Hate Crime is a Redundant, Repetitive Term

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been reading Omer Bartov's Mirrors of Destruction. Bartov says that there should be a distinction between the Soviet Gulags and the Nazi death camps. This comes, as he says, from a "failure to distinguish between racial genocide and political persecutions" (p. 173). I ask, "Is one worse than the other?"

Is mass murder by the Soviets of political dissidents some how more noble than the Nazi killings of Jews because of their Jewishness? While the Soviets were not motivated by racial motives, they killed as many people as, if not more than, the Nazis. It is easy to say the Nazis were worse, but in doing so, we somehow saying the Soviets were better. I cannot buy that.

In our city, we had a recent "hate crime"--a term that is ridiculous because it is redundant. A white man approached an interracial couple (white woman, black man) in a store parking lot. He apparently uttered some racial slur and fired a gun. Many were up in arms about this "hate crime." I ask, "Would it have been better if he had criticized the car they were driving and fired a gun?" Is the murder or assault of someone worse because they are attacked because of their ethnicity, or for some other reason.

This brings me back to the idea of a "hate crime." Is there such a thing as a "love crime"? Is not all crime motivated by--or at least facilitated by--hate? If we truly love someone, we will not violate them or their property.