The Phenomenology and Politics of Hatred

I have long been of the view that, in general, we human beings have only a very vague understanding of our emotions. The result is that we very often misuse emotional terms, either applying them to the wrong objects or using them in a way so vague that their more precise meaning gets lost, thereby actually hindering our better understanding. 

Take the word ‘hate’, for instance, which, at present, is probably the most overused and misunderstood word on the planet. As a trivial but commonplace example, consider, for instance, the statement: ‘I hate Brussels Sprouts’. Nothing wrong with that, you might think. Lots of people hate Brussels Sprouts. Except that, strictly speaking, it is no more possible to hate Brussels Sprouts than it is to hate the Atlantic Ocean. You may find their slightly bitter taste and fusty smell not quite to your liking. You may even have an adverse reaction to them as a result of having been forced to eat them as a child. But neither of these forms of aversion is the same as hatred.

Now, of course, you may wonder why this is important. After all, if I say that I hate Brussels Sprouts, all I’m really doing is expressing my strong dislike for them. My choice of words to express this dislike is irrelevant as long as everyone knows what I mean.

The problem with this approach to language, however, is that by using a word like ‘hate’ as a ‘catch all’ term simply to express strong dislike, we forget or never even come to properly comprehend what the word really means. This in turn makes it increasingly likely that it will be misapplied, which, at a time when more and more people are being prosecuted for ‘hate speech’ and ‘hate crimes’, can have serious consequences. This being the case, it is absolutely vital, therefore, not only that we properly understand what the word actually denotes, but that we become far more careful in its usage.

So what is genuine hatred? 

The first thing to note is that it is an emotion with a strong cognitive element. This differs markedly from purely affective or non-cognitive emotions such as disgust, which is largely a purely reflexive response to anything visibly or malodorously diseased or decomposing and very probably has its origin in our deep evolutionary past when members the species who did not exhibit this reaction to carrion and the like tended to contract more infectious diseases and were thus weeded out of the gene pool through the process of natural selection.

Other emotions with very little cognitive content include what one might call aesthetic emotions such as awe, which results almost exclusively from sensory overload, usually as a consequence of being confronted by something very big, very loud and very powerful, like a large body of water during a storm. Thus while one may not be able to hate the Atlantic Ocean, one can certainly be overawed by it. Hatred, in contrast, is neither a reflex reaction nor a response to sensory stimuli, but the concomitant emotion to a very particular set of beliefs.

This then brings us to the second thing to be noted about hatred, which, strange as it may initially sound, is that it is what one might call an upward-looking emotion, not in the same way as respect or admiration, but more like envy, to which it is closely related, the two emotions having a number of characteristics in common, not the least of which is the fact that, like envy, hatred is always directed towards another person or group of people, never towards inanimate objects.

Again, one might find this questionable, not least because, in the case of hatred, we regularly use the word so loosely that we now feel free to apply it to almost anything, while in the case of envy it is almost universally assumed that we envy others for what they have: a beautiful home, a new and expensive car, etc. However, it is not for their possessions, themselves, that we envy those who have them. In fact, a desire to possess what somebody else has is what is properly called covetousness – even though we hardly ever use this term anymore. More to the point, it is quite possible for us to covet someone else’s possessions without envying them. For envy is less about what someone has than about who or, more especially, what they are.

Take, for example, the exceptionally handsome, athletically gifted boy at school who was liked by all the teachers, inevitably chosen as captain of the rugby team, and is now a Member of Parliament. Or the very attractive girl who starred in all the school plays, effortlessly obtained a place at Oxford and is now a TV presenter for the BBC. We envy such people not because of their success and good fortune – or any of the material benefits their success has almost certainly brought them – but rather because we feel that their success was never in doubt. Indeed, it is almost as if success and good fortune were part of their birthright. As, in a way, they very likely were. For good looks, natural athleticism and even, to some extent, intelligence are genetic, being passed down to those blessed with them by their parents. The good looking girl at school, for instance, will almost certainly have had an attractive mother who, by virtue of her own good looks, would almost certainly have been able to attract for herself a very successful husband. As a result of his success, he, in turn, would have been able to provide all the material benefits his family could have wanted: a beautiful home, the best schools, foreign holidays, and everything his children ever needed in order for themselves to be successful, including the confidence and self-belief to expect that such good fortune would go on following them throughout their lives, as indeed it has.

