Many nations, including Scotland, have recently introduced new hate speech laws. Ireland has attempted similar legislation in the past two years. However, in our case, a series of political disasters (the immigration policy, the housing crisis and recent resignation of Leo Varadkar) has meant that these legislations are now suicidal for any regime to properly pursue. Although Scotland has a particularly aggressive history of using these peculiar ‘laws’, it’s an open question whether they can be enforceable in the long term. The vagueness of the wording, the obvious flexibility surrounding the definition of ‘offence’ or ‘hate’ and the sheer number of arbitrary complaints that will be administered and so on. Ultimately, its not certain that as propaganda and speech control tools, hate speech laws actually work to manipulate the society’s political future in the desirable trajectory (desirable for those who create the laws at least).
In fact, the laws themselves have always appeared to be clumsy, intrusive, badly written and even more badly propagandized. A ham-fisted, hysterical elite seems to have taken over in many Western nations. These elites are comparatively terrible at getting their way in any meaningful long term sense. In this regard, I’m optimistic. A clumsy, hysterical elite might make enough enemies and embarrass themselves enough to create the necessity for proper challenge to the now sclerotic and deranged political system we still live under.
However, regardless of the success or failure of these ‘laws’—and I put laws in quotations marks as I do not think they are laws in the traditional liberal sense—we can learn something about the psycho-political reality of modern liberal societies—particularly in their digital, ‘emotionally synchronised’(to quote Virilio) phase.
Why have the politics of psychology and speech become to central to our society today? I’m yet to get a good answer. It would seem a system that has monopolised the political infrastructure, turned the educational system into a unfathomably stupefying form of social conditioning, and is helpfully facilitated in all the security concerns, pharmacological management and de-moralisation it could ever need—helped, of course, by the corporate neo liberal market place. The Soviet union and communism are dead—just as 20th century fascism is. Why has such a system felt such a need to excessively control the emotions and speech of its own (relatively unthreatening) populations?
One might argue that the internet has disrupted older norms, opinions and thought controls, that have put the larger system into a defensive spasm. And while this is true to a large degree(think of Trump ect.) the colour-revolutions and digital democratisation theories that were once popular in the early 2010s, have all proven entirely naïve.
The internet has not created the groundwork for formal political organisation which is capable of challenging the neo-liberal state or corporate industries. To take one example of this reality, it was Jeremy Corbyn who came so close to taking power in 2017, embracing a younger generation of internet users—even promising publicly funded Wifi—who ultimately lost that election. This loss was largely due to a need to appease the politically correct hysterics in his own party. Figure heads like Corbyn(or Sanders) were incapable of organizing a proper challenge to the neo-liberal state due to the preoccupation with appeasement of progressive identity concerns that were being created and distributed through the internet. We often claim that a political party’s incapacity to stay ‘up to date’ ensures their downfall. Corbyn and Sanders are examples of staying up to date (itself) ensuring their downfall.
Alienated from its own native working class, left wing challenges to the neo-liberal state were neutralized as much by the internet itself than from the pre-internet bourgeois society. The contents of hate speech legislation (the various identity groups ‘protected’ )are simultaneously the product of internet itself as much as organically originating minorities outside the internet.
So the internet is not really as acute a threat as we might be tempted to believe. Then what on earth is causing the need for such desperate and defensive legislative manipulation? We have to assume that the system is not even rational in its own vulgar and opportunistic sense. We have become largely ahistorical when it comes to psychology. We tend to assume that the psychological character to human beings from one historical era to another is much the same. Yet, this could be entirely untrue.
Governments inherit psychological dispositions and civilising practices that they may not even be aware of. In this case, one could view hate speech legislation, not necessarily as a reaction to political instability, but as an ‘inevitable’ step in the psychological conditioning of modern societies, simply applying to and incorporating contemporary cultural fixations and technologies, in order to achieve older ideals. What seems to us as new may be in many ways something far older, simply wearing contemporary clothing.
For example, the German sociologist who I have become quite fond of on this page, Norbert Elias, documented the ‘civilizing process’ which emerged in the early modern period in Western societies. He argued that much of the concern with good manners and civility was, in fact, part of a larger historical, psychogenic and ‘affect-moulding’ process. Elias’s text contains innumerable passages discussing influence of the likes of Erasmus of Rotterdam on the behaviours of the nobility. Taking the expectation to eat meat with a fork instead of your hands, for example, seems trivial. Yet, Elias argued that it was simply one aspect of a larger formation of behavioural conditioning that was attempting to instil a certain standardized psychological disposition—one that was seen as ‘civilised’. Thus, this is ambiguity of the internet. It creates subversive spaces for social communication. But it also creates the power and capacity to standardise the emotions and though of a global society. (emotional synchronisation)
So what was the overall aim or end to this affect moulding and conditioning process which emerged within the early modern period? It can’t be arbitrary—nor , according to Elias, can it be a simply concern with hygiene—of which his scholarly and empirical research into this era shows leading advocates of behavioural changes had no concern with. Elias argued that a civilising process—at least the which created the modern world—was the result of the attempt to balance our psychological states to the point where we no longer felt dramatic extremes of emotions. No more explosive uncontrollable rage, nor anymore crippling grief and melancholy.
