Love, hate and what we know so far
#LoveIsLove.”
In a tweet lauding marriage rights, U.S. President Barack Obama used this now-familiar hashtag — which began several years ago in the campaign for marriage equality — sadly just two days before the horrific act of terror and hate we now call “Orlando.” That was when, early last Sunday an American gunman, armed with a semi-automatic weapon stormed Pulse, an Orlando gay nightclub, and opened fire.
Before the shooter was eventually killed by police, 49 mainly young partygoers were dead and 53 were wounded, making it the largest mass shooting and second largest act of terror after 9/11 in U.S. history.
The creator and star of the hip-hop Broadway megahit Hamilton, about one of the U.S. founding fathers, Lin-Manuel Miranda tore at hearts with the same refrain during Sunday’s Tony Awards, referring to the events in Orlando in his tearful acceptance sonnet: “And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.”
And millions of shocked and grieving people used #LoveIsLove as a hopeful and defiant Twitter hashtag in their response to what one British commentator called the largest mass killing of LGBT people “since the Holocaust.”
As a fast-moving narrative constantly changed, we continued to valiantly dig out emotionally from another atrocity, this one committed by a 29-year-old shooter whom law enforcement officials described as “self-radicalized” and “a lone wolf.”
Omar Mateen not only had apparently claimed loyalty to Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL (as well as, paradoxically, some of its enemies) but appeared to have conflicted feelings toward the LGBTQ community. According to some people, the shooter had a long-standing presence in this gay club and on at least one gay dating site. He was also — another familiar touchstone — described as “mentally unstable” by his ex-wife.
Despite the laudable #LoveIsLove mantra, it’s notable to count how many different kinds of hate were involved in this massacre and its aftermath: homophobia, of course, but also self-hatred.
Some of the latest suppositions about the shooter posited the theory he was actually gay. As commentator and LGBTQ activist Dan Savage put it in a tweet, “a person can be a violently self-loathing closet case and a devout believer. The former all but requires the latter.”
There was also religious bigotry, nihilism, racism and digital hate in the jihadist websites the shooter accessed.
Then there is political hate. The massacre was facilitated by easy access to the AR-15, a semi-automatic murder weapon which has zero place in civilian life. Funding a lobby and campaigning for the right of ordinary citizens to bear a weapon of war that can have only one purpose — to kill and maim as many civilians as efficiently as possible — could be seen as just another kind of hate.
Presumptive GOP candidate Donald Trump is already ensconced in the Hate Hall of Fame. As he proved this week in some of his responses to the Orlando shooting, Trump has no dimmer switch when it comes to hate. Trump started with self-congratulation, moved to intensifying his bigotry against all Muslims and other immigrants by masking it in support for women and gays, and even managed to outrageously suggest President Obama might have been complicit in the shooting.
As Trump told Fox news: “People cannot, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can’t even mention the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable.”
Two of my closest American friends, passionate Democrats, recently went on a mini road trip. “You know what audiobook we listened to?” one said. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Apparently historian William Shirer’s all-encompassing history of Nazi Germany from the birth of Hitler to the end of the Second World War has been key in helping them to understand the rise of Donald Trump in America.
Yet denying the legitimate fear of terrorism, of how it is inculcated and nourished, of this new, deadly, hard-to-combat brand of lonewolfism, isn’t helpful either. Trump has cannily zeroed in on people’s natural concerns while stoking irrational fear and hate.
And how difficult it obviously is — in 2016, in spite of so much awareness of bigotry and hate speech — to stand up against hate. If it were otherwise, the political climate, especially in the U.S., and the global online climate would not be so toxic. What has been remarkable about Trump’s rise is how often he simply denies his statements are hateful, even when they clearly are. Others follow suit. They are not bigots, they are “telling it like it is.”
In the aftermath of today’s acts of mass murder or terror, be they the slaughtering of young concertgoers in Paris, a racially-motivated mass killing in a South Carolina church or this week’s atrocity in a gay club in Orlando, there is usually a standard phrase used in most media accounts: “Here is what we know so far.” Is it just me, or is that phrase, followed by earnest diagrams and timelines, becoming laced with irony?
I’m not sure what we know so far. I’m used to at least trying to put everything in neat context, but it just gets more and more complex: “We don’t have world wars,” one millennial said to me after Orlando. “We just have all these atrocities.” No matter how much #LoveIsLove we express in their aftermath, hate continues to flourish and shape-shift. And I feel I know less and less about how to help stop it.
It’s a dangerous feeling to have. Judith Timson writes weekly about cultural, social and political issues. You can reach her at judith.timson@ sympatico.ca and follow her on Twitter @judithtimson