To us lesser mortals, for whom life is an uphill struggle full of failures and disappointments, it is this ease and apparent inevitability with which success comes to these seemingly blessed individuals that really sets them apart and makes us envy them in a way we could never envy mere lottery winners, for instance. For anyone can win the lottery. Indeed, we could win it ourselves. What we could never be, however, is one of these favoured few for whom life has always held such promise. And while, for some – those more innocent among us, perhaps – this special state of perceived though almost inexplicable distinction elicits only admiration and perhaps even hero-worship, to our more jaundiced eyes it rather reveals to us what we have always known but never wanted to admit, that we, ourselves, are not among their number.

Indeed, it is this bitter recognition, along with the even deeper level of disappointment to which it gives rise, that is the real essence of envy, and which, if left to fester or, worse still, picked at like a running sore, can eventually lead to resentment and even malice. 

We see this most clearly in our celebrity culture, which places a small number of sacrificial deities upon a pedestal almost with the overt intention of knocking them off again should they exhibit even the slightest human weakness, much to the delight of those who take pleasure in seeing their idols brought low. For envy is always, at least in part, a tacit expression of our own self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy, which are partially – if only temporarily – alleviated when those we have placed above us are revealed to be no better than ourselves. 

As such, envy tells us more about the envier than it does about the envied. And the same is true of hatred, which, unless or until it is actually taken out on its victim, is far more an affliction of the hater than of the hated. Indeed, a hated person can often be oblivious to the fact that he or she is the object of such a passion, while this can never be the case with respect to the person who has this passion burning in their breast. More to the point, like envy, hatred flows from that same deep well of dissatisfaction with ourselves that is the source of so many of our negative emotions, the two being so  closely related that envy can very often be the precursor of hatred, the one being transformed into the other by the addition of two further cognitive ingredients. 

The first of these is the belief that at least some of the comparative advantage which the envied person enjoys has been gained at our expense, often as a result of our respective membership of different groups. Indeed, holding this belief is one of most common ways in which we assuage some of the more invidious aspects of being envious. For given that the last thing any of us wants to admit is that the apparent superiority of those we envy is innate – thereby making our own inferiority equally fixed and inalienable – we naturally prefer to attribute their good fortune to anything other than natural ability. Given the further fact that good fortune, along with good looks and natural athleticism, very often go hand in hand with wealth and privilege, the most prominent among these alternative explanations for the envied person’s relative advantage is therefore quite naturally their social position: their family’s wealth, their social connections, and all the potential advantages and opportunities for advancement which such a position brings with it and which we, ourselves, are unfairly denied.

As a strategic solution to our fundamental dissatisfaction with ourselves, however, this approach brings with it a number of problems of its own. For even though it allows us to go on believing that our relative lack of success is not the result of our own deficiencies – and to therefore feel better about ourselves – all it really does is replace our former envy with a long-term sense of grievance and injustice, which is equally as difficult to redress and which can be just as debilitating and inimical to our happiness, leaving us just as bitter and resentful as the original envy it was meant to alleviate.

Even this, however, does not necessarily lead to full-blown hatred. For this to occur, one more cognitive element is required. And this is the belief that, from their position of superiority – whether this be personal or social – those who have the advantage over us also look down on us as their inferiors, regarding us with a downward-looking emotion such as contempt or disdain, which, when perceived as such, throws in our face the very judgement about ourselves we most wish to avoid, thereby either giving rise to a sense of defeat and utter worthlessness which may well push many into a state of depression, or inciting an inner rage and festering hatred directed towards those who have inflicted this torment upon us.

Of course, this too may be mitigated by a sense of grievance and injustice if we believe that the way in which the now hated person or group gained their position of superiority was unfair, dishonourable or even criminal. Indeed, we may even come to think of our hatred as something righteous and noble. However, even if we are able to dismiss the contempt shown to us in this way, the mere fact that the hated person or group felt warranted in treating us in this manner, combined with the way in which we ourselves reacted – bristling with sudden rage – in itself reveals the intolerable truth, not just with respect to how we appear to others, but with regard to how we feel about ourselves. And it is never pleasant.

