The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - May 26, 2026


Suicidal Empathy Video - Produced by the Wonderful Team of PragerU (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_1000)

Topics
suicidal empathy threats suicidal empathy madness
Hosted by
Gad Saad
Mentioned
Angela Merkel Ted Bundy Arnold Toynbee Justin Trudeau George Floyd Omar Khadr Kind
Instant #1 NYT Bestselling Author Self-Flagellates to Honor George Floyd (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_999) Discussing Suicidal Empathy on Politics by Faith (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_1001)

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

140.41

Word count

818

Sentence count

62

Harmful content

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Suicidal empathy is a malignant force that threatens Western civilization. It hijacks our desire to be kind, misdirects it to the wrong recipient, and exploits the natural proclivity to be empathetic. Suicidal empathy tries to override your capacity for reason, and hijacks your ability to reason.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 How do civilizations die?
00:00:04.040 The great British historian Arnold Toynbee asked himself this question.
00:00:08.820 Here is his answer.
00:00:10.320 They die not by murder, but by suicide.
00:00:13.160 We in the West, the inheritors of the greatest civilization ever created, are witnessing
00:00:18.880 this right before our very eyes.
00:00:21.460 I call this phenomenon suicidal empathy.
00:00:24.900 As an evolutionary behavioral scientist, I believe empathy is a noble virtue and a central
00:00:30.560 feature of our humanity.
00:00:32.260 The Oxford Dictionary defines empathy as the ability to understand and share the feelings
00:00:37.760 of another.
00:00:38.760 It sounds great, and often is, especially when you're empathetic toward the people close
00:00:43.280 to you, your spouse, your children, your friends.
00:00:46.900 But empathy can lead us astray.
00:00:48.880 When empathy serves as the only filter for decision-making, replacing a rational and
00:00:53.860 adaptive calculus of prudence, discernment, and justice, empathy can cause great harm.
00:01:00.260 In fact, it can be fatal. The serial killer, Ted Bundy, used empathy to lure women to their violent
00:01:08.020 deaths. He would pretend to be injured, sometimes with a fake sling or cast on his arm. He would
00:01:14.340 ask his soon-to-be victim for help loading items into his car, and then, when they turned their
00:01:20.500 back, he would strike. Bundy killed through kindness, exploiting the natural proclivity
00:01:26.360 to be empathetic. Suicidal empathy endangers not just well-meaning individuals, it threatens
00:01:32.780 entire societies, indeed, all of Western civilization. Let's look at a couple of general
00:01:38.940 and then more specific examples. Mass immigration. In 2015, the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel,
00:01:46.600 instituted an open-door immigration policy, especially for Muslim migrants, most of whom
00:01:52.620 had no intention of assimilating into their host societies. Perhaps her suicidal empathy 0.88
00:01:58.240 toward migrants was meant as penance for her country's crimes against humanity. But a decade 0.89
00:02:04.200 later, Germany, as well as most of Europe, nearly all of whom have followed Merkel's example,
00:02:10.480 is dealing with the consequences. Vastly increased rates of rape, murder, and social disintegration.
00:02:16.600 Defund the police
00:02:18.900 In the wake of the death of drug-addicted felon George Floyd in May 2020, an idea arose,
00:02:25.700 namely that a racist police system was murdering innocent people of color.
00:02:30.960 Though this was easily refuted by the actual data, suicidally empathetic mayors and city
00:02:36.320 councils in places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Philadelphia cut their police budgets.
00:02:42.480 Who suffered?
00:02:43.100 The very people who were supposed to be protected.
00:02:46.380 Let's look at a few specific cases of suicidal empathy.
00:02:50.340 Canadian-born Omar Khadr joined the Taliban and murdered an American soldier in Afghanistan.
00:02:56.820 The U.S. gave him a 40-year sentence, but turned him over to Canadian authorities after
00:03:02.120 10 years at Guantanamo Bay.
00:03:04.280 Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government, which suffered from stage 4 suicidal empathy,
00:03:09.940 gave Khadr $8 million and apologized for his detention.
00:03:15.140 The University of Minnesota Twin Cities Medical School
00:03:18.100 required the class of 2026 to pledge their support
00:03:22.220 for diversity, equity, and inclusion,
00:03:25.100 not to mention honoring all indigenous ways of healing
00:03:28.460 that have been historically marginalized
00:03:30.780 by Western medicine.
00:03:32.760 Because as they wheel you into the operating room,
00:03:35.780 what you really want to know is that your surgeon
00:03:38.540 who got there for some reason other than merit
00:03:40.860 is up on how the local tribes handled medical problems 500 years ago. Under the Biden White
00:03:47.820 House, the Federal Aviation Administration implemented a recruitment program for people
00:03:53.460 with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. Imagine how safe you'll feel
00:03:59.560 when that woke logic reaches the cockpit. No society can long survive such an explosion
00:04:07.000 of suicidal empathy. Is there a cure? Yes. But first, we must understand where this madness
00:04:14.020 comes from. Suicidal empathy is driven by misplaced guilt. The suicidally empathetic
00:04:20.100 person feels guilty for being born in the prosperous, free West. We might call this
00:04:26.260 privilege guilt, a common affliction among Westerners, especially affluent, highly educated
00:04:32.500 ones. To inoculate yourself against this parasitic idea, you must take at the very least these three
00:04:38.840 actions. First, never shut off your rational mind. Suicidal empathy tries to override your capacity
00:04:46.400 for reason. It hijacks your desire to be kind, misdirects it to the wrong recipient in the wrong
00:04:53.500 amount, and in so doing harms you and others. Second, always ask, what happens next? Cause and
00:05:01.320 effect is an immutable law. Actions have consequences, sometimes very bad ones. Third,
00:05:08.000 don't be tolerant of all viewpoints. Not everything is as good as everything else.
00:05:13.660 Some ideas are better than others. Some cultures are better than others. Some religions are more 0.96
00:05:19.380 peaceful than others. These actions were once the default operating system for nearly everyone born
00:05:25.640 in the West. Now, they are a matter of civilizational survival. The good news is this, suicide is a
00:05:32.600 choice. The West still has time to save itself, but not much. I'm Gad Saad, author of Suicidal
00:05:39.220 Empathy, Dying to be Kind, for Prager University. Thank you for watching this video. To keep Prager
00:05:45.620 U videos free, please consider making a tax-deductible donation.