In carrying out the work of the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) in mapping the flows of hate, the effects of hate on human health and wellbeing, the effects of hate on social cohesion, and communicative strategies for countering the effects of hate, one of the powerful lessons is tied to the response of hate groups. I am sharing these thoughts as reflections on my own experiences being targeted by hate groups and drawing on in-depth interviews I have been carrying out with academics negotiating the challenges to academic freedom.
A wide array of hate groups, be it white supremacists or Hindutva supremacists will attack the work through the deployment of a wide array of strategies. These strategies will range from violent attacks including death threats and rape threats to deploying institutional mechanisms to target the anti-hate work. The response of the hate groups is carried out both online and offline, supported by an entire infrastructure of organizations.
This is a key point that is central to our empirical work, the infrastructure of digital hate doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is held up by civil society organizations, charities, political parties, powerful donors, etc. that profit from the business of hate.
It is fuelled by powerful political and economic interests. Hate circulates virally and fuels profits.
The hate industry is one of the most profitable forms of global capitalism. It is held up by power. Hate serves the financial and political interests of the powerful.
It sustains because it is backed by powerful political and economic interests.
The academic work of countering hate, therefore, needs to be safeguarded by academic freedom, nourished by the capacity to challenge power and its consolidation in various forms. The role of the academic as the critic and conscience of society is integral to dismantling the infrastructure of hate by speaking truth to power, by holding powerful corporations, politicians, and political parties accountable.
It needs to be safeguarded by adequate policy frameworks that address the digital networks of hate, and the transparent implementation of these policy frameworks. Creating an entire infrastructure of safeguards is essential to supporting and sustaining the academic freedom necessary to counter the disinformation, communicative inversions, gaslighting campaigns, and direct threats to safety and wellbeing carried out by hate groups.
This infrastructure includes the university, the police, civil society, and political parties. Universities have to seriously ask, What is it going to take to support the academic freedom to counter hate, recognizing that this commitment is a long-term commitment, one that is much more than short-term branding gimmicks about social impact? What is it going to take to support academics when they speak truth to power in public spaces? What is it going to take to support academics when they carry out anti-hate interventions on social media? It is one thing to desire academics to engage in public scholarship. It is something entirely different to actually support and sustain that public scholarship. An entire framework of support for mental health and wellbeing, and institutional infrastructures for sustenance needs to be created. This includes building participatory spaces for academics, horizontal infrastructures for academics to engage with academic freedom policies, listening infrastructures that are continually adaptive to the experiences of academics, and a keen awareness of the workings of power in drawing on institutional mechanisms to threaten academic freedom.
The police similarly need to develop the infrastructural capacity to understand the nature of hate, the effects of the hate on health and wellbeing, and strategies for responding to the hate structurally. The usual individualized response of the police often places the burden of negotiating safety on the individual academic. Certainly, the prescriptions for precautionary steps are good starting points. However, they are just that, starting points. Stating that the hate is digital, and therefore, does not pose an imminent threat to physical safety is a cop-out (literally:-)). Infrastructures need to be created in the police to comprehend the actual effects of the hate, to trace the forms of hate, and to respond with safeguarding resources that are structural.
Now, this is often limited by the policy environment, and this is where the work of civil society and political parties is vital. Civil society advocacy is integral to building anti-hate policy frameworks. Given the adeptness of hate groups to deploy the language of social justice to further perpetuate their agendas of hate, the development of policy advocacy needs to be anchored in a keen awareness of the workings of power, the co-option of social justice frameworks, and the openings for abuse of policy frameworks created to counter hate. For instance, across Western democracies globally, Hindutva organizations, rooted in the politics of hate, are communicatively inverting the narrative of hate, constructing the term Hinduphobia to target dissenting voices (many of whom are Hindus in the diaspora) and to silence them. These organizations are weaponizing the term Hinduphobia to conflate Hindutva with Hinduism. In doing so, their goal is to silence the necessary anti-racist interventions that challenge the pernicious ideology of Hindutva. The whiteness of civil society often translates into the absence of literacy on the various forms of hate, thus resulting in advocacy that is limited or in worst cases, that ends up enabling forces of hate under the rhetoric of multiculturalism.
Civil society advocacy needs to be complemented by the actual commitment of political parties to countering hate. This commitment must go beyond the usual dog whistle to perform the rhetoric of promoting social cohesion etc. Given that the political class and its infrastructure of political campaigns directly profit from the circulation of disinformation and hate, political parties need to develop clear policies on addressing hate and must be held accountable to these policy platforms. The rhetoric must be compared to actual action. If you are a political party that is advertising on digital hate platforms, your rhetoric about countering hate is suspect. If you are a political party circulating the rhetoric of promoting harmony, demonstrate this commitment through the actions of your politicians and through the policy frameworks you put up. Political parties must transcend pragmatic considerations of vote banks and donors to build an actual climate of countering hate.
Finally, returning to the academic work of countering hate, our unions have vital roles to play in safeguarding academic freedom. The over five decades of neoliberalism have translated into our unions turning into privatized business organizations, held up through the cultures of self-care and individualized advocacy. The role of the union in collective advocacy is vital to challenging the infrastructure of hate that is rooted in privatization.
Unions must carefully consider, what role are the unions playing in safeguarding academics? When the academic freedom to do seriously impactful anti-hate scholarship is threatened, who will stand up to advocate for it? What collectives do we need to build across anti-racist struggles in the academe to support each other? When institutional mechanisms are deployed and co-opted by hate groups to target academics, how are we going to counter these co-optive strategies? When powerful trustees for instance deploy their power to align with hate groups, how are we going to push back? What ongoing support are academics going to need when being targeted by hate groups? How are we going to build registers of solidarity across working-class struggles within the academe, beyond the academe in connecting with other working-class struggles, and with anti-racist struggles within the academe?