Why We Hate

Rolling.

Jelani interview, take 2. Mark.

All human beings have the capacity to hate.

But what provokes feelings of hate

Or pushes us to commit acts of violence?

I want to understand the tools

That incite, amplify, and spread hate.

As a historian and a journalist, I'm always thinking about

The way that the past informs the present.

There's this idea that you should write

About the things that make you angry,

And that is how I found myself writing so much

About intolerance and bigotry and hatred

And unfairness, discrimination,

The ways in which we have ill-treated other human beings.

It seems as if there are tools that make it easier

To get people to behave in ways that are inhumane,

That are hateful,

That are violent toward other human beings.

There are charismatic leaders

Who can use those tools and tactics

To convince people to do things that are contrary

To how they might have acted under other circumstances.

They're bringing drugs.

They're bringing crime. They're rapists.

And also there's media

That we can receive a kind of slanted,

Propagandistic view of the world.

Donald trump's not gonna let illegal aliens

Come to the country and murder our women.

'cause it happens all the time,

And sadly, people are murdered all of the time by illegals.

Donald trump is turning this nation into nazi germany.

There was a time when we thought of the role of the media

As being kind of a neutral dispenser of facts,

And that has changed.

We've seen our media become more partisan and polarized,

Speaking to one side or the other.

Extreme positions have become the norm.

Rumors and conspiracy theories reinforce our divisions

And stoke our deepest fears.

How many more americans must die or be maimed

In the name of political correctness?

Why do we have a government in the first place?

Its main job is to protect us from foreign and domestic thugs.

This guy is the most deeply racist guy

That we've had out in the open

with the exception of actual grand wizards of the KKK

and neo-nazis, et cetera, and he's the president.

The power of propaganda is insidious.

It doesn't just affect how we think.

It can push us to actions as well.

One of the clearest examples in recent history

Is what happened during the genocide in Rwanda.

In April 1994,

A tragedy almost beyond comprehension began to unfold.

Machete-wielding Hutu militiamen fell on the Tutsis,

Slaughtering men, women, and children by the thousand.

How does someone transform from being your neighbor

To someone who believes that it's their obligation

To kill you?

In Rwanda, we couldn't really imagine

That it will get at the level

Of killing about a million people in 1994.

We have seen that the propaganda have been used effectively here

As a pathway to genocide.

The propaganda kills.

As so often happens,

The propaganda drew on tribal divisions

That were manipulated many years earlier.

Long ago, in the colonial period,

The Belgians came here,

And they find that Rwanda is a very united society,

So they had to divide us.

So they created an identity card,

Where it was clearly marked that you're Tutsi or Hutu and Twa,

And the basis was very simple --

If you have more than 10 cows, you are Tutsi,

And if you have less than 10 cows, you're a farmer,

You're Hutu, and then you remain like that for generations.

So we start to see each other as different people.

So this created tension between the Hutus and Tutsis.

For months, Hutus in the government

Have waged a hate campaign

Against the outcast Tutsi minority in the media.

Hutu power!

Power! Power! Power!

In the time before genocide,

My childhood was not really happy.

I had five sisters.

We experienced discrimination and hate.

I went to my mother and said, "why do we choose to be Tutsis,

And why does people hate us?"

And she couldn't explain that.

She knew that this will continue,

And she had to comfort me, she had to hug me,

And she said that "This is the situation, but I love you."

That continued, actually,

After the extreme time of genocide, 1994.

Propaganda played a big role

Into participation in genocide --

Anti-Tutsi propaganda specifically.

This one, we have a doctor and we have a patient.

This patient is saying that "I'm sick, doctor."

And the doctor asks, "what is your sickness?"

And his answer was, "Tutsi and Tutsi, Tutsi."

They are like a virus in society and a virus to people,

So the doctor needs to find a medicine

For the Tutsi in this country,

Because these people, they are very dangerous for you.

We had newspapers like Kangura

Spreading these hate messages.

Kangura was funded by people who worked for the government,

So it was channeling the narrative

That the politician couldn't speak up.

And it was cheap.

Everyone who worked could buy a newspaper.

We had this radio, RTLM, which really spread hatred.

By 1994,

They increased the coverage of this radio

Because those people who cannot read,

Because they're illiterate, they can listen.

They find, actually, different ways

Of dehumanizing Tutsis in this country --

By calling them snakes, by calling them cockroaches.

So the Tutsi, they were not a human being anymore

So that killing a Tutsi is not a sin,

Is not a bad thing.

They would say, "If we find you hiding a Tutsi,

You will be killed."

Also economic gains --

They say, "If you kill someone, take the land.

And the more people you kill, the more wealthier you'll be.

You can even rape the women."

Rape was used as a weapon.

Valérie Bemeriki told me how she was taught.

Since childhood, from her parents,

She was taught that Tutsis are not humans,

They're very bad people...

...They were cruel, they were brutal,

They killed small kids.

"you are going to be servants of the Tutsis."

So it was kind of instilling fear

Into the minds of the Hutu population,

Saying, "even a Hutu who is sympathizing with a Tutsi

Is contributing to the fall of the Hutu."

I remember my mother asked me to leave home

And ask for refuge to my neighbor.

And she said that

"Freddy, we don't know what will happen tomorrow."

She said that "If you survive, be a man."

This was the last time I saw her.

So she left.

And next morning, on the 14th of April,

They were all killed.

Rwanda is not the only place

Where propaganda has played a role in inciting mass murder.

Sieg... Heil!

Sieg... Heil!

It's been used throughout history,

Including in Nazi Germany.

But how does propaganda actually convince people

To abandon their morals and commit violence?

Propaganda can be a powerful and subtle tool,

But how does it actually work?

How does it change the way we think?

How does it influence us to see entire groups of people

As fundamentally different than ourselves,

Even as less than human?

There are lots of reasons to think

That dehumanization would have played an important role

In the genocide in Rwanda.

The idea that the Tutsis were framed as cockroaches...

...I mean, part of what that does, that imagery,

It calls to mind what we do with cockroaches.

We exterminate cockroaches.

You know, when we think about what it means to be human,

A lot goes into that.

Humans, as compared to other animals in general,

We tend to think of ourselves

As having more complex mental capacities.

So when we strip another group of humanity,

What we're doing is overlooking or simply outright denying them

These more complex mental states

As well as their capacity to experience things like pain.

We're essentially not only just saying they're not like us,

But they're also beneath us.

Other times, our dehumanization can be

Even more intentional, to stoke fear

About the group that's being dehumanized.

We see them as outside the boundary of people

To whom normal moral rules would apply.

They are seen to pose a significant threat

To the society in question.

And so it becomes more okay to aggress against them,

To even kill them...

...To engage in genocide towards them.

How does dehumanizing propaganda convince us

To overlook our morals and our perceptions?

Well, it doesn't just flip a switch in our brain.