Indeed, so unpleasant is it to be made to feel this way that one might have thought that human beings would have long since worked out ways to avoid being thus triggered. And, historically, it could be said that, once upon a time, we did. For by helping people to understand both themselves and others, and the propensity we all have for immoderate and self-destructive emotions, both Christianity and Buddhism, in their different ways, once offered us paths towards achieving the kind of self-acceptance and inner peace which only self-knowledge can provide and which is the only real defence against the many provocations which life casts in our way. In their purest, most authentic forms, as exemplified by their respective founders, both religions thus provided a kind of antidote to hatred and, for some, still do.

The trouble is that for all those who elect to pursue some form of philosophical or meditative path towards a hoped-for enlightenment and spiritual peace, there are many more who not only now regard all such pretensions as delusional and ridiculous – such being the disregard with which all such peaceful forms of religion are currently held – but who, in their discontent and unhappiness with life, seemingly prefer to indulge their hatred rather than rid themselves of it: a preference which is unfortunately greatly facilitated by the fact that, although the beliefs upon which hatred is founded have to be credible – otherwise we wouldn’t believe them – none of them actually has to be true, thereby making it extremely easy for us, not only to nurture hatred in ourselves – by repeatedly rehearsing a fictional but plausible narrative which constantly stirs our blood – but to incite hatred in others, especially in a group setting, where all the aspiring demagogue has to do is point his finger at some other identifiable group, allude to whatever real or imaginary advantages they are perceived to have, and then describe his audience’s own disadvantages – preferably in the most lurid and outrageous terms possible – before finally claiming that this injustice has only been allowed to stand because those in the position of advantage hold the more disadvantaged group in absolute disdain.

A fairly obvious example of this, of course, is the way in which the Nazis managed to get so many ordinary Germans to hate Jews during the 1920s and 30s. Admittedly, this was under some fairly extreme conditions. But it is under extreme conditions that hatred largely flourishes: in this case the extreme poverty which ravaged Germany after the first world war, largely as a result of the reparations the country was obliged to pay under the Treaty of Versailles, and which, between 1921 and 1923, plunged the Weimar Republic into a period of hyperinflation, wiping out many people’s savings, destroying businesses and causing mass unemployment, for which the Jews were made a very easy scapegoat.

This was because, from the Middle Ages onwards, Jews had been forbidden to own land throughout much of Europe and had consequently gravitated towards businesses and professions which allowed them to accumulate more portable forms of wealth, most notably the trade in precious gems and banking: the very business, of course, which most Germans blamed for the financial chaos which had afflicted them. As a result, it was thus very easy not only to identify wealthy Jewish bankers, and hence Jews in general, as the culprits, but to further suggest that, not being true Germans, they had no regard for those they had made to suffer, thus fulfilling all three of the cognitive conditions required to arouse hatred.

Not, of course, that this is the whole story. For there was still a massive chasm of morality and common decency to be crossed before these three basic prerequisites for hatred could be channelled into mass murder. And for this to have happened, many more additional human weaknesses and accidents of history had to come together than I can possibly examine here. One factor or determinant that does merit special attention, however, is the way in which both the second and the third cognitive conditions for hatred were further manipulated in order to render their object that much more likely to be the target of violent retribution. For the claim was that neither the harm which the Jews were supposedly inflicting on Germany as a nation, nor the contempt in which they were further assumed to hold the German people, were merely the result of them not being entirely German, but were rather the consequence of something far more damning: of them not actually being entirely human, an idea which probably found its ugliest and most shocking expression in the cartoons commissioned by Julius Streicher for his virulently antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer, which depicted Jews in a variety of inhuman guises ranging from the daemonic to the verminous.

The result was that by encouraging Germans to view Jews as less than human, the Nazis were also giving the German public their tacit permission to withhold from them the empathy and moral regard we normally bestow upon all our fellow human beings. And it was this, more than anything else, I believe, that led to the concentration camps and the gas chambers. For as the contemporary German philosopher Martin Heidegger argued in ‘Being and Time’, it is our perception of others as fellow human beings, rather than as mere things to be used or, worse still, pieces of meat to be discarded, that prompts us to treat them in the way in which we, ourselves, would want to be treated. Once this perception was removed, all such moral inhibitions also therefore disappeared, permitting ordinary Germans to give free rein to all the pent up grievances and dissatisfactions with life which more than a decade of grinding poverty had instilled in them, thereby allowing them to vent their rage on those they held to be responsible, smashing up their businesses, driving them from their homes, and watching with pitiless self-satisfaction as those who had once seemingly held the advantage over them were stripped of their possessions and herded onto cattle trucks to be taken to who knows where.

