THE words ‘hate’ and ‘crime’ both incur images of what the French thinker Emile Durkheim called ‘anomie’, by which he meant the breakdown of everyday norms and values. Individuals who fall out of sync with established modes of societal behaviour develop a propensity to criminality and hatefulness — modern society is charged, according to Durkheim, with the responsibility of nursing such individuals back to normality.

We are passing through an age in which one of the candidates for president in the world’s most powerful country openly espouses hate towards the ‘other’, while his party continues to oppose bans on the purchase and use of guns by ordinary citizens which, as we saw with Omar Mateen in Orlando, allows deranged individuals to wreak havoc on unsuspecting populations.

How would Durkheim explain such a state of affairs? Is the outrageous behaviour of Donald Trump more ‘normal’ than the actions of Omar Mateen? One could argue in a strictly legal sense that Trump does not commit a crime by opening his mouth, whereas Omar Mateen’s murderous attack was a crime of the most gruesome variety. But that is neither here nor there. Indeed, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if many gun-wielding, homophobic Republicans secretly advocate hate crimes against the gay community which Mateen targeted.

Take an example closer to home; in recent weeks two transgenders have been killed in broad daylight in Peshawar, presumably under the pretext that their untypical sexual identity permits ‘normal’ individuals to undertake such acts. And what of Mumtaz Qadri? How do we reconcile his ‘hate crime’ with his adulation by millions of ordinary Pakistanis indoctrinated to believe that godly justice is served by such actions? How do we determine ‘normality’ and anomie when confronted with such jarring facts?

Differences are as pronounced today as they ever were.

Despite the increasingly standardised use of the language of democracy, rule of law and human rights, modern societies are deeply divided, both in terms of material inequalities as well as the norms and values that guide everyday behaviour. A sophisticated thinker like Durkheim was certainly aware of this, but the world has changed dramatically since classical social theorists came to prominence a century ago.

The so-called ‘civilised’ countries that spawned the great (white) thinkers of the 19th and early 20th centuries saw their coloured subjects in the colonies rebel against them and create independent states thus turning ideas of ‘normality’ on their head, in which white was superior to non-white. Similarly, the ‘normalness’ of men exclusively determining the course of society’s development was challenged by the institution of universal suffrage which gave women the right to reject ‘propriety’ and participate in public life.

More recently, the sexual rights revolution in the Western world has completely altered the previous ‘normal’ vis-à-vis our understanding of human nature and the family. Needless to say, every society has internalised these changes to differing extents — it will be a long while, for instance, before a country like Pakistan ever provides legal cover to same-sex marriage (if ever).

The point I wish to emphasise is that there never has been, and nor will there be a completely uniform set of norms and values in any given society. Perhaps more importantly, beha­vioural norms are generally conditioned by the structure of power, which needs to be critically interrogated if we are to understand the contradictions to which I made mention here.

So, for instance, does the electoral victory of individuals like Barack Obama or Sadiq Khan suggest that racism in America and Britain respectively is a thing of the past? Or does modern society rid itself of patriarchy when women become leg­ally entitled to the citizenship rights accorded to men? Not at all — in fact it can very reasonably be argued that the differences between whites and people of colour; men and women; sexual majorities and minorities; rich and poor, and so on are as pronounced today as they ever were, notwithstanding the adoption of formal measures that suggest equal rights.

We have to be brave enough to acknowledge that the ‘abnormal’ behaviour of certain individuals who commit ‘crimes’, whether hateful or petty, is due to rather than in spite of the structures of power that prevail in society. The state in particular, with its legal institutions, creates many of the conditions within which ‘deviant’ behaviour takes place, whilst also enjoying a mandate to define what is ‘normal’ and what is not.

The global discourse on ‘terrorism’ is perhaps the most obvious example of just how dumbed-down our collective understanding of power, privilege, injustice and inequality has become. It is a symptom of how much political space has shrunk since the end of the Cold War, even while the rich and powerful continue to peddle hate, and commit crimes with impunity, and sometimes even rapturous applause. They keep us fearful of being the next victims of a ‘hate crime’, and we keep applauding.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, June 17th, 2016