In Defence of Hate

The article sells itself short by calling what it defends "hate", IMO.

Here's something that might seem a bit controversial at first glance, but I think she has a good point:

> What frightened me in your essay was the gospel of love which you begin to preach at the end. In politics, love is a stranger, and when it intrudes upon it nothing is being achieved except hypocrisy. All the characteristics you stress in the Negro people: their beauty, their capacity for joy, their warmth, and their humanity, are well-known characteristics of all oppressed people. They grow out of suffering and they are the proudest possession of all pariahs. Unfortunately, they have never survived the hour of liberation by even five minutes. Hatred and love belong together, and they are both destructive; you can afford them only in the private and, as a people, only so long as you are not free.

-- Hannah Arendt, Letter to James Baldwin, November 21, 1962

The author is not clear on his limits about when art leads to revolution. Does the 'Night at the Opera' of the Belgian revolution count as a way to use art to promote a revolutionary vision (in this case, independence from the Netherlands)?

Or how about all the works of poems, prose and literature, where sentiment of a revolutionary or nationalist aspiration (say against a foreign empire occupying your people's lands) are hidden through code words, to avoid the imperial censors, like we saw by the many peoples of the Austrian Empire in the 19th century?

Or is he talking about art as the ends itself to promote or prevent a revolution rather than a means? That seems like an impossible aspiration to reach, so the qualification seems pointless. The masses won't risk lives for art, but they will for bread. And if you write a song to that effect, they'll gladly sing along.

"There are times in which one must dispense contempt sparingly, because of the great number who deserve it." Guy Debord.

I think this gives some clue why few people same to hate strongly today.

This seems like one of those articles which works by defining very specifically what the author means by “hate” and then being able to conclude that “hate is good”.