(Senad Guraziu – Ars Poetica, June 1, 2026)
[ Photo: Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attends a state banquet for US President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 14, 2026 / Brendan Smialowski – AFP via Getty Images ]
According to Gad Saad, a Jewish immigrant born in Lebanon who emigrated to Canada as a child, just because he became a marketing professor at Concordia University, and because he holds a doctorate in marketing from Cornell University, he now has the right to say, for example, the “Holocaust was indeed okay, no problemos at all, if Western world shows too much empathy, then the West is dying to be kind”.
In his Jewish-centric view, that’s why the world should not “cry” if Israel with the help of Mr. Trump’s power kills 25.000 children in Gaza, together with their mothers, and starves 2 million people in a nation-wide concentration camp! Cause history has showed us, Israel shouldn’t have been allowed to “form a state” (by British, nor by other major political actors of that time), it wasn’t necessary at all, why such empathy… showing such empathy for Jewish people, it could have killed Britains, they better had continued with ignoring them.
According to Mr. Saad, western world shall not be “weak” and feel sorry. There’s nothing to learn from that “holocaustic history”. No – people just should buy his book “Suicidal Empathy: Dying To Be Kind” and make him richer. Because Mr. Musk, Trump, Andreessen, Ackman – many rich people “support” his ideas. My sarcasm with “no problemos” (above) is a deliberate shock language, and it should be understood rhetorically, in my view it exposes what I see as the grotesque casualness of Saad’s position when filtered through the applause of billionaires like Musk, Ackman, Andreessen etc.
Mr. Saad isn’t saying the Holocaust was fine (I used it as a brutal example, I’ll try to explain why), he is cautious enough to stres out that “having empathy in fact is good, the problem with empathy is when too little or too much of it”. He’s arguing that excessive, undiscriminating empathy – especially toward outsiders, enemies, or those he sees as hostile to Western values – can weaken a society to the point of collapse. His examples are open borders, lenient crime policies, and what he calls “guilt-driven” foreign aid. Applied to Israel – Gaza, his logic would be, Israel has a right to defend itself (even by means of genocidal wars), and Western hand-wringing over Palestinian casualties is suicidal empathy because it undermines the one Jewish state.
In my view, that’s just a shallow “political” diorama, kind of superficially packaged, but deep down pulsates a very disturbing, devilish idea, so called by him “suicidal empathy”. We should be able identify a moral inversion, we should try to highlight a brutal contradiction. When someone who fled persecution as a Jewish child (from Lebanon, no less) can use the historical trauma of the Holocaust to justify indifference to mass civilian death in Gaza, is disturbing.
In my frame, I see this as a disturbing betrayal of historical memory – the very empathy that the world should have learned from the Holocaust. If 6 million Jewish dead demand anything, it’s not that we stop crying over children – it’s that we never again look away when a population is starved and bombed in a confined space.
Today – yes, I mean exactly today, June 1, 2026 – the respected British Britannica writes: one of humanity’s historical darkest chapters, the Holocaust was the systematic killing of 6 million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II (1939-45). The Nazis’ various policies for exterminating the Jews were the most deliberate and calculated. Britannica’s stats say percentage of Jewish population killed in Poland was 89% (~3 million, alone in Poland), Czechoslovakia 73%, Hungary 61%, Soviet Union 44%, Romania 34%. In 1933 Jewish population in Europe was ~9.5 million, in 1950 ~3.5 million. Six million people perished.
In my frame of “history”, as I see it, for every 1 book like Saad’s, the academic world should answer with 3 books. Not to “debate” – because some ideas don’t deserve the dignity of a debate – but to overwhelm. To show the right place for such thinking – on the ash heap of history, next to the intellectuals who cheered for eugenics in the 1920s, next to the academics who said “a little fascism is just order”, next to the economists who justified colonialism as “efficiency”.
But as always, we react late, almost always too late. The same thing happened when fascism rose. People clearly saw it coming – the rallies, the lists, the camps being built “temporarily”. But, as it came out, they simply were too late. They thought it would burn itself out. They thought “surely no one believes that”. They thought empathy was safe. But it wasn’t safe, it was the first thing they killed.
