Hate is stronger and more universal than love, despite the Christian message that has been in the doldrums lately. What’s more, it is inherited more easily and forever and ever, as we are now seeing in the Middle East and so many other conflict zones.
The love between two people does not survive their death. While, for example, love for one’s country can be passed from generation to generation, although it always entails deep down hatred or at least rejection of those who do not belong to or share that love, which can so easily turn into hatred of the other. , especially in the hands of populism that is now a scourge to combat. One more time. And no nationalism is innocent.
If in the sixties of the last century, in the middle of the Vietnam War, an entire generation sang All you need is love, now, with social networks that are gone, the message that stands out the most is that of hate, a blind, obfuscated hate. , baseless, base. But it was in those same sixties when powerful and necessary movements were launched in favor of civil rights for everyone and, above all, for the most disadvantaged or marginalized, who have contributed so much to improving the lives of so many people. However, taken to the ultimate consequences, it can lead to absurd and harmful abuse of said rights, as we have been seeing lately.
A new law that has just come into force in Scotland to protect all types of minorities from attacks has only served, as soon as it was approved, to open Pandora’s box. In fact, it has provoked a veritable avalanche of accusations of such magnitude that, from day one, it has left the police almost inoperative, due to lack of officers. Because it is seen that there is outright hatred in Scottish society for all tastes, at a rate of thirty thousand accusations of hatred per month, and it has only just begun. The other attacks, let’s say classic ones, those of a lifetime, have been left in the background.
The new law includes, without going any further, a new crime, namely: “of threatening, abusive or insulting conduct with the purpose of encouraging hatred for reasons of age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or variations in the sexual characteristics. One remembers Minister Irene Montero’s campaign against lascivious glances, always masculine.
As much as it is necessary to protect minorities, and that is what democracy is about, a new intransigent puritanism has been born disguised as progressive that only serves to add fuel to the immense bonfire of hatred. Of course, the first victims of this law have not been the abusers, but rather the sense of humor and freedom of expression.
Unlike love, which is usually ephemeral, hate, even if it has no basis, once assumed, can accompany us throughout life and even beyond. Luis Buñuel tells in My Last Sigh, his essential memoir, the origin of a hatred that overtook Juan Centeno, a medical student who was kind enough to let the future filmmaker sleep in an extra bed in his room at the school. Student’s residence.
Good old Juan Centeno got up first thing every day in order to arrive to classes on time. But before leaving the room, he would stop for a long time in front of the mirror, combing his hair, an activity that the drone Buñuel observed from his cot. And it wouldn’t have mattered at all if it weren’t for the fact that his generous host “only combed her hair in front, leaving the back of her head in disarray. Because of this absurd procedure, repeated day after day, after two or three weeks I came to hate him […]. “Irrational hatred springing from a dark recess of the unconscious.”
And that irrational hatred would accompany Buñuel until his deathbed.
