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Opinion

Commentary: The structure of hatred

22 July 2013
9 minute read

A society dominated by relationships of competition, one where the argument that "the ends justify the means" is considered valid, creates lightning rods out of  phenomena it doesn’t know how to deal with or doesn’t want to handle. In this society, those phenomena are homeless people and especially Romani people. Here, if you give these people a kick, you can easily justify your actions as moral. 

Antigypsyism is on the rise once again here. Nazis are marching in České Budějovice, in Duchcov, and elsewhere. Propaganda spreads online about "welfare abuse", and the actual segregation of Romani people no longer concerns just access to housing and the labor market, but is being extended to other areas by the efforts of many municipalities to enact laws blessing such segregation.  

We have long discussed the causes of this critical state of affairs:  Economic decline, the government’s anti-social policies, rhetoric referencing "inadaptables", and the feeling of ruin that is spreading through society. That feeling is based on the fact that despite all our efforts, official policy has not deviated one centimeter from this deleterious course, but on the contrary, has continued on it.  

The South Bohemian Regional Police director has defended people shouting about "black swine", the city of Prague wants to eject homeless people from mass transit, and no small number of citizens silently agree with these moves, when they are not directly applauding them. Populist politicians promise to go even further, with consequences.

I am not going to discuss the cause of this state of affairs, nor am I going to specify proposals for resolving it, but I will try to describe the composition of the relationships that facilitate its reproduction. Even though I understand the structure of hatred to be significantly autonomous, existing in and of itself, I do not deny that it also fits very well with other structures, and I do not rule out the possibility that specific organizations and people make use of it in their strategies.

I call this the structure of hatred because it mobilizes people for the very worst:  Abuse, anger, disappointment, envy, fear, frustration, hatred, ostracism, rancor and violence. How does it do this?

The basic process was described in a very funny way by Jaroslav Dušek in his "Four Agreements" (Čtyři dohody). It’s called the "falling shit method" and consists of transferring all your own problems elsewhere, onto other people, usually on those who are somehow "lower" than you. 

If, for example, the boss makes a mistake and cannot admit it was due to his own error or negligence, he starts getting angry at his subordinates and blames them for not doing their jobs well, and he starts giving them tasks and harassing them in other ways. However, the subordinates, who are aware that they did what they could as best they could, are unable to grasp what the problem is, and they feel abused and unjustly accused.

The correct response would be for the subordinates to calm the boss down, explain their opinions to him, and attempt to get him to reflect on his behavior. However, the hierarchical structure of many organizations usually prevents such a process. The system often selects people for leadership positions who have very strong defenses against (or are even deprived of the ability to perform) this kind of self-reflection.   

Those selected for leadership are often "strong", very often vain, and usually inconsiderate as individuals. They are led to this behavior by a society dominated by relationships of competition which enormously values "performance" and "results" and has a tendency to overlook the way in which results are achieved. In short, a society where the slogan "the ends justify the means" is considered valid. 

How, on the other hand, does an employee handle those emotions and the tasks the boss has given him in order to relieve himself of his own responsibility? If the employee "wants to move up", he will behave exactly as the boss does and send those emotions on down! This time he may project them not only onto a subordinate lower than him, but perhaps also onto his children, his dog, his partner – or maybe onto someone from a social group that has been designated as the punching bag. It’s so easy to do. The society of competition approves of this, and the government will sanctify this behavior from on high by precisely defining the group intended to serve as a punching bag by using the concept of "inadaptables".  

Society, therefore, as a result of its own functional differentiation, directly creates a lightning rod for the phenomena it does not know how to deal with or does not want to handle. Ridding oneself of responsibility at the individual level, therefore, corresponds to ridding society of its responsibility – and the government, which calls itself responsible, crowns this behavior as acceptable!

This basic process explains a great deal. It is a social mechanism which shifts pressures and problems from the center to the periphery and gradually removes them from the system altogether. It is only thanks to this mechanism that the government is able to purge itself of all its bad decisions, corruption, and dirt, just as the managers of firms purge themselves of the sinister environmental and social consequences of their economic activity, and just as influential editors and journalists purge themselves of the consequences of their own half-truths, lies, and unpublished facts.  

