The New Politics: The Two Minute Hate

Had your Two Minutes Hate yet?

In case you don’t know, here’s what one looks like:

“The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate,” George Orwell writes in his novel 1984, “was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.”

I see it a lot on social media. Questions posed not to prompt introspection or even to get an answer/ Rather, questions asked to point out the hypocrisy present in the Other while wrapping oneself in the warm embrace of perceived self-righteousness on the subject of the question asked.

And while some deserve the satisfaction of being on the “right side” of a question, too many more are only on the right side so they can point and laugh at those they perceive as hypocrites. Altruism plays a minor key second fiddle to Being Right. And Being Right is more important, above everything else.

If the other side does it? For shame. That’s Whataboutism and Wrongthink and How Dare You Because Your Side does THIS. The Two Minutes Hate works only to point out the hypocrisy of the other, not to ferret out the hypocrisy of those posing the question.

My own smug, self-righteous response to those questions: Homey Don’t Play Dat. Because it’s a zero-sum game. No matter how you answer, parachutists fall in with logical fallacy after logical fallacy until they “win.” Because Being Right isn’t enough; someone else must Be Wrong. Because if no one is wrong to be pointed at and lorded over, what’s the fun in Being Right?

And the smug goes up to 11.

Answer the question hat in hand, prepare for a pile-on.

Answer the question belligerently, yeah, that’ll make everything right.

Which is why I typically try the Backwards Hairpiece Gambit. And that never works because what it does is interrupt the jolly Two Minutes Hate everyone else wants to participate in.

A long time ago, and I don’t remember where, I read a piece about political and social thought in Japan. One of the interviewees noted that in Japan, one can hold unpopular thoughts and opinion – Wrongthink – but it had better remain silent. Not because of the political pile-ons, but because speaking unpopular thoughts Just Wasn’t Done. The interviewee described his nation as an “archipelago of thought” where occasionally like-minded people would chance to meet and share, but rarely in public. The restive thoughts were still there, left unsaid. It’s quieter that way.

I don’t want to go there.

But I don’t want to participate in the Two Minutes Hate, which seems to be the norm today.