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Agustin Barrios Gomez, president of SolutionsAbroad.com, has been commissioned by the newly-relaunched English-language daily The News (www.thenews.com.mx) to produce a weekly opinion column on Mexican current affairs. The column is published every Wednesday in the paper and also here online. Our president is a member of the Mexican Council on Foreign Affairs and is an analyst of politics in North America with a degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.
What to Make of the Hate Profession
January 23, 2008
A large group of successful people on both sides of the border make their living trading in hatred. And much of that hatred is channeled at people from the opposite side of the border. In the US, hate professionals are usually right-wing “shock jocks”, while in Mexico, it’s usually left-wing politicians.
Of course, many sociopaths are drawn beyond words to illegal violence, but a true professional of the hate industry lives off inciting hatred legally, through words. They inspire violence, not commit it.
Hatemongering goes mainstream
During a recent stay at a North Carolina Marriott, your correspondent was faced with a large flat screen filled with Jim Gilchrist, founder of the border vigilante movement, the Minutemen. His advice was sought by the Fox News Network to talk about the alleged killing of Maria Lauterbach (Anglo) by US Marine Cesar Laurean (Latino). Given that Gilchrist is neither an expert on forensic science, nor a legal scholar (he’s actually a CPA from Aliso Viejo who declared personal bankruptcy in 1992), the only reason he was on prime time Fox TV was to bash Mexico. The man was given long minutes of airtime to speculate 5 times that if Laurean had indeed crossed into Mexico, it would not extradite him because he would face the death penalty in the US, which is unconstitutional in Mexico. Behind-the-scenes, hate professionals succesfully twisted the story of a fugitive US Marine into a fantasy about the unscrupulous complicity to murder of the Mexican legal system and the need to build a border wall (irrelevant for this story), with a leitmotif of Latinos as mommy-killers. All of this on the regular newscast, without shock jock Bill O’Reilly’s commentary. Evidently, hatred has gone mainstream.
Unholy alliances
In politics, haters are not always on the same side of the political isle. Curiously, haters are better represented on the Right side of the American political spectrum, but in Mexico, more vitriol spews from the Left. The way to know a professional political hater is by their pointing out the target audience’s legitimate problem (say, joblessness) and the people who should be blamed for it (illegal immigrants for the American Right, Multinational Corporations for the Mexican Left). Hatred, like politics, makes for strange bedfellows: both the anti-immigrant Right in the US and Mexico’s anti-American Left despise NAFTA in equal measure, for example.
In Mexico, hate professionals live mainly off politics, although more than a few earn their keep in public universities (which is scandalous) and in the left-wing press. Hate-inspired Mexican politicians have toned down their anti-American rhetoric since the 1970s because they realize they must now appeal to many people who either live cross-border lives, or who depend on remittances sent from “the other side”. To his credit, 2006 presidential candidate López Obrador realized this and uncharacteristically kept mum on the topic. Of course, they still “hate” everything the US stands for, but they couch their rhetoric in vague terms about evil multinationals and exploitative trade agreements. In private, anti-Americanism remains. Fortunately for them, Mexican hate professionals can tap into a cornucopia of local class and racial hatred.
Hatred is a corrosive habit
A boon to professionals in the hate industry has been the advent of narrowcasting: you can now life with wall-to-wall hatred. And, in keeping with America’s awesome ability to turn everything into an industry, hate professionals have hate networks, hate blogs, hate podcasts, hate magazines and hate lecture circuits to keep the righteous indignation flowing 24/7. The emotion is addictive and the fix is everywhere.
Certainly the most destructive element of the hate profession is the way it divides human beings into “us versus them”, leading to hate crimes (locally) and wars (internationally). The saddest part, however, is seeing how it encarcerates the hating professional, typecasting him or her in their role for life. As they realize that they are making a living by inspiring the worst in others, they make a habit of bringing it out in themselves. Soon, well-meaning aspiring politicos and journalists who dabbled in vitriol lose the freedom to talk about different topics, or to go into any sort of measured, thoughtful analysis. They now fear the fickle remotes of their hatemongering audience and they have no hope of appealing to anyone else.
This columnist believes that hatemongers are sowing the seeds of their own, and other’s suffering. For all their money and fringe-group acclamation, I have yet to see a happy hatemonger. In the US and Mexico, it is also a loser’s profession. In the US, the Right risks political irrelevance as it alienates the largest-growing segment of the population. In Mexico, it is foolish to think that Americanized globalization can be rolled back. So, don’t hate the haters, have compassion for them… and ask your local Marriott to change the channel.
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