# The New Hate **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 14, 2013, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250 "2013-08-14T21:02:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/1 "2013-08-14T21:02:07Z")
I just finished [_The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right,_](http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Hate-Loathing-Populist/dp/0307742512) by Arthur Goldwag (Jew). A fascinating study that covers the whole history of paranoid irrationality in American politics and culture, mostly RW, but not sparing black separatism, etc. Despite the title, his point is that the New Hate is not all that “new” after all. He sees a lot of common memes and themes in all past forms of it, mostly the ones [Richard Hosftadter identified,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paranoid_Style_in_American_Politics) regardless of whether the demonized all-powerful Other is the Jews, Freemasons, Catholics, Illuminati, atheists/secularists, intellectuals, Communists, capitalists, bankers, whites, nonwhites, immigrants, or (as is not seldom the case) some combination of the foregoing. He concludes: > [@](#): > > Writing in _The Washington Post,_ Karen Tumulty noted that all these recent conservative disquisitions on [American] exceptionalism . . . have “a more intellectual sheen than the false assertions that Obama is secretly a Muslim or that he was born in Kenya.” Then she quotes William Galston of the Brookings Institution, who said that writing about exceptionalism provides “a respectable way of raising the question of whether Obama is one of us.” > > And there you have it – the core proposition of the not-so-New Hate: that there are those of us who are really “us” and those of us who are essentially “other” – aliens, interlopers, pretenders, and culture distorters, parasites and freeloaders, who bear the blame for the fact that being a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant American no longer suffices to make one the cynosure of the world. > > Back on November 19, 1955, in the mission statement he prepared for the first issue of the _National Review,_ William F. Buckley derided the presiding liberal orthodoxy of his day, which, he said, had as much as ceded the field to "the jubilant single-mindedness of the practicing Communist, with his inside track to history. The _National Review,_ Buckley vowed, would stand “athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” Patron saint of conservatives as he might have been, in John Judis’s memorable phrase, Buckley was much more of a pragmatist than that. He knew that the wheels of history never do stop turning, no matter how devoutly one might wish they did; he recognized that ideological purity (or any other kind of purity, for that matter) was not to be found in our fallen world. “No sense running Mona Lisa in a beauty contest,” he replied, when an interviewer asked whom he was supporting for president in 1967. “I’d be for the most right, viable candidate who could win.” > > The New Hate is at once an expression of a quixotic desire to turn back the clock to a mythical golden age when women and minorities and gays and foreigners were less troublesome than they are today, when the government only gave and never took, and a cynical ploy to up the turnout of Republican voters. Most of the time it’s reflexive and vindictive to its core. And the vast majority of its proponents, even in the heat of the moment – dressed up in colonial costume, with powdered wigs on their heads and “Say No to Socialism” placards in their hands – know better, too. > > No one in New England in 1798 really believed that Jefferson was plotting to bring Jacobinism to the United States, any more than Maria Monk’s readers thought that the convent down the street was a nest of debauchery. Senator Joseph McCarthy never really believed that George Marshall was a Communist or even a Communist tool. For all the prevalence of anti-Semitic stereotypes, even the most vicious of Jew haters are more likely to deny that the Holocaust really happened than they are to defend it. Though millions of Americans claim to believe that Obama is a Muslim and a foreigner, and some of them hate him merely because of the color of his skin, most of them know that the real issue isn’t what Obama is but what they increasingly fear they’re not. > > And thus it has always been. Now, what we’re going through now does **look** kinda new. It takes an insightful analyst to spot the almost tedious similarities to previous iterations. And, following on that, there is one more important point, which all all contemporary conspiracy theorists and Tea Partisans should take to heart: All of the previous iterations, without exception, were **completely worthless.** The Jefferson=Jacobin crowd, the Know-Nothings, Anti-Masons, anti-Catholics, Free Silverites, bank-hating economic producerists, anti-Semites, Klansmen, American Nazis and White Nationalists, John Birchers, Pat Buchanan paleocon-populists – all of them were always utterly, entirely wrong in every single thing that distinguished their worldviews from the mainstream. None were ever of any good use whatsoever to the American polity or society. None brought anything of value to the table ever. None ever did anything but to make irritable gestures resembling thoughts, stir up hatred, and make things worse for America. And your New Hate is eeriely similar. Think about that long and hard. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/2 "2013-08-14T22:04:13Z")
Yet you start so many partisan, divisive threads. Do you see a problem here? ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/3 "2013-08-14T22:16:12Z")
> [@Why the lack of widespread civil disorder in Southern Europe?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-lack-of-widespread-civil-disorder-in-southern-europe/666027/31): > > No. > > That does not mean it is not worth doing. Here you seem to call for the lynching of bankers. You are just a far left version of the far right crazies you are railing against. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/4 "2013-08-14T22:20:54Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I just finished … How was that possible when you’re posting here nearly continuously from the time you get up until the time you (I assume) pass out at your computer? Kudos to you for doing what you love, but imagine if you put all that effort into something, er, practical. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/5 "2013-08-14T22:22:13Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Here you seem to call for the lynching of bankers. You are just a far left version of the far right crazies you are railing against. Hey, you don’t need to be a conspiracy-theorist, or even irrational, to feel a bit of hate and rant about it. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/6 "2013-08-14T22:31:33Z")
