With increasing usage of internet, there has been an increase in the number of political conversations happening online. This is certainly a good thing. Information can easily be transferred and published. Details about policies, news events, and happenings, all reach people the very same day. And the ability to engage with a huge crowd of people online has increased these conversations.
However, we can also see increasing polarization in the political discourse online. Along with the polarization, there is also a lot of hate in the very language used in political discourse. This is especially true on online platforms. Go to any decisive issue and see the comments on news articles. Tags such as 'fascist,' 'libtard,' 'racist,' 'sexist,' 'bhakt,' 'liberandu,' and so on and so forth, are very common these days. This trend seems extremely troubling. But here is the problem.
How do you ask a victim to not use hateful language against the accused as well as those defending the accused?
A lot of events sparking these debates are extremely traumatic for the victims of the events. Whenever there is violence against minority communities, it is natural for the community across the society to feel threatened. In such circumstances, we cannot expect the community to use loving or politically correct language. Or when there are crimes against women, it is natural to use hateful language against the perpetrators (often men) and those defending them.
How do you ask a person who feels threatened for his survival to not use hateful language against those responsible for the threat?
There is a narrative popular in India that the majority community has been overlooked for long and there is a definite danger to the future of the said community. Discussing the truthfulness of the claim is beyond the scope of this article. But under such circumstances it would be natural for the community to use hateful language. Minority communities have always felt threatened. They continue to use hateful language.
How do we counter the hate?
The easy answer to this question would be 'love.'
But such an answer shows a callousness to the very real issues people face. It fails to assure them with a solution and is basically a trite, meaningless, platitude.
So what then is the answer?
I propose hope as the antidote to hate.
To be more specific, I propose hope as presented in the Christian worldview to be an effective antidote to hateful language. This hope is built on the Biblical belief of regeneration. That is seen in the vision of the apostle John, recorded in Revelation 21:4: "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." In other words, if heaven is real, I don't need to worry about my sufferings so much. Or as the apostle Paul put it, "the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us." [Romans 8:18]
If we are certain of this glorious future, we can face our present circumstances with joy. Which is what the early Christians did. The writer to the Hebrews says, "you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one." [Hebrews 10:34]
The example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer for hopeful resistance
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor who spoke out against the atrocities of Hitler, even after repeated warnings from the SS. He gave up security in America and went back to Germany in 1939. He was finally hanged by the Nazi Government on 9th April, 1945 for conspiring against Hitler. But was he hopeful, and loving as a result of that hope? Bonhoeffer's response to a small incident when he taught a confirmation class in 1931 may give the answer. Before he entered class, some of the boys threw garbage at him as a prank. "But Bonhoeffer surprised them with his passivity" and eventually won them over. [Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Life from Beginning to End; Hourly History; Chapter 8] Richard V Pierard writes in Radical Resistance, "from his shining example we learn that spiritual power will surely prevail over the forces of evil - but we must take an active part in that struggle." His part in the struggle was strongly rooted in the hope that evil would be destroyed.
Disclaimer
I realize that such a hope is founded on Christian beliefs, which not all my readers would ascribe to. So I request my Christian readers to be hopeful in the midst of hate (which is very possible in the future considering the present regime), and may that hope translate to love in discourse. That would be the biggest testimony to the reality of our hope.
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