Hate or hatred is an emotion of intense revulsion, distaste, enmity, or antipathy for a person, thing, or phenomenon; a desire to avoid, restrict, remove, or destroy its object.
Hatred can be based on fear of its object, justified or unjustified, or past negative consequences of dealing with that object. Hatred is often described as the opposite of love or friendship; others consider the opposite of love to be indifference.
Hatred is not necessarily irrational or unusual. It is reasonable to hate people and organizations that threaten or inflict suffering on oneself, or whose survival interests are directly opposed to one's own. People hate impediments to their health and wellbeing. Popular objects of hate include fascism, communism, nazism, war, slavery and genocide. Often 'hate' is used casually to describe things one merely dislikes, such as a particular style of architecture, a demographic of people, a certain climate, a bad movie, one's job, or some particular food.
"Hate" or "hatred" is also used to describe feelings of prejudice or bigotry against a group of people, such as racism, and intense religious prejudice. Hate crimes are crimes committed out of hatred in this sense. Sometimes people, when harmed by a member of an ethnic or religious group, will come to hate that entire group. This is not socially acceptable, as Western culture frowns on collective punishment and insists that people be treated as individuals rather than members of groups.
Hate is often a precursor to violence. Before a war, it is often useful to train the populace to hate some nation or political regime. Hatred remains a major motive behind armed conflicts such as war and terrorism. It is not easy to know when hate is logical and when it has become counterproductive and self-perpetuating.
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