Elias was particularly interested in how the civilising process attempted to manage and dilute aggression. In distinction from psychoanalysis, which focussed on sexual repression, Elias was concerned with the super-egoic controls of aggressivity. This is particularly helpful in a time where we see the primary repressive behavioural authority not interested very much in people’s private sexual inclinations, but instead with their ‘hatefulness’ and ‘intolerance’. Elias is entirely proven correct in our time—in opposition to the libidinally obsessed focusses—as our time proves quite empirically that the ‘development’ of modern civilisation comes, not at the repressive sacrifice of a more free and spontaneous sexuality, but of a more free and spontaneous capacity for aggression which was embodied in a society run by a warrior elite. Psychoanalysts will attempt to reduce this aggression to sexuality (a neurotic symptom of failed libido) — but I do not think this works.
If the process of modern civilising attempts to excessively repress aggression and neutralize extremes of emotions, we see could argue that such ‘hate speech’ legislation is simply part of an older, courtly (or managerial) disposition which is simply applying good table manners to the internet. In fact, I believe this is exactly what is happening—and thus it is becoming more and more repressive because the internet allows the courtly and manner-obsessed authorities into our private spaces at any given moment. The good manners being instilled on the nobility of the 16th century was largely contained to social events. The internet is a sort of sociality which now takes up almost all of our time—and can be accessed from anywhere.
The internet contains this paradox. On the one hand it is the space where people often break rules of social civility (arguing and insulting people online ect.). Yet, at the same time, it is a place that constantly records, surveys, and punishes us for breaking social taboos and expectations. (Think of people getting cancelled for something they said online many years prior to the date of punishment). The internet is both the id and the superego simultaneously.
Elias will argue that the excessively harsh restriction of behaviour in favour of manners, which he argued climaxed in the late 19th century, was also the cause of the development and expansion of the middle class. The middle class mimicked its character from the courtly nobility(not the older warrior nobility). The slow integration of the bourgeoise into the courtly elite in the early modern period created a standardized character and psychology for ‘well bred people’. It has since become a universal standard which has been applied to all classes and all nations.
What is interesting about our time is that this gradual expansion of the ‘well bred’, good mannered peoples, seems to have met a limit and crisis. As ‘good manners’ asserts itself into the volatility on the internet it appears something more totalitarian. Perhaps this is because speech(logos) and behaviour (character, psychology ect.) seem to be much more intertwined than in pervious epochs of the modern world when someone’s actions could be easily distinguished from their thoughts—and their status as guilty or innocent, for example, was not something which was entirely premised on their speech. Within the era of political correctness and cancellation we see a time where authorities genuinely don’t seem to be able to separate something somebody says on the internet, from real life actions (like a murder, or theft). People are right to be concerned about the state of these progressive-technocratic speech legislators and politically correct behavioural ‘reforms’. The problem is: what if this phenomena doesn’t actually mark an opportunistic desire for political and industrial control—but more importantly it marks a genuine break with reality through civiilising?
One of the problems with contemporary behavioural controls such as hate speech legislation, is that it takes the modern civilising goal of emotional neutralization (avoiding the extremes of rage and depression ect.) to an extremely degenerate degree. Today, people are demoralised to a radical extent when it pertains to their spirit and pride. Faith is seen as irrational. Pride as dangerous and exclusive. We are always in debt (financially and morally)—and any social or political creativity that goes contrary to the neo-liberal dogmas are seen as ridiculous and dangerous(capitalist realism ect.). Yet, to avoid total depressive collapse of people, who are a least still expected to function enough to work and consume, we are stimulated by a constant stream of pornographic and titillating choices of consumer possibilities. In many ways hate speech legislation is a radical tool of demoralisation that could only be possible in a world where enough medical and consumer stimulants could stop a total collapse of socio-economic function.
Within this vortex of psycho-political decay—we see that forgiveness or any form of debt relief becomes an impossibility. It is observable that the people that craft such legislations or support such things are themselves very far from being exemplars of the opposite to ‘hate’: forgiveness. If one can be so harshly condemned for saying something ‘offensive’ on the internet without physically doing anything to harm anyone at all, how can these people truly present themselves as the great leaders of an anti-hate moral revolution? I realize contradictions have been pointed out but many others for years. Yet, we still find no answer other than ‘hypocrisy’.
