‘Toxic Empathy’ Is Just Tribalism

One of the buzzwords of the political moment is “toxic empathy.” It’s not a new concept, but the term has been popularized of late by Allie Beth Stuckey in a 2024 book, Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. As Stuckey explained to Ross Douthat some months back:

As she added in a debate with David French, “My definition of toxic empathy is that empathy that causes you to ignore the person on the other side of the moral equation.”