What Hate Politics Taught Me

The rise of cult politicians like Trump, Modi, and many others around the world has transformed the political landscape across many regions and countries. A new right-wing politics has emerged, one built entirely on hate and division. In reality, polarization, or divide and rule, has long been a familiar political trick used by politicians across parties to win elections. But these political cult leaders and their comrades have taken polarization to unprecedented levels. They not only managed to sharpen ideological differences but also divided people as if they were enemies of each other, separated by race, nationality, and political belief.

This phenomenon, no matter how harmful to our nations and societies, has taught me at least one important thing. It has shown me how many people around me, including friends and family, carry deep hatred toward people they have never even met. This hatred is not rooted in personal experience; it is driven purely by the religion, caste, or nationality of those they feel threatened by. Many hold a visceral hatred for Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Jews, other races, and people who simply look different, and they no longer feel the need to hide it.

What surprises me most is not the hatred itself, but how comfortably people carry it, how they live with that much rage and venom inside them, day after day, and call it normal. I often wonder whether this hatred is a newly formed perception, shaped by propaganda constantly fed to them from every direction, or whether it was always there, dormant, and simply resurfaced when it found a conducive environment, the way a latent virus reawakens.

In a strange way, all this polarization has been clarifying. While revealing the true character of many people around me, it reminded me how rare and precious love and kindness actually are.

Hostility toward my views is not new to me. I have faced it since I was very young, and I was still trying to navigate complex questions and doubts I had about many things happening around me. But the intensity of the attacks, and the visceral, personal hatred directed at anyone who dares to disagree, is something new. The moment you express an opinion, you are not only placed in a camp but branded with a label meant to ridicule rather than engage. There is no discussion, only attack. Questions are not asked; accusations are hurled, and judgments are passed. Shouting matches are passed off as debates. Facts no longer matter if they fail to confirm what you already believe. Everything that challenges your belief is fake; everything that validates it is unquestionable truth. This is the binary world manufactured by cult politicians and their followers.

Even in this polarized and charged environment, I feel genuinely lucky — lucky that what I carry inside me is not hate, but love, and enough of it to spread around. While so many choose to spew venom, I choose differently. And in times like these, that choice feels more important than ever.

I hope that no matter what you believe or which political party you support, you choose to spread love and not hatred. Because you can only give what you have, and if what you are spreading is hate, fear, and lies, that is what you are full of. Be brave. Choose love over hate. 

Thank you for reading, and please share your views on this topic.