'Bizarre in many ways': Libertarian reveals what’s behind far right’s 'war on empathy'

21 April

A crowd of attendees at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference. Photo: REUTERS / Nathan Howard

During George W. Bush's presidency, a term that occasionally appeared on right-wing talk radio was "compassion sickness." The implication was that liberals and progressives were wasting sympathy on people who didn't deserve it, and that messaging was a sharp contrast to Bush himself — who famously called himself a "compassionate conservative."

"Compassion sickness" didn't really catch on the way that "bleeding-heard liberal" was popular on the right during the 1970s and 1980s. But now, the MAGA movement has a term that is making the rounds on the far right: "suicidal empathy."

Libertarian/conservative journalist Cathy Young describes this "bizarre" MAGA trend in an article published by The Bulwark on April 21.

Young notes that Tesla head Elon Musk, on April 7, tweeted, "Suicidal empathy is a civilizational risk." And MAGA pundit Christopher Rufo, on X, wrote, "Corey[sic] Booker going to El Salvador to rescue Kilmer[sic] Abrego Garcia is the male equivalent of Taylor Lorenz gushing over Luigi Mangione. Empathy turned pathological."

Young says of Rufo's tweet, "The analogy is bizarre in many ways: For starters, Luigi Mangione is awaiting trial for the premeditated murder of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson, while Abrego Garcia has never been charged with any crime. Also, showing empathy for a probably innocent man who may be facing life imprisonment in a modern-day gulag at the age of 29 is maybe not so pathological? And lastly, concern for Abrego Garcia's fate is not just about 'empathy': It is, first and foremost, about the outrageous facts of a case in which a man who had legal authorization to live in the United States, and is the husband and father of U.S. citizens, has been disappeared without due process — and our government is refusing to return him in defiance of the courts."

Young points out that Canadian professor Gad Saad even has a forthcoming book titled "Suicidal Empathy." And she notes that MAGA attacks on ultra-conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett lambast her for having "empathy."

"As the sexist attacks on Barrett indicate," Young observes, " the right's war on empathy often has a distinctly misogynistic subtext. Empathy generally tends to be regarded as a feminine trait, and women do, on average, report higher levels of empathy than men, though studies of objective evidence yield mixed results. It's not that the anti-empathy right goes easy on males — Pope Francis is a favorite target — but the swipes at women are far more likely to be sex-specific."

Cathy Young's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.

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