SUNY series in New Political Science

Reflections on Hatred, Rage, Revolution, and Revolt

William W. Sokoloff

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781438467832
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A growing number of people are enraged about the quality and direction of public life, despise politicians, and are desperate for real political change. How can the contemporary neoliberal global political order be challenged and rebuilt in an egalitarian and humanitarian manner? What type of political agency and new political institutions are needed for this? In order to answer these questions, Confrontational Citizenship draws on a broad base of perspectives to articulate the concept of confrontational citizenship. William W. Sokoloff defends extra-institutional and confrontational modes of political activity along with new ways of conceiving political institutions as a way to create political orders accountable to the people. In contrast to many forms of democratic theory, Sokoloff argues that confrontational modes of citizenship (e.g., protest) are good because they increase the accountability of a regime to the people, increase the legitimacy of regimes, lead to improvements in a political order, and serve as a means to vent frustration. The goal is to make the word citizen relevant and dangerous to the settled and closed practices that structure our political world and to provide a hopeful vision of what it means to be politically progressive today.

Chapter One

In Defense of Hatred

Citizen discontent with politicians and a lack of faith in the normal channels for addressing grievances and bringing about political change seems to be at an all-time high. As liberal democracy and global capitalism are touted as the only viable programs for ordering our political and economic lives, this best of all possible worlds depends on the repressive apparatus of the state to secure access to natural resources and markets, export permanent war, squash internal dissent, terrorize poor people into submission via prolonged economic insecurity, militarize the US‒Mexico border, and incarcerate a growing percentage of the US population.1 If a total transformation of economic and political relations seems unrealistic given the lethal power that props them up, holding political and economic elites accountable to the people for their actions may be a promising first step to challenge the economic and political status quo. But how can political and economic elites be held accountable to the people?

Elections normally serve as an accountability mechanism and shut-off valve that citizens could pull when they have had enough. Unfortunately, elections today are more of a meaningless spectacle than a substantive means to control the arrogance, corruption, and criminality of the ruling class.2 The distortions caused by the private fortunes needed to run for/stay in office and staggered reelection timelines make it nearly impossible for the people to replace/oust elected officials when they break the public’s trust. Combine this with the fortress lifestyles of the ruling class (e.g., private security systems, gated communities, bodyguards), and you have astounding levels of elite nonaccountability, social prominence in the media combined with material invisibility, and political untouchability.3 Tack on what Sheldon S. Wolin calls “the political demobilization of the citizenry,” and we are stuck in something worse than an American nightmare.4

How can elites be held accountable to the people they represent? The answer is simple: via enmity/hatred. Popular hatred of corrupt elites signifies the unsurpassable rupture in political orders between rulers/ruled and rich/poor and can lead to resistance against oppression. When power is in play and regimes are only more or less legitimate in the eyes of citizens, popular discontent will drift toward extreme forms of animosity for political leaders. While hatred clearly has its dark side, hatred also represents a way to reactivate social antagonism, create collective solidarity, and increase political accountability between elites and the people.

A variety of political thinkers have emphasized the centrality of hatred as a political category. However, it is not Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) who deserves recognition as the main theorist of hatred (even though Schmitt famously reduced the concept of the political to the distinction between friend and enemy), but Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527). Machiavelli makes a strong case for the productive role that popular hatred can play in political regimes. Power generates hatred. Hatred, though, can be enlisted for positive political ends. For Machiavelli, an antagonistic political culture based on extra-institutional manifestations of popular hatred and violence against elites ensures the preservation of liberty and the accountability of leaders to the people. Despite the central role hatred plays in Machiavelli’s work, Machiavelli has yet to be recognized as a major theorist of hatred. Hatred at a more general level has also not received the attention it deserves as a productive political force. The reasons are clear.

First, hatred is an ugly word and an uncomfortable topic. I hesitated defending hatred because I did not know how it would be received. Everyone is understandably squeamish when it comes to hatred, given hatred’s tendency to spiral out of control, generate cycles of revenge, and lead to vigilantism.5 Why would anyone want to defend hatred? Hatred is linked to everything that is wrong with the world today, including violence against young people at schools, genocide, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. For these reasons, hatred is either ignored, is viewed with disgust, or is conceived of in a legalistic way (e.g., “hate crimes”), as opposed to seeing hatred as a complex political phenomenon.6

The reason why hatred is overlooked or downplayed in Machiavelli is related to the dominance of the civic republican interpretation of Machiavelli.7 This view, which has come to be known as the Cambridge School, emphasizes love for patria, wisely designed political institutions, rule of law, and civic virtue, but arguably tames radical moments out of Machiavelli’s thinking by downplaying evidence of popular agency and intense passion. Leo Strauss and interpreters influenced by Strauss are also prone to miss the central role played by hatred because their interpretations are premised on the break Machiavelli represents with the premodern and the absence of a broader theory of democratic power in Machiavelli’s work.8 Hatred, finally, has also been overlooked by radical interpretations of Machiavelli that emphasize the people as political agents of violent contestation of oppression or read Machiavelli as an advocate of a conception of freedom as nonrule.9

In what follows, I chart Machiavelli’s view on the origin, causes, and control of hatred to address an oversight in the scholarly literature. Next, I present two examples of the appeasement of popular hatred against elites. In order to clarify my defense of political hatred, I distinguish productive political hatred for elites with hatred for the other in Carl Schmitt and Samuel P. Huntington’s work. Finally, I analyze the political implications of different types of hatred. Naming the proper object of hatred emerges as a key component in the fight against oppression and is a central aspect of confrontational citizenship.

