Federico Reyes Heroles
It is said that we hate certain people because we do not know them, and we do not know them because we hate them. We live in times of hatred as if it were a principle. Iran’s leaders have declared that their ultimate goal is the extermination—the complete destruction—of Israel. It starts with words. Israel’s actions seek the extermination of Palestinians. Netanyahu complains that 95% of the victims of Iran’s attack were civilians. Excuse me, but what were or are the thousands of dead in Gaza? They were also civilians. Most of the hostages taken by Hamas were civilians. Zero consistency. Impulses.
For decades, some academics have conceptualized and quantified what they call “societies of hatred.” They are not referring to ancestral hatreds: misogyny, race, or religion. There are other things: sexual diversity. Stereotypes and falsehoods fuel the new hatreds. To make matters worse, there is the power of new technologies and mass communication, which gives a voice to words, as well as the invasion of screens. It is a dimension without borders. Readers will recall Trump’s insulting remarks in 2015: Mexicans were bringing crime and drugs to the US and were also rapists. What became of those words? They did not fall away, they vanished, they remained in some corner of the minds of millions, they live on in them. The Cato Institute reports that in 2023, there were 1,617,197 US-born prisoners. Undocumented migrants numbered 67,813. I mean, falsehoods.
At a Netanyahu conference I attended, the politician raised his hand and stated: There are five countries that Israel must eliminate. He listed them one by one, raising a finger for each one. “It is enough for one man to hate another for hatred to spread to the whole of humanity,” is attributed to Sartre. Hitler was obvious, but there were others: Stalin and Pol Pot. In 2025, the list of influential people who instill hatred is very long. Social media are overflowing with insults, disparagement, and hatred.
Necessary question: how do those who sow hatred come to power? The US re-elected Trump. Netanyahu returned. Social condemnation of hatred is appallingly weak. There are exceptions. In 2023, the Southern Poverty Law Center recorded more than 800 “hate groups.” Of these, 220 are centered on the rejection of migrants. That is why the United Nations launched a cultural strategy for conceptualizing and reporting hate speech. That is why the “New King” of the north has been pursuing it since his first term. Imagine the damage it has done to UNESCO or the World Health Organization. They are weakened. Iran is not authorized to manufacture nuclear weapons.
Hatred carries cruelty in its gut. The scenes of repression against protesters in the United States go beyond the fulfillment of an order. Schools, churches, and stadiums are empty for fear of arbitrary arrest, simply because of the color of their skin. Those police officers hate and are cruel. Cruelty, plus uniforms and batons, is a terrible combination. The heartbreaking spectacle of families—women and children—fleeing the attacks on Gaza speaks of human misery mounted on modernity. The widespread hatred that is mass-produced today is putting the world’s democracies in check. Mexico is no exception; rather, it is a prominent example of this. Seven years of injecting poison from the mañanera divided the nation. Seven years of simplistic labels—simplicity is the fashion of thought—“fifís,” hypocrites, members of castes, thieves, gangs of ruffians. As with Trump, these words live in the minds of many Mexicans.
What can we do? Let’s start at home, in our own homes and our common home, Mexico. Intolerance toward hatred is civilizing. The first step is to be sensitive to offenses, in after-dinner conversations, on radio discussions, in publications, wherever they may occur.
Offenses lead to hatred. Hatred leads to cruelty. That is what we are experiencing.
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