Two Minutes Hate

In the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell, the Two Minutes Hate is the daily period during which members of the Outer and Inner Party of Oceania must watch a film depicting Emmanuel Goldstein, the principal enemy of the state, and his followers, the Brotherhood, and loudly voice their hatred for the enemy and then their love for Big Brother.^[1]

The political purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is to allow the citizens of Oceania to vent their existential anguish and personal hatred towards 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 towards non-existent external enemies, the Party minimises thoughtcrime and the consequent subversive behaviours of thoughtcriminals.^[2]

Purpose

In the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the first session of Two Minutes Hate shows the introduction of O'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.^[3]

Brainwashing of 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,^[4] 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, either Eastasia or Eurasia. The hate session includes the participants throwing things at the telescreen showing the film, as does the Julia character. 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 soldier charges towards the viewers, while firing his sub-machinegun; the face of that soldier then becomes the face of Big Brother.^[5] 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 created Hate Week, a week-long festival of hatreds.^[6]

Instances and parallels

In a 2012 blog post, a Ukrainian TV manager said attacks on the government's liberal opposition by Russian state-owned Russia-1 reminded him of the "two minutes of hate".^[7] American propaganda by the Committee on Public Information during the First World War has also been compared to the propaganda in the "two minutes hate" programme.^[8]

See also

• Novels portal

• Brainwashing
• Classical conditioning
• Enemy of the people
• Hate speech
• Propaganda
• Stochastic terrorism
• Struggle session