Orwell on the uses of hatred
In this post I’ll be presenting the “Two Minutes Hate” excerpt from Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. I think the template for the passage’s physical description of Goldstein (the object of the Hate) may have been Trotsky, at least in part. Here’s a video of Trotsky in exile, speaking in English, of all things – and although he’s certainly not speaking about Orwell or about anti-Semitism, he’s speaking about something that’s relevant to Orwell’s book: the Moscow show trials:
Here’s the passage by Orwell, to refresh your memory. It’s masterful and still relevant, unfortunately, including describing the contagious group nature of the required Party exercise in hating [emphasis mine]:
As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. … Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party’s purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea,
under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even–so it was occasionally rumoured–in some hiding-place in Oceania itself.Winston’s diaphragm was constricted. He could never see the face of Goldstein without a painful mixture of emotions. It was a lean Jewish face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard–a clever face, and yet somehow inherently despicable, with a kind of senile silliness in the long thin nose, near the end of which a pair of spectacles was perched. It resembled the face of a sheep, and the voice, too, had a sheep-like quality. Goldstein was delivering his usual venomous attack upon the doctrines of the Party–an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it. …
Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheep-like face on the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne: besides, the sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically. He was an object of hatred more constant than either Eurasia or Eastasia, since when Oceania was at war with one of these Powers it was generally at peace with the other. But what was strange was that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were–in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him. A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his directions were not unmasked by the Thought Police. He was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State. The Brotherhood, its name was supposed to be. There were also whispered stories of a terrible book, a compendium of all the heresies, of which Goldstein was the author and which circulated clandestinely here and there. …
… The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.
That fits in well with this recent substack essay by Guy Goldstein (no relation to Emmanuel). He writes that anti-Semitism and especially the blood libel work as memes, and always have, even long before the internet began. Memes have a simple and effective emotional power:
The lecturer at UCL [University College London] did not revive the Damascus Affair [an ancient blood libel against Jews] because she respects history. She revived it because she understands narrative power. Blood libels do not survive for centuries because they are persuasive. They survive because they are built like memes. They are easy to grasp, easy to repeat, easy to weaponize, and perfectly engineered to bypass critical thinking.
Memes are some of the most powerful weapons in the cultural world our kids live in. A meme is not a joke. It is a piece of information designed to move through people fast. It spreads by emotion, imitation, and recognition. It crosses languages without effort. It does not wait for logic to catch up. That is why militaries study memes and why extremists deploy them. They are perfect carriers for ideas that need to hit hard and travel quickly. They succeed because they compress a whole worldview into a single format the brain can absorb in seconds. And blood libel was doing this long before the internet. It was a weaponized meme template built to trigger disgust, create panic, and spread without friction. …
The adults fighting antisemitism have not understood this. We keep arriving with facts. We bring timelines, context, nuance, longform arguments, citations, and appeals to reason. Meanwhile antisemitism arrives with images, punchlines, tropes, and emotionally loaded shortcuts.
Here’s the solution the author suggests:
If we want to counter the oldest hate, we need to switch languages. We need to teach young people to recognize the pattern of antisemitism the way they recognize a recycled meme format. Once they see the template, the narrative collapses. They do not need to memorize history to reject it. They need to understand the shape. …
… It is time to stop losing a battle that was never about facts at all.
I hate to criticize that suggestion when I certainly don’t have a better one. Nevertheless, I just don’t see how it would work. Maybe, just maybe, it would work as a preventative, but I really don’t see how it could possibly change someone’s mind who already believes the lies. It seems to me that “recognize the pattern” is also too logical, and that the counter to the memes would have to be memes strong enough and emotional enough to compete with hatred and fear.
Anti-Semitism – Jew-hatred, in other words – seems to fit a deep need in so many people. It’s one that Orwell understood and described, although his dystopian novel was not about that. Hatred spreads on a visceral and emotional level, and to counter it with logic, the teaching of history, and rational thought seems weak and ineffective. Suggestions?
Suggestions?
Barry Meislin posts this suggestion in the recent Roundup thread
“‘Gun Rush’ sweeps Jewish New York;
‘Jewish New Yorkers are buying firearms and seeking training in anticipation of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani taking office, fearing a rise in antisemitic incidents and reduced police protection’—
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/flashes/670506
Eric Blair was obvious in “Emmanuel Goldstein” in 1984.
