The Hate Racket

"So the farmer chooses to sell his pretty daughter to a visiting purchasing agent. And, having seen her off for the factory--or the red-light district, where she will have the honor of entertaining knights in khaki or tycoons in kimonos until she dies of syphilis or t.b.--he sighs with relief as he goes to cash the check which will repay a large part of his debt."

So runs "The Truth About the Japs," as presented to the American public in the widely read pulp magazines and newspapers of our nation. This quotation happens to come from an article by Ernest O. Hauser in the January issue of LOOK magazine. Claiming that "no one in America has a keener understanding of the Japanese than Mr. Hauser," LOOK proceeds to publish an article which would be labeled "humour" if it were not printed at this particular time. "The Japanese is compelled to go through life without romance--which may be why he lacks imagination and is generally such a dull companion," writes our learned "sociologist." "I have seen little boys behave so badly that in America they would have been spanked and sent to bed," he continues. "In Tokyo, everyone looked at their antics with pride and infinite indulgence."

Similar documents in similar magazines tell how "Nazi officials look forward to the day when no child will have any legal father other than the German State"; and how Hitler took Jewish-born blonde beauty, Leni Refinstahl, to the opera six times and then had her husband done away with.

The nation that is fed with this kind of journalese during the war will be expected to drink the cup of peace after the war. That is the paradox of winning both the war and the peace. All talk about fighting the enemy governments, and not the enemy peoples, is being choked in an attempt to whip the American public into a psychological tantrum that will inspire them to make great sacrifices at home and do deeds of unsurpassed daring on the battle fronts.

This is an all out war. It is a war in which the civilians are fully as important a factor as the armed forces. We must not only hate the little yellow warrior; not only despise the war party that has created them; but we must learn to loathe every Japanese boy and girl who gather rice in the fields, or go without food so that the yellow army can bomb our shores. It is the people, the customs, the culture,--every least part of the Japanese civilization that is symbolized by a spider or an octopus in the cartoons which decorate the editorial pages of our city newspapers.

And yet, all this will have to be unlearned, if there is to be an objective peace, based on freedom, and enforced with justice. The very forces which are calculated to spur us to victory can destroy what we have been fighting for, after the war is won.

This is the paradox which has nurtured the hate racket. But it is based on the assumption that the only way to make American democracy worth fighting for is to blacken the way of life of every nation which threatens democracy. This assumption is false. The American people do not have to be doped with the adrenaline of hate journalism. All they need is the facts: the facts about the strength of their own forces, about the actual danger which is facing them. If the newspapers and magazines of the country would spend less effort on giving them unnecessary excuses to fight the enemy, and more accurate reporting and cold fact, the people would respond with a seriousness which is not warranted by the pulp journalese which they are now expected to take seriously.