In a very nice diary, Undercover Blue asks why the rightwing is so prone to hate. As a psychoanalyst, philosopher, political theorist, and critic of ideology I've thought a good deal about precisely these sorts of questions. I posted this as a long comment to his diary, but thought it was worth a diary in its own right. These points, of course, are only a crude outline of a very broad body of research condensing work done in a number of different fields done by a number of different researchers. In short, this is a vast simplification that requires more fleshing out with appropriate bells and whistles such as references and whatnot.
Rightwing politics is the politics of resentment. It's not a mistake that conservatives are primarily disaffected white males (I'm not suggested that all white males are subject to this resentment... I happen to be a white male myself). I suspect that the real root of all of this is a waning sense of power and importance within American society, harsh economic conditions that make jobs unstable (it's not unusual to go through layoffs every few years in the corporate world), and a world that's progressively become opaque and threatening to the understanding. This breeds a politics of resentment where those feeling powerless but also believing themselves entitled to power cast about for some scapegoat responsible for the theft of their enjoyment or source of dissatisfaction.
Of course, this has nothing to do with the real group itself, but is all about the hater's insecurities. The muslim provides a perfect fantasy object for the insecure white male, as the Middle East doesn't have a tenth of the power the U.S. has militarily, so it allows the insecure creature of resentment to bask in their own feelings of superiority as they crush the opposing group. Compared to massive issues like job insecurity produced by globalization, the potential for apocalyptic disasters such as global warming or a meteor hitting the heart, war against the weak "ferner" gives them the sense they have some power over their destiny. Of course, things haven't turned out well which is why these creatures of resentment cling all the more ferociously to their fantasies of superiority, casting about for rationalizations of our failure in Iraq such as a hostile liberal media (castrating to the white male), etc., etc. that would allow them to continue believing in a power and superiority that they lack.
Whenever encountering a discourse of ethnic and racial hate you will invariably find that it's accompanied by some fantasy that the other group has stolen some sort of enjoyment that is rightfully theirs or that they're participating in a form of enjoyment that is forbidden. The trick is simply to ignore the racial, gender, or ethnic content and translate it back into the social dissatisfaction the rightwinger is experiencing with respect to their own economic, social, and romantic realities. Example:
- "Homosexuals are promiscuous" translation: the rightwingers sex life sucks and he has a hard time dating or he's in a horrible marraige that he rushed into because of the "Christian" values that thrust him in the direction of marriage at too early an age or he himself is gay.
- "Women want unfair advantages such as affirmative action" translation: the rightwinger doesn't interview well for jobs and experiences the rejection he gets from women in his romantic life as something that might translate into his worklife if he happens to have a female boss or competitor. It's bad enough that he gets turned down for dates again and again, but it's especially galling to now have to compete with those same women that turned him down.
- "Blacks are lazy and want to live on government money" translation: the rightwinger is overworked and doesn't get payed enough but is stuck in a dead end job and can't protest his exploitation so as to produce more equitable working conditions.
You get the idea. The real question then is why does the rightwinger projects the source of dissatisfaction onto other groups such as women, homosexuals, minorities, and so on in this way? I suspect that the answer to this question is that the rightwinger experiences himself as profoundly powerless where possibilities of changing his concrete social and economic conditions are concerned. This is a major difference between the left and the right. On the left we feel empowered, we believe we can change society. On the right, by contrast, the person is always a bootlicker, fawning over the very people that cause him suffering, but believing that no other way of life is possible.
For instance, take the xenophobia directed towards immigrants. It's likely that the real source of this hostility has nothing to do with immigrants, but has everything to do with globalized capitalism that has rendered all our jobs and prosperity precarious due to outsourcing and whatnot. The rightwinger can't do a whole hell of a lot about global capitalism. He relies on the corporation he works for to put food on the table and the forces of global capital are just too great and complex to be strategically targeted (so he thinks anyway). However, if he displaces this anxiety towards economics onto some ethnic groups like Hispanic immigrants, well he can do something about that: he can take pleasure in kicking their teeth in or at least saying all sorts of vile and hateful things about them "ferners" taking over the country and destroying "good wholesome 'merican jobs". This, at least, gives him the illusion that he has proactive mastery over his life and puff up his ego by making him feel superior and powerful with regard to the powerless and weak immigrant. In short, I see this resentment as a way of resolving what are essentially economic and social problems by obfuscating true causes for fetishized illusions that, in turn, give one a false or illusory sense of power without really changing anything. Or that's my theory anyway.