How do we stop the epidemic of hate?

When I was young, I had a dream that sadly has turned into a nightmare these many decades later.

It wasn’t a perfect world then but there was every reason to believe it could and would be made better.

Truth to tell, despite many advancements, the world and our little part of it has become a much meaner place and I don’t know how we fix mean. 

Canada has earned the reputation as a welcoming and tolerant society of “nice people” but is experiencing a dramatic increase in acts of  discrimination and hate. What was once seen as someone else’s problems is now evident in our own communities and in our own backyards.

I never thought I would see the day when families are afraid to send their kids to school, places of worship hire security guards and near riots break out between groups with opposing opinions at our institutions of higher learning.

Whatever happened to freedom of speech? Many, at all levels of society, are now afraid to speak up for fear of abuse and retribution.

Social media has become a cesspool for the incubation of lies, hate, terrorism and savagery sadly reminiscent of the period and conditions leading up to the Holocaust.

Born into a working-class family in a small Ontario town in a land of peace, resources and beauty, life has been good to my generation. Our grandfathers had fought one far-away world war and we were too young to realize the world was again at war somewhere “overseas.”

My toddler friends and I were living a carefree life when a 15-year-old girl named Anne Frank was dragged out of her family’s hiding place in Amsterdam and thrown into a concentration camp where she would die along with millions of other victims of fanatical racism and hate. 

The depression and war became history and as young adults, we reaped the benefits of a post-war economic boom and emerging advancements in just about every field from science to human rights, social justice, equality of opportunity and world order. 

Immigrants were our neighbours, colleagues and friends and we worked shoulder to shoulder to build this unique and bountiful country. Some groups didn’t like each other but Canada was big and bold and confident that differences could be worked out.

As always, the world faced major challenges but things seemed doable. Our institutions and their leaders were respected. Today, not so much. Contempt and ridicule are more the order of the day. 

Our public debt loads are staggering. Politicians who once peddled optimism and hope have become apologists overwhelmed by public demands, how much needs fixing and how to pay for it.  

We live in a polarized world. The gap between rich and poor has become a crater filled with starvation, squalor and violence on one side and luxury, greed and power on the other.

 Our leaders are addicted to public opinion polls and too many of them are more committed to pandering to their base of supporters to get re-elected rather than supporting compromise and cooperation to solve the problems of the majority.  

The system doesn’t reward politicians willing to break rank with the party line and do or say what they believe is right. To do so will only confine them to a seat in the back benches. 

Unhappy voters of all ages are easy targets for right-wing populism. Younger members of our society grow resentful of the challenges and uncertainties their generation faces---such as a load of debt to pay for our mistakes and excesses, an imperiled environment and insecurity over benefits and opportunities their parents took for granted.  

Gangs and drugs once associated with big cities now threaten the security of our smaller communities as well.  

Many of our fellow citizens think they deserve a bigger piece of the pie and believe their voices are not heard as taxes rise and laws and trends reflect social change they oppose. While diversity is a panacea to many, it’s a curse to others.

We are living in a time of great distrust of government and most of our institutions. Voter turnout is deplorable. Traditional media, on which we depend to scrutinize our institutions, is going broke and increasingly impotent. 

Artificial intelligence can produce great benefits but poses dangers as well and is already playing havoc with public trust. False AI messages pollute and jeopardize the legitimacy of our information systems. As if democracy needed another challenge!

But to my mind, our biggest challenge is addressing what many are now calling an epidemic of hate---the vile product of anger and fear that knows no borders and threatens the stability of public institutions and democracy itself. 

The trend across Europe is increased support for far-right parties, the policies they espouse and the methods they would use.

Closer to home, we’ve grown used to violence and unrest in the United States. School shootings, insurrection, protests and demonstrations, threats against public officials such as politicians and the judiciary, seem almost commonplace.

Hate-related incidents have shown a marked increase in Canada in the last year, fueled by racism, foreign wars and ancient loathing and revealing that there are those amongst us quite capable of atrocities.  

When will Jewish parents be able to send their kids to school without worry that they could become the next victim of some twisted individual or group in search of cult-like vengeance and loyalty to certain ideologies?

When will Muslim families be able to go out for a walk together without fear that someone drenched in hate will take offence at the clothes they wear or the mosque they attend and slaughter them on the spot?

Does this hatred of people different from ourselves start in the playground? The home? The workplace? Our places of worship? The backrooms of the influential and powerful? 

All we know for sure is that the re-election of Donald Trump as the leader of the free world and his acolytes in Canada and elsewhere will only further destabilize our democracy by releasing a wave of white supremacist militancy and political unrest. He foments and wallows in chaos and revenge with his vainglory scorched earth approach to everything.

We can only remind ourselves that anger and fear fuels hatred and hatred is stoked by silent complicity on the part of ordinary folks like ourselves and those we elect to lead us. 

When something bad happens in Canada we hear the sanctimonious reassurance from politicians that it’s an anomaly----“it’s not who we are.”

The real question is what are we becoming?