Why we’re almost always too late? Maybe because we keep treating anti-humanism as “another perspective”. Because universities defend “free speech” while letting a marketing professor pose as a historian. Because billionaires buy platforms, and platforms buy silence, and silence looks like consent. Because the people who should write those three books are busy with tenure, or grants, or not wanting to “get political”.
And thus, what can we say now, after Mr. Saad book has seen the light, to teach us about “darkness” of our souls? Perhaps nothing. Or perhaps “Thank you, Mr. Musk for being brave enough to show us who you really are, thank you to all the billionaires clapping for this man”. At least that’s honest, at least we can stop pretending this is about “civilization” and see it for what it is – the powerful, the rich telling the rest of us that our compassion is the real threat.
And we, well we can stop being late, we can name it, we can refuse to call a doctorate a shield against moral collapse. We can write those 3 books, even if they’re just 1 long post shared quietly. Because the dead of Europe – 6 million Jews, 89% of Poland’s Jews, 73% of Czechoslovakia’s – didn’t die so that a marketing professor could sell a book about why empathy is suicide. They died because empathy failed them, and if we let that lesson be erased by billionaires who need a philosophy to sleep at night, then we are not “dying to be kind”. We are dying because we forgot how to wake up on time, fascism “teached” us that lesson.
To fall into “on the one hand, on the other hand” posture – the kind of academic tic that treats “balance” as a virtue even when faced with something that doesn’t deserve it, isn’t “academic” at all. Some ideas don’t deserve the dignity of “a perspective”. Reframing basic human compassion for starving children and their mothers, for starving 2 million people, as “suicidal empathy” – isn’t a legitimate intellectual position. It’s anti-humanism with a PhD, holding a doctorate in Marketing (thus how to sell things) doesn’t make that sacred, it just means someone spent years learning how to dress up cruelty in respectable language.
A person who says “don’t cry for 25.000 dead children because the West is dying to be kind” has abandoned the moral framework that makes the word “doctor” mean anything beyond a credential. And the rich men clapping for him aren’t intellectuals – they’re customers buying a justification.
The Holocaust wasn’t a lesson in “too much empathy”. It was a lesson in what happens when empathy evaporates for a whole category of human beings. Mr. Saad isn’t drawing a lesson from that history – he’s weaponizing it to do the same thing the Nazis did. When his “theory” is used to brush aside 25.000 dead children and a famine, the word “empathy” starts to sound like a dirty joke. And that’s where his academic veneer cracks.
We shouldn’t let anyone tell us this is abstract philosophy, let us remind ourselves how their opportunism is naked. In March 2024, Mr. Musk – same Musk who now praises Saad’s “suicidal empathy” as a warning about Western civilization dying – posted this on his own platform, X: “Super rich ex-wives who hate their former spouse’ should be listed among ‘Reasons that Western Civilization died”. He was talking about MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife, because she was donating billions to racial and gender justice. Not to Hamas. Not to open borders. To charities. And that, for Musk, was civilizational collapse.
Then later he deleted the post. Because even he knew how it looked. But the Internet Archive doesn’t forget. Musk deletes his own words from the platform he owns, while Saad writes a book saying empathy is suicide, while President Trump poses as Israel’s defender, while 25.000 children lie under rubble in Gaza. The rich get to rewrite history in real time – not with ink, but with delete keys and algorithm tweaks. The Nazis burned books. Today’s authoritarians don’t bother. They just erase the posts, buy a “professor”, and call us paranoid for remembering.
That single deleted post tells us everything about how this ideology actually functions in practice. Luckily for our history, the Internet Archive keeps receipts, so his deleted post couldn’t be “deleted”, sorry Mr. Musk, you’re rich but not God.
When a woman hates you then “Western Civilization died” (his words) – this isn’t a philosophy, it’s simply a dangerous opportunism. This is a billionaire, going through a divorce-related custody battle (with Grimes), watching another billionaire’s ex-wife give away billions to charitable causes he doesn’t like, and deciding that this – not famine, not war, not climate collapse – is what “Western Civilization dying” looks like.
