As the Guardian has reported in an email this morning:
Israel is to cut off any remaining electricity supplies to Gaza in an apparent attempt to ramp up pressure on Hamas, as multi-track negotiations over the fragile ceasefire in the territory become increasingly chaotic. Israel had already cut off all supplies of goods to the territory, claiming that Hamas was stealing aid.
Last week, CNN reported this about Elon Musk:
“We've got civilizational suicidal empathy going on,” Musk said, borrowing the term from Gad Saad, a Canadian scholar who is also a frequent Rogan host.
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit,” Musk said. “There it's they're exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.”
Empathy, he said, has been “weaponized.”
He is wrong, of course.
He might be suggesting that we should all behave exactly as neoliberal economics suggests we should. He might think that the world would be a better place if we all removed our concern for others from our thought processes, as that economics suggests to be appropriate. But he would still be wrong.
The reason why is obvious. When we cannot imagine ourselves as others might be, three things happen.
Firstly, we lose our sense of justice. My perspective on this issue is heavily influenced by the work of John Rawls, and so Kant and Aristotle before him. Rawls' theory of justice requires that we imagine ourselves in what he called the original position where an individual presumes that they are behind a "veil of ignorance," unaware of their social position, talents, or life circumstances. As a result, they make impartial decisions because they have no idea where they might stand with regard to the distribution of the justice they are considering, meaning that they ensure all benefit. The Israeli leadership, like Musk, has clearly lost any such sense of justice. They work solely for the advantage of privilege.
Second, we lose our ability to care, whether about people or consequences.
This, then, thirdly diminishes our sense of who we are as a human being, because we cannot live in isolation. The indifference Musk and the Israeli leadership are showing to the 'other' is the consequence of their choice to ignore empathy. This means that they are bound to have a reduced capacity to function as people, simply because they are denying one of the capacities that makes us human in nature. This is a major reason why most of us find them so hard to understand.
Nothing can make the actions of Israel or Musk acceptable. The point I am making is that these actions are chosen. They reflect a decision to follow a corrupt philosophy, applied in extreme ways. They represent not just injustice at work as a consequence, but evil.
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Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian, now working at Exeter University, argues that ‘normal’ colonies are just occupied. Settler states aim to create a new nation.
He cites North America, Australia, South Africa, Algeria and Israel. He could add the Russian colonisation of Siberia.
Settler states have aways attempted to de-humanise the indigenous people and use that as a justification for their occupation and repression.
Much of our media and many politicians talk about the Palestinians in terms of terrorism. They never seem to acknowledge the widespread war crimes being committed by the IDF.
Another issue here (admittedly not on a level with genocide) is the reinforcing of the careless association of autism and lack of empathy. Anyone with experience of autism will know it’s not true, that autistic people are often highly empathetic, and that empathy has to work both ways. Musk is assumed to be autistic ( don’t know if he has a diagnosis?). I wonder if he is using this as a shield, a way of justifying his extreme actions?
I completely agree.
I found Musk’s pronouncement on empathy the most chilling thing he has yet said. At the same time, it is the most revealing and informative. Most of us would regard empathy as one of the biggest strengths of civilised society (the other being tolerance). Musk’s speech reveals the fascists’ strategy: to use our strengths against us.
It is time we suspended both our empathy and our tolerance when dealing with those who show none themselves.
Karl Popper said we should be tolerant of everything but intolerance.
Thank you, Richard.
Speaking of Musk, readers may be aware of his attacks on his birthplace and where he grew up and egging on of the community of European origin, not just Afrikaners, to leave / emigrate to the US. Some sense an opportunity to reverse course or partition the country and, therefore, make common cause with Musk.
What’s not reported is that Musk’s father lives happily in the beautiful seaside town of Langebaan and shows no inclination of fleeing or having to flee.
an interesting article in the Guardian today – https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/10/making-of-elon-musk-childhood-apartheid-south-africa?CMP=share_btn_url. In my days in South Africa, apartheid was the law – I had ‘banned’ friends, one of whom was ‘banned’ because (as a white South African) he taught black children. The Afrikaners were the superior race in the hierarchy – white Afrikaner, then white British, then ‘poor’ whites, oh and the Japanese were honorary whites because they were good for trade. After that came Asians, then the various mixed race and so on – it was horrific. I was offered a good job in PE (Port Elizabeth) but turned it down because I could not live with Apartheid – clearly Musk can.
Well done
I had many friends from SA who left because of apartheid.
