A comment posted two days ago disturbed me. It came appended to a red-meat post to progressives about the imminent threat that Trump’s movement poses. The diary itself utilized a lot of photos, images, Tweets and headlines to stir the reader’s emotions. It was effective and not too over-the-top, a bracing essay. But then the author posted a comment as an amendment, almost as a guidepost for those which were to follow. The comment read:
By the way, the DKos algorithm chastised me recently for referring, in my most recent diary, to Trump supporters as capital M, capital A, capital G, capital A, capital T, capital S, and said I had to remove the offending word or I would be barred from posting. So I removed it. After all, I wouldn’t want to demean the people half of whom would gleefully kill me. No sir. I wanna be as respectful as possible to people who think I want to kill newborn babies weeks after their birth. I want to be polite to those who want to establish a Right-wing religious dictatorship which will strip me first of my right to vote, then my citizenship, then my right to live. Gosh, I wouldn’t want to demonize or dehumanize the people who want to butcher my gay friends and replace the public school system with a series of Right-wing fundamentalist Christian madrassas that will destroy American science education permanently. So be polite, OK?
77 people uprated this comment as of 8:30 p.m. last night.
The author uses the word ‘kill’ twice in rapid succession, along with ‘butcher’ as a verb. ‘Destroy” also appears here. That’s tone-setting.
Not only would MAGA types kill him, supposedly, but gleefully (as opposed to sorrowfully?). Of course, only half of them would, must as Trump said Mexico was sending drug dealers and rapists but rest assured some of them were good people.
‘Butcher’ is a word right-wing agitators have been using, along with ‘grooming,’ to describe LGBTQ+ people and/or the doctors who perform gender / sex reassignment surgery. Is this word used to boomerang the effect?
Also, ‘madrassas’ is a word used almost exclusively by the right wing, to smear Muslim / foreign religious schools. We all know that famously the word was deployed against Mr. Obama when he was in office, to make him seem even more foreign than the right had already made him out to be. In fact, the word itself simply means “school.” So there’s no need to use it in this context, except that the word in our culture has already been imbued with these senses of “foreign” and “a place of indoctrination.” So the use of it here in this DKos post is to make MAGA types even less “like us,” less American, more alien.
On top of that is the scornful shaming of progressives who’d call for the minimization or the shirking altogether of dehumanization, as though that stance would be the more deserving of ridicule. To call for not dehumanizing or demonizing is painted as the less moral thing to do here.
This is a hate message. Especially coming on the heels of a diary whose substance was meant to stir the blood, get the heart pumping and outrage flowing, a diary already a call to action—this message by the author invites readers already so charged to discharge those feelings into contempt, into loathing, and into a need to defend themselves first (a pre-emptive first strike, which of course theoretically would be permissible if it’s known that such a threat to existence were menacing and advancing upon us). This comment means to instantly transform those pent-up feelings of suspense and anger into superiority and unassailable distance, vengeance and reprisal.
77 people uprated that. Endorsed that.
That message made seventy-seven people hanker for intolerance. Someone right on cue carried the author’s “sarcasm” (really spite) forward further downstream in the comments. Just like that, the hate was propagating.
This is no different from wanting to use an N-bomb. You know there are people on the right, just itching to use that in public. They’re waiting. Already people have “joked” it’ll be only a matter of time before Trump trots out the slur, to the delight of his followers.
The same urge infects our “side,” with this juvenile desire to use this dehumanizing word. “Why can’t we say it?” some people here demand. I want to know: why do you want to say it? What will it bring you? Joy? Catharsis? A feeling that, finally, meanness can be a tool put to use on our side?
That way be dragons. Don’t go down that path.
You can see yourself only in the same fullness as you see other people. As you would demean them, you demean yourself. You demonstrate just how much regard you have and will ever have for yourself through your regard for others. There’s a reason why “the greatest commandment” is to love one’s neighbor as oneself. That’s because the brain cannot tell the difference. You treat others as you would be treated? No: you treat others as you would treat yourself. That’s the bar you set for humanity, and you’re included.
So this is self-respect. This is a measure of self-respect.
I’m not saying that you have to acquiesce or “be polite.” That is not my point at all. It certainly isn’t “Be polite for politeness’ sake.” My point is that the person who uses hate speech is corrupted by the use of that speech. It doesn’t matter which “side” you’re on. The intake of hate is what we’ve been fighting against this whole time. We’re not immune to its effects. We don’t get a pass. It will corrode us just as surely as the same kind of speech creates a racist or a misogynist. It’s the same process for each of us.
Beyond that, this preoccupation with strength or weakness is the same value system that the authoritarians use when they walk through the world. For those of you who want to shame your fellow progressives for remembering that others are human? You’re employing the same lens. You’re that much closer to seeing the world through authoritarian eyes.
Some may not like to face this, but these people are our neighbors. They live here, among us. We’re in an existential fight for our way of governance, but these people will remain our neighbors. (The alternative is . . . what exactly?) No matter how this turns out, we will need to be able to live together when all the dust settles.
We don’t have to hate to win. In fact, if we hate we will have won nothing worth keeping, and we will have lost ourselves.