But it must be more complicated than that. What comes across as simple hypocrisy may be a mode of psycho-political management and civilising. Perhaps the hypocrisy is so common because we have fundamentally misunderstood what it means to be of good character; or at least that we have given up wondering what is implied in the word good. If the neutralising and extreme-avoiding psychological dispositions which emerged with the power of courtly, and the bourgeois society, genuinely sees its aversion of material extremes as superior and morally more enlightened or civilised, than we may have become blind to what truly creates the virtuous and reasonable people that we wish, apparently, to create through civilising.
The hypocrisy of the tolerance-obsessed, punitive tattle tales which have revealed themselves as an almost standardized disposition among the middle class, the elite and institutional peoples, may be due to the fact that we have over valued everything middle of the road and romanticised the extreme-avoiding psychologies which have emerged within the modern civilising processes.
The ancient and modern understanding of psychological extremes are evidently distinct. When Aristotle spoke of a golden mean where by virtue could be achieved, he did not believe this to be an aversion. Virtue was achieved through having the capacity to, for example, be courageous while not being merely cruel or ruthless. This did not mean the aversion of conflict or anything that may invoke the risk of excess. It meant the capacity to be both cooperative and aggressive at once—and understanding in what situation which end of the emotional spectrum was appropriate. In the modern world, we give up the capacity to judge appropriate levels of emotional energy, instead we adopt the act of avoiding the situations and phenomena that may put us in waters we have long forgotten how to swim in; thus we give up passion in favour of vulgar stimulation.
Perhaps an ethical virtue such as real forgiveness is only possible by those who retain the capacity for real hatred(as in, to encounter the extreme)? This is almost unthinkable for the predominant enthusiast of modern civilising (which is still all institutions). And why is this so shocking? Extremes and excess,—and not the middle— may be where virtue is found.
The passionate political landscape of Europe in the early 20th century is constantly used as evidence that the middling-peoples are the only ones capable of reason and virtue. Yet, if we take a look at the Ukraine war, as example, we see the opposite. The incapacity for peace talks—and thus a certain form of forgiveness—is driven by those very unwarlike managerial peoples that are equally as incapable of real hatred as they are of real forgiveness. These are people who have likely not felt an overwhelming emotion since childhood—not due to discipline, but because of insulation from intense experiences— and likely due to the habit of doing everything to avoid any situations which would demand intense emotions from them.
They do not perpetuate war and demand victory at all costs for the same reasons the traditional conqueror, solider and political revolutionary did. They demand it because they are, in a sense, morally retarded by civilisation itself. They don’t feel the possibility of reconciliation in their hearts anymore than a psychopath could feel the possibly of empathy. Almost no account has been given of the moral retardation that occurs through civilisation itself: through being such insulated, wealthy, bloated historical victors and inheritors of such extreme levels of peace of prosperity (the post war, post historical era). The sort of extreme sentiments that would be required to forgive and negotiate among terms of peace is not in their capacity—albeit for very different reasons to the assumptions we are given by hippies, peace-nicks and ‘anti-war’ activists.
We should recall that in the Iliad, the greatest and most wrathful warrior to ever exist—Achilles—reconciled with Priam and returned Hektor’s body for burial reasons. Priam kissed the hands of the man who killed his son. In the horrors of WW1, opposing nations played football with each other on Christmas day. I believe this capacity for extreme levels of reconciliation only emerges where respect can form, despite being on opposing sides of the friend-enemy distinction. This is a complex thymotic dimension which taps into the psychology of recognition. One can at times admire their enemy.
It is, in fact, this post-war, managerial, unwarlike elite that are incapable of any minimal act of compassion or forgiveness. Perhaps this is because a managerial, economistic elite are too ‘civilised’. They lack the spirit and passion necessary for the ambiguous terrain of admiring your enemy. It is evident that they treat geo-political of domestic political rivals as if their existence is a personal insult to them. The average liberal-technocrat will speak of Putin as if he has personally insulted them for standing up for his own nations interests and dignity. They are a childish, petty and narcissistic demographic that cannot grasp the complexities of politics on any level; they reduce the tensions of political life to personal achievements and emotions.
It is the worshiping of the middle which is most at fault here. This false assumption that truth, justice and reason stems from the averse and petty —and not the intense and glorious. I will end with a polemical quote from Nietzsche, who in this context could be seen as the greatest critique of modern civilising to have ever lived.
‘We have set our chairs down the middle’ - that is what their smirking tells me - ‘ and as far away from dying warriors as from contented swine’.