The Age of Cruelty
Trump has normalized the use of ridicule and humiliation as political weapons; it is not too late to avoid infecting the upcoming electoral campaign.
There was a time, not so long ago, when ridiculing the weak, insulting the sick or humiliating the disabled were excluded from democratic discourse and the only place for this kind of speech was in the most disreputable areas of political and media circles. You do not need to idealize the past to remember that at the beginning of this century a U.S. president from the Republican Party like George W. Bush proposed “compassionate conservatism.” He believed that the values of the right that he represented were not at all at odds with helping the disadvantaged or listening to others. His successor, Barack Obama, argued that the “empathy deficit” was a more serious problem than the budget deficit and advocated learning to “stand in somebody else’s shoes” and “see through their eyes.” All these good intentions were possibly naïve, but at least they demonstrated a desire for decency and setting an example. They went up in smoke a decade ago when Donald Trump erupted onto the electoral scene calling Mexican immigrants “rapists,” mimicking a disabled journalist at a meeting and denigrating the war record of someone like John McCain, a prisoner for more than five years in Vietnam and viewed as a hero by his party and his country. There was neither empathy nor compassion there. And this was just the beginning.
Trump has normalized cruelty as a political weapon and has inspired all kinds of imitators in South America and Europe. From Nayib Bukele shamelessly displaying inmates in the prisons of El Salvador to describing underage immigrants in Ceuta as “invaders,” there is an underlying common characteristic: lack of inhibition in the use of language and confidence that there will be no price to pay for breaking some unwritten rules. This is reflected in the business model of social networking sites like the one owned by Elon Musk, where noise and polarization are prized. Nor is the vision of some oligarchs any different: that of a world in which what Musk calls “suicidal empathy” threatens the end of “Western civilization.” “Release the Wolves”* is the title of one of the essays liked by the owner of X. If further proof were needed that brutality is now at the center of life in the U.S., it came this week with the Pentagon’s decision to livestream the execution of a soldier condemned to death. This is a practice worthy of the Islamic State. That which years ago would have remained on the margins — a testosterone program and a lack of inhibition used as an electoral selling point — is now the official doctrine of the most powerful nation in the world.
Contagion is inevitable. It also has to do with the atomization of the public sphere driven by algorithms spoiling for a fight and with capitalism, whose excesses democracies are unable to curb. And there is something else: the erosion of the social contract around the welfare state established after World War II, a project that would have been impossible without the agreement of both Christian Democrats and Social Democrats.
Today these agreements are unraveling, and it is the extreme right that is making headway in the polls and putting together a chain of victories. The benchmarks are no longer Bush, much less Konrad Adenauer or Charles de Gaulle. They are Trump, Musk, Javier Milei with his chainsaw and the latest provocateur on X or TikTok. Moderation has become a flaw and extremism is a virtue. But this manner of discourse is very far from the traditions that built Europe, so it is surprising to see some conservatives renounce them. It is also strange that there are people from parties that aspire to be part of the next Spanish government who disparage an old woman who was thrown out of her apartment or dehumanize immigrants. The problem is no longer Obama’s “empathy deficit”; it is now an “excess of brutality.” If it were possible to control this trend and introduce a dose of Obama empathy or Bush compassion, it would provide a sign of hope at the start of this electoral campaign.
*Editor’s note: The title “Release the Wolves,” though accurately translated, could not be independently verified.
There was a time, not so long ago, when ridiculing the weak, insulting the sick or humiliating the disabled were excluded from democratic discourse and the only place for this kind of speech was in the most disreputable areas of political and media circles. You do not need to idealize the past to remember that at the beginning of this century a U.S. president from the Republican Party like George W. Bush proposed “compassionate conservatism.” He believed that the values of the right that he represented were not at all at odds with helping the disadvantaged or listening to others. His successor, Barack Obama, argued that the “empathy deficit” was a more serious problem than the budget deficit and advocated learning to “stand in somebody else’s shoes” and “see through their eyes.” All these good intentions were possibly naïve, but at least they demonstrated a desire for decency and setting an example. They went up in smoke a decade ago when Donald Trump erupted onto the electoral scene calling Mexican immigrants “rapists,” mimicking a disabled journalist at a meeting and denigrating the war record of someone like John McCain, a prisoner for more than five years in Vietnam and viewed as a hero by his party and his country. There was neither empathy nor compassion there. And this was just the beginning.
Trump has normalized cruelty as a political weapon and has inspired all kinds of imitators in South America and Europe. From Nayib Bukele shamelessly displaying inmates in the prisons of El Salvador to describing underage immigrants in Ceuta as “invaders,” there is an underlying common characteristic: lack of inhibition in the use of language and confidence that there will be no price to pay for breaking some unwritten rules. This is reflected in the business model of social networking sites like the one owned by Elon Musk, where noise and polarization are prized. Nor is the vision of some oligarchs any different: that of a world in which what Musk calls “suicidal empathy” threatens the end of “Western civilization.” “Release the Wolves”* is the title of one of the essays liked by the owner of X. If further proof were needed that brutality is now at the center of life in the U.S., it came this week with the Pentagon’s decision to livestream the execution of a soldier condemned to death. This is a practice worthy of the Islamic State. That which years ago would have remained on the margins — a testosterone program and a lack of inhibition used as an electoral selling point — is now the official doctrine of the most powerful nation in the world.
Contagion is inevitable. It also has to do with the atomization of the public sphere driven by algorithms spoiling for a fight and with capitalism, whose excesses democracies are unable to curb. And there is something else: the erosion of the social contract around the welfare state established after World War II, a project that would have been impossible without the agreement of both Christian Democrats and Social Democrats.
Today these agreements are unraveling, and it is the extreme right that is making headway in the polls and putting together a chain of victories. The benchmarks are no longer Bush, much less Konrad Adenauer or Charles de Gaulle. They are Trump, Musk, Javier Milei with his chainsaw and the latest provocateur on X or TikTok. Moderation has become a flaw and extremism is a virtue. But this manner of discourse is very far from the traditions that built Europe, so it is surprising to see some conservatives renounce them. It is also strange that there are people from parties that aspire to be part of the next Spanish government who disparage an old woman who was thrown out of her apartment or dehumanize immigrants. The problem is no longer Obama’s “empathy deficit”; it is now an “excess of brutality.” If it were possible to control this trend and introduce a dose of Obama empathy or Bush compassion, it would provide a sign of hope at the start of this electoral campaign.
*Editor’s note: The title “Release the Wolves,” though accurately translated, could not be independently verified.
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