How calculated malice transforms into a strategic instrument of political power

“ In some, nature hath invested a disparity; in some, report hath foreblinded judgment; and in in some, accident is the cause of disposing to love or hate. Or, if not these, the variation of the bodies' humors ”

“ The existence of an anti-Semitic movement in the United States of America since the World War is a paradox that attracts attention at once. The most ancient and most pervasive form of intolerance is now at home in a nation founded by revolution and dedicated to the principles of freedom and tolerance. How can such a movement exist in such a nation? The apparent contradiction leads us at once into the many contradictions of the psychology of large groups of human beings, which both parallels and contradicts the simpler psychology of their constituent individuals. ”

“ In between lie degrees of dislike depending partly on the strength of the initial antipathy, but equally so on the degree to which others, whether persons, institutions, or ideas, interfere with our activities, desires, or ideals. The man who seriously obstructs our love, our pleasure, or our ambition, or who tries to do so, provokes hate, and its concomitants of jealousy, rage, and pugnacity. ”

“ The fomenting of fear is in nearly all such cases a prerequisite to the fomenting of hate. And the promotion of hate has historically been one of the frequent ingredients of international conflicts.
Like love, hate is profoundly influential in modifying our interest in persons and situations. To dislike a person moderately is, in his absence, to be indifferent to him. To dislike him intensely, in a sense increases our interest in him, though perversely. ”

“ Every principle of justice and equity requires, that, those who are totally unprotected by birth, station, wealth, friends, influence, and popular favor, and especially those who are the innocent objects of public contempt and prejudice, should be more vigilantly protected by law, than those who are so fortified by defence, that they have far less need of legal protection; yet the poor slave who is fortified by none of these personal bulwarks, is denied the protection of law, while the master, surrounded by them all, is panoplied in the mail of legal protection, even to the hair of his head ”

“ The total number of hate groups rose to 1,020 in 2018, up about 7 percent from 2017. White nationalist groups alone surged by nearly 50 percent last year, growing from 100 chapters in 2017 to 148 in 2018 . ”

“ Both sides vow they will never give in, and the anti-vivisectionists are busy manufacturing small china copies of the Brown Dog figure, inscription and all, for purposes of domestic irritation. Here hate, the evil ugly brother of effort, has manifestly slain love the initiator and taken the affair in hand. That is a little model of human conflicts. So soon as we become militant and play against one another, comes this danger of strain and this possible reversal of motive. The fight begins. Into a pit of heat and hate fall right and wrong together. ”

“ Infiltration and take-over of established political organizations by Communist and Nazi methods.
These extremists feed on fear, hate and terror. They have no program for America - no program for the Republican party. They have no solution for our problems of chronic unemployment, of education of agriculture, or racial injustice or strife. ”

“ As citizens of the United States, we are treated as outlaws in one half of the country, and the national government consents to our destruction. We are denied the right of locomotion, freedom of speech, the right of petition, the liberty of the press, the right peaceably to assemble together to protest against oppression and plead for liberty—at least in thirteen States of the Union. If we venture, as avowed and unflinching abolitionists, to travel South of Mason and Dixon's line, we do so at the peril of our lives. ”

“ They ask, that Congress shall fulfil the tyrant wishes of these States. They ask, that the whole people of the United States--those who hate, as well as those who love slavery, shall, by their representatives, assume the guilty and awful responsibility of perpetuating the enslavement of their innocent fellow men:--of chaining the bodies and crushing the wills, and blotting out the minds of such, as have neither transgressed, nor even been accused of having transgressed, a single human law. ”

“ If we would escape torture and death, on visiting any of the slave States, we must stifle our conscientious convictions, bear no testimony against cruelty and tyranny, suppress the struggling emotions of humanity, divest ourselves of all letters and papers of an anti-slavery character, and do homage to the slaveholding power—or run the risk of a cruel martyrdom! These are appalling and undeniable facts. Three millions of the American people are crushed under the American Union! ”

