Empathy Is Being Repudiated as a Moral Value by the Hard Right in the US and Britain, Marking a Western Moral Counter-Revolution
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/johnharris. "From the US midterms to the hard right in Britain, empathy has become a dirty word in politics | John Harris | The Guardian." November 3, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
The author argues that leading figures on the political right, from Elon Musk to JD Vance to Britain's Reform UK, are openly treating empathy as a weakness, and that polling suggests many ordinary voters agree. He sees this as a deep moral shift away from compassion, including from Christianity's own roots, and says one election won't reverse it.
Conclusion
Empathy and compassion are being actively repudiated as moral virtues by Trumpism and its allied movements in the US and Britain, including among ordinary voters, and this amounts to a serious, possibly already underway moral counter-revolution that will not be reversed by a single election result.
Premises
- Prominent right-wing figures explicitly denounce empathy as a weakness or danger: Musk calls it the 'fundamental weakness of western civilisation' and an exploitable 'bug', Gad Saad's book 'Suicidal Empathy' is endorsed by Musk, and Robert Jenrick of Reform UK borrows the phrase 'suicidal empathy' to justify welfare cuts.
- A genre of right-wing books, podcasts and social media content (e.g. 'Toxic Empathy', 'The Sin of Empathy') constitutes a body of work articulating a philosophy in which might is right and compassion is for wimps.
- This stance is not confined to elites: PRRI polling shows only 54% of Republicans (versus 84% of Democrats) agree that empathy helps build a healthy society, and a majority of white evangelical Protestants say empathy can be dangerous.
- Political leaders such as JD Vance subordinate compassion to a narrow hierarchy (family, neighbour, community, fellow citizens, then the rest of the world) and rebuff the pope's appeals to Christian peace and charity.
- Empathy for the outcast and vulnerable was historically a foundational moral innovation of Christianity (per Tom Holland), so rejecting it breaks with the moral tradition that these movements claim to defend.
- Concrete policies and rhetoric reflect this rejection: ICE detention camps, the dismantling of USAID (linked to an estimated 700,000 deaths), proposed 25% welfare cuts, and British right-wing calls to let migrants drown or attacks on the lifeboat service, with roots in Thatcherite moralising about wealth and the Good Samaritan.
Assumptions
- Empathy and compassion are genuine moral goods and the proper baseline for judging political morality.
- Rhetoric by prominent figures and survey responses about the word 'empathy' reflect real, durable shifts in values and not just partisan signalling.
- Policies like welfare cuts, aid cuts and immigration enforcement are driven by, and demonstrate, a rejection of empathy rather than by competing legitimate considerations (fiscal sustainability, rule of law, national priorities).
- The views of a few high-profile figures (Musk, Saad, Vance, Jenrick) are representative of the broader right-wing movement.
- Christianity's historical contribution of compassion is the relevant standard for judging contemporary Christian-identifying politicians.
- US and British developments are part of one coherent global phenomenon.