The 6 Types Of Hate That Exist (and Their Characteristics)
Hate is a human emotion, although it is not considered healthy. Antipathy and aversion towards a person is not a good thing nor is it an emotion that we want to have, although it is natural to feel a little dislike towards someone who has offended us.
This word has acquired a new nuance in recent years, thanks to the awareness that there are many incidents motivated by hatred towards a certain group of people.
There are several types of hate based on prejudices and false beliefs present in society and then we are going to find out.
According to the DRAE, the word “hate” is “antipathy and aversion toward something or someone whose evil is desired.” We have all felt at some point in our lives this emotion that, although clearly bad and negative, it is inevitable that we can feel it towards someone or something. It’s not a healthy emotion, but Everyone feels it and that doesn’t mean we should think that we have a serious problem The important thing is to recognize that, sometimes, we may not like everyone.
However, in recent years this word has acquired a new nuance, a definition that refers to something very murky: hate the different It is not that a new type of aversion has emerged in society, but that it has been very present almost always, only this time it has been given a name, it has been detected. They are hatred towards minorities, towards people of another sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, gender or political ideology. A hatred based on prejudices and erroneous beliefs about what people who are part of a certain group are like.
It is this type of hate that we talk about when we read about “hate crimes” on social networks. Any attack, insult, harassment and murder that has discrimination and prejudice towards a group as its background is considered a hate crime or, at least, an incident associated with hatred towards minorities. So, if someone has shown signs of harassing or attacking someone for having a disability, being of a different race, of a particular religion, gay or transgender, or any other protected category, it is considered a hate crime.
These are the types of hate based on how hate crimes are defined.
1. Racism
Racism is hatred based on racial prejudice, that is, one or more irrational and harmful attitudes towards one or more races. This hatred has been one of the main causes of humanity’s greatest misfortunes in recent years, including the slave trade to the New World, racial segregation in the United States and apartheid in South Africa.
The Holocaust is considered by many to be an example of racism, and they are right. But not only was this more than abominable event in our history motivated by racism, but also by xenophobia and marked religious intolerance. Jews were attacked for being of a different race (even though the vast majority were white), belonging to a different culture (despite being mostly German), and believing in Judaism (many of them not practicing).
2. Xenophobia
Closely related to racism we have xenophobia, although they are not synonymous terms. Xenophobia is based on ethnic prejudice, that is, false beliefs about people with a specific nationality or who belong to a specific culture It can be combined with religious hatred, linguistic discrimination and racism towards people of a certain ethnic group.
There are several recent events motivated by xenophobia, a hatred towards people who do not have to come from outside the country they are in but rather be part of a different culture. We have an example of this in the Yugoslav wars, in which people who until recently shared the same nationality killed each other for feeling like Croats, Slovenes, Serbs, Bosnians and other ethnicities.
2. Religious hatred
One of the main arguments used in wars throughout history has been religion Since time immemorial, it has been justified to wipe out an entire people for the simple fact of not believing in the same gods as those of the invading peoples. Within religious hatred we find aversion towards people who profess one or more religions.
One of the most classic and ironic examples of religious hatred were wars between Catholics and Protestants in which two creeds that claimed to defend peace and love in the world were embodied in bloody battles to prove which of the two factions was right.
In the Yugoslav wars, religious hatred was also evident, especially towards the Muslim-majority Bosnians, seen as the main problem of the now extinct country. The images of the destruction of the Old Bridge in Mostar (1993) are historic, this incident considered the end of the peaceful coexistence of several religious communities in the Bosnian city.
Religious hatred has also been responsible for the majority of terrorist attacks in recent decades in Europe, motivated by Islamic fundamentalism. Included within religious hatred is the desire to completely end religion and establish a completely atheistic society, as would be the case of several communist regimes in times of the Cold War.
3. Ideological intolerance
People are very diverse, even living in the same country, sharing the same language and being of the same race this is evidenced in the great diversity of political ideologies that we can see materialized in the form of all types of parties and associations.