“ And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies--a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. ”

“ The Republican Party fully respects the contribution of responsible criticism, and defends the right of dissent in the democratic process. But we repudiate the efforts of irresponsible, extremist groups, such as the Communists, the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch Society and others, to discredit our Party by their efforts to infiltrate positions of responsibility in the Party, or to attach themselves to its candidates. ”

“ Colonel Hickman replied: "You must see Carson and Craig."
Lord Kitchener saw them. Sir Edward Carson's position was not easy. He was most eager to help by every means in his power. But he had a heavy responsibility towards the people of Ulster. If the fighting men of the Province were to go to the war, and in their absence a Home Rule Act, such as they had banded themselves together to resist, were to be forced upon those they had left behind, they would have had cause to reproach him. ”

“ In the first days of September Colonel Hickman and Captain Craig crossed to Ireland to begin their work. On the 3rd of the month Sir Edward Carson made a great appeal, at a meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council in Belfast, to the men of the U.V.F., urging them to come forward for the defence of the Empire, the honour of Ulster and of Ireland.
In Ireland much had happened meanwhile. A large number of Ulstermen, the eager spirits who would not wait, had already enlisted. Of these the greater number had gone to the 10th Division, then being formed. ”

“ Prove one of these things wherewith you have charged me, and I will confess the whole Indictment, and that I am the horriblest traitor that ever lived, and worthy to be crucified with a thousand thousand torments.
Attorney—Nay, I will prove all: thou art a monster; thou hath an English face but a Spanish heart. Now [Pg 19] you must have Money; Aremberg was no sooner in England (I charge thee, Raleigh) but thou incitest Cobham to go unto him, and to deal with him for Money, to bestow on discontented persons, to raise Rebellion on the kingdom. ”

“ Attorney—Thou art an odious fellow, thy name is hateful to all the realm of England for thy pride.
Raleigh—It will go near to prove a measuring cast between you and me, Mr. Attorney.
Attorney—Well, I will now make it appear to the world that there never lived a viler viper upon the face of the earth than thou.—And there withal he drew a letter out of his pocket saying further—My lords, you shall see this is an agent that hath writ a treatise against the Spaniard, and hath ever so detested him; this is he that hath spent so much money against him in service ”

“ Lord Cecil—You mean a letter intended to me; I never had it.
Attorney—No, my lord, you had it not. You, my masters of the jury, respect not the wickedness and hatred of the man, respect his cause: if he be guilty, I know you will have care of it, for the preservation of the king, the continuance of the Gospel authorized, and the good of us all.
Raleigh—I do not hear yet, that you have spoken one word against me; here is no Treason of mine done: If my lord Cobham be a Traitor, what is that to me?
Attorney—All that he did was by thy instigation, thou viper; for I 'thou' thee, thou Traitor. ”

“ The South simply cannot afford to permit the processes to go on that are adding fresh groups every year to its grand total of illiterate and unfit citizens. In the face of the present situation, if a new race of degenerates, brought up in exhausting toil, dense ignorance, and exposed to all the temptations of an unprotected environment, is to be developed now in the fast-growing centres of the new South, they are certain to form a social and civic and economic menace to the community. ”

“ And the hatred of the various immigrant groups for each other—the hatred of the older American groups against the immigrant, the Catholic and the Jew, returned with redoubled force. As the present writer found occasion to note directly after the close of the war:
70During the war we felt that prejudice between men of different groups and different faiths was lessening day by day, that our common enthusiasm in our common cause had brought Catholics, Protestants and Jews nearer together on the basis of their ardent Americanism. ”

“ Shall we continue to enforce with precept and penalty the rule of competition, whose cruel creed is “every man for himself,” or shall the effort and industry of the world be hereafter conducted on a more humane and fraternal principle? That is to say, is society—stripped of its polish and altruistic pretences—is society after all only a mass of struggling brutes fighting for the best places and the biggest bones, and is government simply an armed referee standing by to see that every dog has fair play? ”

