If you have the nerve to stomach it, open local social media and news sites any day and you will find a river of hatred.
“Go home” to the foreigners, “just leave” to those who make statements about the current state of development, “you are ruining our country” to government supporters and “sour grapes” to opposition supporters.
Such comments, in obviously much more coloured language, have become the order of the day. What is most worrisome is not the prolific language, it’s the sentiment of animosity behind these comments that has somehow come to be seen as normal.
There is a word for this: schadenfreude or the pleasure we get from seeing others suffer.
Ask anyone behind such comments and they will tell you that they are right and that the other party deserved to be on the receiving end of hatred.
I encourage you to look up the pyramid of hate starting with attitudes and beliefs, leading to cultural microaggressions, verbal expressions, physical expression, summiting in homicide or suicide. When we see others as the enemy, we behave like they are the enemy.
This river of hatred is a clear sign of verbal expressions which even locally has been shown to lead to worse. And I am not just saying. This is backed up by many years of research. Look at the Stanford prison experiment, the concepts of groupthink and schadenfreude to name a few.
In Malta, we seem to have become experts in creating barriers between who is the in-group and who is out. Those who share our beliefs are the best and those who don’t, well they’d better find a way out… there’s no space for them here anyway.
The hatred that serves politics so well is killing the country- Corinne Fenech
It looks like we still need to crack the nuts called ‘empathy’ and ‘diversity’.
Many actually feel threatened by the opinions of those who do not agree with them.
But perhaps it pays. Ask any political party whether it pays to have empathy. I bet you it doesn’t. If the people start empathising, then they will not have the fanatics clapping and shouting madly in mass meetings, they will not have those who blindly believe every word that comes out of the leader’s mouth as if it were the sacrosanct truth and those who would be able to kill for their beliefs. They would have a much more balanced and perhaps less loyal electorate; one which votes on the merits of actions rather than ingrained in unmoving principles based on ‘those who are not with us are against us’.
We are experiencing dehumanisation at a rate never seen before. Dear leaders of this country, open your eyes. The hatred that serves politics so well is killing the country I hope you truly love.
Why don’t we do something about it? Perhaps it is about time that we either let go of the illusion that the Maltese are truly a charitable nation or we start enabling people to understand that dissenting voices help us grow not harm our self-image.
Corinne Fenech is a PhD researcher specialising in unethical decision-making in organisations with the University of Glasgow; the research is partially funded by Tertiary Education Scholarship Scheme (Malta).