Hate and Lies about Hate
Southern Poverty Law Center vs Turning Point USA
Hate is one of those words we hate. When spoken, this word, hate, sets off a volcano within us. From some subterranean caldera within our id a pyroclastic eruption wants to scald those accused of hating with molten moral ash and lava. We suddenly become haters of haters.
The Southern Poverty Law Center Hates the Klan
This kind of eruption took place within my soul as I opened the mail recently. “Hate is back,” is the first line in a letter I received from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Immediately I asked myself: which hater should I begin to hate? “The Klan,” said the letter. Well, for me it’s easy to hate the Klan because I don’t know any members of the Ku Kux Klan. I shake my fist in anger. I spit molten moral lava at those unrecognizable people dressed in hoods.
To be serious, I do not see a lie at work here. Yes, the Klan is vicious. So is the emerging new white nationalism. These worries are on target. And I grieve that racial equality is still only an ideal rather than an actuality. In his treatment of the fascist momentum at work in the US today, Yale philosopher Jason Stanley similarly grieves. “When we see progress toward multi-racial democracy receding before our eyes, it is easy to become disheartened” (Stanley 2024, 186). Yes, I sent a donation to SPLC.
Turning Point USA and those Hateful Leftists
More mail came that same day. Turning Point USA (TP USA) sent me an envelope with multiple flyers soliciting donations. “For decades,” reads one flyer, “the radical left…anti-American hate…has been poisoning young Americans…They’ve sought to destroy the country we love…” So, I asked myself again: which hater should I begin to hate?
Turning Point USA’s answer: I should hate “the radical left.” Now, wait just a darned minute! I’m a Berkeley professor. I love my Berkeley colleagues, friends, neighbors, and even their pets. Whether radically left or only moderately left, my leftist friends are lovely and loving people. And Berkeley is so exhaustively left that one can go weeks without seeing a MAGA cap.
This puzzles me. I have never met a radical left person who hates America. Perhaps some do. But I’ve never met one. This seems to be the case in Berkeley and everywhere else I’ve caroused with leftists. So, I wonder: just what is TP USA talking about here?
Charlie Kirk, Founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, said in his letter that “America is THE greatest force for good the world has ever seen.” Mr. Kirk stands on the side of the good. He stands for America and against hate. For this reason, Mr. Kirk asked me to give a $1000 donation to his organization. I would be glad to donate double that amount to support good America against the hateful leftist friends I have in Berkeley.
Unless, of course, Mr. Kirk is telling a lie. Because no one of my leftist friends hates America, I think Mr. Kirk is in fact telling a lie. So, I declined the invitation to donate.
BTW. My favorite Berkeleyite is Kelly Hammargren. For the latest in activist news, visit her website for the Sustainable Berkeley Coalition at the Berkeley Daily Planet.
Self-Justification, Telling Lies, and Scapegoating
The prophetic role of the public theologian is to keep before public awareness the scapegoat mechanism. Classically, theologians call this sin. Jesus identified it when castigating hypocrites who identify with what is good while scamming victims.
We do not ordinarily pursue evil in the name of evil. Rather, we pursue evil in the name of something good. It is good to stand up against hate, even if in standing up one becomes a hater. This part of the sin mechanism I label, “self-justification.”
The SPLC justifies soliciting for contributions because it stands up against racial prejudice and even against the Klan. Actually, I’m persuaded by such self-justification because there seems to be no lie at work here.
TP USA justifies soliciting donations on the grounds that it stands up for good America against radical leftists who hate America. This is self-justification at work, to be sure. But there is a lie being told here. Leftists do not in fact hate America. They may love America in ways that Mr. Kirk disagrees with; but it’s misleading to identify leftists with hatred. The net effect of this lie is that MAGA Republicans can now justify scapegoating my colleagues and friends in Berkeley and elsewhere.
I rely on the scapegoat theory of René Girard, because Girard grasps what we need to grasp about America today. According to Girard…
“we cry 'scapegoat' to stigmatize all the phenomena of discrimination--political, ethnic, religious, social, racial, etc.--that we observe about us. We are right. We easily see now that scapegoats multiply wherever human groups seek to lock themselves into a given identity--communal, local, national, ideological, racial, religious, and so on" (Girard R. , 2001, p. 160).
