Authored by Stu Cvrk via The Epoch Times,
The theory of suicidal empathy is gaining increasing currency among people who are deeply concerned about the apparent fracturing of Western civilization, particularly American culture.
Suicidal empathy can be defined as excessive or misdirected compassion expressed by individuals or groups that prioritizes short-term emotional responses over cultural norms and long-term societal stability and personal well-being. Over time, the concept can lead to self-destructive outcomes for individuals (the loss of traditional values in favor of equity and other false gods) or societies (robust nationalism replaced by unchecked multiculturalism and moral decay).
A good example is the European Union’s embrace of open borders policies that led to the flood of people from the Middle East and Africa in the name of “empathy for poor people” without regard to assimilation.
Who gains from this chaos and angst?
Any distress that destabilizes Western civilization serves the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which exploits anything that undermines the United States and its allies.
Some observers believe that Beijing covertly amplifies the elements of suicidal empathy in the West—excessive compassion, cultural relativism, polarization, and over-tolerance of immigrants who refuse to assimilate—as a low-cost, asymmetric front in its hybrid war against the United States.
Let us examine the issue.
What Is Suicidal Empathy?
Lebanese–Canadian evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad coined the term in 2024 to describe excessive, misdirected, or hyperactive empathy that becomes self-destructive. As with anyone who postulates a new concept, he is considered by some to be a “controversial figure.”
Saad is the author of “The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense,” a university professor at Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business, and a frequent presence on X (@GadSaad), podcasts (such as “The Joe Rogan Experience”), and YouTube. He explains how suicidal empathy fuels open borders, cultural chaos, and self-sabotage in the United States and the West in general.
He argues that suicidal empathy leads some to prioritize the needs of illegal immigrants over those of citizens and veterans, to show leniency toward criminals and addicts in the name of compassion, to refuse to confront national threats for fear of “appearing unkind,” and to value the appearance of being kind and empathetic even when the result is harmful to individuals or society.
Saad maintains that prioritizing compassion for potential threats, outsiders, or criminals over one’s own group’s safety, security, and long-term survival has led to questionable policy choices by liberal governments in the West.
Saad is critical of “woke” culture, political correctness, Islamofascism, and what he calls the Marxist corruption of academia, which he groups as “idea pathogens”—harmful ideologies that spread like parasites and supplant traditional moral, political, and cultural values, particularly those rooted in Judeo–Christian philosophy.
Critics argue that elite-driven immigration policies, motivated by suicidal empathy, have downplayed assimilation requirements, contributing to the persistence of culturally insular communities. They often point to debates surrounding Islamist activism or illiberal norms within some immigrant-heavy areas of Minnesota, Michigan, and Texas as illustrative cases.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) confer during a hearing about fraud in Minnesota at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 7, 2026. Federal prosecutors filed charges against dozens of people in Minnesota, many from the area’s Somali community, for stealing taxpayer dollars through fraudulent social services schemes. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Perhaps even more consequential are the recent federal prosecutions uncovering large-scale fraud schemes involving Somali-American defendants, most notably the Feeding Our Future case in Minnesota, which prosecutors say siphoned roughly $250 million from a federal child-nutrition program. The scandal exposed serious failures of state and federal oversight and further eroded public trust in government institutions.
A combination of bureaucratic incompetence, risk aversion, and fear of appearing discriminatory allowed the fraud to persist longer than it should have. This reluctance to enforce rules rigorously—suicidal empathy—can weaken accountability and invite abuse, ultimately harming both taxpayers and the very communities such policies are meant to protect
These fractures in American society serve the CCP, as whatever distracts, disrupts, weakens, or causes chaos among Americans is considered good by the communists.
CCP Exploitation of Suicidal Empathy
“Unrestricted Warfare,” an important 1999 book by People’s Liberation Army Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, advocates the use of “unrestricted” or “beyond-limits” warfare, emphasizing non-military methods to weaken adversaries such as the United States without resorting to direct armed conflict.
“Beyond limits” has since been expanded to include all forms of hybrid warfare, short of kinetic warfare. While suicidal empathy was unknown in 1999, it is not a stretch to speculate that the CCP has embraced it as another important front in its ever-expanding hybrid warfare against the United States.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping would appear to recognize and champion chaos as a means to achieve Chinese global dominance, as his statement from 2021 indicates: “The world today is undergoing a great change in situation unseen in a century. Since the most recent period, the most important characteristic of the world is, in a word, ‘chaos,’ and this trend appears likely to continue.” And societal chaos is a direct result of suicidal empathy.
The CCP uses united front actions to influence Western academia and media to exploit political and societal divisions in their ongoing hybrid war. By leveraging proxies, disinformation, funding networks, and diaspora communities, the CCP amplifies polarization in the United States on issues such as race and identity politics, immigration and open borders, and the cancel culture, turning them into tools for societal upheaval and chaos.
Chinese state media, Chinese embassies, and CCP-funded nonprofit groups publicly express empathy for protected classes in America, the underprivileged, and especially illegal aliens from the Third World in a synergistic effort to amplify the suicidal empathy being pushed by American elites.
The Chinese regime routinely deploys fake social media accounts on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to inflame public discourse and encourage street protests. For example, during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests (as a classic example of suicidal empathy in action), CCP state media and influence networks amplified narratives that portrayed the United States as racially oppressive and chaotic. Pro-CCP actors on social media posed as American activists to escalate calls for defunding police and radical reforms, aiming to prolong disorder and erode public faith in law enforcement and American institutions in general.
The CCP also directly or indirectly funds certain activist groups that promote “woke” ideology and street protests against ICE agents and law enforcement personnel in general, while using state-backed media such as CGTN or TikTok algorithms to further amplify social discord and division among Americans.
For example, Neville Roy Singham, an American tech millionaire living in Shanghai, is allegedly the “main backer” of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (to the tune of $20 million) through nonprofits such as the Justice and Education Fund and the United Community Fund. PSL has organized nationwide protests against ICE, including the 2025 Los Angeles riots, where they were implicated in violence in the streets and civil unrest.
Singham’s pro-CCP network of radical organizations also allegedly funds the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) and The People’s Forum, which promote Marxist education and progressive causes on campuses, such as immigrant rights and anti-racism, and also support anti-ICE campus protests while promoting “woke” themes like social justice and anti-oppression.
Concluding Thoughts
Did Gad Saad hit paydirt by theorizing that the practical results of decades of putting Marxist critical theory into practice in America are—as he puts it—a “tsunami of unmodulated kindness,” “parasitized suicidal empathy,” or an “orgiastic, hyperactive form of empathy” that are undermining Western civilization?
The CCP has certainly figured that out, as its actions to spread and exacerbate chaos in America, as described above, elucidate. Whatever undermines the United States from within advances its hybrid warfare objectives and world domination goals.
What is the surest sign that the CCP understands the effectiveness—and threats of—suicidal empathy?
It is the communists who stamp out all vestiges of it in China. The CCP has historically viewed universal empathy, compassion, or spiritual beliefs among individuals as potential threats to its authority, often labeling them as “superstitions” to justify eradication, persecution, and suppression—with Falun Gong adherents and minorities (such as Tibetans, Uyghurs) as among the victims. The CCP prioritizes atheism, nationalism, and Party loyalty over individual or humanitarian concerns, subordinating empathy for individuals to collective goals.
Meanwhile, the CCP is working behind the scenes to promote suicidal empathy in America.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