Hatred

Machiavelli accords hatred a central role in political life in his most advanced reflections on politics in the Prince and the Discourses. Hatred as a defining feature of politics is also apparent in many of Machiavelli’s other writings too, including “The History of Florence” and his poems.10 Unlike a tradition of political thought predicated on replacing hatred with reason, Machiavelli argues that hatred cannot be eliminated and, more importantly, hatred can play a positive role in politics. For Machiavelli, hatred serves a variety of productive roles, especially in terms of policing the behavior of arrogant elites and punishing them.11

Hatred tends to be interpreted as an irrational and apolitical force. This is an oversimplification grounded on a bias against hatred. For Machiavelli, hatred possesses, as Louis Althusser correctly puts it, “a class signification.”12 The poor have good reason to hate the rich. The ruled have good reason to despise rulers. For Machiavelli, hatred is not a private emotion but is an essentially political feeling. Nor is hatred more of a problem in one type of regime than in others. Hatred is an issue in both principalities and republics.13

Machiavelli does not define hatred. The closest Machiavelli comes to defining or providing a genealogy of hatred can be found in “Tercets on Ambition.” There, Machiavelli states,

A hidden power which sustains itself in the heaven … sent two Furies to dwell on the earth. … Each one of them has four faces along with eight hands; and these allow them to grip you and to see in whatever direction they turn. … Envy, Sloth, and Hatred are their companions, and with their pestilence they fill the world, and with them go Cruelty, Pride, and Deceit. … These drive Concord to the depths. To show their limitless desire, they bear in their hands a bottomless urn.14

A mysterious power sent Furies to the earth to “deprive us of peace and to set us at war.” Envy, sloth, and hatred have otherworldly origins, and are Ambition’s companions who fill the world with their pestilence, to “take away from us all quiet and good.” One human climbs up on the back of another: “To this our natural instinct draws us.” Ambition, if unchecked, will burn down towns and farmsteads if “grace or better government does not bring her to nought.”15 The management of hatred was not explored in “Tercets on Ambition,” but was treated systematically in Machiavelli’s political writings.

Throughout these writings, hatred is posited as an explosive and unpredictable feeling.16 Leaders find out that they are hated too late, or simply presume they are hated and take the necessary security precautions. Even though Machiavelli states that “men do you harm either because they fear you or because they hate you,” hate is more problematic than fear. Fear may trigger a response to something threatening, but fear can also paralyze and stupefy. In contrast to fear, hatred empowers.17 When someone is filled with hate, their energy is directed back at the despised object. As we shall see, Machiavelli’s presentation of how to hold onto power receives its contours from Machiavelli’s advice on how to avoid being hated.

In his discussion of the methods used to acquire and retain principalities, Machiavelli advises leaders as to how they can avoid being hated. This is an important subject because the downfall of a leader is caused by “hatred or scorn.”18 Although eliminating hatred is impossible, prestige can protect you from hatred.19 Prestige is wrought by “great campaigns and striking demonstrations.”20 Princes must also work to retain “the friendship of the people” and “avoid being hated by the people.”21 Grounding one’s rule on the favor of the people makes princes powerful and secure. Princes who are not hated by the people are more difficult to attack. The lack of hatred of the ruler is the index of the internal strength of a principality. If you are hated, fortresses will be needed for protection but will become your prison: “The best fortress that exists is to avoid being hated by the people.”22 The best safeguard against conspiracies is “to avoid being hated by the populace.”23 For Machiavelli, “a prince can never make himself safe against a hostile people: there are too many of them.”24

What causes hatred? Laying “excessive burdens on the people,” being “unarmed,” “severity,” and “extraordinary vices” cause the people to hate leaders.25 The prince should also avoid “ferocity and cruelty.”26 Being from “the lowest origins” can make the prince hated, while being old leads to “scorn.”27 Disarming your subjects will cause them to hate you because your actions communicate that you distrust them.28 No definite rule, though, can be given as to how a prince can win the people over.29 Buying people will not work. Generosity practiced over the long term will make you despised and hated since you will be compelled to take back what you have given.30

In chapter XIX of the Prince, Machiavelli yet again advises leaders to avoid the hatred of the people. As Machiavelli states, “princes cannot help arousing hatred in some quarters.”31 Even good deeds can lead to being despised: “One can be hated just as much for good deeds as for evil ones.”32 The prince must nonetheless endeavor “to avoid anything which will make him hated and despised.”33 For this reason, sometimes it is necessary to “delegate to others the enactment of unpopular measures.”34

Hatred of a leader can also be the result of the character of political leaders, as well as how they are perceived. For Machiavelli, the prince will be despised “if he has a reputation for being fickle, frivolous, effeminate, cowardly, irresolute; a prince should avoid this like the plague and strive to demonstrate in his actions grandeur, courage, sobriety, strength.”35 The leader will be hated above all if “he is rapacious and aggressive with regard to the property and the women of his subjects.”36 The ruler lives in constant fear of secret conspiracies, and for good reason: “Princes cannot escape death if the attempt is made by a fanatic.”37 Even if a ruler plays his harp perfectly and appeases the populace with rhetorical melodies, there will always be malcontents but they are much more likely to come from the nobility who are easier to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction Anger, Hatred, and Rage in Dark Times
• Chapter 1 In Defense of Hatred
• Chapter 2 Immanuel Kant on Thinking without the Constraint of Rules
• Chapter 3 Frederick Douglass and the Politics of Rage
• Chapter 4 W.E.B. Du Bois on Revolt as a Way of Life
• Chapter 5 Hannah Arendt on Putting the Political Bank into Politics
• Chapter 6 Gloria Anzaldúa Singing the Song of Herself
• Chapter 7 Paulo Freire and the Pedagogy of Revolt
• Conclusion The Right of Resistance
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Back Cover