“Working hours had been drastically increased in anticipation of Hate Week. It was more than a month distant, but the enormous, complex preparations that it entailed were throwing extra work on to everybody.”
George Orwell
1984
In Orwell’s 1984 the idea of Hate Week first shows up on page 3 and becomes a mini-theme throughout the book. For Orwell, Hate Week is an operation put on Oceania’s government in order to increase the hatred the population feels. The hatred is directed at the two opposing superstates, Eurasia and Eastasia, as well as at Emmanuel Goldstein, the leader of the mythical “Brotherhood.”
Hate Week was for Oceania what Christmas and Easter is for Christians today. It was a high and holy day anticipated by everybody and celebrated by all. It came each year with a new “Hate song.” Orwell describes the preparations for Hate Week;
Processions, meetings, military parades, lectures, waxworks, displays, film shows, telescreen programmes all had to be organized; stands had to be erected, effigies built, slogans coined, songs written, rumours circulated, photographs faked.
I note all this to say that art has become life. While we do not yet have official Hate Weeks or the other Orwellian fixture of official daily “two minute hates” we have in our culture embraced the substance of this Orwellian reality.
Today I read in the Washington Post that a substitute teacher was fired somewhere because the sub dared to try and provide background for why Vladimir Putin is doing what he is doing in Ukraine. However, while this firing dynamic may be unique in relation to the whole Russia and Ukraine affair it is not at all a new dynamic in terms of the hate that is required by the FEDS for certain unsanctioned and so unacceptable behavior.
Hate required of the populace by the FEDS? How about the hate that is required for the amorphous and impossible to define thing called “racism?” How about hate required of the populace by the FEDS for those who say “Vaccines can go bugger themselves?,” or, “You can take your mask and shove it up your southern most aperture where it might actually do some good?” How about all the Hate pushed by the FEDS that results in what we now airily refer to as “Cancel Culture.”
Hate Week? Hells bells that would be a vast improvement of epic proportions. We are currently living under a Federal regime that demands Hate Year, year by year. The FEDS push us to hate those who love the historic definition of family, who love the idea that marriage is reserved only for one man and one woman, who love the idea of loving their nation, etc. etc. etc. The FEDS are even assiduously working on, via Critical Race Theory taught in Government Hate schools, getting the population to hate all white people
Are people so stupid that they can’t learn the lesson that Orwell was teaching in 1984? The State is not our god people and if anything should be hated right now it is the Hate State who is conniving to constantly keep us in a lather.
Now, I know a thing or two about hate, constantly being accused myself of being a “hater.” Why just a couple days ago someone reminded me again of how hateful I am;
“I will pray for the congregation as they are being misled by these posts, your words, your hate.”
And because I am an expert on being a hater I resent the Hate State encroaching upon my bailiwick and so insist that the Hate State quit with their organizing of hate and leave the hatred to us professionals.
The way to fight racism is with more racism