Different Forms Of Hatred

Not all hatred has to do with dislike of someone for an aspect of their identity they have no direct control over, like their gender or skin color.  One of the grand lies about hatred that is popular on almost all sides of the political spectrum is that hatred is automatically evil because it entails illicit discrimination, abusive behavior or desires, or selfishness.  Even if they do not equate hatred with things like sexism and racism--as if sexism and racism always even emerge from sheer hatred as opposed to stupidity, arrogance, and cultural conditioning--many people oppose hatred on the basis of the slippery slope fallacy: they fear what some people might do if they thought hatred is sometimes a valid attitude and motivator.

The truth is that hatred does not involve any of these things by default.  Of course, someone could hate another person just because of their gender; the exact terms for this are misogyny and misandry, and these attitudes are possible manifestations of sexism.  Likewise, someone could hate another person for their skin color; this is just a more intense kind of racism than others.  Someone could also hate others for their age or nationality.  The similarity between all of these different forms of hatred, beyond them all being legitimate examples of hatred, is that they involve hating someone for a characteristic they cannot change by willpower, reflection, or going about their daily lives.  This kind of hatred is either baseless and therefore irrational or based on stereotypes and therefore still irrational.

However, it is quite stupid to think that there are no other forms of hatred with very different motivations, conceptual natures, and moral aspects.  One person could hate another because the latter has refused to be consistent with their own moral and intellectual demands or even failed to ensure that these demands are in line with reality itself.  One person could hate another because the latter hates people without basis other than arbitrary personal preference, which means the former person actually does have a basis of substance for their hatred.  These forms of hatred are objectively distinct from the kinds involving irrational discrimination or other assumptions.

For whatever reason, people who seem to ironically, hypocritically hate those who are driven by even philosophically legitimate hatred not only are inconsistent enough to hate hatred, but also are shallow enough to think all hatred is ultimately invalid for the same reasons.  Nevertheless, one can hate certain people very deeply without sacrificing rationality to the slightest extent and without hating anyone on baseless grounds.  It does not follow logically that worldviews and actions featuring hatred are always emotionalistic, selfish, or unjust.  Popular but erroneous and superficial misunderstandings of hatred simply obscure these facts for some people.

Hatred is not identical to cruelty.  It is not impossible to love and hate someone simultaneously.  Hatred is even something the Bible repeatedly describes as something God harbors for people like sadists (such as in Psalm 11:5).  It is outright asinine for people to make even the smallest conceptual error in understanding what the experience and idea of hatred are and are not, but the errors most people at least verbally make go beyond misunderstanding the basic concept of hatred.  It is assumed to be a horrendous evil by many regardless of context and how a person acts or thinks because of it.  Despite this, there is no logical or Biblical proof that hatred itself is evil or even psychologically destructive.  Like many other things, hatred can be felt for many different reasons and acted upon in many different ways.