[Gorani:] A woman's hijab tore from her head by a stranger on the tube, a man stabbed in the neck for speaking Polish in public, just two examples of hate crimes in this country, the UK, and they have surged by a record 29% in the past year. New figures show that the Brexit referendum of 2016 and then a string of terrorist attacks earlier this year were followed by spikes in racially aggravated crime. The UK Home Office says that, although some of the rise is down to increased reporting, it also marks a significant increase in hate crime. Does it have to do with some of the messaging that came out during, for instance, the Brexit referendum campaigns? Some people say it could have a relationship to that, the feelings that immigrants may be causing problems for this country. My next guest says, in the era of Trump, America is at risk of hate crime becoming the new normal. She says the president's own behavior fosters an environment where intolerance could be considered more socially acceptable. Maria Konnikova is a contributing writer for "The New Yorker" and she joins me live from New York. You wrote a piece called the new normal. What is the new normal in the era of Donald Trump in the United States?
[Maria Konnikova, Contributing Writer, "the New Yorker":] Well, Donald Trump is the voice of the free world, for better, or some might say, for worse. And so, when he says something or acts in a certain way, it becomes it's kind of a message from above that this is the way that we should be acting or that we can be acting, that this is the way that we can express our frustration. And so, what he says ends up becoming somehow, through a trickle-down effect, the new norm of social behavior. It's hate speech normal. Well, some would now say, sure, the president does it, why can't I?
[Gorani:] First in Charlottesville as an example, where you had these neo- Nazis, these white supremacists, marching with tiki torches. After that, the president famously said that among them there were some very fine people. Here's a hypothetical. If the President of the United States Donald Trump had come out and said these men and women are un-American, their message is un-American and shocking, and I condemn wholeheartedly, let's assume he had said that instead of what he did say at the time. What difference could that have made?
[Konnikova:] That would have made a huge difference because people look to sources above them, as psychologists have known for decades, for cues on what is and isn't OK to say and how one can act and how one can't act. So, if the president condemns hate crime and says this isn't OK, suddenly if I have these impulses, if I want to say anything like this, I'm going to tone it down, I'm going to say, OK, at least I can't express this in public. If the president calls me or someone like me a fine person, what am I going to do, I'm going to say, this is amazing, I don't even have to tone it down anymore, I can ramp it up, I can say it in public, and I'm going to be sanctioned by the most powerful office in the country.
[Gorani:] But what's interesting is, in your piece, you're not saying people are necessarily inherently, to their core, experienced bigots or homophobes or Islamophobes? You even give an example you give an example at the beginning of your piece of someone who didn't who drew neo-Nazi graffiti and he didn't even get the shape of the swastika right. Why is that significant?
[Konnikova:] So, you have people who are just frustrated, who are displaced, who don't like the fact that they don't have power and that there are elites who do have power, and they are looking for a way to vent that frustration, to express it. And so, they look from above. This isn't an inbred hatred. This isn't something that's kind of deeply rooted prejudice on their end. It's a way of expressing just general social anxiety and discomfort. And so, you look for cues from above because those are your sources of authority. That's where social norms are set, from above, from the places of authority. So, when the president uses anti-Semitic rhetoric, all of a sudden, it's OK for you to do it, so you try it on for size.
[Gorani:] You give the example of Rwanda, obviously, where many years and many thousands of miles away from anything happening in the United States, but it found it interesting that, for generations, and you give this example, Hutus and Tutsis lived side-by-side and when there was this directive from above to massacre basically your next-door neighbor that that happened very easily. And what made me obviously, we're all it made me wonder, are we all really that pliable that all it takes after generations of living in peace with a neighbor we cover the Middle East a lot, we see it a lot in certainly community that that's all that is required, is just a directive from above?
[Konnikova:] You know what, it's a very scary thought. And the woman who did this research, Betsy Pollock, just won a MacArthur Genius grant because it's incredibly it's incredibly timely right now. And the answers is, for the most part, yes because sometimes Hutus were married to Tutsis. These weren't even neighbors. This was your family. When everyone around you, when your entire community is acting a certain way, maybe at first you resist, but unless there's someone who's helping you, unless there's kind of a way to foster that resistance, it becomes very easy to find yourself kind of in that same root. So, a lot of the Hutus and Tutsis said we felt like cattle. So, this was a direct quote that that's actually somehow, we turned into cows and we were being herded in one direction. And you see it happening, but it's really hard to resist because we really care about being liked and we really care about being members of our community. And there have been studies after studies that have shown that, when everyone is against you, you will often give the answer that you know is wrong just because everyone else is doing it. And, over time, especially when it's social norms, you stop seeing what's right and what's wrong. Instead, you are just saying this is how everyone is acting. And it seems totally crazy. It seems like this can never happen to us. But then you look at studies like Stanley Milgram's, obedience studies that were done after World War II, when people would give electric shocks to someone who they thought was suffering from a heart condition which seems totally inhuman
[Gorani:] And they did it.
[Konnikova:] But there was a voice of authority, someone in a jacket, in a lab coat who said, no, this is fine, keep going, and they kept going.
[Gorani:] All right. Well, there is a lot more to talk about on this topic. Maria Konnikova, thanks very much for joining us from New York. We appreciate your time. Very interesting piece in "The New Yorker." Coming up, a former "Fox News" host accused of sexual misconduct says it has been horrible for him and his family. Bill O'Reilly lashes out after revelations of a $32 million settlement with a former colleague.