MAGA’s 'war on empathy' started with this fundamentalist Christian influencer: analysis

Allie Stuckey at the River Center Theatre for the Performing Arts in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on October 27, 2025 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

When former President George W. Bush described himself as a "compassionate conservative" during his eight years in the White House, some far-fight pundits objected to the "compassionate" part. Bush, they argued, was hurting conservatism when he called himself "compassionate," and they believed the right needed to purge itself of "compassion sickness."

The term "compassion sickness" isn't as popular in right-wing media as it was during the 2000s, but the concept is alive and well. Tesla/SpaceX/X.com leader Elon Musk considers "suicidal empathy" a major threat to the United States' wellbeing.

That term is closely identified with Musk. But in an article published on December 1, Salon's Amanda Marcotte stresses that the far right's use of "empathy" as an insult originated with evangelical Christian fundamentalist podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey.

"As with much of the asinine ponderings coming from the Silicon Valley billionaire class," Marcotte explains, "there's a pseudo-intellectual rationale to prop up this nonsense. Musk got this 'suicidal empathy' language from Gad Saad, a Canadian college professor who falsely presents himself as an 'evolutionary behavioral scientist'… But I'm not here to debate Musk and Saad's self-serving delusions. More interesting is that while they have tried to frame this anti-empathy discourse in faux-scientific and masculinized rhetoric, the right's modern war on empathy really began with a woman."

Marcotte continues, "Unlike Saad and Musk, fundamentalist Christian influencer Allie Beth Stuckey doesn't see empathy as a failure of evolution. As a creationist who denies the scientific reality of prehistoric dinosaurs, she doesn't even believe in evolution. And even though she believes the Bible forbids women from being pastors, Stuckey has made it her mission to rewrite the teachings of Jesus so that her savior is a harsh disciplinarian whose 'love' has little to do with empathy."

"Phyllis Schlafly knock-off" Stuckey, according to Marcotte, has been railing against "empathy" for at least three years on her "Relatable" podcast.

"Stuckey's book 'Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion' came out in late 2024," Marcotte observes, "but the idea for it appears to have originated on a 2022 episode of her popular podcast 'Relatable.' She hadn't yet come up with the catchphrase 'toxic empathy' — which, in true trolling style, appropriates the progressive use of the term 'toxic' to describe unhealthy and cruel behavior — but her basic argument is right there…. In a sense, she is simply reworking a longstanding argument from the Christian Right that kindness and compassion are not what Jesus meant by 'love.'"

Marcotte adds, "To the contrary, true Christian love is what looks, to most people, like beating someone into submission…. This line of thought has always been the paper-thin rationale for bigotry and abuse. But Stuckey's sinister genius was in using her gender to make these tired gambits seem fresh and modern."

Amanda Marcotte's full article for Salon is available at this link.

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