Are you baffled by or fascinated by or despairing of the human capacity for hatred and violence? Ever since reading about the Holocaust as a young boy, I have been. So “Why We Hate,” written by the prolific and redoubtable Alex Gibney and directed by Geeta Gandbhir and Sam Pollard, attracted me. The six-part documentary surely chimes with our times. I became thoroughly engrossed. The first five episodes delve into hatred, covering evolutionary clues, tribalism, incitement playbooks, the role of ideology, and hatred’s ultimate conclusion of genocide. Artfully directed as a blend of footage and brilliant talking heads, each episode offers insights. Particularly impressive was International criminal lawyer Patricia Viseur Sellers talking about meting justice against perpetrators of crimes against humanity. The final episode of Why We Hate enlists a neuroscientist to offer hope derived from the plasticity of the human brain. Perhaps that dose of positivity struck me as a mere glimmer, leaving me as unclear as ever about why, indeed, we hate and what we can do, but overall this is another vital Gibney moral record.
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