If there is any consolation to be taken from this dreadful period in our history, however, it is that, mercifully, such hate-based ethnic cleansing is actually quite rare – especially on such a scale – not least because it requires two identifiable ethnic groups to be living in close proximity, which, historically, has largely only occurred in large metropolitan cities such as Rome at the height of its imperial power. Thus while history is littered with examples of ethnic massacres at a local level – with one quarter of a city turning on another – the only other instances of large scale hate-based ethnic cleansing that readily come to mind are the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda.

Another reason why this should be so is the fact that while racism – a fairly obvious prerequisite for ethnic cleansing – is fairly commonplace, racial hatred, strange as this may sound, is also, mercifully, quite rare. In fact, most forms of racism have nothing to do with hatred at all. When India was part of the British empire, for instance, many if not most of the British colonial officials who were sent out to administer it were almost certainly racists, looking down on the empire’s native populations as feckless, mendacious and lazy. But they didn’t hate them. For the simple fact is that one cannot hate someone one looks down on. If anything, the hatred would have flowed the other way, directed against these imperial overlords who ruled a land that wasn’t theirs, plundering its wealth and living in the style of ancient maharajas, while generally regarding their colonial charges with haughty disdain.

Indeed, while racism and racial hatred are often thought to be synonymous, viewed from this phenomenological perspective, racism and hatred are actually antithetical – one looking down while the other looks up – with antisemitism constituting an almost unique exception to this rule due to the relative success and prosperity which members of the Jewish diaspora managed to attain in the various foreign lands they came to inhabit. What is even more noteworthy, however, is the fact that when not a spontaneous and often unconscious response to those we implicitly regard as inferior – as was typically the case with respect to British colonial officials stationed almost anywhere in the empire – racism is often nurtured in those who embrace it with the principal, if not always conscious aim of fostering just such an attitude of superiority towards others. For among those of us plagued by a sense of our own inadequacy – no matter how much we may strive to deny it – belittling others and according them an inferior status is one of the most satisfying ways we have of feeling better about ourselves. 

Back in the 1970s, for instance, when the BBC still permitted racist comedy, there was a comedian called Jim Davidson who had an imaginary West Indian friend called Chalky White, whom he used to portray by putting on a very poor West Indian accent. His routine was then to place Chalky in various situations in which he could make jokes at the latter’s expense, revealing a rather naïve, almost childish ignorance of the world which quite naturally elevated both Davidson, himself – and, of course, his audience – into a position of patronage and condescension. 

In fact, most of the racism I have witnessed during my life has been of this type. It’s why it is most often to be found among groups who have few accomplishments and little to be proud of in their lives and who therefore try to compensate for this by putting down others: others of another race being a particularly easy target.

That’s not to say, of course, that this, in itself, isn’t baneful, injurious and unwholesome, particularly as those who adopt this strategy as a way of alleviating their own dissatisfaction with themselves also very often feel the need to ‘act it out’, providing an alternative rationale and justification for their attitude by giving voice to numerous violent expressions of a hatred they don’t really feel, in order to make others to believe that it is this that is the true cause of their antipathy. Thus while genuine hatred may play very little part in the actual aetiology of this type of racism, in playing out the role of the racist, those who opt for this solution very often end up feigning an emotion which, over time, can get pretty close to becoming the real thing. 

More to the point, there is at least one way in which this kind of compensatory racism, as one might call it, can actually generate genuine hatred. This happens when there is an inversion of the constructed superiority/inferiority relationship upon which this form of racism depends.

Imagine, for instance, that we have a friend like Chalky White whom we regularly belittle for his lack of ability in some particular field. Suppose, however, that one day he exhibits far more ability in this field than we, ourselves, are able to demonstrate and does so in front of a room full of people who have all previously witnessed our belittling of him on this very score. Not only does he thus turn the tables on us, revealing himself to be the one in a position of superiority, but he also makes us look a fool in the eyes of all those present, thereby making us the potential object of others’ contempt and providing us with all three of the cognitive preconditions required for triggering hatred. Indeed, such a dramatic inversion of the superiority/inferiority relationship can often spark an uncontrollable rage made all the more overwhelming by the fact that the person responsible for our shame has also left us bereft of the very compensatory strategy we usually employ to protect us from such humiliation. 

