The Criminal Code of the Russian Federation defines incitement to ethnic hatred as public actions aimed at inciting hostility, hatred, humiliation of a person's dignity on the basis of race, nationality or language.
A wary attitude towards representatives of other peoples has lived in a person since ancient times. It is based on the fear that causes everything unknown and incomprehensible, as well as on the possible competition for resources with another community. Such relations gave rise to the worldview principle “stranger means enemy”. This is called xenophobia.
Modern man is less influenced by xenophobia than his distant ancestors, and yet, under certain circumstances, it comes to life.
Spontaneous inflammation
Sometimes interethnic strife does not even need to be kindled - it flares up on its own. The trigger is the search for the culprit. For example, a person cannot get a job and finds a convenient explanation: the immigrants are to blame, they have taken all jobs. On the other hand, immigrants blame the indigenous people for their troubles: the authorities treat them better. The higher the unemployment rate, the more people who think in this way, and this is no longer the opinion of an individual, but a public mood, which may well turn into riots and armed clashes.
National stereotypes play an important role in this process. For example, there is a vicious tradition of attributing greed and cunning to Jews. It is not far from here to accusing the Jews of poverty of representatives of other nations, and then to fantastic theories about the "worldwide Zionist conspiracy." The natives of the Caucasus are traditionally attributed to increased aggressiveness, so they are in a hurry to accuse them of an increase in crime, even if there is no evidence that the next robbery or rape was committed by Caucasians.
Purposeful incitement
In some cases, the incitement of interethnic hatred is beneficial to the authorities, because the principle of "divide and rule" was known in ancient Rome.
The media are used to incite hatred. Direct calls for reprisals against representatives of this or that nation would be a violation of the law, so a more subtle means is used, which psychologists call "hate speech."
One of the main methods of hate speech is focusing on the nationality of the participants in the events when it comes to negative facts. For example, you can write in the chronicle of incidents: "The Tajik janitor did not chuck the ice from the sidewalk, as a result of which the pensioner received a leg injury." After reading such a note, the impression remains that it was not just a woman who suffered because of the poor work of a janitor, but the Russian suffered because of a Tajik. If the fight was started by the Russians, the nationality of the hooligans may not be mentioned at all, but if the Chechens did it, it must be mentioned. A few such notes - and readers will be sure that all the fights in the city are started by Chechens.
Another trick is to link to authorities. The authority of science is quite high in the modern world, but the level of education leaves much to be desired, therefore, publications appear in the media and the Internet about certain scientists who allegedly proved that this or that nation is the most "genetically pure". Scientific propaganda can be veiled. For example, you can write about a scientific study that allegedly proved the intellectual superiority of blue-eyed people. Of course, neither the Chinese nor the Yakuts fall into this category.
Social media propaganda is just as important as the media. Users can create accounts on behalf of non-existent people in order to write about atrocities allegedly committed by representatives of a certain nation.
The best "vaccination" against inciting interethnic hatred is critical perception of information, raising the educational level. A thinking person is extremely difficult to manipulate, inciting irrational hatred.
