Five books in this season of hate speech

It’s a season of anomy. The continuous interest in anarchy, inhumanity, hatred, words that cut through and refuse to go away and groups disinterested in peace in parts of Nigeria boggles the mind. If you have ever been the subject of unwarranted hate, the sort that makes you sick to your stomach, you will understand the current state of Nigeria with deranged individuals whose only interest is how to make another person miserable and dismember a nation. You do not have to do anything to another, just a group of disgruntled sick individuals pushing the most bizarre statements online and elsewhere for their selfish interests, be it religious, political, ethnic or gender related. A couple of years ago, I was faced with a child, only 11 years old, at the summer writing boot camp which I facilitated, who shocked me to my bone marrow. He told me he was not going to sit with another ten-year-old child who came from a certain ethnic extraction. There was no other reason other than for the fact of her ethnicity and religion. The ten-year-old cried for two hours, the offending child failed to apologise and I had him stand outside until he did. Even then he could not grasp his offending behaviour enough because he was cocky and selfrighteous. Parents are part of our hate problem nationwide. An eleven-year-old is only acting out his socialisation. Many parents feed their children with stereotypes and hate so bad it consumes the child. Charlottesville, Ku Klux clan, white supremacists, racists, ethnic jingoists, Rwanda, South Africa, all the tribalists and shameless hate speech propagandists worldwide are all in the same boat. Persons who are so unhappy they need to pass their unhappiness along through hatred, people so unfortunate they die just watching others being happy. It’s a battle, but can be won if we are all honest with ourselves. Hate speech can lead to all sorts of social upheavals, wickedness, bullying and the complete absence of national development. Haters are not worthy of our time. They are very sick people. In the light of the current battle with hate speech in Nigeria, I dedicate this week’s column to books that deal with hate and the possible consequences, with a few examples that abound.

1) Long walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela. This book, although a bit, heavy gives us the story of a man that symbolised the resistance in apartheid South Africa. In this case the entire hatred and meanness was pivoted on racism, white-onblack violence and segregation. Some of my favourite quotes from this book tell us how hate is not going to solve any problem and how peacemakers will continue to inherit the earth and some go on to become iconic like Mandela. Here are quotes from the book I love for all time and particularly for this season. “I am fundamentally an optimist…Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death. Other quotes I love are the following “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others” This last quote was tweeted by Barrack Obama early this week in response to white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, United States.” No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally than the opposite.”

2) When issues of hate speech are being discussed anywhere in the world, the genocide in Rwanda always comes to mind. One book that left me totally mad after the genocide was Philip Gourevitch’s award winning book written in 1999: Tomorrow we will be Killed with our Families. I read this book with my heart in my mouth and Gourevitch captured the genocide five years later as if it had just happened. It opens in parts with him describing how he is walking on fields and still stepping on skeletons from the genocide. Winning thee Guardian book prize for that year, Grouevitch says he had a certain urgency to write about what he considered “the most ambiguous case of total genocide since the holocaust…” He admitted the sheer scale of the horrors exhausted and defeated him. It started with hate speech on the Radio and all across the land, and in 100 days, one million people were dead. One of the judges of the Guardian award described the book as “more than just a piece of great journalism but a monument to events which defy comprehension” Indeed, I have many friends from Rwanda who still suffer depression for what the mind cannot truly comprehend nor forget.

3) Night by Elie Wiesel. Written in 1960, this book on the holocaust drove me to tears and gave me sleepless nights for days. This is the experience of the author and his family in Nazi Germany’s concentration camp at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Hatred for the Jews led to the most bizarre and mind boggling killings seen in modern day history. Translated into 30 languages, it tells of the horror and the inhumanity Jews were subjected to at the time. During the German occupation of Hungary during World War 2, they were not allowed to move home, own a car, use telephones, listen to foreign radio, or even travel. Each Jew over the age of six was made to wear a yellow badge on their clothes and were expected to declare the value of their property. Jewish authors could no longer be allowed to publish; their books were removed from libraries and Jewish civil servants, lawyers and journalists were sacked. In December of 1991, I visited Auschwitz, the concentration camp. The leftover horrors are unimaginable. On the entrance to the museum was a quote from George Santayana, “Those who do not remember History, will repeat it”. A word is enough.

4) All books by Rosa Park. History remembers Rosa Parks well. She it was who in 1955 refused to give her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery Alabama. She is considered the mother of the civil rights movement. A smallish woman, she was facing unfair laws in racist Alabama at the time as it was all across America. The trans-Atlantic slave trade leaves one gutted from just thinking the hatred, the injustice, the unabated racism. She is quoted as saying “the only tired I was, was tired of giving in. Each person must live their life as a model for others. I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear, knowing what must be done does away with fear”

5) The measure of a Man by Martin Luther King Jnr. The martyred and revered civil rights leader delivers meditations in this book on why non-violence matters. Eloquent and passionate, reasoned and sensitive. This contains theological roots of his political and social philosophy of non-violent activism. But the haters killed him anyway but took only his body as they can never kill the philosophy or the spirit of the man who speaks truth to power.

BONUS BOOKS Roots by Alex Haley The Bible and The Quran which have always preached peace. Nelson Mandela, Conversations with myself The Harm in Hate Speech by Jeremy Waldron.