While both the real and counterfeit forms of hatred to which compensatory racism can give rise are thus clearly recognisable phenomena and are always likely to be with us – fulfilling, as they do, a certain psychological need – the good news is that the emotional dynamic required to produce them, as illustrated in the above examples, is so complex that neither is ever likely to become widespread. While there is much talk these days of White Supremacist groups posing a threat to democracy and public order, in political terms such groups are always therefore likely to remain a freakish sideshow on the fringes of politics and are never again likely to become mainstream. 

More to the point, when it comes to mainstream politics, hatred in it most basic form – arising as it so often does out of our sense of injustice at the disparities of wealth and privilege that are to be found in almost any society – is far more the preserve of the socialist left than of the conservative right and, indeed, is regularly used as a galvanizing force by left wing activists who, fully cognizant of its cognitive underpinnings, carefully nurture among their followers the belief that those who have all the power also have nothing but contempt for rest of us. 

In the United Kingdom, for instance, which has very little history of either antisemitism or race based conflict, it is this division between the haves and the have-nots – the conservative ruling class and the toiling masses – rather than any differentiation based on race, that has not only constituted the principal fault line in the country’s political history, but has also been the locus of most of its recent historical unrest. Indeed, one only has to remember the miners’ strikes of the 1970s and 80s to appreciate the strength and depth of the emotions which this division can arouse.

That is not to say, of course, that all those battling against what they regarded as inequality and injustice always succumbed to hatred. Having spent large parts of my life in areas of the country where Tories were generally regarded as a malignant disease, however, there have been times when I have witnessed more hatred in the hearts of my fellow countrymen than I thought possible in a civilised society. And this was especially the case in the late 1970s and early 80s when, after nearly two decades of financial mismanagement and economic collapse, the hated Conservatives, under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher – probably the most hated Prime Minister in the country’s history – were returned to power with a programme for government that was principally designed to remedy our economic woes, but which was almost universally interpreted in a way that strongly reinforced historic working class prejudices. For by cutting public expenditure to balance the government’s budget, while simultaneously cutting taxes to stimulate the economy, to those brought up in an age of Keynes, Mrs. Thatcher’s entire strategy for returning the country to economic health seemed more designed to benefit the rich while further impoverishing those dependent on welfare benefits and public services than to achieve her stated economic aims. What really made her hated, however, was not just her insistence that her ‘Austrian’ style economics were correct – as, indeed, they proved to be – but the fact that she made no attempt to conceal her scorn for those who championed the underclass she was apparently further disadvantaging. For believing that it was the welfare state, itself, which, by disincentivising aspiration and fostering dependency, was not only the root cause of the country’s economic decline but was also injurious to the people themselves – depriving them of a full and active life – she was the first and only Prime Minister in our history who ever tried to reverse our national decline by forcing people to face economic reality and take more responsibility for themselves, rather than handing this responsibility over to the state.

To a post-war generation brought up to believe that the state was the beneficent provider of all good things and that the last thing they would ever have to face again was economic reality, what this precipitated, therefore, was something akin to an existential crisis. For not only was this cold-hearted representative of the ruling class telling them that they had to solve life’s problems for themselves, but they were also being made to face the terrible truth that the life free from want they had always been promised was a fantasy – a fairy tale for children – and that it was time for them to grow up and live in the real world, which was hard and cold and totally unforgiving. 

In presenting the people of this country with such a pitiless and implacable message, not only was Margaret Thatcher thus quite clearly assuming a position of moral superiority but, by rigorously pursuing unpopular policies and forcing people to do what they didn’t want to do, she was also making it perfectly clear that she held their contrary opinions in utter contempt, thereby meeting all three cognitive conditions necessary for making herself hated. 

In this, however, not only was she possibly the most selfless Prime Minister this country has ever had – as well as the most thick-skinned – but she was also the country’s saviour. Because she was right: her policies worked. By the mid-1980s, the economy was booming. From having been the sick man of Europe, by 1985, Britain had become a European dynamo. And although Margaret Thatcher, herself, has always remained a monster in the folklore of the left, as the country grew more prosperous, the more widespread hatred to which she had initially been subjected gradually abated.

