Mass political murder: What and where is the hate?

Abstract

AbstractThis article explores the meaning and importance of hate in intergroup conflict, especially in conflict that moves to genocide or politicide. Review of controversies in defining hate leads to definition of hate as an extreme form of negative identification that includes perception of bad essence. Negative identification is inverse caring for others, as seen in studies of schadenfreude and gluckschmerz. Studies of dehumanization suggest that two forms of bad essence can be distinguished: evil human (entitativity essentializing) and infrahuman animal (natural kind essentializing). Studies also show that those who essentialize more are more ready to punish indiscriminately all members of a rival group—thus essentializing facilitates killing by category. Application of the negative‐identification‐bad‐essence definition of hate in the Nazi, Cambodian, and Rwandan cases indicates that leaders of political mass murder hate their victims, but that hate is relatively unimportant for those who do the killing. For the mass public that leaders and perpetrators claim to represent, the importance of hate as defined here is currently unknown. Implications are considered for measuring hate in texts and polls and for future directions of research on hate.