The phrase “Western Civilization” is doing enormous work here, by simply being there… it sounds grand, it sounds like something worth defending. But in Musk’s actual usage, it means a rich white man’s feelings about another rich man’s ex-wife helping minorities. That’s the deep “philosophical” crisis in his mind, by not being philosophy at all, simply an angry opportunism.
Then Mr. Saad writes a book about “suicidal empathy” – supposedly a serious critique of progressive overreach. Musk picks it up, praises it, makes it part of his brand. But when you look at what Musk actually calls “suicidal” or “civilization-ending,” it’s not open borders or DEI programs. It’s one specific woman he has a personal, almost petty grievance against. The ideology is just a costume for Mr. Musk. The billionaire puts it on when it’s useful. Underneath, it’s always about him, his exes, his enemies. His convenience is dangerously “opportunistic” cause his mind pollutes the whole socio-ecosystem.
That’s not a civilization dying, Mr. Musk, that’s a tantrum. We see how you saw a woman give away money you didn’t approve of, and you decided that was the Four Horsemen. Then you deleted the evidence and hired a marketing PhD to tell us that “our heart is the real enemy”. History is not a joke. But you Mr. Musk, the powerful make it one – because you know the powerful can afford the punchline.
Mr. Musk’s deleted post is the proof that “Western civilization dying” was never a serious argument. It was always a costume. And the deletion is the confession. Perhaps we should say “super-rich woman are allowed to hate their ex-spouses, if those women have a reason…” – because the unspoken rule Mr. Musk is revealing, empathy is only “suicidal” when other people practice it. When he decides who deserves compassion, that’s just “deep empathy”.
Rich people promoting anti-humanism, that’s pure and dangerous opportunism. Mr. Musk, Ackman, Andreessen – they don’t believe in “suicidal empathy” as a coherent philosophy, they believe in whatever lets them sleep at night while their wealth accumulates over bones. It’s not deep, it’s not even cynical in an interesting way – it’s just opportunistic, find a professor who will say “your selfishness is actually heroic”, give him a platform, and call it a day.
So, how did we get to a place where a Holocaust survivor’s child can become a cheerleader for policies that produce concentration-camp-like conditions, and billionaires call that “deep empathy”? In Mr. Musk mind, perhaps the answer lies in how “empathy” gets redefined, his “deep empathy” for society as a whole often ends up meaning, no empathy for specific suffering if it inconveniences power. Mr. Saad’s “suicidal empathy” becomes a cudgel against any compassion that crosses a border or a political line.
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In my view, Mr. Saad book, or idea so called “suicidal empathy” isn’t an intellectual position worth debating. It’s a tantrum in a tuxedo, and the fact that it’s being used to justify indifference to 25.000 dead children in Gaza is obscene. Our heart isn’t “our enemy”, what human’s heart can hold is more than just ideas in your head, Mr. Saad, the weight of what we’re carrying in our hearts is called “humanism”. We’re not just critiquing an argument of yours, we’re mourning something too, we’re mourning 6 million Jewish people perished during the Europe’s tragical history, we’re mourning all dead people caused by Nazi-history.
All of us as humans (dear Mr. Saad and Mr. Musk) should be moved to tell the history with some dignity. Dignity for the dead, and for the living, cause history teaches us not to repeat mistakes of the past. Denying history is another thing, we do it often, we often forget, but perhaps that’s the main reason of “history’s existence” – to learn from it. We should be moved about the dignity for the 300 innocent children killed in that school in Iran. It looks like, whether it’s 300 children in an Iranian school, or 25.000 in Gaza – your philosophy makes them all acceptable.
