The Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College is trying to get beyond the tautophrase, "Haters gonna hate," and has launched a serious academic investigation of the phenomenon:
The Initiative’s goal is to create an energetic, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural community of students and scholars who will focus on improving our understanding of what hate is and how it works. Both a theoretical and a practical endeavor, it seeks to foster the academic study of hate while also connecting scholars and students to institutions and organizations (such as NGOs, legal and governmental agencies, religious groups, or the media) whose work involves dealing with hate-related issues.
As part of the program, an essay contest was held, and the student whose essay was judged the best has correlated increased hatred with increased equality.
With all respect to The Hannah Arendt Center and its serious commitment to an academic study of hate, I'm sticking with the insights of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
The weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
http://www.hannaharendtcenter.org/
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