Hegel says hate crime doesn’t exist

“Ze hate crime? Das ist verrückt!”

The great dialectician preached unity of opposites. For every thesis, he argued, there’s an antithesis, and then they come together in a synthesis.

If hate is the thesis, then love is the antithesis, which relationship must pertain even when the two words are used attributively.

Thus ‘hate crime’ presupposes the existence of ‘love crime’. Assuming that a hate crime is motivated by hatred, one also has to assume that there must be crimes motivated by love.

Since I’ve never heard of a person mugged, maimed or killed lovingly, I have to believe that all crime is motivated by some negative emotions, often including hatred. Therefore we can safely drop the modifier ‘hate’ and just talk about crime qua crime.

I doubt this speculation would pass the most rigorous of dialectical tests, and Hegel would certainly punch it full of holes. But compared to the mass hysteria about ‘hate crime’, my facetious musings have to be the paragon of sound reason.

One general observation: whoever talks about hate crime is incapable of nuanced thought. When such differently intelligent people (is this PC enough for you?) talk about crime, they confuse two different things: aforementioned crime motivated by hate and hate as a crime in se.

The distinction is critical: the first is a criminal act, the second is a criminalised thought.

What kind of criminal act? Oh, you name it. Murder, assault, GBH, harassment, that sort of thing.

The law does prosecute palpable acts, not the nebulous thought behind them. The thought may at times figure as a mitigating or aggravating consideration, but that’s strictly background stuff.

Hence what intellectually challenged people (this definitely must be PC enough) mean when talking about hate crime is the crime of hate. Hating a person or especially a group of persons is to them a crime in itself, especially when such feelings are put into words.

There’s something suspect about the very notion of criminalising intangibles like feelings and thoughts, and something decidedly spooky about trying to police them. This evokes fond memories of my Soviet youth, and whenever that happens at night I wake up in a jolt, hoarse from my own scream.

Fair enough, hateful words may sometimes be upsetting, but even there popular folklore distinguishes words from sticks and stones.

Granted, it’s not nice to find oneself on the receiving end of slurs based on one’s race, religion, ethnicity, colour or absence of hair, sexual preference or stature. But that’s where those nuances come in: ‘not nice’ doesn’t fit any traditional definition of ‘crime’.

A victim of murder can’t ignore that crime, but a ‘victim’ of a slur can just pay it no notice. Or, if such is his nature, respond in kind, for example by suggesting that the offender take two words, of which the second is ‘off’, and arrange them in the right order.

All this hate crime business would make even a lesser mind than Hegel wince. Yet there’s something the philosopher wouldn’t understand if he were miraculously transplanted to modernity.

His experience wouldn’t have prepared him to grasp the thought I’ve expressed a thousand times if I’ve expressed it once: ‘hate crimes’ are committed not against individuals but against the state.

The very category was thought up as a means for the state to put its foot down and control things that civilised countries used to leave to people’s own discretion.

The state aggressively promotes the ethos of victimhood, offering protection to the self-professed victims. But such protection comes at a price as it does with gangster families. For gangsters, it’s money; for the state, it’s liberty.

I don’t necessarily mean just our state. In fact, like most modern perversions, the culture of hate crime started in the US, which makes me wonder why we never borrow good things from the Americans, such as their enterprising dynamism and polite conviviality.

The disease afflicts the West in its entirety. And it’s getting worse.

Parliament is about to debate a bill proposed by the Labour MP Stella Creasy to make misogyny a crime. Miss Creasy and her likeminded allies define misogyny broadly: not just hatred of women, but also contempt or prejudice.

Now in my long and varied life on two continents and in four countries I’ve never met a straight man who hates women. Some, far from all, homosexuals do, but one can understand them: women with their jutting attractions sidetrack men from the real thing.

Admittedly I’ve heard men mention reservations about women’s intellect, emotional sturdiness and driving ability. I’ll refrain from coming down on either side of this issue but, whichever side that might be, I can’t for the life of me see such men as hardened criminals.

Typically such remarks are just banter offered in jest. But even if there’s some deep feeling behind them, only extremely stupid, or else ideologised, people can possibly take serious offence.

I have, however, met a few women who are hostile to men in general, and some of those women aren’t even lesbians. That creates another opening for Hegel to poke his head in.

If misogyny is a crime, then surely misandry must be too. And what about misanthropes, those who don’t differentiate between women and men and hate them all equally, along with everyone in between? Should they be banged in the slammer?

The proposed bill is actually an amendment to another one, about ‘upskirting’ (aiming a camera up a woman’s skirt). I can only admire our legislators for concentrating their attention on really important matters.

Never mind Britain fighting for her sovereignty, becoming the most crime-ridden country in Europe, having a Third World health service and facing foreign threat. What really must be nipped in the bud is adolescent cretins snapping pictures of women’s knickers.

I see another dialectical problem here, although Hegel probably wouldn’t identify it as such. If upskirting draws legislative attention, what about downblousing? Men, those hateful creatures, peeking down women’s low-cut blouses?

So far no reports of men taking downward photos have been filed, but isn’t preventing crimes the most important part of policing? Today they peek, tomorrow they’ll snap – unless some MP rides in on a white steed and preempts the outrage.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, where are you now that we need you? Come back, all is forgiven: your iffy philosophy, turgid prose and too many Christian names. And please bring Aristotle with you – this is a plus-one invitation.

8 thoughts on “Hegel says hate crime doesn’t exist”

  1. “If misogyny is a crime, then surely misandry must be too.”

    This was instantly my first thought too. A lot of men hate women but a lot of women hate men. I guess the idea is that the man has the physical wherewithal to inflict damage in a manner the woman does not?

    1. Oh well, go to a pub in a rough part of town and see what kind of damage some women can inflict. These days they get into pub fights as often as men do, and they’re getting good at it. I wouldn’t fancy my chances against those dainty creatures smashing beer bottles over chair backs.

  2. I accept your point wholeheartedly, but here are a couple of candidates for “love crimes”. Defending your own home or family against invasive violent intruders and abusers. That’s done out of love for one’s kin and property, yet we all know what the police and courts think of it. And expressing certain opinions about society, immigration, and social mores because one loves one’s country. That can also get you into a lot of legal trouble.

    1. I agree that the acts you mention come from love. But they aren’t crimes – even though one can get in trouble over them. That they may be treated as crimes is a symptom of the malaise afflicting our civilisation, and that’s really my point. This is all I ever write about actually, in different guises.

    1. Hegel talked about opposites that resolve their conflict in a unity. In fact, this is one of the laws of his dialectic. I struggled through his recondite texts in my youth, but I probably never read a single book other than Aeasthetics in its entirety. Then again, I might have done — too far back to remember. In any case, don’t feel bad about not having read any Hegel: only philosophy professors ever do, or else aspiring eggheads like the young me.

    2. Marx borrowed his dialectical approach and applied it to the evolution of economic structures

      Slavery > Feudalism > Capitalism > Communism

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