Arjun Murarka

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

You've probably seen the video. A young Frenchwoman in Paris, in tears, begging looters to stop. "Why are you doing this? That's not what we stand for."

Some accounts are mocking her. "She voted for it."

I won't. Because what you see on her face is not stupidity. It's a disease that has infected the entire West, and it has a name: suicidal empathy.

The term comes from Gad Saad, an evolutionary behavioral scientist at Concordia University in Montreal. A man who fled the Lebanese civil war as a child, and who knows what it looks like when a society falls apart. His new book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, is the follow-up to The Parasitic Mind. Here is the thesis, and why it concerns every one of us.

Empathy is one of the best things about us. It evolved for a reason: to care for our children, our kin, our tribe. It was calibrated for a world where the people you felt for were the people around you, and where empathy always came paired with its counterweight: the instinct to protect your own and to recognize a threat.

Suicidal empathy is what happens when that mechanism misfires. When it fires at the wrong targets, in the wrong amounts, with no brake. When we feel more for the criminal than for his victim. More for the stranger who breaks the rules than for the citizen who follows them. More for how compassionate we look than for what our compassion actually produces.

Where does it come from? Four layers.

First, biology. Empathy is a spotlight, as the psychologist Paul Bloom put it. It lights up the one face in front of you and leaves everything else in the dark. The crying migrant on the boat is visible. The thousands of future victims of a broken system are statistics. A spotlight is a terrible tool for running a country.

Second, our own civilization. The West is the civilization that put the victim at the center of its morality. Christianity taught us to care for the stranger, the poor, the weak. It was one of the greatest moral revolutions in history. But cut off from its other half, justice, responsibility, the duty to protect your own, it turns into something else.

Third, ideology. In The Parasitic Mind, Saad described idea pathogens, ideas that hijack our reasoning. Suicidal empathy is the emotional counterpart: an ideology that hijacks our compassion. It sorts the world into oppressors and victims, then demands unlimited empathy for whoever ranks as the victim, whatever they do.

Fourth, status. In the age of social media, empathy has become a display. Posting "refugees welcome" costs nothing and earns applause. The bill goes to someone else: the working class, the suburbs, the women walking home at night.

The results are everywhere. Criminals treated as victims of society. Sexual assaults by migrants met with lenient sentences. Self-defense branded as aggression. Borders treated as cruelty. Saad's conclusion is simple: a society dies when it would rather display infinite tolerance than use its survival instinct.

Now the part I'll add myself, and that few people dare to say.

On average, women score higher than men on measures of empathy. It's one of the most consistent findings in psychology, across cultures, and it makes perfect evolutionary sense: for most of human history, the survival of children depended on it. It's a strength.

But it means an ideology that weaponizes empathy will hit women harder. And the data shows it: in country after country, young women have moved sharply to the left of young men, especially on immigration.

This is where men have a responsibility.

Not to mock. Not to lecture. Not to say "she deserved it." Empathy has always needed a counterweight, and that counterweight was the protective instinct: the one that draws lines, says no, and stands between the threat and the people it loves.

Men abandoned that role. They were told it was toxic, and many believed it. So they stayed silent at the dinner table, at work, with their partners, sisters, daughters and friends.

That has to end. Men have to have this conversation, honestly and with respect: compassion that cannot say no is not compassion. It's surrender. And the first to pay for it are women.

Many women already understand this better than anyone. Some of the bravest voices in this fight are women, precisely because they are the first to feel the danger in the street.

A civilization rests on a balance: compassion and strength, openness and borders, mercy and justice. When one side swallows the other, the foundations crack. What we are watching in Europe is what happens when empathy has no counterweight left.

Look at that young woman again. She isn't the enemy. She's what this ideology made of a generation that was told kindness would be enough.

Our job is to make sure she's the last generation that has to learn it this way.

[Randeep Sisodia @Randeep_Sisodia]

This needs to be played on loop by every sincere Indian…

[Mohandas Pai @TVMohandasPai]

The Brutal Goa Inquisition led by the Catholic Church. Never forget

[Arjun Murarka @arjunmurarka]

@narendramodi Sir , we trust you to push for the Airport at Jamshedpur for the accelerated development of the region.

[Manav Kedia @manavkedia1975]

@PMOIndia @HemantSorenJMM @JharkhandCMO @rashtrapatibhvn @ombirlakota @DCEastSinghbhum Singhbhum Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s protest in demand for Dhalbhumgarh Airport in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand. Look into this urgently.

[Priyanka Tibrewal @impriyankabjp]

A startling piece of information has emerged in West Bengal regarding the SIR!

Father – Ayub Shah
Mother – Monohora Shah

1. First child – Samir Uddin Shah
2. Just four months later, second child – Amir Ali Shah
3. Four years later – Amina Shah
4. One year later, fourth child – Sagar Shah
5. Within two months, fifth child – Pinki Shah
6. Four months later, sixth child – Haidar Shah
7. Seven years later, seventh child – Swapan Shah
8. Six months later, eighth child – Marjina Shah

The “extraordinary efficiency” of Trinamool’s vote-bank politics could truly leave the entire world astonished.

এসআইআর নিয়ে পশ্চিমবঙ্গের এক বিস্ময়কর তথ্য সামনে এসেছে!

