In the context of our modern liberal values hatred is a feeling we are not generally permitted to bring to the surface or express. Hatred is of a class of its own, when it accompanies a criminal act the crime becomes a hate-crime. Generally lady-justice is unconcerned as to the emotional nature of a crime; we do not as yet have; 'happy', 'sad' or 'disinterested' crimes. There are no 'crimes of boredom' or ennui, that would equally reflect the emotion of the perpetrator. Indeed if the crime involves a relationship, a love triangle, or jealousy, it may be pitched into the basket of a 'crime of passion'; however hatred (perhaps in light of our collective repugnance for it) has the privilege of enjoying a uniquely defining status.
In spite of our ostensible aversion, there are certain things that we are encouraged to hate, such as 'hate itself'. We are also permitted to hate relatively benign and ephemeral things, things of little significance, like; broccoli, hemorrhoids or the weather.
We are not permitted to hate things that are protected under the umbrella of our modern liberal values; we cannot hate certain people like; Jews, homosexuals, differing ethnicities, nor can we hate other countries or religions. We are not permitted to hate God, despite the fact that he/she may have made a complete mess of things. Nor are we permitted to hate humanity, despite the fact that relative to all other species ours represents the most cancerous influence upon the entire ecology of our planet.
We can eat animals but (with the exception of those who thrive in our company; vermin, cockroaches, crows, gulls and those that feed on our detritus) we are not permitted to hate them especially those that are cuddly and remind us of ourselves in some way or another.
Plants apparently have no feelings, and as in the case of broccoli, we can hate them unreservedly, perhaps with the exception of the rain-forests, which we must all respect and cherish.
When an American, Egyptian or Israeli, or Syrian Government need to legitimize killing, they too will make use of the 'hate rules' and will invariably point out to us that the victims are, (or were): 'terrorists', 'fundamentalists', 'anti-democracy protestors' or members of Al Qaeda. All of whom in accordance with our current hate-rules, are deserving of hatred and extermination.
Regardless of the hate rules I can find no other word that more suitable expresses my opinion of RTE, (our national broadcasting agency) and mainstream media in general. I buy Irish newspapers only to light my fire. I listen to RTE strictly by accident, and with the same stoic reluctance that I consume second-hand smoke when in the company of those who apply poison to their lungs as well as their ears.
When I try to adhere to the hate rules and reconcile my pacifism with my hatred of RTE, I imagine a fantastic fate for that bastion of predictability and mirror for the mindlessness of the masses. I dream for example, of the spontaneous emergence of a giant sink-hole, (as does happen in more tectonic climes) beneath its headquarters in Donnybrook, and the entire physical structure of our national intellectual lavatory, being swallowed whole, ...deep into the bowels of mother earth, (late at night with no injuries or casualties, an elderly dog or a budgie perhaps.) Now that would be lovely, and for a week or precious month, the airways and the brains of my countrymen and women would no longer be contaminated by the groundhog-day of paralysed intellect and by that uniquely Irish form of retarded analysis that everyday flows from that cornucopia of predictability.
Were I an American my hatred would probably extend to Fox and CNN, to SKY and the mass media. My hatred is both generous and ecumenical, it extends to all those media institutions who reflect back to the consumer, an abstracted and palatable form of their own stupidity and incapacity for independent analysis. The brainwash that is invariably referred to by the dictatorship of our day as: "the news".
I have no doubt that in Germany and elsewhere during the 1940's there were those few who hated the Nazi's, who hated the hatred of the Nazi's and their cruelty to their fellow human beings (I am an optimist as well as a pacifist). Of course at that time (as in our time), there were specific Hate Rules to which the majority were expected to comply. What we tend to forget is that the single greatest pathology at work in the 1940's, was the same erosion of the capacity for independent thought. "Propaganda is only recognised in retrospect, and today's news of this and that and of 'weapons of mass destruction', 'gassings' and so on, is tomorrows propaganda.
In Ireland as in America the same media personalities that promoted and promulgated the ideals of the 'sub-prime' and those of the 'Boom'; are the same individuals who are at the helm today, remorselessly and relentlessly promoting the accepted notions of today. The same notions that will effect the consequence of tomorrow.
Our thinking remains eerily unchanged and we yearn for a return to the same 'growth' and economic conditions that precipitated the collapse. The majority of plebs believed them then, and majority believe them now; it is hard not to be a hater of the majority. Personally my love and hate for humanity are maintained in an equilibrium that is at times difficult to maintain, especially after sex, or Thai Green Curry, or when I watch the sunrise, or see children smile, or when I am compelled to listen to the mind-wash of modern media.
Perhaps Mr Murdock or the Directors of CNN or RTE should be hung drawn and quartered for the disease of mass ignorance which they are guilty of spreading with all the virulence of modern technology?
Yet we must evolve beyond our fetish for scape-goats. There is no conspiracy, no invisible Hitler, no Dr Mabuse or Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, directing the propaganda and controlling the minds of the masses. There is no 'neo-liberal agenda', no 'blue-print for armegeddon'. There is only the Market and we ourselves. All of these things, and most of our evils arise out of relations between the two, between our consumption and our idiocy.
RTE like CNN seek an audience of the majority for that is how profits are maximised. As such the majority are fed what they want to hear, which is entirely different to the truth of what they need to hear. Pat Kenny is not an evil man, he is simply a small minded unintelligent man, one who reflects back to the masses their own small mindedness and un-intelligence. There can be no other types of presenters at RTE they are hued from the same stone. The institution is governed by the majority that is the market; this is our new totality and these are its new dictators.
'Freedom of the Press' is a modern euphemism to for it's enslavement to the markets. This enslavement of the media is proving more destructive than any historical suppression of free speech; fascist, communist, dictator or otherwise. Arguably the single most essential ingredient to a functional democracy is a true freedom of the press. This loss has meant that our Democracy has been entirely undermined and turned to a cancer upon the earth, one that has lost the restraining influence of a truly free and independent media. A media that has become subservient to the dictatorship of profits and the market.
Even the worst dictator in history preserved the capacity for compassion, for justice. Hitler was at least a vegetarian, who loved his dogs and, unlike Churchill , was conscious of the need to respect his health. The markets on the other hand, lack the potential for justice or compassion, they see only profit,opportunity and economic growth. Hitler put them into ovens and gas chambers, the market kills many more through starvation, depravity and war; it undermines the very basis of of our ecological survival. Hitler was an angel in comparison.
At the behest of Nazi authorities, with the persuasion of the media, and through the 'acting out' of an anti Semitic sentiment that was entirely European (and not specific to Germany), Germans engineered the holocaust and attempted to exterminate an entire culture of human beings by mass incineration or gassing. We are too familiar with the horror, and yet the mention of it does not tend to bore us. The currency of that barbarism is perhaps of an infinite concentration so grotesque, that it is unlikely ever to become passe or dilute. Those atrocities have perhaps come to refine our view of political evil, to the extent that we are blind the holocaust of the plastic bottle and genocide of 'democracy' that are unfolding before our eyes and ears.
It is perhaps because our present social experiment involves a romance with technology that the genocide of the Holocaust remains of such intrigue. That the mass destruction of fellow humans was effected in a most scientific manner with an application of available technology and efficiencies not far removed from the efficiency and science which a budget airline might apply to the task of herding humans about the planet.
