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Assignment 13: Miguel Montana

In “Affective Economies” by Sara Ahmed she examines how external environmental factors contribute to the emotional stability of individuals. She does this through examples, starting with the Aryan Nation website and its’ perpetuation of hate. In her examination of these hate groups and their content, one thing that she wants the reader to keep in mind is that they love to hate. And it’s in this love, that there is a sense of approach that can be garnered and understood by the perpetrators. Perhaps, and this is something that I think, in understanding the causal relationship between the individual’s love of perpetuating hate and why, further empathy and understanding can be gained. And in turn, can crumble their movement, too. These examples that she uses continue to extrapolate this idea of having a different basis of understanding why people hate the things that they hate, and how we interpret that information differently than they do. Which gives the readers an added sense of perspective, but, and this is also what I think, does little to justify the criminality of their behavior and their hypocritical response to similar treatment. It’s not difficult to argue that when subjected to the same treatment, these hate groups fail to comprehend why anyone would treat them in such a way, and why they shouldn’t treat other’s in such a way either. Which is curious, I think, as it outlines something a little more important when it comes to people that are subjected to hate groups and ideologies. And it’s that the things and people that they are taught to hate, or have come to love to hate, they don’t exactly view as human or anything worthwhile to save. Which is why it’s so acceptable for them to treat the people that they hate in such an awful way but when they are subjected to the same treatment they can’t tolerate it and quickly fold.