Hate speech

Oscar Yescas Dominguez

August 5, 2,019

The world in the 21st century seems smaller and smaller, geographical distances no longer determine us, technological development allows us to communicate immediately with several people simultaneously regardless of whether some are within our city, State, country or out of them.

Social changes raise the need to speak more than one language if we want to succeed in labor and economic matters, because there is an increasing interdependence and interaction between several countries. Today it is not difficult to meet or meet people from other countries in our cities, whether traveling for pleasure or forced to leave their place of origin to seek a better life. Who does not know a friend or has a family member living abroad?

We live a historical moment in which a great social, cultural and sexual diversity predominates in contemporary society, but unfortunately we are seeing how racism resurfaces, how xenophobia increases and gives rise to hatred of who is different, who you saw differently, to those who speak a language other than ours.

Hate speech is fueled by those who enjoy enormous social and economic inequality because they are favored by it. Those who live in the country where most of the products they consume are made by poor people who live in distant countries and also in not-so-distant countries, receiving a very low salary and living in conditions of poverty from which they will never leave, unless They emigrate from those places.

Those who live from the importation of products are limited to consuming regardless of the living and working conditions of those who made those products that arrive at their homes because it is an issue that does not interest them. Those conditions of great social social disadvantage that exist in other countries and that indirectly creates its own government when carrying out political or military interventions, since the development of a country is based on the underdevelopment of other countries.

Something similar to what happens with the social wealth that is produced daily, the rich increase their wealth through the exploitation of the workers who generate that wealth, the more the rich increase their fortune, the more impoverished who generates that wealth.

Rich countries exploit the resources of poor countries, which they euphemistically call "developing countries" and their inhabitants live their daily lives thinking that they deserve to have a good life and their concept of a good life is to have a high daily consumption They mistakenly think that happiness is achieved by consuming more every day.

The dominant ideology makes them think that they are “successful” and those people who lack economic resources or who live in poverty are “losers”, people who are not intelligent or who simply did not take advantage of the “opportunities that life gives”.

When the living conditions of people living in poverty are complicated to the extent that they are only surviving, or when violence is exacerbated by putting personal security in danger, emigration occurs, abandonment of those places and countries in which there are no development opportunities to go to places or countries where it is believed they can improve their living conditions.

That is when the problems that exist in other countries knock on our doors, it reaches our streets and cities. We see in Mexico the passage of thousands of emigrants towards the northern border with open intentions to cross illegally to enter the United States. In their passage through Mexican territory, emigrants suffer assaults, rapes and a treatment that frankly borders on racism, rejecting the foreigner who enters our country violently, demanding a treatment that allows them to meet their needs and we wonder why They did not fight that way in their places of origin to defend their rights.

But also immigrants who cross Mexico receive solidarity, support, food, shelter from people with feelings of social solidarity towards the excluded, but needless to say, these manifestations are less frequent than those that show suspicion, distrust and frank rejection towards the foreigner who crosses our lands.

But this treatment of exclusion, of rejection received in Mexico is nothing compared to the treatment received by those who manage to enter States, since in that country the discourse of hatred has time taking on a force and increasing force.

Hatred of foreigners, distrust and violence against illegal immigrants has lost proportions and has affected American citizens of Latin descent. It is the racism that leads to rejecting someone for the tone of their skin, for their physical complexion, for speaking a language other than English. It doesn't even matter that he speaks English is his simple physical appearance.

This hate speech has been managed with political intentions to inspire fear, insecurity and mistrust towards those people who fit into the stereotypes of terrorists, undocumented or ill-survivors.

Hate speech arises in a society where there is a strong culture of attachment to weapons, a society that allows its citizens to buy modern weapons with relative ease, allowing thousands of people in the United States to have a true arsenal in their homes.

Hate speech tries to blame the foreigner for the mobility of large companies prefer to open branches in distant countries to pay lower wages than those he would pay to American workers.

Hate speech tries to generate psychological instability by creating feelings of insecurity, fear, uncertainty among the population, to present proposals to increase the military budget or military interventions abroad aimed at “hostile targets” using lies, deception and fraud to ensure that large arms manufacturers' corporations obtain millionaire contracts from the government and politicians can continue to take care of "national security."

Unfortunately, this hate speech has become so effective that it has gone from words to deeds, from insults, humiliations and humiliations to those in the "socially unaccepted" stereotypes, to present themselves in their most destructive expression: murder mass of people, but not of any person, only those that correspond to the stereotypes spread from the highest levels of government.

The contemporary violence that American citizens see in other places of the world in a magnified way, but that they are not able to see within the American territory today exploded in one of the icons of the consumer culture in the United States: a WaltMart branch.

A young American who has just turned his age, left his house armed to the teeth in search of Mexicans to kill. What motivated him to carry out these hate crimes? We cannot individualize a social problem, we well know that the individual is determined by the social. It can be argued that he is an isolated, frustrated individual with psychological disorders, etc., but it cannot be denied that the prevailing political discourse has been distinguished by characterizing Hispanics as the prototype of rapists, drug traffickers, murderers, etc.

The social determines the individual and today an individual act (well in reality there have been three in a relatively short time), leaving a high number of deaths made by an individual who had all the intention of "killing the largest number of Mexicans."

President Trump says the shootings are an attack on the nation and has asked the FBI to investigate internal terrorism and hate crimes as well. He has condemned racism and supremacist theories. He also talks about reducing the culture of violence, including videogames and Internet violence. Trump is willing to reform mental health laws to identify - before they act - dangerous individuals and calls for the death penalty to be applied to the perpetrators. of these shootings. ”

But it is a late speech that is opposed to the speech he handled during the last years and above all it is a speech that at no time exercises self-criticism. The truth is that in the United States there is a culture of violence, reflected in a freedom for any individual to buy an arsenal and store it at home.

The best way to deal with this wave of mass murders inspired by hate speech is to take responsibility for their generation, promote the adoption of laws that prevent free access to weapons and curb the growth of racist groups, promoting the Peaceful coexistence among the members of a society that by its nature and origin has a great social and cultural diversity.

It is necessary to resume these tragedies from an approach that allows us to obtain something positive from something negative, that is, to end the hate speech, curb the free sale of weapons and, above all, educate the population in respect for every individual regardless of their racial origin, economic status or sexual orientation.

The pain of the relatives of the numerous victims cannot be eliminated, but preventive actions can be taken so that these types of events are never repeated in the future.