Journals of Hate is based on readers’ comments published in the electronic editions of Argentina’s major newspapers, where opinion is expressed without restraint. Selected fragments were transcribed directly onto the exhibition walls.

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The chosen excerpts reveal discursive nuclei where entire sectors of society are dehumanized. Hatred operates by defining certain groups as social surplus: “shit,” “trash,” “waste.” The other is expelled as excrement from the social body. Medical metaphors also appear—“cancer,” “infection,” “gangrene”—figures that must be cut out, removed.

But hatred is relational: it needs an object. Commentators construct their own identity in opposition to the despised. They call themselves “Argentinian” by vilifying immigrants—“bolita,” “paragua,” “perucho.” They claim whiteness by denigrating people of color; masculinity by humiliating women; education by stigmatizing the uninstructed. They situate themselves as middle class only by degrading the poor. No matter how precarious one’s own condition, it is always possible to imagine someone lower.

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These dynamics are not new. At first glance, the comments may seem like anonymous rants. Yet history reminds us that many of the great massacres were preceded by precisely these kinds of dehumanizing discourses—public narratives ignored at the time.