Two Minutes Hate

In thedystopiannovelNineteen Eighty-Four(1949) byGeorge Orwell,theTwo Minutes Hateis the daily period during which members of the Outer and Inner Party ofOceaniamust watch a film depictingEmmanuel Goldstein,the principalenemy of the state,and his followers, the Brotherhood, and loudly voice their hatred for the enemy and then their love forBig Brother.

The political purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their existential anguish and personal hatred toward politically expedient enemies: Goldstein and the enemy super-state of the moment. In re-directing the members' subconscious feelings away from the Party's governance of Oceania and toward non-existent external enemies, the Party minimisesthought crimeand the consequent subversive behaviours ofthoughtcriminals.

Purpose

In the novelNineteen Eighty-Four,the first session of Two Minutes Hate shows the introduction ofO'Brien,a member of the Inner Party, to the story of Winston Smith, the protagonist whose feelings communicate the effectiveness of the Party's psychological manipulation and control of Oceanian society:

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.

Brainwashingof the participants in the Two Minutes Hate includes auditory and visual cues, such as "a hideous, grinding screech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil" that burst from the telescreen,meant to psychologically excite the crowd into an emotional frenzy of hatred, fear, and loathing for Emmanuel Goldstein, and for Oceania's enemy of the moment, eitherEastasiaorEurasia.The hate session includes the participants throwing things at thetelescreenshowing the film, as does theJuliacharacter. In the course of the Two Minutes Hate, the film image of Goldstein metamorphoses into the face of a bleating sheep, as enemy soldiers advance towards the viewers of the film, before one enemy soldiercharges towards the viewers,whilst firing his sub-machinegun; the face of that soldier then becomes the face ofBig Brother.At the end of the two-minute session of hatred, the members of the Party ritualistically chant "B-B... B-B... B-B... B-B." To maintain the extreme emotions provoked in the Two Minutes Hate sessions, the Party createdHate Week,a week-long festival of hatreds.

Instances and parallels

The attacks on theliberalopposition by state-ownedRussiantelevisionchannels such asRussia-1andRThave been characterised as reminiscent of the "two minutes hate". Russian television portrayedUkrainian troopsas monsters during thewar in Donbas.One of the most notorious examples was a 2014hoax reportonChannel One RussiathatUkrainiansoldiers hadcrucifiedathree-year-old child.American propagandaby theCommittee on Public InformationduringWorld War Ihas also been compared to the propaganda in the "two minutes hate" program.

TheIndianfar right media has also been alleged to use similar practices to denouncePakistanto distract people from local issue and makeMuslimstargets ofHindutvahate attacks.

See also

• Classical conditioning
• Enemy of the people
• Propaganda
• Struggle session