While the coronavirus and its many variants is still present, it appears to be loosening its grip. There is, however, another pandemic infecting our world that doesn’t get enough notice and for which there is no known vaccine. The disease to which I refer is ‘hate.’
The virus of hatred and intolerance is infecting us globally, with the pervasiveness of social media and the Internet facilitating its spread.
Those (groups and individuals) spreading their messages of hate for others based on ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion, and other characteristics, and engaging in violent acts against the target groups, seem to be increasing, in some cases and in some places geometrically.
Now, it you think I’m about to bemoan the situation in poor or underdeveloped areas of the world, think again. This viral hatred of which I’m speaking is that which has burrowed into some of the wealthiest and so-called developed nations on the planet.
In Canada, for example, there are an estimated 300 groups classified as ‘hate’ groups, meaning that their speech, publications, and actions target individuals because of gender, race, religion, or some other trait. Western Europe’s richest nations have seen a rise in neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant groups since 2010, and in the United States, the Southern Poverty Law Center issued a report in February 2023 identifying 733 hate groups throughout the country, including the Ku Klux Klan, white nationalist, and religious nationalist groups who target minorities, women, and immigrants with their hateful rhetoric and with violence. While such groups are concentrated in the south, the Atlantic coast and the Pacific coast, they have a presence in all fifty states.
In the U.S., there is also a growing anti-government, anti-democracy sentiment, that seems to have been empowered since the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol during the certification of the 2020 Presidential election.
The start of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States saw in increase in racist, anti-Asian rhetoric (including senior politicians like the former president), and a significant increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans. During the first two months of 2021, for example, there were at least 500 hate crimes against Asians, 68 percent of which were verbal harassment and 11 percent involved physical attacks. Police department statistics from major U.S. cities show a 150 percent surge in anti-Asian hate crimes in 2020.
Domestic hate groups are in most countries a greater threat nowadays than international terrorist groups. Some security officials in the U.S. have described domestic hate groups as the greatest threat to our country.
Hate-fueled violence (verbal and physical) is not new in any of the countries currently experiencing it, but thanks to social media and communications technology, hate groups can now recruit and spread their messages faster and farther, including across national borders. There have been reports, for example, of American white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups coordinating with like-minded groups in western Europe, and in one Australian hate crime a few years ago, the perpetrator quoted from the manifesto of an American white supremacist group.
Would that the government could launch a campaign to create a vaccine to cure hate the way we did for Covid. Alas, there is no quick cure. We can only continue to speak out against and stand up to the extremists and educate our citizens to embrace rather than fear difference. I would be the last to call for restricting legitimate free speech, but do not hesitate to ask—no insist—that politicians and other public figures take personal responsibility for the harm caused by their intemperate, thoughtless remarks, and that social media platforms and news media outlets be responsible in controlling the presence of hate speech on their outlets.
In the meantime, I can only repeat the words of a young man who was once severely beaten by police after a traffic stop, “why can’t we all just get along?” – NWI
