Lisa Dupler, a 33-year-old from Columbus, held up a rainbow-striped John Kerry sign outside the Nationwide Arena on Friday, as Republicans streamed out after being rallied by George W. Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger. A thickset woman with very short, dark hair, Dupler was silent and barely flinched as people passing her hissed “faggot” into her ear. An old lady looked at her and said, “You people are sick!” A kid who looked to be about 10 or 11 affected a limp wrist and mincing voice and said, “Oh, I’m gay.” Rather than restraining him, his squat mother guffawed and then turned to Dupler and sneered, “Why don’t you go marry your girlfriend?” Encouraged, her son yelled, “We don’t want faggots in the White House!
The throngs of Republicans were pumped after seeing the president and the action hero. But there was an angry edge to their elation. They shrieked at the dozen or so protesters standing on the concrete plaza outside the auditorium. “Kerry’s a terrorist! yelled a stocky kid in baggy jeans and braces. “Communists for Kerry! Go back to Russia,” someone else screamed. Many of the took up the chant “Kerry sucks”; old women and teenage boy shouting with equal ferocity
With four days to go until the election, you can feel th temperature rising in Ohio
Salon
Down with the Kerry haters
October 30, 2004Hatred, Hitler had recognized, was among the most powerful of emotions. That was what he consciously appealed to. That it what drove so many of his followers. But there was idealism, too — misplaced, certainly, but idealism none the less: hopes of a new society, of a ‘national community’ that would transcend all existing social divides . . . Those who did not belong to in the ‘national community’ — ‘shirkers’, ‘spongers’, ‘parasites’, and, of course, those deemed not to be German at all, notably Jews – would be ruthlessly suppressed
Ian Kershaw
Hitler
1998
Love is stronger than hate but hate is closer at hand: we find it easier to hate, to objectify/demonize. If you’re not one of Us, you’re one of Them and may God help you.