I’m not saying that Mr. Musk dropped that real tragical bomb, I am saying he’s been dropping so many “silent bombs”, he had a platform, a phone, and two thumbs – and he said nothing, not a single word for 300 children. He has the biggest microphone in the world, the X platform, according to Google, shortly after his $44 billion takeover, reports surfaced that Musk was unhappy with how much engagement his personal posts were getting compared to other world figures. He deployed a massive engineering effort to reconfigure X’s algorithm. This change automatically boosted the visibility of his personal posts by a factor of a thousand, essentially forcing them onto everyone’s timeline – regardless of whether they followed him or not.
And when 300 children are blown apart in a school, he says nothing. I am pointing to his silence, to his absence while children die. That’s the silence that kills. I am not talking about that hand on the trigger, but about his hand that could type two words, “Stop this”, and chooses instead to type “We’re going to Ibiza” or “on the Air Force One, going to China, we got a party, a trade deal” or “buy my friend’s book about how empathy is suicide”. He finds time and words if a rich woman donates to charities, to him that’s civilization-ending, a Jewish guy who teaches the “Western world” what empathy is… that’s civilization-ending.
We should be moved by all of our wrongdoings throughout history, for the 25.000 children in Gaza, for the 6 million Jewish people of Europe, history insists, we should learn from such mistakes. Dignity means refusing to turn their unnecessary deaths into footnotes in someone’s philosophy book, in a marketing Professor’s book… teaching us what history and “Western empathy” is.
Whether you Mr. Musk as a billionaire deleting your posts from X, or a pilot releasing a bomb over a school (while children learning perhaps exactly about history of Holocaust) – the philosophy that allows it is the same sickness dressed in different clothes. The rich call it “civilization defense”, the generals call it “collateral damage”, the marketing-professors call it “suicidal empathy, no need to feel sorry”. But underneath all the words, it’s just the same old animal – my tribe matters, yours doesn’t, and I’ll hire someone to explain why that’s actually moral, I’ll hire Mr. Saad to teach us.
Bombing a school full of children in Iran, killing more than 300 children and saying nothing in Western media – but supporting a book about how Western empathy is the real danger for the civilisation – that’s not inconsistency, that’s the mask slipping. We refuse, we shouldn’t get used to your “absurdity”, Mr. Musk. That’s the true dignity left to us, to refuse to normalize the grotesque. To say “this is wrong” when the whole your war machine says “this is complicated”. Our simple dignity is to remember the names and the numbers not as statistics, but every child as somebody’s child. You have children too, 13 children Mr. Musk, God bless all children of this world, God bless all innocent mothers and their children-angels
We’re not late, we’re not powerless, Mr Musk, we’re seeing it, we’re seeing you, we’re seeing all of your “picture”. Remember, Mr. Fuhrer could write books too, he had rich friends too, he even was supposed to be an artist, he left behind many paintings, artworks. Now just because Mr. Saad can write a book, and by supporting his ideas your’re telling us who you really are, who you exactly are. And we’re writing it down. That’s how history keeps any dignity at all – not through the powerful who invest 300 $ millions to “install” a President, not through the rich who own the X-platforms and can delete their shameless posts, but through the people who refuse to look away.
If empathy is weakness – if caring about 25.000 innocent children is “dying to be kind” – then why shouldn’t Europe go back to Africa, Mr. Saad? You fled Lebanon as a Jewish child. Someone had empathy for you, now you sell a book against it. Why shouldn’t the West finish what it started in the Americas, for example? Why shouldn’t the powerful take everything, while the taking is good – why not take Gaza literally and finish it, 100% emptiness, make it flat and build vilas for the rich? If Dubai can build “world palms” by claiming “land” from the sea… then Mr. Trump’s idea about Gaza would be like a piece of cake.
If we follow your “shameless philosophy”, Mr. Saad, then the Holocaust simply can be seen as “necessity, not shame”, that’s exactly where your road leads. If you can rewrite the Holocaust as a lesson, if you’re capable in teaching us that is too much empathy for Jews – if you can say Europe was “dying to be kind” by feeling guilty since 1945 until today – then yes. The only logical conclusion is, Europe should have finished the job, that’s why the Western World should do it now. Everywhere – that’s not hyperbole, that’s the trajectory of every genocidal ideology. It always starts with “our people first”, it always ends with “their children, their suffering doesn’t count”.
