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The Right’s Latest Culture War Crusade is Against Empathy
Current Affairs • Sep 30, 2025

The Right’s Latest Culture War Crusade is Against Empathy

Elon Musk doesn’t like empathy, which he calls the “fundamental weakness of western civilization,” which people “exploit.” The late Charlie Kirk did not like empathy either, commenting that "I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that—it does a lot of damage." (He said he preferred “sympathy,” but did not explain what he meant, and elsewhere suggested that it was unimaginable for him to empathize with his own child.) Two conservative Christians have published books arguing that empathy can be corrosive, Allie Beth Stuckey’s Toxic Empathy and Joe Rigney’s The Sin of Empathy. Pastor Josh McPherson, on his “Stronger Man Nation” podcast, was emphatically anti-empathy: “Empathy almost needs to be struck from the Christian vocabulary… Empathy is dangerous. Empathy is toxic. Empathy will align you with hell.”

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