I mean Trotsky’s real name at birth was Lev Davidovich Bronstein
Then again who was Koba Dzhugashvili? Right, Josef Stalin.
What’s with Commie name changes, anyway?
Hate and fear are the principle weapons of our political adversaries. They don’t have the foundation of right/wrong–good/evil sorted out and cannot win arguments on the basis of wisdom, so this is where they land. The things they support always require wresting resources from others (the working citizens) and fundamentally this breaks 2 commandments given to us by the Judaic Creator God–thou shalt not covet and thou shalt not steal. Is it any wonder that Jewish people ultimately suffer backlash when the Commandments are upended?
Screw hating a bunch of political adversaries when the truly straight from Satan NY Yankees can suffice.
Just mock them without mercy. They cannot bear that. And if they get sporty, well…….
*sigh* I’m coming around to agree with one of the other Chicagoboyz commenting on a recent threat – that Jew-hate is like dirt itself. You can sweep it up, clean the surface, but dirt always returns.
I thought the rabid Jew hate that we now see from Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes (with support from Tucker) was largely a thing of the past or relegated to the dark fringes but I was obviously wrong. It turns out that October 7th was diabolically successful at fomenting hatred not only against Israel but all Jews.
The attack was so brutal that Israel had no choice but to respond forcefully and now they are accused by otherwise seemingly sane people of genocide. In addition to being evil, this line of reasoning just strikes me as so incredibly stupid I don’t really know what to say about it. It is blatantly obvious that whatever you think about Israel’s response, it is clearly not genocide. But there is a deep spring of Jew hatred that lies beneath the surface in a lot of people that is just waiting for some excuse to be tapped. It’s very depressing.
He was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State.
Hillary Clinton: “Well, I don’t know if I’ve been that dramatic. That would sound like a good line from a movie. But I do believe that this is a battle. I mean, look at the very people who are involved in this—they have popped up in other settings. This is—the great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.”
Uh huh. The vast conspiracy. Got it.
______
Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErwS24cBZPc&list=RDErwS24cBZPc&index=1
Remember this advertisement? It’s sort of a weird turnabout, in that here the rebel is smashing the face of Big Brother with a sledge-hammer. Not the incited masses or mob smashing the face of Goldstein. In a way, it is almost like a foreshadowing of the Antifa rebels smashing established structures in America that have worked pretty well.
You gotta love the attractive athlete throwing the hammer depicted as sort of a Leni Reifenstahl Aryan goddess figure. I wonder what Ridley Scott was smoking when he dreamed this up?
What Big Brother is saying in an echoey voice:
Today we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives.
We have created for the first time in all history a garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests of any contradictory true thoughts.
Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth.
We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause.
Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion.
We shall prevail!”
Qatar is full of expats from all over, and the Qataris are a tiny minority in their own country. Most of them are rich and need not work. The expats doing all the work are mostly Muslims from the Middle East and South Asia. After working there for two years, I told a Jewish friend that the Israelis are living in a fantasy word, if they think that they can trust Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, or Muslims in general. That was back in 2007. The slaughter of October 7, 2023 proved me right beyond my worst nightmares, but the ensuing fever swamp of Jew-hatred has been an ugly surprise.
Despite my natural pessimism and my experience in Qatar, I haven’t given up hope that in the US, our current bout of Jew-hatred will subside. Last week, at his substack, Arnold Kling sounded a slightly optimistic note, so I’ll pass it on here:
“America as I know it has preferred politicians who express optimism rather than those who express resentment. Ronald Reagan rather than Pat Buchanan. I think that Americans tend to reject anti-semitism. Not because Americans love Jews, but because anti-semites come across as losers. Americans prefer winners.”
(https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/culture-links-11142025)
For what it’s worth, Kling is a practicing Jew.
Memes are only a reinterpretation of the collective memory. To quote Dr. Helms:
“Collective memory is the toolshed, tomorrow’s ideological arsenal,from which political concepts and symbols are selected ,reinterpreted, and manipulated both by established governments and opposition groups.It may wait for decades patiently dormant, only to be reactivated suddenly as an explosive, contagious force.”
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-D5_400-PURL-LPS31627/pdf/GOVPUB-D5_400-PURL-LPS31627.pdf
The late Pat Lang wrote at length on this on his blog.
While the focus here is hate in the form of antisemitism, I think the larger problem is TDS. The visceral rabid hate that wells up in seemingly normal folk when Trump is mentioned is amazing to behold. Unfortunately antisemitism is always going to exist on both the right and left. But to me, this TDS has the potential to really tear the country apart.