বাবা – আইয়ুব শা
মা – মনোহরা শা

১) প্রথম সন্তান – সমির উদ্দিন শা
২) মাত্র চার মাস পর দ্বিতীয় সন্তান – আমির আলী শা
৩) চার বছর পর – আমিনা শা
৪) এক বছর পর চতুর্থ সন্তান – সাগর শা
৫) দু’মাসের মধ্যে পঞ্চম সন্তান – পিঙ্কি শা
৬) চার মাস পর ষষ্ঠ সন্তান – হায়দার শা
৭) সাত বছর পর সপ্তম সন্তান – স্বপন শা
৮) ছ’মাস পর অষ্টম সন্তান – মর্জিনা শা

তৃণমূলের ভোটব্যাঙ্ক রাজনীতির এই “অসাধারণ দক্ষতা” দেখে সত্যিই গোটা বিশ্ব বিস্মিত হতে পারে!

@BJP4Bengal @narendramodi @AmitShah @amitmalviya @NitinNabin @byadavbjp @blsanthosh @sunilbansalbjp @mangalpandeybjp @BjpBiplab @SamikBJP @SuvenduWB
@Amitava_BJP

[Bhakt Prahlad🚩 @RakeshKishore_l]

📍SALUTE TO Rubika Liyaquat Who opened the Pajama of Terr0rist's Sympathizer Rahman when he said that misguided youth are becoming terr0rists.

Rubika-" Why don't Hindu youth get misguided, why don't Christian youth get misguided, why are only Muslims in the whole world getting misguided and becoming terrorists?"🔥👏

[Arjun Murarka @arjunmurarka]

All Madrasas in India should be shut with immediate effect.

[BhikuMhatre @MumbaichaDon]

“When I ordered closure of madrasas, some officers said there'll be outrage. I said; have we taken contract to produce mu££ahs? Let there be outrage, I will shut down madrasas"- CM .@himantabiswa Ji

No communal angle, one valid Q— Why should Govt fund ANY Religious Education...whether Hindu, Mu$£im or Christian? Let the kids join Govt Aided or Pvt Schools (as the financial purse permits) to get Mainstream Education & let every Religious Community fund its own Religious Education. If 'India' is really 'Secular' (as per Indira Ghandy's illegally inserted word in Constitution during illegally imposed emergency), then why should taxpayers money be used to fund ONE PARTICULAR Religious Preaching/Education?

[Arjun Murarka @arjunmurarka]

@aviralbhat Yes

[SUHEL SETH @Suhelseth]

The finest TV interviews EVER…

[Mr Sinha @Mrsinha]

We should avoid foreign-made items, but some people still bring "Chhoti Ankh wala Ganpati Bappa" (Chinese-made) home. 😭🤣

[Sanjeev Sanyal @sanjeevsanyal]

That was quite a speech! Perhaps @narendramodi ‘s finest. No one should be left in any doubt that India means business.

#OperationSindoor

[Arjun Murarka @arjunmurarka]

All Madrasas in India should be closed with immediate effect. Very important for the 0.5 Front. @narendramodi @AmitShah

[Megh Updates 🚨™ @MeghUpdates]

Pakistan Defence Minister says, If necessary, we will use the children of madrasa for war, they are our second line of defence.

PS: Many Terror training camps are operated in guise of Madrassas in Pakistan

[Megh Updates 🚨™ @MeghUpdates]

Pakistan Defence Minister says, If necessary, we will use the children of madrasa for war, they are our second line of defence.

PS: Many Terror training camps are operated in guise of Madrassas in Pakistan

[Ofer Binshtok - Kafir - עופר בינשטוק @Ofer_binshtok]

This is what genocide looks like:

[The Analyzer (News Updates🗞️) @Indian_Analyzer]

"NO LOCAL KASHMIRI helped us in Pahalgam."
~ Wife of Shubham Dwivedi confirms. Victims were left to bleed. Kashmiris just want MONEY from Tourism 💔

This wasn’t just terror. It was Betrayal. And it lives among us. TRAITORS walk free. Beware.

[Karan Verma @KARAN_author]

Never fall for this crap. Mr @salim_merchant kindly read 4:56, 4:48, 4:116, 98:6 , 9:5 to name a few. And after quoting 5:32 please read the next verse 5:33. Then show the guts to denounce these verses. Tab manenge your concern!!

[Sonam Mahajan @AsYouNotWish]

In Pahalgam, terrorists confirmed the Hindu identity of tourists, then started spraying bullets on them. Just like in Dhangri, a village in Jammu’s Rajouri district, where two years ago, Aadhaar cards were checked before Hindus were executed in their own homes.

In Murshidabad, Hindu homes were marked by their very Muslim neighbours, and a father–son duo was hacked to death in broad daylight. Just days apart.

All this while Indian Muslims cry ‘genocide’ on global stages and claim to be persecuted second-class citizens.

Ask Dhangri. Ask Murshidabad. Ask Pahalgam. Ask us.

[Anand Ranganathan @ARanganathan72]

There was absolutely nothing wrong in what Dr @nishikant_dubey said.

Here I provide nine clear-cut instances where the Supreme court, in both overlooking and overseeing blatant discrimination against Hindus, not only seeded resentment, it stoked the prospect of religious wars:

[Arjun Murarka @arjunmurarka]

@MeghUpdates Yes