so angry I was trying to kill him by smashing his head against a tree. Fortunately, we were eleven. He was extremely wiry and I had no upper body strength. A week later we were friends again. Growing up, as a wannabe liberal I never quite worked up hatred for Reagan or Bush- Dick Cheney maybe, Stephen Miller, but even there it’s on me. And liberals wind up hating their own much more than conservatives. It was “Hey Hey LBJ how many men you killed today,” not “Hey Hey Richard Nixon…” where do you even go with that? And now, of course, as everybody and his dog – except for conservatives- want to embrace the Me Too, and Black Lives Matter, and Woke Culture, hatred is just uncool. If we hate, we need to work on our relationship skills. Everybody is trying desperately to be reasonable. President Trump seems to be the last hater in America, but it could just be the holding of grudges, not quite the same thing. He seems obsessed with Hunter Biden, though I don’t quite see why. Because his Dad maybe helped him get a job ten years ago, a job he doesn’t even have any more? Frankly, when it comes to children riding on Dad’s coat tails, a little healthy self-hatred might come in handy for Donald Trump. And any one of his kids, if you’re honest about it, if they ate at your restaurant, you’d tell them cash only, and count the forks when they left. No hater, just common sense. Trump also seemed to hate Kamala Harris. He called her a monster, when in fact, she’s a Senator. I thought he liked Senators. It was Congress he pretended to hate. Trump also called Kamala Harris a Communist, but we do not have those either. We have run out of hate as a nation. Where do we put it? The Cold War is over. Russia is just Putin’s playground and China, we don’t even know what China is right now. Another damn marketplace, near as I can tell. Here in California, what with fires and Covid, we don’t have the breath or the personal space for hatred. However, some people hate having to wear masks. Some people hate people for not wearing masks. Hate can be a word we use when we don’t have the right one. Do racists really “hate” black people? Or is it some kind of performative anti virtue signaling to white people they’d like to have a beer with? Are all these hatreds equivalent? Cancel culture and woke are the same! Wake up sheeple! And quit saying sheeple I hate that. Do I hate Soviet Death Camps as much as I hate Jordan Peterson. Which do I hate more? Figs or broccoli? It’s a sliding scale. We don’t all hate Nazis. Nazis love Nazis. That’s how baby Nazis are made. I hated a vending machine once until my Snickers fell down. On Judge Judy, just the other day, a woman was suing her former boyfriend for the money she loaned him to fix the bumper of his car. She looked mad. She looked like she hated him. But all she wanted, as it turned out, was her 300 bucks back. Judge Judy agreed. All hatred suddenly vanished! We love you Judge Judy! And if you don’t love Judge Judy, you’re probably a Communist, or the equivalent, and should be shunned. Or hated. Whatever. I gotta go.

Josh Landy
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of KALW local public radio San Francisco and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2020.

Ray Briggs
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Josh Landy
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Ray Briggs
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Josh Landy
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Ray Briggs
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Josh Landy
Not even when they’re true and reasonable. The conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org, where you too can become a partner in our community of thinkers. I’m Josh Landy.

Ray Briggs
And I’m Ray Briggs. Thank you for listening.

Josh Landy
And thank you for thinking.

John Oliver
I do not like that man, Ted Cruz. I do not like his backward views. I do not like his stupid suits. I do not like his cowboy boots. I do not like him when he sneezes, I do not like him eating cheeses. I hate to see his dumb face smirkin’ because his beard looks like a merkin.