Frederick, that is an astonishing link.
Thanks for bringing it to our attention…
From George Orwell, via Neo:
”A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current…”
e.g. “No Pressure!”
Then from physicsguy:
”While the focus here is hate in the form of antisemitism, I think the larger problem is TDS. The visceral rabid hate that wells up in seemingly normal folk when Trump is mentioned is amazing to behold.”
I was just about to say this. The quote above reminded me of the video of a circle of women, all without pants, screaming and “shouting obscenities at Trump through their vaginas.”
As a man and an engineer, I have no comeback for something like that. It’s just too far gone.
If we want to counter the oldest hate, we need to switch languages. We need to teach young people to recognize the pattern of antisemitism the way they recognize a recycled meme format. Once they see the template, the narrative collapses.
–Guy Goldstein
I love this thinking. I myself once thought Critical Thinking, as in recognizing the standard logical fallacies, could help save the world. I haven’t entirely given up.
Once they see the fallacy, the narrative collapses.
Would that it were so simple.
I hear a rooster crowing in the background of the Trotsky recording!
John Galt:
I’m not sure where you get Koba as a first name for Stalin. His first name was Ioseb, the Georgian equivalent of Joseph, or Iosif in Russian.
Pointing out the historical pattern of Jew H8 is better than doing nothing.
I read a book, from a used book store, on the 50s Soviet Show Trials during DJT’s impeachment trial. In a nutshell prosecutor and judges worked together. Defendants very ready didn’t admit to crimes they ever committed due to torture and even duty to the party even if it ment their and families destruction.
I returned it after reading hoping someone else reads it.
Jew hate is an incarnation of envy, against success and against being Chosen and against the Jewish refusal to assimilate.
Humans are hardwired to envy, and need to be taught not to, as well as that those who envy are bad. Envy, wanting to destroy the other’s good fortune, is different, tho similar, to admiration & desire to emulate.
Hate is fun. Hating evil makes most folks feel really good, really righteous. Once a person or group is considered evil, like Hitler or fascists or Nazis, then hating those evil ones feels good. TDS, & the woke mind virus, makes those infected feel good & righteous fighting evil. Which is why demonization is what the Dems do against Trump, Kavanaugh, Bush; now against Israel & Jews.
Life is unfair. Many confuse this unfairness, like high Jewish avg IQ, with injustice. We need more linguistic separation between injustice, based on some human action & decision, with unfairness of reality, from God. Treating people “fairly” is how you avoid being unjust, unfair to them. But taller people are usually better at basketball, so with the same, fair, rules, tall folk score more points.
That Jews keep themselves separate, “superior/ chosen” from others, maintains the Jewish identity at the cost of resentment by the gentiles whose sons are not good enough to marry a Jewish girl, like Tevje’s third daughter who is disowned in loving a gentile Russian. This resentment is, sadly, easily fanned into hate by claiming the success achieved thru hard, smart work, is actually based on cheating somehow, being unjust.
The Democratic Demonization Strategy includes conflating unfair life with injustice as they claim the disadvantaged or unsuccessful are oppressed, unjustly, by the successful, privileged, oppressors. The Dems demonize whoever opposes them so as to promote the good feeling of fighting for Justice, hating injustice. Verbally against the claimed injustice, emotionally in support of hate and envy.
Very related to why socialism never ceases to be a simple minded idea, allowing its believers to hate capitalism, instead of obviously stupid hate of the unfairness of life.
Hatred of Jews is pretty deep in two large populations: the Russians have a very long history of it as does certain parts of Christianity (Including, unfortunately, my own Eastern Orthodoxy). Islam, comparatively late in its existence hates Jews. It seems that somewhere at some point some group is hating Jews. This may subside but it will always be there.
“‘Koba the Dread’ is a study of the depredations of the regime of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1950s. The title alludes to Stalin’s nickname ‘Koba’”
Indeed, one must get out more (and read one’s Martin Amis…).
Interestingly (and/or more than somewhat ironically), Amis—yes, son of Kingsley—became very close to the much older Saul Bellow, the difference in age meaning that the latter served as a kind of mentor/father figure of a sort, but they also became good friends.