Each political ideology has its pluses and minuses, but as long as it does not promote harm to other people or the denial of fundamental rights, each person can defend the idea that they consider most appropriate. Unfortunately, not everyone thinks this way, there are people who defend attacking and harming people who do not have the same opinion as them. This is a display of hatred called ideological intolerance.
Anti-communism in the United States and Franco’s Spain are an example of this. So is the political persecution of opposition leaders in Venezuela and the total eradication of any opinion critical of leader Kim Jong-un in North Korea. Religious hatred, depending on how you look at it, can also be considered ideological intolerance since someone is persecuted for their ideas, whether these are policies or how nature and human life are governed.
3. LGTBI+phobia
LGTBI+phobia encompasses all hatred towards non-cisheterosexual people Thus, within this type of hatred we find several modalities such as homophobia, biphobia, transphobia and any hatred aimed at people who feel identified in the acronym LGTBI+.
Although it is rare in the most advanced and civilized countries, hate crimes motivated by aversion towards people with a non-normative sexual orientation or gender identity still continue to be committed. An example of LGTBI+phobia, in this case homophobia, is beating to death a kid who is walking calmly down the street and shouting “Faggot!”
4. Linguistic discrimination
There is the kind of hatred associated with a language and its speakers. This is known as linguistic discrimination, based on the idea that there are better and worse languages and, also, in the myth that languages are specific to certain places, despite the fact that the earth does not have a specific language nor does it have a race, a culture or a religion naturally associated with it.
An example of hatred for linguistic reasons would be the discrimination against Catalan, Basque or Galician in multiple periods in the history of Spain and also by certain current political movements. In most cases, it is the speakers of minority languages who suffer this type of hatred, which in turn produces situations of linguistic minoritization, something common in countries such as Italy, France, Germany and the United Kingdom.
Ironically, Linguistic discrimination does not have to be directed towards minority languages, but speakers of majority languages seen as “invasive” can be victims of this type of hatred. An example of this is when posters in Spanish in Catalonia or in French in Corsica are crossed out, or Spanish speakers are attacked in the United Kingdom and the United States.
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has fueled many stigmas and preconceived ideas towards different age groups. At the beginning, when it was still not believed that a health crisis like the one we are experiencing could occur, There were many who saw the elderly as potential contagion sources to flee from
Over time this vision has changed. Now that the majority of the older population is vaccinated, it is young people who are considered a potential source of transmission, blaming them in multiple ways for the latest outbreaks that have occurred throughout the world.
Be that as it may, hatred towards people of a certain age group is ageism, and we don’t just see it with the pandemic. Thinking that older people are worse at driving and should not drive is an example of this type of hatred, as is believing that all young people get drunk while having loud drinking in the squares or that youth today is very vague.
6. Misogyny
Misogyny is hatred towards women Although stating that a society is completely misogynistic is an exaggeration, it is clear that violence against women, sexist murders, feeling free to sexually abuse a woman who is walking down the street at night and other acts against women are fueled by misogynistic visions.
There is also the fact that, Structurally, we live in a very sexist society and we have proof of this in the form of lower salaries for women in addition to the existence of the Glass Ceiling, which prevents women from achieving the best jobs with the same ease as men.
What are the incidents associated with a hate crime?
When a person commits an attack based on their hatred towards a protected group a person with a different ideology than yours or simply because of their gender, the behavior does not have to manifest itself only in the form of physical aggression.
There are many incidents associated with a possible hate crime, incidents motivated by the prejudices of the person who committed them towards the group to which the attacked person belongs. Among these behaviors we find:
All of these actions are incidents associated with an ideology of hate, but not all of them are crimes The crime will be considered a crime based on whether these incidents clearly violate the laws of the country and will be called “hate” if it is proven that there has been prejudiced motivation in their execution, such as racism, homophobia, transphobia or religious intolerance.