“ Industrial labor unregulated has everywhere developed the same symptoms. Competition between producers tends to encourage all possible reductions of costs, to reduce wages, to increase the use of cheap child labor, to perpetuate long hours of labor, etc., and to range the interests of the employing class against those of the operative class. In the struggle which results from this antagonism the employer has the advantage of position to force his own terms of contract upon the laborer, for he has in his hands an accumulated capital which is equivalent in power to effective organization. ”

“ The doctrine that cheapness is the all-sufficient goal of economic progress, the only economic fact of any possible interest or concern to the laborers, has been a corner-stone in political economy. Only within recent years has the idea begun to dawn that an adequate theory of economic welfare must include the interests of the citizen as a producer as well as a consumer; that the conditions under which the man works, and his opportunities of enjoying the fruits of his labor, are quite as vital to his happiness as the price of potatoes or beef or clothing. ”

“ Within the limits of any one interdependent industrial group, like the United States, there must be at least some general approach to uniformity in the working conditions of the laborers, by given lines of industries. Differences in competitive success must come from differences in managing ability, quality of plant, or natural environment, not from different standards of decency in the use of labor. If long hours and child labor become the fixed conditions of success, the whole field of competing industry must eventually come down to that basis. ”

“ No man in this world is absolutely right and no man absolutely wrong. If this be so, men ought, as organized labor has for half a century demanded, and as the National Civic Federation has emphasized, to meet in conference and be helpful in allowing common-sense and fair dealing and justice and equity and the needs of the people to determine what shall be the conditions under which industry and commerce 34shall continue to advance until we shall be in truth producers for the whole world. ”

“ Ministers have solemnly assured their hearers that the ministry is the highest of all callings while the contempt of lawyers for the skill or knowledge of others has been chronic. And who has not been told that labor produces all goods and who else ever can be "practical" but the business man? In so far as this group-smugness is born of a conviction of the dignity and social value of one's calling, such a feeling will have social value. But in so far as it is indicative of group-selfishness, we must find an antidote for it. ”

“ Unless the ancient self-seeking by individuals is to become, under the modern necessity for organization, mere self-seeking by groups, codes of ethics must keep clearly in mind at all times the good of all. ”

“ If chambers of commerce may dominate the legislature of Pennsylvania, why may not the farmers dominate the national Congress? If lawyers are to make work for each other, how are we to say that laborers shall not soldier on their jobs? Self-determination by groups there should be; but self-determination in the light of the good of all.
One aspect of group consciousness of late is the belief of each of the professions that it alone should inherit the earth. Engineers have recently claimed that engineering is the one all-inclusive industrial profession. ”

“ We believe that the public has confidence in the printed word of journalism in proportion as it is able to believe in the competency of journalists and have trust in their motives. Lack of trust in our motives may arise from the suspicion that we shape our writings to suit non-social interests, or that we open our columns to propaganda, or both. ”

“ It so happens that at times the liberty of the press is exercised as license to infringe upon the rights of groups and of individuals: because custom and law have brought about certain immunities, it happens that in haste or zeal or malice or indifference, persons are unjustly dealt by. ”

“ It is not only that we dislike the mere presence Page 135 of the person (in the opposite case the mere presence of the beloved object is a joy) , but we dislike it for what it portends in danger and threat to ourselves. The more serious the evil or disaster for which a person comes to stand, the more violent the hatred for him, despite his personal fascinations. The villain is not infrequently a "damned smiling villain."
The provocation of hate is complicated by the fact that it is closely associated with fear. ”

“ Our hearts go out to the victims of Christchurch and the good people of New Zealand and to the victims of similar domestic violence and murder. And we also know we have a responsibility here, at home, to combat the forces that promote these violent attacks, because, as we have seen time and again, this kind of hate knows no boundaries and no restrictions of geography. ”