“For fascists,” observes Jason Stanley, “being political means defining oneself against an enemy. As such, fascist regimes selectively disenfranchise certain segments of their population and violently cast them into…semi-citizenship in order to emphasize the virtue and worth of the dominant group….fascists are led to take joy in cruelty against those outside this group, and others who stand to benefit from greater equality” (Stanley 2024, 2-3). Might Berkeley leftists get classified as such a scapegoat? Should I begin worrying?
The Self-Justifying Lie Deforms the Soul
Scapegoating the person who allegedly hates deforms our own soul. Why? Because the soul forms itself around the lie and then takes on the attributes of hatred itself.
Here is the key lie: we tell ourselves that we are good and that leftists or immigrants or foreign students or Democrats are hateful. Through this lie we engage in self-justification, self-purification (Peters 1993).
To repeat: telling this lie about someone who is allegedly hateful makes us ourselves hateful. Can we hate hate without becoming a hater?
Conclusion
Prompting eruptions of hatred by designating scapegoats who allegedly hate seems to be an effective tool in fundraising. And in getting elected to office. And in persuading others to do your will.
The downside is that such a lie stains society with a cross fire of hatred against hatred. Such an anxious and volatile society is not likely to effectuate due process or justice let alone charity.
Substack PT 3267. Hate and Lies about Hate
SIN 1 Sin? Really?
SIN 2 Self-Justification
SIN 3 The Visible Scapegoat
SIN 4 The Invisible Scapegoat
SIN 5 Sin Boldly!
Patheos PT 3264. Do Scapegoats Purify America?
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Meet Ted Peters. Ted Peters is a Lutheran pastor and emeritus professor at the Graduate Theological Union. His single volume systematic theology, God—The World’s Future, is now in the 3rd edition. He has also authored God as Trinity plus Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society as well as Sin Boldly: Justifying Faith for Fragile and Broken Souls. In 2023 he published. The Voice of Public Theology, with ATF Press. This year he has published an edited volume, Promise and Peril of AI and IA: New Technology Meets Religion, Theology, and Ethics (ATF) and along with Arvin Gouw an edited collection, The CRISPR Revolution in Science, Religion, and Ethics (Bloomsbury 2025). See his website: TedsTimelyTake.com and blog sites on Public Theology and the Voice of Public Theology.
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References
Girard, René. 2001. I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightening. Maryknoll NY: Orbis.
Peters, Ted. 1993. Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society. Grand Rapids MI: Wm B Eerdmans.
Stanley, Jason. 2024. Erasing History: How Fascits Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. New York: Atria/One Signal .
You write: "Leftists do not in fact hate America. They may love America in ways that Mr. Kirk disagrees with; but it’s misleading to identify leftists with hatred. The net effect of this lie is that MAGA Republicans can now justify scapegoating my colleagues and friends in Berkeley and elsewhere."
From the POV of Mr. Kirk, he could say the same thing: "Right-wingers do not in fact hate America. They may love America in ways that Rev. Peters disagrees with; but it's misleading to identify right-wingers with hatred. The net effect of this lie is that radical left Democrats (Socialists) can now justify scapegoating my colleagues and friends."
The problem with the right is that it defines "love of America" very differently than do folks on the left. In their eyes, they are NOT doing wrong things. They are NOT willfully sinning. They are NOT hating. They are loving. Loving their families, their friends and neighbors, their local community, their country. In other words, anything that they can conceptualize as "their own" or "very much like me." The boundary lines for what constitutes "their own" tend to be drawn pretty close to the chest, pretty narrowly and tightly. They focus on what they include within those lines (which they love), and don't focus a whole bunch on the consequences of this for whatever lies outside those lines.
Let me put it in a different way. Remember that old Coca-Cola commercial where a whole group of people standing on a hill are singing, "I'd like to teach the world to sing"? Well, folks on the right don't want to teach the WORLD to sing. They want to teach the person standing next to them in the choir to sing. And to sing ON KEY, darn it! And to tell the other folks not in their choir to go sing somewhere else.
Brenda...you rise to a high level of eloquence. Yes, my leftist friends and colleagues scapegoat MAGA Republicans just as the reverse is the case. But I don't see the left accusing the right of hating America. Be that as it may, self-justification and scapegoating takes place on both sides of this fence. I like your extended choir metaphor. Ted