Hating Hate Speech

By DONNA SCHAPER

My head aches with hate speech.  My own speech against hate speech spews and sputters anger and is part of the head ache.  Call my frustration illegal and undocumented hating.  Or part of the stress inducing sick care system.  As a religious and spiritual, even ordained person! I know that hate is dangerous and wrong.  No matter what we think about complex social issues themselves, spiritual people, of all faiths, prioritize love.  We hate hate.  We religious people have high stakes if hate gets public permission.  We have our hearts pierced and wear hypocrisy as a loose bandaid where the knife struck.

The last time we had this kind of noise, Dr. King was murdered.  Already there is an increase in “hate”crimes.  Consider Patchogue, New York where the Southern Poverty Law Center has declared Steve Levi, County Commissioner, an “enabler” in the murder of Marcello Lucero.  (Check out their report on Hate Speech at SPLC.org)  Religious institutions, whose hearts are pierced, also enable when we keep our mouths shut as hate spews.  “The evil we would not do we do and the good we would do, we do not”, to paraphrase St. Paul.  Many people, on all sides of the aisles, would call that sin.

Do we have to listen to Lou Dobbs sneer?  Or Bill O”Reilly smirk?  Or Glenn Beck intimidate? Or Congressman Wilson pop off? Or Barney Frank make good jokes about how we can’t police each other, even when we are jerks?  Or ask people what planet they live on?  Is not each of these a permission to speak hatefully, which leads to places no one wants to go? 

Religious institutions have a job right now: it is to counter hate speech with love speech. It is to control our own anger and frustration and fear long enough to embolden kindness, even loving kindness, especially non-violent loving kindness.

Love for Lou Dobbs would be to take him off the air, quietly and firmly, before he hurts anyone any more than he already has. A 22-year-old person whose father was deported is often in tears, wondering “why does he talk that way about me?”  Love for Lou Dobbs would be to sign up on the BastaDobbs.org  site and add our names to those who want his advertisers to take responsibility for his sneer.  Does Verizon really want to be associated with a sneer?   Similar calm, quiet and sure removals from the national stage would help stop the hating.  We don’t have to hate Dobbs to ask him to control his speech.

Nor do you have to hate immigrants to develop a policy to control our national borders.   Nor do you have to fear communism to wonder how far the government should be involved in insuring health insurance.  The biggest problem today is not figuring out who to blame but who to trust.  The second biggest problem is figuring out how to stop externalizing evil and how to internalize divinity.  When we hate, we externalize.  When we love, we internalize.  When we hate, we objectify.  When we love, we subjectify.  These are not answers to major national considerations so much as highways to them.  We are demonizing, objectifying, human beings whenever we let fear or sneer about the poor or the undocumented to invade our speech.  The step right after this objectification is violence.  We said we would not forget Nazi Germany.  Let us not forget it.  First, the Jews were sub human.  Then they were destroyed.  While I don’t want to exaggerate the hatred against immigrants, or the poor, or gays, I also don’t want to ignore it, even in a nascent stage.

Religious institutions have enormous responsibility in these hateful, objectifying campaigns.  We may not have policy solutions to offer but we cannot condone hate, anywhere, any time, against anyone, including Lou Dobbs.

What if you don’t really understand how health care works in the first place?  Or whether immigrants can or cannot get help if they are sick?  What if you wonder if there are just too many people situated in too much chaos, locally and globally?  What if your middle name is IDunnoKnow?  Is there a way for you (or me) to create an ignorance zone?  Or a hate free zone?  Or a respecter of human complexity zone? Can’t we shield ourselves from hate speech, especially if we are unwilling to consider ourselves “right”, politically or religiously?  Can we not enjoy a certain humility?  Or must the punishmentalists in politics and religion blame people who just don’t know, while hating the victims of our ignorance.

My congregation just had a piece in the Daily News about our "conversation" with FAIR, at their Shock Jock Conference in DC.  We were asked to leave after one day.  While this makes a good story, mocking people who happen to be my political “enemies”, why would I make a big deal about their intolerance?  Where do these retaliative strikes end?  I’d rather stick to this truth: we seem to be afraid of each other.  We don’t have to be.  Love and respect, non-violently and calmly considered, are much better options, even for opponents (there is no need to call them enemies) than fear.

When hate speech starts to objectify people, terrible things happen or become imaginable.  We don't have to agree about policy but we need to change our tone of voice.

Donna Schaper is the author of SACRED SPEECH: Instruction in the Art of Non-Violent Conversation and Senior Minister of the Judson Memorial Church in New York City.