Hate Hype - A weapon of Marxism and malice

By John Vinson
Volume 28, Number 1 (Fall 2017)
Issue theme: "The Refugee Crisis And Its Impact on the West"


The accusation of “hate” is the left’s primary rhetorical weapon to enforce obedience and conformity. The accusers refuse to concede that their opponents might have any decent motives. Immigration restrictionists know the sting of this verbal bludgeon only too well.

The typical restrictionist earnestly tries to show that less immigration will promote benevolent ends: protection of the environment, national cohesion, and worker protection. The accusers are never moved. Sitting in stern judgment, they typically hiss: “That’s what you say, but we know perfectly well that you are nothing but a hater, a xenophobe, and a bigot.”

Often restrictionists feel disarmed and even intimidated by such a harsh rebuke. They reason: “I would never make such harsh criticisms of someone else’s motives unless I had good reason to believe that the charges were true. Is it possible that they might have a point?”

What restrictionists don’t understand is that not everyone shares their mindset and convictions. Often they hold to the Western/Christian system of ethics, which affirms rational debate, respect for opponents, and a willingness to concede personal imperfection. The Left quite commonly embraces none of these ethics. In fact, its avowed mission is to destroy them.

The left by and large takes its ethical direction from Marxism. Its key tenet is that the world is divided into two groups, oppressors and the oppressed. The oppressors are irredeemably bad, and the oppressed are without flaw or blemish. According to Marxism, the “laws of history” ordain that the oppressed will overcome their opponents.

In classical Marxism the oppressors are the capitalists and the oppressed are the working class. Once the workers win, capitalism will give way to a socialist utopia. This classical view has subsided in light of the reality that socialism is highly flawed as an economic system. But even before that, Marxism was morphing in other directions, under the direction of theorist Antonio Gramsci and the so-called Frankfort School.1

They gave birth to Cultural Marxism—what people commonly refer to as political correctness. It offers a new cast of oppressors and oppressed, emphasizing race, gender, and nationality as much or more than economic distinctions. The primary oppressors are white, western, heterosexual males. The oppressed include non-whites (designated “people of color”), females, homosexuals, and immigrants of color. If people in these groups don’t identify as oppressed, it is only because the oppressors have deceived them.

If “oppressors” try to defend themselves, Marxists reply that their reasoning should be ignored because it’s simply a rationalization to uphold the oppressors’ position and privilege. The oppressed, however, always speak the truth from their heart-felt experience.

Thus the Marxist left sees no need to refute what their opponents say. Their task, rather, is to expose the oppressors’ evil motives and discredit them. In the words of Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin, “We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.”2 More recently, the radical Saul Alinsky affirmed the principle of personal attack, “pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”3

To promote their theme of evil oppressors, the Marxist left has placed great emphasis on how to change perception and opinion through propaganda. The name sometimes used for this study of manipulation is psycho-politics, and a large measure of it involves Pavlovian conditioning. The Cultural Marxists commonly use short attack words—hate, hater, racist, nativist, sexist—as the Pavlovian stimulus to elict “hate, revulsion, and scorn” toward the person or persons being attacked.

One of the leading attack dogs and enforcers of Cultural Marxism in the U.S. is the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which depicts groups it hates as “hate groups.”4 The sympathetic liberal media serve as an echo chamber for its scurrilous charges. Groups calling for immigration restriction are primary targets of the SPLC. This is hardly surprising because mass immigration has long been part of the radical left’s strategy to destabilize society and impose its vision of a new order.5

The SPLC is not interested in dialogue on immigration or offering any degree of tolerance to restrictionists. In the words of SPLC spokesman Mark Potok, the goal of the SPLC is to “destroy” restrictionist organizations, and if malicious dishonesty is necessary to get the job done, that’s no problem.6 A perfect example is the label of “hate group.” The popular imagination typically conceives a hate group as a violent law-breaking organization. But none of the leading restrictionist groups, so designated by the SPLC, fit this description. All are law-abiding, and none employ racial slurs and other abusive rhetoric.

That being the case, why does the SPLC inform law enforcement agencies across the country of its designated “hate groups”? Obviously the purpose is to make those agencies believe that those groups bear watching for possible criminal activity. Unfortunately, some law agencies seem to take this suggestion seriously. By encouraging police scrutiny of lawful activity, the SPLC shows its partiality toward a police state.

Another tactic the SPLC uses is to link people it targets, no matter how tenuously, to genuinely disreputable people and groups. In light of this tactic, it is interesting to see what kind of people the SPLC openly embraces. One is Bill Ayers, co-founder of the Weather Underground, a Communist terrorist organization that conducted bombings during the late sixties and early seventies. The SPLC’s magazine Teaching Tolerance, once interviewed Bill Ayers and described him as “a highly respected figure in the field of multicultural education.” It also praised him as an advocate of “social justice.”7

Ayers has never apologized for his terrorist activities, and even stated, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”8 According to Larry Grathwohl, an FBI informant who infiltrated the Weather Underground, Ayers and his comrades speculated that they would have to exterminate as many as 25 million Americans in order to impose their version of social justice on the U.S.9

Given the proclivity of Marxists to attack the character and motives of other people, it is certainly appropriate to turn the spotlight of examination on them. Other than their own assertion, what gives these inquisitors the moral authority to sit in judgment on anyone? Theirs is an ideology which spawned the Communist movement and its reign of terror, repression, and mass murder. Left in its wake during the twentieth century were the Soviet Gulag camps, the Ukrainian Holodormor, and the Killing Fields of Cambodia.

If the Cultural Marxists of today ever gain the power of their ideological antecedents, will they follow the same path to imposing tyranny? Those who zealously practice character assassination may well be inclined to practice literal assassination if the opportunity presents itself. If decent people don’t stand up to these bigots and bullies, that opportunity may indeed arise.

The first step of resistance is to use the term political correctness less often, and perhaps Cultural Marxism as well. The most accurate term is Neo-Communism. Once people consider this source, they will be less deceived and intimidated by hate hype and other assaults of pyscho-politics. How ludicrous it is when the malice-driven heirs of Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, and Pol Pot hurl accusations of hatred. Neo-Communists have no moral standing. Their power rests on arrogance and bluff—and nothing else. ■


Endnotes

1. http://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/21PbAr/Hst/WrldPsyPolGbl.htm

2. http://www.azquotes.com/quote/1255417 lenin

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals alinsky

4. https://capitalresearch.org/article/southern-poverty-law-center-wellspring-of-manufactured-hate/

5. https://www.amazon.com/Importing-Revolution-Borders-Radical-Agenda/dp/0936247150

6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnTz2ylJo_8&feature=relmfu

7. https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/spring-1998/an-unconditional-embrace teach tol

8. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/11/books/no-regrets-for-love-explosives-memoir-sorts-war-protester-talks-life-with.html do enough

9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBtANp4IKVk 25 million

About the author

John Vinson is president of the American Immigration Control Foundation.