Shall we continue with Africa, Mr. Musk – later will be too late? As you know even Aristotle wasn’t againts slavery – but his time was perhaps somewhat “decadent time”, our time is so modern, ultra-modern, even “futuristic”, you don’t have “tech-diapers” but you’re unstoppable in building rockets, you’re “Starships” explode as if nothing, who cares for billions, as celebration fireworks, you’re selling us even dreams of Mars. While 30 million Americans without basic health care, a whole Canada, a whole Australia’s population. Showing some basic “empathy” for them probably would kill America.
Or perhaps Mr. Saads and Mr. Musks of this world have no answer to that. They simply know how to write books, to tell us how “empathy kills the Western world”. Philosophically they know what is the “danger” for Western civilisation, their philosophy has no brakes. Once you remove empathy from the equation, there is nothing left to say “stop”.
We’re simply holding up a mirror against your “philosophy”, we’re saying this is the logical conclusion of your “empathy is suicide” argument. So why not go all the way? According to your ideas “our heart is the real enemy of us”, that’s why after your book, all Europe now can celebrate… Holocaust was a necessity, not a shame, 60 million deaths of WW wasn’t a mistake, it was your “logic”… now we’re free of historical guilt. Perhaps we should go and enslave all Africa while this huge operation still is doable, while we still can, some decades further it might be to late, cause Africans may advance too.
There’s no shame in thinking for “ourselves”, we know Africans didn’t build their own AI-s yet, but got some knowledge… they didn’t stand still, even though Wakanda is pure sci-fiction, it’s simply a Hollywood project to exploit their “patriotism”, we can own all Africa right now… or it might become too late. We should act, we did the same with Americas, we exterminated the whole cultures and civilisations, why now stop… why not go full way with Africa too, there’s no shame on us, no… for us even worse, as it tourns out “empathy is our enemy”.
We know, Wakanda is truly sci-fiction, it’s true Mr. Musk, but so was Auschwitz – until it wasn’t. That’s the thing about nightmares, they start as ideas in your head “empathy is suicidal”, “our civilization is dying”, “rich women hate ex-spouses, that means western civilisation already dead”. Sometimes as “books” to be sold, to become rich, sometimes small, sarcastic posts, easy to delete – just as you deleted your post of our “dead civilisation”, Mr. Musk.
And Europe is celebrating, even as we speak, something sick is already going on, not just in your heads Mr. Musk. There are people today – politicians, pundits, professors – who speak as if the Holocaust was an inconvenience, as if German guilt was a burden to be shrugged off, as if “never again” was always meant to apply only to us, never to them. You can see it in the laws passed against refugees, you see it in the silence over Gaza, you see it in the way African migrants drown in the Mediterranean, and Europe calls it a “pushback”. So yes, some “parts” of Europe are celebrating even now. Quietly, behind closed doors, in think tanks funded by billionaires like you, Mr. Musk. In books with glossy covers and “Dr. Saad” on the spine. But in humanism’s eyes Saad is truly “Sad”, it doesn’t deserves 2 “a”-s.
In the past (some years), I pushed what I saw happening kinda into the future, made it hypothetical, gave it a buffer of “not yet”. I have no idea why we always react late. Maybe it’s because we keep waiting for the people who say these things to mean them literally. We keep waiting for Mr. Saad’s books to teach us why Holocaust was “okay”, simply a necessity. And by the time we realize that “empathy is suicide” means let them starve – the children are already dead.
But the concentration camps aren’t coming, they’re already here, now, today. Gaza, not Auschwitz this time, Mr. Musk, 2 million people in a nation-wide concentration camp, not barbed wire and gas chambers – not yet, or not exactly the same – but starvation as a policy. Aid blocked, children weighing less than when they were born, hospitals without power, water without clean sources. A population trapped, unable to leave, bombed from above with your planes, sealed from the outside.