A conspiracy theorist is not someone who theorizes that there are conspiracies. There **are** conspiracies, every time two or more people communicate in furtherance of a criminal enterprise. The common law has provisions for dealing with it; the law of conspiracy predates American independence. Conspiracy **theories** are much more all-encompassing. They imagine dark secretive forces, in some cases persisting over centuries, behind everything that goes wrong in life, pulling strings from behind the scenes, causing wars and depressions and revolutions and even apparent natural disasters for their own nefarious or deluded ends. Some choice bits from [Hofstadter’s 1964 essay](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paranoid_Style_in_American_Politics): > [@](#): > > The paranoid spokesman, sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms — he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization… he does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated — if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.[1] > > \ > > The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman — sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed, he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will. Very often, the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for influencing the mind (brainwashing); he has a special technique for seduction (the Catholic confessional).[1] Yes, it would take something like that, to plan and prepare for Obama’s presidency as long ago as 1961. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/7 "2013-08-14T22:40:30Z")
Conspiracies dont work because humans just cant keep their mouths shut and their interests arent always aligned. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/8 "2013-08-14T22:48:28Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Conspiracies dont work because humans just cant keep their mouths shut and their interests arent always aligned. Conspiracies **do** work. The 9/11 attack was a conspiracy. But conspiracies cannot be kept up and kept secret for a very long time, certainly not for centuries. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/9 "2013-08-14T22:53:59Z")
The book’s author calls himself Arthur Goldwag (Jew)? Fascinating. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/10 "2013-08-14T23:16:08Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But conspiracies cannot be kept up and kept secret for a very long time, certainly not for centuries. What’s the longest one? The Catholic baby snatching ring in Spain lasted ~50 years and involved what, a couple dozen doctors, nurses, and nuns? That’s pretty good, especially for a non-governmental entity. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/11 "2013-08-14T23:17:52Z")
You’re telling me that human nature hasn’t changed in the last 200 years? Well, I’m shocked…!! ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/12 "2013-08-14T23:54:50Z")
There are strains of hate in all populist political philosophies. People hate. That’s why such strains are called “populist”. But each time around the hate gets lessened, because hate is bad and society becomes increasingly less tolerant of hate. The only time it gets dangerous is when the hate is deemed acceptable, and unfortunately class hate is still permissible. It really should go the way of all the other hatreds. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/13 "2013-08-15T00:35:01Z")
There’s a book called _Them: Adventures with Extremists_ by Jon Ronson. He spends time with various extremist fringe group and in general, he found they really are sincere in their beliefs. That doesn’t mean their beliefs are true, obviously. But these people aren’t faking it. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/14 "2013-08-15T01:18:52Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > . . . All of the previous iterations, without exception, were **completely worthless.**. . . Doesn’t keep them from being dangerous. Even if they always lose in the long run, in the short term, they can do incredible harm. And there’s no guarantee they’ll lose. The French Revolution went terribly awry, and something of that general nature is not impossible, here or anywhere. Looking at today’s events in Cairo is heartbreaking. How does a nation go forward after such tumult? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/15 "2013-08-15T01:50:58Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Hey, you don’t need to be a conspiracy-theorist, or even irrational, to feel a bit of hate and rant about it. 😉 True. However rants go in The BBQ Pit, not Great Debates. Off you go. ---
**Author:** ![waterj2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/858c86/32.png) [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/16 "2013-08-15T04:50:23Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Here you seem to call for the lynching of bankers. You are just a far left version of the far right crazies you are railing against. I’m afraid comrade **BrainGlutton** is mistaken on this. We far-left crazies want the bankers summarily guillotined after being declared counter-revolutionaries by properly constituted People’s Tribunals. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/17 "2013-08-15T04:53:03Z")
I realize you’re joking, but what’s interesting about that is even if you weren’t, that would seem a relatively mild form of hate, whereas if you inserted just about any other group of people in that sentence it would be beyond the pale. ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/18 "2013-08-15T07:09:25Z")
I hate the New Hate! Bring back Classic Hate! ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 8:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/19 "2013-08-15T08:31:45Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > I realize you’re joking, but what’s interesting about that is even if you weren’t, that would seem a relatively mild form of hate, whereas if you inserted just about any other group of people in that sentence it would be beyond the pale. Lawyers? Not beyond the pale. Politicians? Not beyond the pale. Dentists? Not beyond the pale, though pretty odd. Physicians? Beyond the pale, weirdly enough. Anyway, it’s not beyond the pale because banking (like lawyering, etc.) is an _occupation_, not a race, sex or creed. Although I see that some occupations appear to have protected status, while others do not. ---
**Author:** ![camille](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/22d042/32.png) [@camille](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/camille)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2013, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250/20 "2013-08-15T08:39:10Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > The book’s author calls himself Arthur Goldwag (Jew)? > > Fascinating. :dubious: I’m usually the last Jew to raise an eyebrow on the internet, but I found that very unsettling. And he did the same thing in another thread in GD just before this one. Is it a subliminal message? Is it part of the new hate? Why, **BG**? > [@Nametag](#): > > I hate the New Hate! Bring back Classic Hate! This is priceless. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-hate/666250.md?page=2)