(Perhaps even more ironically, much earlier on, when the younger Bellow believed himself to be at the Communist
end of the ideological spectrum—at which end he lingered relatively briefly—he and a fellow-traveling friend, also from Chicago, were down in Mexico to interview Trotsky; alas the interview never took place…since it was scheduled for the day after Trotsky had that run in with an axe…)
Tom Grey:
Yes and no. You’ve accurately described a certain type of Jew-hatred. But Jew-hatred is FAR more versatile than that
Jews have also been hated when they are dirt-poor and downtrodden. That’s not envy.
You write:
However:
(1) “Chosen” does not mean “superior.” It just sounds like it – which I suppose is good enough to engender hatred in some people. In fact, however, plenty of groups believe that THEY are chosen – or in some cases, are the only people and everyone else is somewhat subhuman. But those groups are not hated; their feeling of superiority is ignored.
(2) During the time when “Fiddler” is set, I would say that just about all groups frowned on intermarriage. Christians, for example, were not exactly ecstatic about marrying Jews. Even some Christian groups didn’t want to marry other Christian groups. I knew an elderly Norwegian woman who used to say how, in her day, Norwegians looked down on Swedes and such intermarriages weren’t approved of. And on and on. Jews didn’t approve intermarriage – so what? And see (3) which follows.
(3) When Jews assimilated and intermarried, they often were hated just as much or more. The Holocaust began in Germany, one of the countries where most Jews were as assimilated as they are in the US.
During the time when “Fiddler” is set, I would say that just about all groups frowned on intermarriage.
==
My mother went through formal confirmation when she married my father. He’d been raised in liturgical confessions and she had not. That was in 1952. (What his grandmother had to say about it was amusing in retrospect).
==
Unless a couple is too old to have children, resistance to intermarriage is sensible. A lack of resistance is indicative of religious indifference, and clergy (among others) tend to frown on that.
==
Tevye was presented with unpleasant dilemmas by all three daughters. You’d think at least one of them could get it right.
When Jews assimilated and intermarried, they often were hated just as much or more. The Holocaust began in Germany, one of the countries where most Jews were as assimilated as they are in the US.
==
Prior to 1930, volkisch sentiment with its attendant anti-semitism was a fringe phenomenon, capturing perhaps 2% of the electorate under the Empire and perhaps 3% during Weimar. During the inter-war period, anti-semitism was a consequential feature of the political spectrum in Poland, Hungary, Austria, and Roumania. It was as well in the Germanophone Hapsburg lands prior to WWi.
After Oct 7, so much hate blew up out of the campus world so fast it would seem to have been on hold awaiting a subject.
I mentioned earlier that sixty-odd years ago, the head of the American Nazi Part came to Michigan State U. to give a presentation. He was received with courtesy but demonstrations outside the venue expressly supported the Jews and opposed Nazi anti-Jew ideas.
Since I posted that, I have wondered what would have happened on fraternity row if mobs had attacked Jewish fraternities or sororities. I’d have paid good money to be in the first line, but I suspect I’d have been outbid. We had ball bats and hockey sticks and lawn care tools and for working on cars…That’s before cleaning out the kitchen.
Maybe the Greeks are still the good guys but….back then there was no need to find out.
What has happened since to have so much hate awaiting the subject as instructed?
Richard Aubrey:
At least three things happened. The first is that the university veered way to the left. The second is that tons of Qatari money poured in as well as professors from Arab states (or simpatico to them) flooding the Middle Eastern studies departments and other disciplines (spearheaded by Edward Said of Columbia’s English Lit department), preaching the pro-Arab anti-Jewish line and teaching students their point of view. The third is that the internet is a fabulous way to spread Jew-hatred; it’s one of the first things I noticed when I went online 30 years ago. It spreads and amplifies it. October 7 acted as inspiration for more Jew-hatred to be openly expressed, rather than as a cause of it.
Art Deco:
I was not referring to volkisch sentiment causing anti-Semitism. There was plenty of other resentment of Jews in Germany, and it did not dissipate once they assimilated. The Nazi point of view whipped it up and made it more overt and gave it a racial basis, but it built on pre-existing resentment of Jews who, once assimilated, had become quite dominant in certain areas such as law and medicine. Years before the Holocaust, the Nazis drove Jews out of those professions and isolated them, and ultimately made it nearly impossible for Jews to earn a living in Germany. Most regular Germans were only too happy to get the jobs Jews had been forced to vacate.
My point is that assimilation did not protect Jews from being hated.