Certainly not autism! I have family members on the spectrum, and empathy is a characteristic they all have. I would suggest classic Narcissism, where the drive, aggression and lack of care for others is founded in the moral and existential void at the centre of their personality (classic Freud). NB earlier in the year you had a link to Dan Goyal, who discussed adding Greed to the Dark Triad of personality; that would fit with Narcissism in the case of many ultra rich and techbro types.
His series is good
John, would it be convenient for you to provide a link to the Goyal piece you mentioned?
Dan Goyal on Substack. I’m at work but if you interrogate Sustack his page called ‘The Antidote’ contains the relevant essay, I’d guess January ish.
Thanks, John.
The neurodivergants are often perceived as not caring when they actually do. Neurotypicals are often assumed as caring when they actually do not.
Thank you, John.
JG: “Drive, aggression and lack of care for others. These appear to be the attributes needed and needed to be shown to succeed in Big Finance. One former CEO of HSBC, a lifer judged a bit too crude for the more ambassadorial chairmanship and the first CEO to miss out on the top job, openly encouraged such behaviour. It beggars belief that these people are lionised and, with regard to the government, courted.
I don’t know if readers are aware that Huawei is employee owned. Other Chinese firms have a fair amount of worker participation. It helps with their long term approach. The current success of Chinese car and mobile telephony firms go back some decades, including when engineers were recruited from NorTel and Ericsson in the late 1990s. The Chinese managers learnt how to avoid the mistakes of western firms.
Tesla is finding it difficult to compete with Chinese cars.
You can treat people like shit, but they do realise and leave as soon as they can. DEI makes good business sense.
Narcissism is characterised by a lack of capacity to empathise.
I suspect Musk and other members of the US administration have a deficit or complete lack of empathy. I rather doubt they have decided to simply ignore it; I’m not sure it is possible to do that.
I found an interesting article that listed a number of psychiatric disorders related to lack of empathy. “The empathic brain”, (https://bpsmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1751-0759-1-22).
I suspect Musk, and consequently others, suffer from one or more of these conditions.
Those conditions include, amongst others, autistic spectrum disorders. Having several close family members diagnosed as on the autistic spectrum, I am happy to confirm that this does not, necessarily, mean they lack empathy. 🙂
I’m not sure how we get round the problem of elected (and unelected!) officials having psychiatric conditions that render them unsuitable for public office.
Interesting read. However, the study is dated 2007, and it erroneously conflates psychiatric disorders (mental illness) with personality disorders (NOT mental illness).
Mental illnesses include depressive disorders, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, OCD, PTSD, post partum psychosis, schizophrenia, and so on. These are disruptions of “function”, so to speak, and can be treated although not necessarily cured. They are not enduring personality traits.
Personality disorders, on the other hand, are set in childhood and early adolescence and are permanent personality traits. They cannot be cured, and are resistant to any form of treatment.
The two classifications are completely separate with psychiatry. That’s not to say someone with a personality disorder cannot also be depressed or anxious. But it very definitely means that someone with bipolar disorder, for example, will not subsequently develop a personality disorder.
Sorry to labour the point, but it’s absolutely vital that no one falls into the trap of believing that Trump (a random example, obvs) has a mental illness. He does not. His personality traits anre dangerous, enduring and untreatable.
Thanks, and agreed
Western leaders and politicians have been normalising war crimes for a long time, losing any moral authority to criticise the criminal behaviour of Putin, because they remain silent about the even worse war crimes of Israel.
But the media are complicit in this normalisation, because, unless they are writing about Russia in Ukraine, or an Islamist atrocity against Western backed states, they don’t mention international law. This article describing the suspension of aid (again), as well as electricity, to the civilian population of Gaza, doesn’t mention international law, war crimes, or genocide yet that is very clearly what it is describing.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/09/israel-cut-off-electricity-gaza-hamas-ceasefire-negotiations
Similarly articles about the “escalation of violence” in the West Bank & E. Jerusalem utterly fail to describe the accelerating expropriation of land, the eviction of civilians from their homes and lands, and the murder of civilians (including children) by illegal settlers and IDF soldiers as genocidal war crimes.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/01/footage-shows-last-moments-boy-12-killed-in-west-bank
Who enforces this censorship?
Who sanitises this reporting?
Who bans the mention of genocide, war crimes, illegality or international law, when the article is about the actions of Israel?
Who are they afraid of?
Why are they complicit?
“We were only obeying orders…”
Nowadays in Western countries it is those who protest about war crimes who get arrested or censored or harrassed, and who are regarded as extremists aiding and abetting “terror”, smeared as antisemites, or, if we are lucky, just irritants to be ignored.
But one day, the books will be opened.
Funnily enough BBC Radio4 bulletins were reporting Israel’s aid, energy and water blockade as a potential breach of international law. But probably only because UK government had expressed the thought already in calling on Israel to stop the blockade.
