The Two Minutes Hate, from George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, is a daily period in which Party members of the society of Oceania must watch a film depicting the Party's enemies (notably Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers) and express their hatred for them for exactly two minutes.
Contents
Details from Nineteen Eighty-Four
The protagonist's feelings, the psychological methods and their effects within a social setting are analyzed in detail by Orwell in the following passage:
The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.
The film and its accompanying auditory and visual cues (which include a grinding noise that Orwell describes as "of some monstrous machine running without oil") are a form of brainwashing to Party members, attempting to whip them into a frenzy of hatred and loathing for Emmanuel Goldstein and the current enemy superstate. Apparently, it is not uncommon for those caught up in the hate to physically assault or throw things at the telescreen, as Julia does during the scene.
The film becomes more surreal as it progresses, with Goldstein's face morphing into a sheep as enemy soldiers advance on the viewers, before one such soldier charges at the screen, submachine gun blazing. He morphs, finally, into the face of Big Brother at the end of the two minutes. At the end, the mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted viewers chant "B-B!...B-B!" over and over again, ritualistically.
Within the book, the purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is said to satisfy the citizens' subdued feelings of angst and hatred from leading such a wretched, controlled existence. By re-directing these subconscious feelings away from the Oceanian government and toward external enemies (which probably do not even exist), the Party minimises subversive thought and behaviour.
In the first Two Minutes Hate of the book, the audience is introduced to Inner Party member and key character O'Brien. Within the novel, hate week is an extrapolation of the two-minute period into an annual week-long festival.
Origins of the term
Orwell did not invent the idea behind the term "two minutes hate"; it was already in use in the First World War. At that time, British writers satirised the German campaign of hatred against the English, and imagined a Prussian family sitting around the kitchen table having its "morning hate".
In addition, short daily artillery bombardments made by either side during the First World War, and aimed at disrupting enemy routines, were known as "hates":
The evening of this same inspection was one of the few occasions on which Pommier was bombarded. A sudden two minutes’ ‘hate’ of about 40 shells, 4.2 and 5.9, wounded three men and killed both the C.O.’s horses, ‘Silvertail’ and ‘Baby’
Use of Orwell's concept
Russian T.V.'s Rossiya 1's attacks on the liberal opposition have been characterised as reminiscent of the 'two minutes of hate' in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Russian television has been used to portray Ukrainian troops as monsters during the War in Donbass. One of the most notorious examples was a (hoax) 2014 report on state-controlled Channel One TV that Ukrainian soldiers had crucified a three-year-old.
During the 2016 presidential campaign speeches by Donald Trump were occasionally compared to the novel, sometimes commented on citing passages on two minutes hate as evidence.
American propaganda by the CPI during World War I was also compared to Orwell's novel and the hate propaganda in the two minutes hate program.