Joyful contempt / Essential anger

Today:  Anna Merlan, author of REPUBLIC OF LIES: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power; and Diana Moskovitz, investigations editor, writer, and co-owner of Defector.

Issue No. 122

Summer of the Hater
Anna Merlan

Bikini Kill Has News For You
Diana Moskovitz

Summer of the Hater

by Anna Merlan

Through June and into July, the summer of 2024 was shaping up to be a celebratory, exhilaratingly cathartic Summer of the Hater. Leading this much-needed revival was rapper Kendrick Lamar, who wrote an astonishing series of diss tracks about how much his former colleague Drake, in his estimation, sucks, is a bad or absent father, an unoriginal culture vulture, and, allegedly, a “certified pedophile.” This extravaganza of insults culminated in a hallucinatory Inglewood show where Kendrick was joined by nearly every living West Coast hip-hop icon imaginable, during the course of which he played “Not Like Us,” the climactic diss track of the lot, six times, pausing at various points each time to let the audience joyfully take over. People identified as Crips and Bloods danced together onstage, prompting one Twitter user to wisely note, “There has never been such a complete cultural victory before this. this is Genghis Khan levels of hating.” 

To be a hater is to criticize things openly, spiritedly, unabashedly. It’s to say what you mean, and more often than not, to give others permission to say it too, in a satisfying camaraderie of shared feeling. The entire world, minus the president’s innermost circle, recently joined together in noting that Joe Biden didn’t do a good job during the recent presidential debate, on account of being mostly dead. Katy Perry’s song “Woman’s World” was savaged around the world, so thoroughly that she eventually claimed it was satire. A new book by journalist Lili Anolik will reveal more detail on the decades-long frenenmity between Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, an inspiration and a reflection for those of us who may need to keep the objects of our hating close. Eminem tried to criticize the very concept of hating by dismissing haters as “complainers” in a justly ignored song. 

Hating is the opposite of undermining, which is passive-aggressive, infuriating, and not bold enough to declare the courage of its convictions. Hating, at last, is everywhere, and it is praxis. 

I, too, have been imbued with the spirit. The other week, a friend took me to a fancy goth gem store for my birthday. She hefted a rock in her palm and tried to hand it to me, saying, “This one dispels negative energy.” 

“No,” I said, before I could really think about it. “I’m using mine.”