The Metastasis of Hate

Joy Liu, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, USA

One of the worst ironies of cancer is that it’s caused by our own cells. A part of us turns against the body it once protected. How can something that once functioned within us become harmful? How can a previously natural part of us become foreign?

The language of hatred is filled with words of sickness. Parasite. Germ. Disease. By using this language, the narrative turns to a simple one of power, pitting us against a common enemy. In this way, we can dismiss refugees, Roma, Jews, and other groups as not part of us because they do not come from us.

But maybe this analogy is wrong. Instead of an infectious disease, it is cancer. It is not an invader, it is not foreign. It is taking something within our society, identifying and thinking that it is harmful until it spreads and hurts the entire body.

What happens is mutation. As a social psychology researcher from the Center for Research of Prejudice at Warsaw University presented to us today, hate speech and discrimination have a way of metastasizing. It has been shown to affect psychological well-being and suicide rates among minorities. It can cause the minority group to place blame on an entire majority group. Hate speech can have a desensitizing effect. Ironically, this measure that’s used to protect a part of the body may be hurting the entire self.

What if the cancer is not a group of people that are perceived as threatening, but the words of hatred that multiply to become such a large part of our society that it swallows what is good? Then we would have to bear the tragedy of one day realizing that what we were purging was always a part of us—what made us a whole body and a full society.