One of the most chilling and distasteful aspects of the totalitarian dictatorship that George Orwell envisioned in Nineteen Eighty-Four was the “two-minute hate.”
Fuelled by State propaganda demonizing dissidents and alleged enemies, and reflecting the mob psychology of true believers manipulated by power-hungry rulers, the “two-minute hate” is the type of Reign of Terror phenomenon that no sane and decent person would wish to be part of – or be victimized by – in real life.
Yet, increasingly in American and European politics and culture, extreme partisans of Left and Right indulge in hateful rhetoric while ironically accusing others of “hate” – even when a bit of introspection and understanding of human behavior might reveal fewer people than one might think are actually motivated by that dark emotion.
Referencing Orwell and his Prometheus Hall of Fame-winning classic Nineteen Eighty-Four, libertarian economist David Henderson identifies the disturbing trend of using and abusing language to demonize anyone who holds differing views.
“What Is a Hater?,” Henderson asks on his Substack column, I Blog to Differ.
“When I grew up, we used the word “hater” to describe someone who hates. Seems obvious, right? But now the meaning has evolved. At first, it seemed to mean someone who was angry at someone. I’m often angry at people; I rarely hate those same people,” Henderson writes.
“Now it seems to have evolved further to mean someone who is critical of someone or even critical of just the person’s ideas or actions. I saw an instance of this in an X by Utah Senator Mike Lee recently. He wrote: ‘What will Trump’s haters do if his tariff play brings country after country to the negotiating table, resulting in bilateral trade agreements that make U.S. trade more free than ever?’
“Maybe Lee was referring to Trump’s actual haters, of whom there are millions. Who knows what they would do? They would probably keep hating.
“Somehow, though, I have the uncomfortable feeling that Senator Lee would include me among the haters, simply because I’m strongly critical of Trump’s unilateral imposition of tariffs,” Henderson writes.
Always balanced and reasonable in his must-read Substack blog, Henderson rightly observes that such misuse of language is bipartisan – and offers examples.
“Language matters. The late Thomas Szasz stated, “In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.”
“Whoever does the defining, it’s important to get the definitions right,” Henderson says.
“George Orwell pointed out that language affects thinking. If you keep calling a critic a “hater,” at some point you may think, without any justification, that he hates you.”
Bio note: David Henderson, who I first became acquainted with at a libertarian convention in San Francisco in the late 1970s, is a retired Canadian-born American economist and author.
A research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution since 1990, Henderson is an emeritus economics professor and served as a senior economist with the president’s Council of Economic Advisers in the early 1980s.
He has written articles for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Fortune, and The Freeman and has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, the BBC and C-SPAN.
Among his books: The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey, his highly recommended autobiography; Making Great Decisions in Business and Life; and (as editor) The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics and The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.
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The same point might be made about the label “racist” and about a whole list of words ending in “-phobe.”