In fact, from the late eighties onwards, until the financial crash of 2008, Britain became as hate-free as I think I’ve ever known it. As the British people gradually got used to more people of colour living among them, not only did the endemic racism of the 60s and 70s also slowly disappear but, even more significantly, the fundamentally Marxist Labour party of the previous six or seven decades – which, throughout those years, had fought an unceasing class war – was now at least superficially transformed into New Labour: a centrist party which even embraced a form of capitalism, leaving the population at large with very little about which to argue and even less to hate each other over.

All that ended, however, in 2008 when, as I explained in ‘The End of an Era (Part II)’, the bubble of mostly false prosperity which had largely kept the nation together, finally burst, forcing the incoming Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition to once again turn to the Margaret Thatcher textbook of fiscal responsibility, which, in turn, opened up all the old class divisions, eventually leading to the return of the old-style Marxist Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. 

Not that this last point is likely to be as important or even relevant as I suspect Jeremy Corby would like it to be. For over the previous twenty or thirty years, unbeknownst to most of us, a new political ideology had been steadily coming to take the place of old-school socialism, even though most of us didn’t recognise it as such. Indeed, we used tell jokes about it, calling it ‘political correctness’ and recounting tales of how this new trend in our political life had totally ‘gone mad’. What we didn’t realise, however, was that what we were joking about was actually a manifestation of what is, in fact, a fairly old political philosophy, which owes its origin to the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci.

Like many Marxist thinkers of his generation, Gramsci had believed that at some point during the first world war, the ordinary soldiers of each nation would eventually turn on their ruling elites and join together in a great European socialist revolution. After all, as members of a world-wide proletariat, they had more in common with each other – or so it was thought – than they had with those who commanded them and sent them to their slaughter. When this great revolution failed to occur, however, Marxist philosophers had to rethink some of their basic assumptions about the international fraternity of the toiling masses and recognise that the ties of home, family, church and motherland were actually far stronger than the rather abstract category of class.

Another Italian Marxist philosopher who also clearly saw this was Giovanni Gentile. Realising that in order to build a socialist society, people very often had to sacrifice their own personal interests to those of the collective, and that people are generally far more willing to do this if the collective in question comprises their own family, their village or town, or indeed their country, Gentile argued that it was upon these deeper allegiances that a new form of socialism therefore had to be built. This new form of socialism he consequently called National Socialism, better known as Fascism – named after the bundle of rods surrounding a single axe which were carried by lictors in ancient Rome to signify magisterial authority – the main principles of which he outlined in a book called ‘The Doctrine of Fascism’, which was originally attributed Benito Mussolini, though how much Il Duce actually contributed to it is open to question. 

In contrast, Antonio Gramsci went in what one might almost call the opposite direction. He too recognised that people’s allegiances to the institutions of family, church and the nation were far stronger than any comradeship they may have independently felt towards their fellow workers. But rather than embrace these institutions, he argued that, for socialism to succeed, they had to be destroyed. Not all at once, of course – which would have likely been impossible – and not through violence – which would have likely been counter-productive – but slowly over time, through a process of re-education amounting to a cultural revolution which, he argued, had to precede any political revolution. 

It was this central idea of a slow ‘long march’ to cultural change that was then picked up by a group of academics of different disciplines at the University of Frankfurt. These included Max Horkheimer and Friedrich Pollock, who were the original founders of the group, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm, who were arguably its most famous representatives, and a number of others who, collectively, came to be known as the Frankfurt School. 

Not that they actually remained in Frankfurt for very long. For rightly fearing Nazi persecution during the late 1920s and early 1930’s, they each gradually made their way to Columbia University in New York, from where, over the next three or four decades, they and their followers slowly spread their cultural revolution all across the western world, firstly by propagating their ideas throughout academia, itself, especially in the social sciences, where ‘critical theory’, as their methodology was known, quickly became the dominant form of debate, and then by seeding all the other cultural institutions of western society – the news media, publishing, the theatre, cinema and education in general – with their students. In this way they were able to amplify their message exponentially, as Gramsci himself had recognised. For if you take over the institutions of a culture you very quickly take over the culture itself, from which point on it then becomes a relatively simple matter of replacing old cultural norms with those of a new, more progressive ideology.