We are still left asking the question:  Why homeless people and the Roma now? Why not, for example, foreigners, or homosexuals, or the Jews, who have also previously found themselves among the usual suspects here? This is not to say that there are no indications of antisemitism, homophobia or xenophobia in our society, there are, but their intensity is different.  

I see the reason as lying in the fact that a victim is now sought who will be clearly and easily identifiable. You cannot tell who is homosexual or Jewish at first glance. Moreover, there is a certain awareness here that such people might be influential and wealthy, which means there is the risk that if you kick them, they will knock you to the ground. As for foreigners, they have earned social recognition here to a certain degree (they respect the discourse of work) and are often from countries that might even start fighting on behalf of their rights – in other words, they are not easy victims. 

That’s why homeless people and the Roma are the victims of choice today:  Their public image is such that they have no money, no power, and very often no one to stand up for them. If you kick them, they either flee or move away, or you might even have a proper fight with them (if that’s what you want) and work out all of your negative emotions that way. 

Some other important, if minor, details also come into play here. You can relieve yourself by humiliating others, but if you do this to someone weaker than you, it is normal to feel certain pangs of conscience. That’s why it’s better to kick a Romani person than a homeless one. Romani people defend themselves, so it represents a certain challenge to assault them, a "test of bravery". However, the racism associated with facts of ethnicity and skin color has been de-legitimized socially, so the choice of the "gypsy" as a lightning rod for one’s own frustration must be justified through some explanation other than his ethnic difference. These must be Romani people who don’t work, but who are still receiving some sort of advantage you do not. It is difficult to explain to people that such rumors are completely unsubstantiated, as many other articles have described.

The Roma, therefore, are said to be not like the ordinary unemployed, but allegedly are even better off. That’s why it seems to be "morally" correct to throw claims of inequality back in their faces, and to justify oneself in so doing by claiming to be actually defending equality:  It would be unfair for Romani people to be entitled to some sort of affirmative action, a Government Rapporteur for Roma Affairs, or any other special care!

In order to satisfactorily humiliate someone else, we must first raise him up a bit, at least rhetorically. After all, we are humiliating him because he has somehow unjustifiably lorded it over us. That’s how easy it is for indefensible human behavior to basically be viewed as an act of morality. That’s why it is necessary for these unbelievable (and usually untrue) stories to circulate among people. In addition to this "call for equality", which paradoxically justifies inequality, the myths of Romani people driving Mercedes to pick up their welfare serve one more fishy purpose:  They mobilize people’s envy. Similarly, when homeless people are singled out, the view taken of them is in the context of fear – fear for one’s own employment and housing – and mobilizes people to do "whatever it takes to get rid of them".

Above all, fear and similar instincts paralyze critical detachment and thinking in the interest of taking immediate action. That’s why those chain e-mails spreading untrue myths are often accompanied by the well-known phrase "Unless you send this to 10 more people right now, the collections agent will come for you." 

We hear that "nothing can be done" about elites who don’t measure up, or that "it’s too complicated" to deal with the disempowerment of the middle classes and the gradual elimination of the lower ones, but at a minimum we will point to inequality when it brings us a certain emotional and psychological satisfaction. After all, homeless people smell bad! You can justify it however you like, but that smell makes me feel sick, so I’m glad for anything that removes it from my environment. This is how we return to "the ends justify the means", coming full circle. Any kind of exclusion of "inadaptables" can be justified, and we will applaud anyone who does it for us. I don’t intend to get my own hands dirty ("I am not a racist"), but I will be glad when the dirty work is done. 

A clear demand is being created in this market society. We don’t even have to ask why, the market will take care of it. After all, in a market society, the satisfaction of any demand is a priori legitimate. As we have been following the all but holy terror being visited on people in this country for the past month, we understand that it not only legitimizes the "exclusion of the pests" and social problems, but satisfies a demand for certain political decisions. These decisions are actually not popular with most people, and are very often unconstitutional, but they have found their place on the market nevertheless.   

First published on Denikreferendum.cz. 

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