That is a camp of your ideas, that is the reality of Mr. Saad’s book. And the word “concentration camp” was invented for exactly this, civilians concentrated into a confined area, deprived of the means to live, controlled by military force. The camps are here, Mr. Musk, their name is Gaza, a nation-wide concentration camp, the “concentrated” population is 2 million. The only question left right now is – will we say it’s a camp, will we name it, will we refuse to look away?
And the world watches. Some cheer, some make excuses, some say “it’s complicated”, some say “don’t cry – empathy is suicide”. But we’re not crying for nothing, we’re crying because we see, we’re not blind as you are Mr. Musk. And seeing, today is the first act of refusal, we refuse your “sick mind”. That’s not suicidal Mr. Saad, in contrary, that’s the only thing keeping us human. In the name of humanism, humans are obliged to know, the architects of Gaza-camp are not just generals but also professors who write books about why “Westerners” shouldn’t feel bad. Such camps are financed by billionaires who delete their own posts and call compassion a disease.
The same Mr. Musk reaffirmed strong support for Germany’s far-right AfD party, his words “I’ve said publicly, I think only AfD can save Germany. And I just want to be very clear about that: Only AfD can save Germany, end of story. And people really need to get behind the AfD, otherwise things gonna get very, very much worse in Germany”.
Germany is a big country, almost ~84 million people, and Mr. Musk pretends we don’t know that “he knows”, because AfD’s platform explicitly challenges universal human dignity, every other mainstream political party has maintained a strict Brandmauer (firewall), ruling out any governance or coalitions with them. This creates a volatile political reality, a major political direction supported by millions of voters is completely isolated by the parliamentary establishment, intensifying societal polarization.
Your ideas Mr. Musk, and those other ideas you support about “dying western civilisation”, aren’t dangerous at all. Mr. Saad and you don’t care for dividing America, for dividing the Middle East, dividing the entire World, you simply want more, you want even Mars, you want to divide as much as you can, by shamelessly orchestrating societal polarization. May God bless your 13 children, may peace be with them, may God bless America, Europe and all the World! But the camps are here, their name is Gaza, Mr. Musk, their population is 2 million – 25.000 children died there. The only question left is – will we name it? Will we refuse to look away? We already have, we know it’s called “killing humanism”. That’s not suicidal, that’s the only thing keeping us human.
No, Mr. Saad, Mr. Musk, 6 million Jews or 25.000 children in Gaza aren’t a resource to be managed, a problem to be solved, a statistic to be balanced. They are not matter, not numbers, they are murder. Each one, individually, a decision made by someone with power over someone without. You’re not God, you’re just rich. You have an army, you claim world is yours, you have mercenaries, you have a war machine that never sleeps, you need oil to feed it, you can buy professors to justify it, you have billionaires to fund it. But you are not God.
You don’t get to decide which child lives and which child dies under rubble. Nobody has the right to decide for your 13 children, Mr. Musk. You don’t get to call 25.000 dead children “collateral damage” or “complicated” or “suicidal empathy” – as if their death is our moral failure for caring. No, the moral failure is your bomb. The drone. The blockade. The veto. The silence. The book of your friend that says “don’t cry”.
You are not God, the children of this world are not “statistics”, they are not “the other side”, they are children who wanted to live. Who had names, who had mothers, who did not choose to be born in Gaza instead of Manhattan. You didn’t give them life, you don’t get to take it. That’s not philosophy, that’s not “on the one hand, on the other your interests”, that’s just… the line. The line you don’t cross. And if you cross it – if you bomb the school, if you starve the population, if you call empathy suicide – then you are not “defending civilization”, you are ending it, one child at a time. You are not God, you are just evil with excellent funding.
Suicidal Empathy
A theory gaining the support of some of the world’s richest people following the release of a new book by Gad Saad, a Canadian marketing professor and frequent critic of liberal policies. The term "suicidal empathy" has been gaining traction on the American right, and among billionaires like Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, and Bill Ackman. Saad’s ideas have drawn frequent praise from those billionaires, who said suicidal empathy will "end civilization".
