What is hate?

I have been working on my topics for years now, and yet the questions seem to have remained the same throughout this time: What is hate? Why do people hate? Why do people hate other people? And why is it so often Jews who are hated?

I have devoted an entire chapter to this question in my latest book. Therefore, no quick answer can be given here to such a complex question. However, since I took part in an internal training course last Thursday at one of the institutes I work for, the question seems more relevant than ever. One of the guest lecturers was a professor who trains and educates teachers at a German university. The topic of his workshop was how to deal with extreme opinions, e.g., in lectures or in the seminar room. Interestingly, he focused almost exclusively on right-wing extremism. While explaining a graphic representation, he drew a comparison with the so-called left wing. According to his presentation, what constitutes extremism on the right side of the political spectrum does not exist on the left.

Well, first of all, the historian in me must clarify that right and left are arbitrary classifications anyway.

What is hate?

Background:

The March Revolution of 1848 led to a group of people meeting in Frankfurt am Main to prepare for elections to the first all-German parliament. To organize the elections, they gathered at the so-called Pre-Parliament in St. Paul's Church. The building was chosen because it was considered one of the most modern of its time and offered plenty of space for the delegates. And so, from March 1848, the windows of the church were decorated with the flags of the new federal colors of black, red, and gold. The pulpit was covered and the organ concealed. A presidential table was set up in place of the altar. From March 31 to April 3, the Pre-Parliament first met to prepare for the election of the Frankfurt National Assembly. On May 1, 1848, elections were held in all states of the German Confederation. The election followed the principles of personal election, meaning it was free, equal, direct, and secret.

On May 18, 1848, the National Assembly finally convened in a solemn ceremony. Due to the location of the meeting, this National Assembly is also referred to as the “Paulskirche” or “Paulskirchenparlament” (St. Paul's Church Parliament). Among the 830 delegates, including deputies, were respected and well-known personalities. The number of delegates who were present fluctuated between 300 and 500 because travel was still very difficult at that time. The delegates met in informal gatherings to discuss political issues.

In Parliament itself, in the church building, the members of parliament sat as is customary in the French Parliament. Viewed from the president's seat, the conservatives sat on the right, the moderate liberals next to them, then the liberals in the center of the plenary chamber, the progressive liberals to their left, the moderate democrats further to the left, and the radical democrats on the far left. However, there was also a large group of people who did not want to be assigned to any of these groups, also known as factions. In this respect, this division into right and left is not particularly meaningful.

Okay, I let my colleague get away with that; perhaps as a non-historian, it's not something you necessarily need to know. However, it is simply wrong to assume that extreme opinions and extremists are only found on the right of the political spectrum. And none of this is anything new!

Extremism is not a right-wing attitude. Extremism is a human attitude. The same applies to hatred. Hatred is not a right-wing attitude. Hatred is a human attitude.

Of course, I am not alone in this statement—legions of researchers from all kinds of disciplines have tried to explain extremism and hatred.

My view on this is as follows:

Whenever people are stereotyped and simplified into a group, it is only a small step to hating that group. This is then a matter of lower human feelings and attitudes, not right-wing ones. Groups are therefore the key word. Groups are no longer individuals, because you don't look groups in the eye when you denigrate them: you don't have to confront an individual, a person, a human being. That makes everything easier. To hate is easier and to murder, too.

These groups can also be understood as communities. And the concept of community has been and continues to be negatively connoted by both the left and the right, who try to use it to their respective advantage. All sides see their own homogeneity threatened by their irrational interpretation of otherness. Both the left and the right see this threat in Judaism, for example. But this is not about personal acquaintances, neighbors, or colleagues: these are excluded as supposedly atypical representatives of Judaism; it is about the collective of Jews.

No wonder, then, that the IHRA, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, places such emphasis on the collective in its definition of anti-Semitism or hatred of Jews: “Jews as a collective,” “Jews as collectively responsible for the Jewish state of Israel and its government.” And it is no wonder that so many states and institutions around the world follow this definition. It is obvious: if you declare people to be collectives and turn them into communities or groups, it is quite easy to identify inequalities with other supposed groups. Inequality is inhumane when it comes to rights, duties, and humanity. I'm not lumping everyone together here; people are different. Isn't that wonderful? But declaring people to be groups, collectives, in order to make them unequal and deny them their dignity often leads to hatred. At least that's what I've learned from our shared humanity. Of course, I wasn't particularly surprised that my colleague didn't recognize this. Many are simply blind in one eye, in this case the left. Inequality, degradation, extremism, and hatred—these things have always existed. And even today, we see that it doesn't matter where those who spread hatred are politically positioned.

And it is completely irrelevant whether the inequality and degradation come from the left, the right, or even a religious direction. In the end, it's all the same, and the answer to the question of what hatred is, as profane as it is obvious and devastating, is:

First and foremost, hatred is human.

The good thing about this is that if it is human, then we humans can also put an end to it. And with everything we are currently experiencing and having to endure, that seems quite comforting to me.