In addition to working to eliminate any religion which still professed the kind of conservative values which might have constituted an impediment to their progress – which, in America, largely meant Christianity – their overall strategy was to undermine and replace the existing culture along three principal axes:

1. Firstly, they sought to undermine the institutions of marriage and the family, initially by promoting feminism and sexual freedom (it was Herbert Marcuse, for instance, who coined the phrase ‘make love not war’) and then, more latterly, by normalising homosexuality and promoting gender fluidity.
2. Secondly, they sought to rewrite the history of both individual nations and European civilization as whole, partly through the passive strategy of almost entirely ignoring the latter’s great achievements – in the arts and sciences, engineering and technology, jurisprudence and the development of democratic government – but mostly through the far more aggressive strategy of concentrating, instead, on the historical expansion of European culture and civilization around the world through conquest and colonisation and the consequent extermination or enslavement of the indigenous people it encountered.
3. Thirdly – and possibly most importantly – they sought to undermine the belief in objective truth, itself, replacing it, instead, with a thoroughgoing cultural relativism in which all perspectives upon the world were seen as equally valid and in which rational argument, scientific method and even mathematics were viewed as the product of one culture in particular, i.e. European culture, which not only meant that these previously dominant forms of intellectual enquiry were now believed to have no greater claim upon the truth than any other ways of perceiving the world, but were also made to seem fundamentally racist and sexist, owing their origin and propagation to mostly European (white) men.

Basically, what the West told itself – and gradually brought itself to believe – was that all opinions were equally valid and that science and rational thought were intellectual straightjackets imposed on people to prevent them from freeing their minds; that Europeans had no culture of their own except that which they had ruthlessly appropriated from others; and that the family was a patriarchal institution designed to oppress women, from which they could only free themselves through economic and sexual liberation.

From the point of view of reinventing Marxism, however, this systematic demolition of European culture and history had one even more significant consequence in that it also provided a solution to Marxism’s traditional problem of basing its ideology on class identity, which, as both Gentile and Gramsci had recognised, did not resonate well with everyone, and was soon found to be even less appealing in aspirational America where penniless immigrants strove to become millionaires and were not therefore very much interested in class-based politics. By concentrating on the West’s intellectual, historical and social failings, however, this new form of Marxism was now able to appeal to a whole raft of other identities – particularly those of gender, race and sexual orientation – all of which could not only be shown to have been subject to some form of discrimination, but were far more inalienable than mere social status, in that they were not identities which people could simply cast off and leave behind them.

Even more felicitously, these alternative categories of social victimisation were largely single poles in a binary pairing, thereby rendering those responsible for their oppression that much more obvious. For if women had been traditionally disadvantaged due to their gender, it could only be because men had taken advantage of them. If people of colour had been abused because of their race, it had to be because Europeans had abused them. And if homosexuals were discriminated against because of their sexuality, then it could only be because heterosexuals were prejudiced against them. The result was that one group – that of white, heterosexual males – could now be presented not only as having historically held all the power, but as having held this power by keeping all other groups oppressed, thereby opening the door to a new social revolution in which these wrongs could be addressed, the reign of white, heterosexual males brought to an end, and a new age of equality introduced. 

The problem, of course – although I don’t think it has ever been properly recognised as such – was that this analysis also painted white, heterosexual males in such a way as to perfectly incite hatred in those they were believed to have disadvantaged. For not only were they said to have held all the power – and to have systematically abused those they had held the power over – but, for centuries, they had behaved as if this were perfectly natural, thereby evincing in their attitude a belief in their own superiority and the inferiority of others. 

As a result, the concepts of ‘white privilege’, ‘toxic masculinity’ and ‘homophobia’ are now central to almost every cultural and political debate, with white, heterosexual males being made the objects of almost universal scorn. And who is it, today, who most personifies this universally hated archetype? Why, Donald Trump, of course: a man who is not only totally unapologetic about what he is – even revelling in the fact that so many people seem to regard him as a monster – but who, in becoming president of the United States and placing himself in a position of power over those who consequently came to hate him even more, inflicted on his opponents one of the most humiliating inversions of the superiority/inferiority relationships in history. For prior to his election, the progressive left – those who now embody the ideology of Cultural Marxism, whether they are aware of this or not – regarded both him and his followers with contempt. Hilary Clinton even described his followers as a ‘basket of deplorables’. They were uneducated hillbillies, rednecks, and white supremacists whose representative and very personification should never have been allowed to attain the presidency. The result, therefore, was that when he did, the outpouring of rage was almost hysterical, especially among women who seemed, quite literally, to lose their minds, donning ‘pussy hats’ and howling ‘Nooo!’ at the empty sky.

