Supporters of Donald Trump at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., November 6, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
The terms "toxic empathy" and "suicidal empathy" have become a popular insult in the MAGA movement, from evangelical Christian nationalists to Tesla/SpaceX leader Elon Musk. The idea is that "empathy" is a sign of weakness and is harmful to Christianity. But not everyone on the right embraces the "toxic empathy" concept, which Never Trump conservative David French is vehemently critical of. And in The Bulwark, libertarian/Never Trump conservative Cathy Young offers a biting critique of a new book she describes as a cliched litany of MAGA "grievances."
The book is "Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind" by psychologist Gad Saad, who is originally from Lebanon but has spent most of his life in a country where U.S. President Donald Trump is wildly unpopular: Canada. The 61-year-old Saad is known for his anti-Islam views, and his anti-empathy argument has made him a popular figure among MAGA Republicans in the United States.
Young argues that while "Suicidal Empathy" has some valid points, most of the book uses shallow "pop psychology" to promote "familiar" MAGA "grievances." And he makes some of his points "bizarrely," according to the libertarian journalist.
"The thing is, Saad's concept — empathy is a good and necessary trait, but can be bad and self-damaging when taken too far — is one few people would dispute," Young explains in the conservative Bulwark. "Obvious examples include being trapped in an abusive relationship or a toxic friendship because you're afraid to hurt the other person by ending it — a concern exploitative people can easily manipulate. On a larger scale, it is self-evidently true that empathy alone is usually not a reliable guide to policy or collective action: refusing, on compassionate grounds, to forcibly hospitalize people experiencing certain acute mental health crises can result in grave harm not only to other people, but to the patients themselves."
But according to Young, one of the book's main flaws is that it uses "suicidal empathy" as "strictly a culture-war concept." Moreover, Young stresses, Saad makes huge generalizations — for example, blaming Muslims in general for acts of Islamist terrorism.
"In his framework," Young argues, "the term refers to ostensibly compassionate political views he considers misguided: support for migrants and refugees, Muslim immigrants in particular; excessive concern with the rights and wellbeing of criminals and/or homeless people; high taxes to pay for social programs; defense of transgender identities; an #IBelieveHer stance toward women who accuse men of sexual misconduct — unless, of course, the alleged perps are migrants or Muslims or both, in which case insufficient support for the victims is a sign of suicidal empathy for those groups. This isn't to say that Saad is always wrong. Progressive policies on crime, homelessness, immigration, etc. sometimes really are flawed in ways that can be described as arising from misplaced empathy."
Young continues, "But much of the time, Saad can't help taking his argument to the other extreme: If progressives can downplay Islamist radicalism, he treats the Taliban as representative of Islam and asserts that Muslim public prayers in western countries are 'a signal of dominance.' When residents of a small Italian town insist that they have no problem with Muslim refugees despite one refugee man's arrest for the rape of an underage girl, Saad can only throw up his hands at what he sees as liberal brain rot; he's unwilling or unable to concede that the townsfolk might not wish to judge the whole group by the one case."
The book, Young writes, includes "some extremely shoddy analysis."
"If you're starting to suspect that much of 'Suicidal Empathy'boils down to a catalogue of familiar right-wing grievances," Young says, "you're not wrong."