It seems the world has had a week of hate all around.
On the heels of an extremist’s attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, killing 49 and injuring 53 more, a new and rising British member of Parliament who advocated for refugees and diversity was fatally shot and stabbed last week by an apparent white supremacist.
News outlets are reporting that the alleged killer of Labour party member Jo Cox was a longtime supporter of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, a once-prominent American white supremacist group. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which operates Hatewatch, obtained records indicating that the alleged killer, Thomas Mair, 52, purchased a manual from the National Alliance in 1999 that included instructions on how to build a pistol.
The Guardian, meanwhile, confirmed police reports that Nazi regalia and literature, including the manual with instructions on building a pistol, were found after searching Mair’s home.
And The Daily Telegraph reported Mair was a subscriber to S. A. Patriot, a South African magazine published by the White Rhino Club, a pro-apartheid group. Hatewatch reports that the White Rhino Club describes that magazine’s editorial stance as opposed to “multi-cultural societies” and “expansionist Islam.”
Cox, 41, also had worked as an aid worker in developing countries and went on to become head of policy at Oxfam, an international confederation of 17 organizations working in approximately 94 countries worldwide to find solutions to poverty and what it considers injustice around the world. She was elected to Parliament in 2015.
Eyewitnesses said Mair was armed with a knife and a gun and may have shouted “Britain First” or “Put Britain First” as he attacked Cox. News reports said the phrase may have been a possible reference to the far right Britain First party, whose leader, Paul Golding, is a former member of the white nationalist British National Party.
“Britain First” sounds all too much like Donald Trump’s foreign policy, “America First,” with its aim, among other things, to deport Mexicans and ban Muslims on the basis of their religion.
Why is there so much hate? The simple answer is because there isn’t enough love. But the more realistic answer is because we teach it – often unintentionally, but also often deliberately.
We must remember every day that children are not born knowing how to be afraid or to hate or even to be aware of prejudice, discrimination and stereotyping. These things are learned behavior.
We can and do teach children, early on and throughout the rest of their lives, how to hate – just as surely as we can and do want to teach them to love.