Haters gonna hate hate

If we are to ban states of mind, my vote would be for self-righteousness first, followed by sententiousness, with maybe imbecility as third choice. That would criminalise most of the people in the country I cannot abide, including all of the Lib Dems, Momentum and Justine Greening.

Sadly, the state of mind which the government wishes to ban is that rather more useful quality, hate. You are not allowed to hate anything any more, except for hate itself. But at least in hating hate you can really let yourself go, even if it is usually a wholly imaginary hate that you are hating. You can spew out your bile suffused with self–righteousness, sententiousness and imbecility. You can have yourself an anti-hate hate fest, safe in the knowledge that your hatred of hate is commendable. You can even join the organisation Stop Hate UK, which is trousering up plenty of funding for directing its hatred at hatred.

Stop Hate UK (SHU) doesn’t hate only hate, it also hates Brexit and people who argue that perhaps we’ve had too much immigration or are a little nonplussed when told that a muscular bloke with a beard in a dress is as authentically female as a real female. In other words, it hates a majority of the population.

You see, there is a lot of scope in hating hate: you are allowed a certain mission creep. If you weren’t, you would simply be a hippy. Anyway, SHU argues that it is ‘indisputable’ that hate crimes have increased enormously since and as a consequence of that hateful Brexit vote. Hatey people are going around beating up Poles and Pakistanis, or shouting out nasty things to them (‘whatever they call you, call us,’ demands SHU).