I read 1984 before social media was invented. I thought, wow, what an amazing novel about McCarthyism! But in the years since, I return more and more often to this story, and now we’re at the point where it’s a cliche to call the world Orwellian, even as I witness how we’re constantly directed in groups to aim our bile and vitriol at other groups, gnashing our teeth about how morally correct we are and how morally corrupt they are. And it doesn’t matter the side we choose — we’re both frothing at the same screen in fury over the sheer injustice of their thought and their speech and their existence. We’re two sides of the same coin. And none of us will tear our eyes away from the screen to see who’s running the projector.
FEED THEM DEATH has put this cycle of sanctimonious savagery into their two minute death grind onslaught “Two Minutes Hate.” They’ve created the pessimistic soundtrack to our screaming into the worldwide void. They’ve captured the catharsis of self-righteousness into a caustic, driving anthem that penetrates your senses like a rage-fuelled earworm. It’s off their new record The Malady that’s out now on Brucia Records — get it here. Listen to “Two Minutes Hate” below, and look away from others and into yourself.
The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, 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.
George Orwell, 1984
TWO MINUTES HATE [Lyrics]
In the long, windowless hall, with its double rows of cubicles an endless hum of voices murmuring their two minutes hate
The discontents produced by our bare and unsatisfying lives are all turned outwards and dissipated
And the speculations which might possibly induce a skeptical or rebellious attitude are killed
39 years on and still partake the two minutes hate
Acquainted to blind rage
We deserved two minutes hate
And the speculations which might possibly induce a skeptical or rebellious attitude are killed
In the long, windowless hall, with its double rows of cubicles an endless hum of voices murmuring their two minutes hate
