GATESTONE
‘Suicidal Empathy’: Is the West Committing Suicide-by-Compassion?
Drieu Godefridi
January 30, 2026

The theory of “suicidal empathy,” taken up and developed by Canadian Professor Gad Saad in his book Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, describes a psychological and societal condition in which excessive or misguided compassion leads Western societies — particularly, it seems, “progressive” ones — to adopt self-destructive attitudes and policies that will ultimately “succeed” in destroying them. The process, however well-intentioned, is a form of civilizational suicide. According to Saad’s thesis, empathy becomes misdirected into a type of benevolent altruism that prioritizes the perceived feelings and needs of “marginalized” or external groups at the expense of the survival, security, and interests of one’s own group and its values. The outcome is the weakening, and ultimately the destruction, of the very civilization that expressed this emotion. READ MORE