Hate is a strong emotion. Rather a deadly one. For it blinds reason and misleads. It bounces, and bounces badly. It usually emanates from fear, and fear distorts rationality. Haters consume themselves in hating others just as their imagination lands them into wicked and sadistic malice. Poet Pablo Neruda writes in Autumn Testament––
Hate is like a swordfish,
working through water invisibly
and then you see it coming
with blood along its blade,
but transparency disarms it.
Hate carries a pointed spear that cannot be disarmed. Even as hate is so much discernible all around, it has not been tamed so far. Prejudices perpetuate it and responses aggravate it. It falls into a vicious cycle of retorts whose outcome is usually disgraceful and violent. In the words of Jane Austen, “the natural defect of propensity to hate everybody” has become the hallmark of the present age. Almost everyone hates anything at any point in time. Hate seems to come in so naturally while many other factors contribute to its making. Even the most sophisticated and educated demonstrate it and become persecuting people.
The notable quote of Martin Luther King, Jr. reads, “Like unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true”.
The Charlie Hebdo event in Paris was an eye-opener. The skilled and renowned editorial staff of this magazine used satire to vent out their prejudice against a particular faith, Islam. For the last so many years, Charlie Hebdo has been publishing provocative stuff smacking hate for Islam. Humor was utilized to suggest Hate. Despite receiving warnings from different quarters, the magazine repeatedly took swipes against Islam.
Stretching the slogan of ‘free speech’ too far, Charlie Hebdo continued to take a dirty dig. It is reported that within its pages, the magazine to date has published more than a dozen objectionable cartoons, bringing unprecedented disapproval from the Muslim world. In 2011, headlined by a cartoon reading “100 lashes if you don’t die of laughter,” an issue invited Prophet (PBUH) to be a “guest editor” for the weekly. The Charlie Hebdo offices were firebombed following its publication.
In its report, The Washington Post, described Charlie Hebdo as “irreverent, crass and a foe to just about every religion”. The news report added, “Over the years, Muslim anger at the weekly publication has burned slowly in the background. Charlie Hebdo continued to depict Muhammad (PBUH) and critique Islam in its editorial pages, resisting calls to stop the practice”.
In 2020, Charlie Hebdo again resorted to justifying the “insult to Islam” by republishing the controversial cartoons that had culminated in an attack on the paper’s Paris headquarters, killing 12 including some of France’s renowned cartoonists. This act was simply inane and provocative; burrowing out more hatred to bloat. Recently, during the surge of the Covid-19 crisis in India, Charlie Hebdo released a cartoon that took a dig at the multiple gods and goddesses in India, and how they have been unable to help the country’s plaguing oxygen crisis. Carrying the catchphrase, the cartoon ridiculed: “33 million gods in India and not one capable of producing oxygen.” Again, the lampoon was unkind and humiliating for a particular faith.
The question is can hate veil as satire? Not always. When hate is too intense, satire cannot prevent the consequences. Bad satire can dismount people in dangerous territory. It is “when the powerful mock the powerless that bad satire accomplishes the opposite of what it is supposed to accomplish”.
The shooters in Paris did the same. They became identical haters of those who instigated them through bad satire. Since hate had brutalized them, their reaction was also brutal. A condemnable gory act. Factually, hate is revoltingly getting embedded in people with each passing day. All political discourses around the world are rapidly turning into a controversy’s child. From the hate statements floating viral to ubiquitous outrageous remarks, hate is spreading like a pandemic. Speeches, statements, comedy, literature—hate percolates through them all.
Is hate getting strong and stronger? Is plurality a concept impossible? Have religions failed to inculcate tolerance among their followers? Is freedom of expression the freedom to disgrace and debase anyone anytime?
Foolhardiness does no good. Creative control is still not an idiotic norm. Radical responses are reckless. Hate has to be tamed, not allowing it to bleed. Letting others live, breathe and exist, honorably, is a rule recognized universally. Hate cannot undermine the right to life, no matter who are the haters and the hated.