Populism and Hate Feelings

A new wave of right- and left-wing populism has been on the rise since the 1990s, fuelingpolarization and conflict around the world. The high levels of polarization instilled by thepopulist worldview intensify negative emotions among antagonistic groups, escalating fromgeneralized fear to more attack-oriented and demeaning emotions such as anger, contempt,disgust, and ultimately hate — one of the most destructive and understudied human feelings.Hate is an intense, enduring, and meaningful emotional experience at the core of many racial,religious, ideological, and political conflicts, including those fostered by the populistworldview. Surprisingly, compared to other emotions, hate has been scarcely studied in thecontext of populism. In the present chapter, I propose a three-phase theoretical model to explainhow the populist worldview might progressively lead to the emergence of hate feelings. Thischapter provides a review of the main characteristics of the populist worldview, the distinctivefeatures of hate, and highlights the exceptional match between them through hate’s uniquecomponent emotions, appraisals, and goals. The implications of experiencing hate beyond otherdiscrete negative emotions in the context of populism and its consequences for intergroupconflict are discussed.