What is particularly interesting about this, however, is that it is not the only instance of a such an inversion to have occurred as a result of Cultural Marxist indoctrination over the last few years. For something very similar happened with regard to Brexit.

I say this because, before the referendum, it was widely believed that the principal reason why supporters of Brexit wanted to leave the EU was their opposition to mass immigration. This, therefore, not only made them xenophobic, nationalistic ‘Little Englanders’ but also, by definition, racists. Indeed, within the mainstream media they were regularly represented not only as knuckle-dragging Neanderthals but as fascists, white supremacists and Nazis. Due to their supposed low intelligence and limited education, however, it was also assumed that when the vote came, they would be soundly defeated by all the educated, enlightened, ‘right-thinking’ people who made up the majority of the British population and who would clearly see the benefits of remaining in the EU. When this didn’t happen, therefore – when the basket of deplorables actually won – the outpouring of hostility against them was very similar to that which met the election of President Trump five months later. Moreover, the hatred which was then unleashed throughout the UK has only strengthen and become more visceral in the three years of waiting and uncertainty that have followed. 

So what do these two events have in common and what is actually going on here?

The first thing to note is that, in certain ways, Cultural Marxism has a very similar aetiology to compensatory racism, in that they are both based on our primordial insecurities about ourselves. Awash with a sense of his own inadequacy, the compensatory racist, as described earlier, belittles and derides another ethnic group in order to feel superior to them and thus better about himself. Similarly, those who subscribe to Cultural Marxism – whether or not they identify themselves as doing so – deflect whatever doubts and fears they may have about their own ability to cope in a cruel and hostile world by blaming their self-doubt and sense of inadequacy on whichever group they hold to be responsible for their oppression, thereby similarly alleviating their feelings of existential angst.

However, unlike compensatory racism, Cultural Marxism doesn’t stop there. For not only does it tell its subscribers that they are not to blame for whatever shortcomings they may feel – these having been fostered or even ground into them by those who have kept them oppressed – it also tells them that, in their blamelessness, they are morally superior to those who have wilfully and malignly inflicted this oppression upon them, thereby effectively turning the tables on their erstwhile tormentors and allowing them to now look down upon those who had previously had the upper hand. And why not? After all, is it not said that the meek shall inherit the earth? And are not those who have suffered centuries of oppression, by definition, the meek? 

Even this, however, is not the end of the story. For the conclusion to which this whole new compensatory philosophy of the oppressed then inevitably gives rise is the belief that if we could only eliminate all the racist, sexist homophobes who have been responsible for all these centuries of oppression, then we would finally arrive at the promised land: a socialist utopia in which no one would be abused, put down or reviled; where tolerance, equality and communal harmony would reign; and where everyone would have what they need without reference to wealth, status or power. The problem with this, however, is that this whole wishful vision is of course a total fantasy: another fairy tale for children who refuse to confront the harsh vicissitudes of life, and who hate not only those who constitute an immediate threat to their delusions – uncivilized monsters like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson – but those, like Margaret Thatcher, who would force them to recognise and face up to the existential fears that are basis of their desperate attempt to avoid reality.

For it is reality, of course, that is the ultimate problem. It is too big for us, too overwhelming; while we are too small and too insignificant. It’s why we have always needed an omnipotent god or an all-powerful state to protect us and provide for us, and why we are even willing to give up our liberty and right to self-determination to an undemocratic, international institution like the EU, if only it will keep us safe from reality in its comforting, bureaucratic embrace. 

However, this is where the whole strategy falls down. For reality is nothing if not persistent and is currently not just knocking at our door but, due to the western world’s economic and monetary policies over the last three decades, is practically taking a sledgehammer to it. Indeed, as I have tried to demonstrate in my last few essays, the post war era, during which the West has prospered more than at any other time, is coming to an end. Another financial crash, on scale far more destructive than in 2008, is on its way, and the result will be a new economic reality far different from that which any of us have known before. 

And it is this that is the real cause of our current discord. For while most people wouldn’t be able to say why or how the world has gone wrong, most of us sense that it has. And it is our different responses to this awareness that now divides us, not along lines of class or race, but between those who embrace reality, no matter how challenging it may be, and those who want to hide from it and do not want it thrust in their faces, which, of course, is exactly what Brexiteers and supporters of Donald Trump, by their very existence, do. For it is reality they represent. And it is this for which they are fundamentally and existentially hated.