Mitchell’s Musings 5-15-17: Stamping Out Hate Daniel J.B. Mitchell In 1966, “The Mad Show” opened off-Broadway. Among the songs in the show was the Hate Song, featuring the notion of “stamping out hate.”1 The lyrics involve progressively violent and grisly things the performers plan to do to “hate.” So the song shows that the idea of intolerance on the left in the U.S. is not a new development, since it was being parodied six decades ago. But it was something that apparently was attracting attention back then. On the other hand, there is a long history of those on the left of American politics pushing for civil rights and against prejudice in the U.S. Tolerance was associated with left-liberal thinking. Behavioral types nowadays tend to see the right vs. left division as a matter of some deep psychological leaning toward established order vs. openness to new things. Voting behavior regarding Trump in the U.S., Brexit in the U.K., or Le Pen in France is thus analyzed in that framework as determined by such attitudes, although where those attitudes originate is not so clear.2 However, the behavioral view leaves out the ideological component, at least in an historical perspective. Left and Marxism became intertwined in the 19th century. The connection was reinforced by the Russian revolution and the formation of the Soviet Union. In the Marxist view, human history was seen as class conflict which, by the 19th century, had evolved into workers versus capitalists. If that is your model of the underlying force in social development, other divisions in society are inherently downplayed. Divisions on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, or anything else (other than whether you are a worker or a capitalist) are viewed as artificial. Indeed, prejudices based on anything else are seen as devices used by capitalists to divide workers and thus forestall revolution. Since those on the left tended to face official repression, the idea of pushing for such things as civil liberties and free speech was natural. Ending segregation and discrimination more generally also was natural, since such practices were seen as capitalist devices that were aimed at dividing the working class. In short, tolerance and left-of-center politics became linked in the U.S. Left and liberal tended to go together, although sometimes in an uneasy alliance. But by the mid-20th century, there were forces undermining old leftism and its worker-focused approach. The Soviet Union, particularly as Stalin’s purges and gulags were revealed, could not be easily viewed as a contemporary workers’ paradise or even something that was likely to evolve into one. In any event, Cold War politics repressed out-and-out communists (and others). While the Great Depression had tended to reinforce Marxist views about “contradictions” in capitalism, post-World War II prosperity worked in the opposite direction. Labor unions, which in the 1930s seemed to be part of the Marxist conflict model, by the late 1950s appeared to have become part of the “system.”3 The New Left of the 1960s, often linked to college students rather than to blue collar workers, was less connected to traditional Marxism and was more into some kind of personal liberation. It didn’t exactly 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km3YOJ0CQRM. https://theconversation.com/the-cultural-division-that-explains-global-political-shocks-from-brexit-to-le-pen76962. 3 Richard A. Lester, As Unions Mature: An Analysis of the Evolution of American Unionism (Princeton University Press, 1958). 2
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