Musk, in particular, has been a longtime supporter of Saad’s ideas. In March 2024, months before Musk launched the America Super PAC and publicly endorsed Trump, Saad said on Piers Morgan’s show that he and Musk were "good friends" who chatted regularly. He also praises Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) for eliminating "a breathtaking amount of corruption, waste, and fraud".
On X, Musk has repeatedly reposted and agreed with Saad’s idea of suicidal empathy. He has also weighed in on the kind of empathy needed in society. In an October 2024 interview with Tucker Carlson, Musk introduced the concepts of "shallow empathy" and "deep empathy". "What I see is what I call shallow empathy. People have empathy for the criminals, but not empathy for the victims of the criminals", Musk said. "I believe one should have deep empathy and ask, what is the greater good for society?"
As the former head of DOGE, Musk significantly cut back on foreign aid programs and initiatives while also laying off hundreds of FEMA workers who had assisted with disaster relief and natural-catastrophe preparedness in the U.S., leaving the federal government hobbled in its ability to respond to humanitarian crises both at home and abroad.
"A society dies when it cares more about exhibiting infinite tolerance and empathy than invoking its survival instinct" - Saad argues in his book "Suicidal Empathy: Dying To Be Kind".
The term is also linked to preserving Western civilization in particular, which Saad describes in his book as "in rapid decline": from open-border immigration policies under Biden and Trudeau, to DEI training, soft-on-crime policies, transgender activism, and Canada's universal healthcare system. In Saad's book, empathy becomes suicidal when it's "misguided". He argues this is especially true among people who subscribe to progressive liberal ideologies and tend to show kindness to foreigners rather than to their own citizens.
"I'm not saying that empathy is bad. Empathy is actually a very important virtue to have. The problem with empathy, like most things in life, is if there's too little or too much of it" - Saad said on a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Saad did not study suicidal empathy from a social psychological perspective, explaining that the academic literature on empathy "draws some fine distinctions that are unnecessary for our current treatment". Instead, he used anecdotal examples to argue that suicidal empathy is perpetuated by the Western ruling class, who believe the West is guilty of racism and colonialism.
"By recognizing their supposed existential privilege and thus destroying it from within, they can seek penance for their 'unearned' advantage" - Saad writes. He aso writes that women are particularly susceptible to suicidal empathy, a tendency he claims could lead to men who try to protect women from harm being labeled "sexist" or "sufferers of toxic masculinity". He dedicates a large portion of the book to immigration-friendly policies in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, particularly those welcoming to Muslim immigrants, as prime examples of suicidal empathy. He cites several criminal cases in the U.K. in which Muslim suspects exploited young white girls, talking points that have been circulating among prominent conservative figures pushing for stricter immigration measures.
"To the West, I say, be proud of your heritage, and defend it at all costs from its avowed enemies", Saad said. According to Saad, the West should actively reject "empathy-based dopamine hit[s]" and stop being "empathetic fence sitters". "There is nothing more existentially empathetic than the dogged defense of the truth", Saad writes. Saad also argues that people should start demanding reciprocity rather than asking for nothing in return, citing foreign aid that the U.S. and Canadian governments send to African countries as an example of suicidal empathy.
Gad Saad - Saad is a Jewish immigrant born in Lebanon who emigrated to Canada as a child. As a marketing professor at Concordia University, he holds a master's degree in management and a doctorate in marketing from Cornell University. In 2020, Saad began attracting attention from right-wing media by departing from his specialty in evolutionary psychology and releasing The Parasitic Mind, a book that argues that certain "harmful ideas" such as cancel culture and political correctness, spread through society like parasites, and that a healthy society should allow open debate on ideas. As a frequent guest at conservative outlets, Saad has also spoken at length about how his concept applies to broader cultural issues that right-wing personalities focus on, including what he sees as an assault on masculinity and the rise of antisemitism following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
[ Time - Article by Philip Wang / May 19, 2026 ]
[ Photo: Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attends a state banquet for US President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 14, 2026 / Brendan Smialowski - AFP via Getty Images ]