| Strongly Disliking the Status Quo
by Simon Ringsmuth
September 12, 2005
I found out this week that I live in a hateful state. Not the most hateful state (that honor goes to South Carolina), but a hateful one nonetheless. Minnesota, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, had seven active hate groups in the year 2004. I was already aware that this is a battleground state, and we certainly had our share of arguments between the blues and the reds last November, but I did not realize this state was so rife with hatred. |
|
Nor, for that matter, did I realize we are just barely ahead of Nebraska--my old stomping ground. After living here a year, my impression of the place is one of mostly content football fans who like to fish in the summer and ski in the winter. So you can imagine my surprise when I found out that our state is home to three groups of Neo-Nazis, two chapters of the Christian Identity movement, and one rather shady-looking chapter of Other.
That's right, our great state of 10,000 lakes is, unfortunately, housing one of the ever-dangerous Other movements. It's a loosely defined group, that is to say it is not really a group at all but more of whatever the Southern Poverty Law Center deems it to be. According to the SPLC, hate groups which fall into the "Other" category are defined as follows:
This category includes hate groups with a hodge-podge of doctrines.
A hodge-podge of doctrines? That definition is broad enough so as to include virtually anyone whom the SPLC deems worthy of the h-word. Now, I'm not one to go around hating people. In fact, I use the term hate as little as possible and often encourage others to do the same. When we use words meant to express ideas or emotions on the extreme ends of a given spectrum, those words begin to lose their power. They become sanitized by their frequency of occurance, much in the same way the f-word becomes merely a distraction, a mosquito-like annoyance, to any viewer of Pulp Fiction or South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. And in applying such a broad definition to a slope as slippery as that of hate, the SPLC may be doing itself and the general a great disservice.
Of course, any discussion of hatred must ultimately involve the infamous phrase "hate crime". According to Wikipedia (don't laugh, it's quickly becoming the number-one source of information on the internet) a hate crime is "a crime (not necessarily a violent crime, though sometimes so) that is motivated by prejudice against a social group". That definition, like SPLC's definition of a hate group, far too vague. And, by consequence, far too meaningless to be effective.
Hate is a tough word to use, and it's easy to throw it around in contexts where it is not really appropriate. If the SPLC can label groups as hateful simply because they disagree with a group's politics, could not another group label the SPLC hateful in a similar fashion? Not that I am a supporter of the Westboro Baptist Church (far from it, in fact. Fred Phelps is nuts, and way off base in his religious thinking.), but could not they label many homosexual activist groups as hateful?
It seems as though a definition of hate depends on the status quo. If we lived under Hitler's rule, hate would have an entirely different social connotation than it does now. And this just goes to show how careful we have to be when tossing the word "hate" around whenever it suits our fancy. We label certain groups as hateful, and certain crimes as hateful, when it is deemed necessary or acceptable by the status quo, which is what makes the term so dangerous in the first place. I have certain religious views which, by the SPLC's definition, could qualify me as a hateful person. The Scottish government is preparing to enact a law which would add gays and lesbians to those covered under hate crimes, but this has led to fear and thoughts of intimidation among others who simply have differing views on homosexuality than the status quo.
"There has been intimidation of religious groups, who felt they had to keep quiet as a result," said John Deighan, the spokesperson for the Catholic Church in Scotland, in reaction to this new legislation. "You get self-censorship developing. People are afraid to say what they believe in on homosexuality because they feel that they will be accused of homophobia."
I believe there is evil in the world, and I believe there is hate in the world, but I also believe it is hard to define. And we have to be careful how we use the term hate, lest it come full circle and we find ourselves on the wrong end of the definition before we even realize it.
Leave feedback in the Forums
|