As someone who tests outside the normal range on an autism tests with family members having similar struggles, autism definitely doesn’t mean a lack of empathy. I may not express it the same but it’s there. A lot of masking is about hiding your own emotions for the benefit of others.
Musk’s statements appear to come from a simplistic, one-sided view on things. Sympathy and empathy can be exploited, and exploitation is bad. Therefore, shut off the exploit. That the cure is infinitely worse than the problem is missed.
Equally, there’s a ‘might is right’ element throughout how the US views itself, particularly Trump and his fondness for dictators. Culling the weak plays into that, and seems to be a part of the worldview against empathy.
Where does that lead? It may not be part of the textbook definition of fascism, but certainly regimes like Nazi Germany were amongst those most associated with such attacks on vulnerable groups like disabled people.
Musk could do with considering the benefits of empathy to weigh that against the costs of empathy. Even on a naked self-interest basis. For example, he doesn’t want to be on the receiving end of a Luigi Mangione type attack but might be the prime target because of DOGE. The majority who need and want to have a safety net won’t be willing to see it removed entirely as would be implied by treating empathy as an attack vector.
Much of Philip K Dick’s writing explored the nature and extent of empathy in humans, androids and robots and the consequences of its absence. ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ (filmed as ‘Blade Runner’) posited the possibility that androids may develop empathy and humans may work hard to deny it.
This is all terribly unfair on Musk, who is, as we all know, a hyper normalised genius.
The point he makes about empathy is correct: his empathy if for rich white men & that is how it should be. The rest of us, deserve no empathy and indeed should thank the normalised hyper genius for the air that we breath. Thank you Master Musk, thank you oh and tell me, how are Tesnazi car sales going these days? Not so well? well that’s a real pity. UK banned you tank? Empathy cuts both ways sweetheart – & remember how Mussolini ended his days.
Look up reports on his sales in Canada of late…..
God Almighty!!
That is the most odious thing I ever heard in all my life.
And I thought that Ayn Rand was the last word rabid self-interest!!
Ugly.
Good analysis of Elon Musk from a psychological perspective by Dr Russell Razzaque:
https://youtu.be/i5HN5pEk_aI?si=bVz51LXbg9-A3dqM
Martin, thank you SO much for that link. The psychiatrist who makes these videos is also a philosopher, and the two disciplines together make for highly informed content. I’ve subscribed to his channel and his newsletter – as he rightly points out, channels such as his are subject to the whims of those in charge of the algorithms. There is no guarantee that his channel will remain.
And I cannot believe I’m having to write that.
[…] are unaffordable, a burden and a cost to be reduced. This is, of course, pure neoliberal thinking. Elon Musk would be proud of it. This is a policy of dehumanising those with disabilities, which those with PIPs have, because, […]
The extremist words and behaviours shared by Musk and Zionists can be understood by examining them through the lens of Cultic Abuse. One of the shared characteristics among all cultic belief systems is the concept of supremacy – us against the other. Another shared characteristic is that Cultic Abuse robs its victims of their humanity.
I have spent 40 years as both cult member (MEK) and anti-cult activist. My CV is here on the Optimus Speaker page https://my.optimus-education.com/conferences/preventing-extremism-and-tackling-radicalisation-schools-2016/speakers
This is my definition:
“Cultic Abuse occurs when an ideology or belief system is used alongside the systematic and sustained application of an array of recognised techniques for psychological manipulation without the knowledge or informed consent of the victim (aka brainwashing), in order to effect a breach of a person’s psychological, emotional, intellectual and social integrity for the purposes of abuse, exploitation, slavery and/or pecuniary gain, and to so inhibit their critical faculties that they do not recognise their own predicament so that they may act in ways harmful to their, their family’s and their society’s best interests on instruction, by command or by neglect.”
Academics, mostly sociologists, are as reluctant as any other group to even whisper the word Zionist in their professional capacity, such is the dangerous backlash that can ensue. But any former cult member will recognise the phenomenon as a shared experience.
Anyone interested in following up on this is welcome to DM me.
I will forward mails
[…] are unaffordable, a burden and a cost to be reduced. This is, of course, pure neoliberalthinking. Elon Musk would be proud of it. This is a policy of dehumanising those with disabilities, which those with PIPs have, because, […]
As Prof. George Lakoff has argued empathy is the foundation of democracy. If you dismiss empathy you are well on the way to dismantling democracy.
That is Musk’s aim.
I know I’m a little late to the party here but this has relevance moreso here…
“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trials 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men.
Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
https://dirkdeklein.net/2019/05/22/evil-i-think-is-the-absence-of-empathy/
So true.