Hate older and more complex than a simple left-right affair

Of course the activist left have come out to protest against the rioters, but how many were equally damning of the violence and destruction of the Black Lives Matter riots?

Hate has a formula as old as time itself. It is a formula being played out in real time today and its perpetrators are not just who you might think.

The Ancient Greeks famously invented democracy in the 5th century BC — perhaps the most progressive and groundbreaking political act in history which for the first time held that all human beings — or men at least — were equal. And they did it while owning vast amounts of slaves.

But they saw no hypocrisy in this. They really did believe that all people were equal, it’s just that slaves weren’t really people. They simply considered them barbarians, as they did anyone who wasn’t Greek.

Point being, the casting of others as backward or less than human is something that humans have always done because it makes it easier to subjugate, enslave, kill or otherwise do to them whatever is necessary to uphold your own belief system.

This is often most obvious when it comes to race: The Nazis portrayed Jews as animals, “vermin”, in order to justify their “extermination”. Colonial powers cast Africans as subhuman in order to reconcile the slave trade with their Christian consciences.

Anti-racism activists have arranged "unity rallies" in response to a series of anti-immigrant protests and riots in the UK.

And thus it is the racial aspect that simplistic activists and progressives tend to be obsessed with.

But it is often nothing to do with race. And that is an even more sinister truth that those on both the extreme left and extreme right need to confront.

If we go back to the Ancient Greeks, it had nothing to do with racism or nationalism — for one thing there was no Greek nation state and “barbarians” could have the exact same complexion and ethnicity as their masters.

The dark joke, of course, is that the rioters are literally in the process of destroying that civilisation to the point where the streets are unsafe and shops are being boarded up. Who are the real savages here?

And the ironies don’t stop there. Of course the activist left have come out to protest against the rioters and right-wing demonstrators and progressives have been outspoken in their condemnation.

But how many were equally damning of the violence and destruction of the Black Lives Matter riots that swept across the US in 2020? I suspect there’s not much overlap in that Venn diagram.

Nearly 500 people have been arrested, in what has become one of the largest police operations in British history.

After all, as countless revolutions and riots attest, the extreme left believes that violence or destruction is justifiable if it’s done for the right cause.

And what of those upon whom the violence or destruction is inflicted? The activist left of course believes in human rights but, just like the Ancient Greeks, they don’t see their victims as human.

Instead they label them “fascists”. And who wouldn’t want to kill a fascist?

The Romans figured this out early on. As detailed in Catherine Nixey’s incredible new history Heresy, in AD407 the emperor issued a decree declaring that heretics who disagreed with the church “have nothing in common with the human race”.

While right-wing extremists apply the same logic on the basis of race or culture, left-wing extremists do the same thing to political heretics.

An exaggeration surely? Incredibly, no.

A UK Labour councillor — an elected official no less — was filmed at one protest allegedly calling for the throats of anti-immigration protesters to be cut.

After describing them as “disgusting, nasty, fascists”, Cr Ricky Jones — now suspended from the party — is recorded shouting: “We need to cut all their throats and get rid of them.”

He then, bizarrely for a protest supposedly about immigration, starts chanting “Free, free Palestine!”

He was yesterday arrested by the Met Police and held “on suspicion of encouraging murder” and later charged with a count of encouraging violent disorder.

And so the same old formula of hate continues to this day: Dehumanise that which you don’t like and then do as you will with them.

Meanwhile Australia’s terror threat level was last week raised to probable, fuelled by far right extremism and tensions over the War in Gaza.

If we cannot see a stark lesson here for ourselves then we are all doomed.

If you think that someone is not quite as human as you because of their beliefs then the dangerous extremist is you.

Listen to The Real Story with Joe Hildebrand wherever you get your podcasts.