Plus the absolutely insane global media
coverageincitement operating 24/7/370.(See the most recent BBC scandal—WRT Israel; add to that the NYT, WAPO, Reuters, AP and Eurotrash media hit-jobs galore, and multiply all that by practically every “news” org around the globe, all of which will give you a very incomplete idea of the scope of global character assassination that took—and is still taking—place.)
the two minute hate has gone on for about 10 years now, even people who once worked with trump, like kathy griffith, because she reached her eldritch form, went insane, is it performative, at this point it doesn’t matter, its as arbitrary as the meme from that after school special ‘the wave’ which was based on a social experiment in 1967 palo alto
with trotsky it seems a little less likely, because he and stalin had the same goals, initially, they just went about it in different ways, the stalinists rather quickly monopolized the stage in the 30s,they had already vanquished the social democrats, as they had done in Germany, in other places, they were temporary useful allies, one might consider the popular front government in france and Spain as examples, the far left faction went after trotskyites and anarchists as resolutely as the did with Monarchists and Loyalists,
AD, ever research German Anti-Semitism in the 19th century?
You know, the classic variety…
(To be sure, the Jewish community in Alsace-Lorraine was quite relieved when Germany took control over their regions in the 1870s, since the Jews there believed they wouldn’t then have to deal with the tremendous level of French Anti-Semitism spawned by the Dreyfus Affair…)
And right on cue…
“Antisemitic mob descends on historic NYC synagogue — urging the ‘resistance’ to ‘take another settler out”—
https://nypost.com/2025/11/20/us-news/antisemitic-mob-descends-on-historic-nyc-synagogue-urging-the-resistance-to-take-another-settler-out/
The newish normal…
o’briens brotherhood, the anti big brother apparat, seems a lot like the Trust, the phony opposition group, or some aspects of the social revolutionaries in the czarist era, or more relevant some faction of the Delta House, J6 movement, that were prompted to direct action,
Must say that the reparations racket sure brings out the best of ‘em (out of the woodwork, that is…).
“Jasmine Crockett Shares List Of Republicans Who Took Money From Epstein – Only Problem – It Was A Different Epstein”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/jasmine-crockett-shares-list-republicans-who-took-money-epstein-only-problem-it-was
File under: What a Crocket!
I admit I find antisemitism somewhat mysterious. Many groups are hated but not like the Jews.
Not that I blame the Jews.
My best guess is that it’s combination of bad luck — being on the wrong side of Christianity and Islam — and geopolitics — being on the wrong side of current global blocs.
There is also a resentment of Jewish success, which applies Americans as well.
All of this is handy when a scapegoat is needed.
Jews ended up where they are because of forces they did not choose and they could not control, but they must make the best of.
neo
Thanks for putting those influences together.
Maybe my rear window is rose-tinted, but I don’t think we’d have fallen for that crap back in the Sixties on campus. Even if the profs had been trying to spread it. As I recall, we mostly thought the profs were to be believed about what’s on the next exam. But we weren’t required to believe it. Mostly, we did, since we weren’t doing independent research. But things which seemed just…..not quite quite…. Profs couldn’t sell that. And, given the times, a substantial number of our fathers and uncles had been in Europe ca. 44-46.
Don’t know. Just Not Getting It.
Neo. Maybe I didn’t say what I wanted to say. It’s as if they were burning to hate–just in general hate– and were given an object. Where did the first part come from.
Or Stalin could give you a midnight interview!
Richard Aubrey, neo:
Plus the 60s weren’t far from the Holocaust. As a boomer teen I vividly remember trying to confront and understand that real genocide.
That vividness has been not been confronted by the young today.
Richard Aubrey; huxley:
I think you and huxley are correct that back then WWII was quite close in years. Everyone not only knew veterans, but knew it was recent – and I don’t know about you, but as a kid I watched tons of WWII movies on TV. What’s more, the whole society gave out very different messages about the world and society than kids get nowadays. Plus, today’s young people didn’t just get exposed to leftist ideas and anti-Israel ideas (which go together like a horse and carriage) in college, they get them earlier in school as well.
I also think that people in their late teens and early twenties today are the generations whose earlier school days were warped by COVID lockdowns. I think that had a profoundly negative effect. I think it contributed to their anger, which can be harnessed into Jew-hatred.
Neo.
Thanks. The anger–unaimed–exists. And it can be, has been, “harnessed”.
The best answer is firearms.