The Hate Industry
18th May 2023
The agenda, perfectly expressed by author Michael Shellenberger in a Substack post last week, is to “manufacture a fake ‘hate’ crisis as [a] pretext for mass spying, blacklists, and censorship.” The hype, also exposed by Shellenberger in his recent article, is underscored by the fact that over the past 10 years, hate crime convictions, as opposed to “criminal complaints of hate crimes,” have not increased at all. In a state with 40 million people, hate crime convictions were a minuscule 109 in 2021, and a negligible increase from 107 in 2012.
The hate industry is a vast agglomeration of lucrative hustles, now institutionalized and expanded into multiple and overlapping sectors. There is the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) sector; the equity, social, and governance (ESG) sector; the activist sector comprising countless groups, including Black Lives Matter and Antifa; the corporate, academic, and government sectors; the media sector; the politicians; and the pundits. All of these sectors have spawned scores of thousands of well-paying jobs.
If these institutions weren’t able to point to rising levels of hatred in America, then their specialty, the business of hate, would no longer be a growth industry. Where there is no hate, they must manufacture it. Where hatred has diminished, they must discover new forms of hate, often so subtle that we foolishly fail to recognize it without their assistance.