Donald Trump holds a cage-fighting spectacle on the grounds of the White House (where, not coincidentally, one of the main participants attacks Michelle Obama in crudely racist, sexist and homophobic terms). This is the same Donald Trump who called on police to treat people more roughly when arresting them. The same Donald Trump who, during his first run for president, called on his supporters to physically attack protesters at his rallies—and who boasted that if he murdered someone in plain sight in New York City, his supporters would continue to support him.
On a larger level, this is Donald Trump who, in his role as head of state, has ordered immigrants to be rounded up and, without any pretense of due process, shipped off to a torture chamber prison in El Salvador (and Trump threatened to do the same to U.S. citizens). This is the same Donald Trump who has wielded ICE to repress and literally murder people, has federalized the National Guard in a number of states and deployed it against people who were overwhelmingly protesting peacefully. The same Donald Trump who utilizes the military to murder people at sea...who orders an illegal attack on Venezuela which kidnaps its head of state...who commits a blatant war crime in launching a war against Iran in clear violation of international law. The same Donald Trump who appoints, as “Secretary of War,” Pete Hegseth who openly proclaims that the U.S. military will no longer even pretend to be constrained by international law and rules of engagement which, he insists, prevent the U.S. military from fully being the ruthless killing machine it is meant to be.
Cruelty Is an Essential Component of Fascists Like Trump and His MAGA Supporters
Cruelty is not accidental, or incidental, for these fascists—as a number of people have observed, cruelty is the point. Trump supporters and the MAGA ranks are encouraged to revel in and celebrate acts of blatant cruelty, especially against those these fascists regard as less than human. As I pointed out in HUMANITY ON THE BRINK:
The brute fascism of Trump and his backers has become so undisguised and unapologetic that the billionaire co-founder of the tech company Palantir has openly called for the return of public hangings in the U.S., as an important means of re-establishing “masculine leadership”! (Palantir is already negatively notorious for its surveillance technology in coordination with ICE and the overall repressive moves of the Trump regime.) 1
And, as seen in this statement by this Palantir executive, cruelty—and ritualized exhibitions of cruelty—is closely linked to the fascist notion of “masculinity.” In her book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, Kristin Kobes Du Mez makes this important, succinct summation regarding the white “evangelical” Christian fundamentalists who are the backbone of present-day American fascism:
White evangelicals have pieced together this patchwork of issues, and a nostalgic commitment to rugged, aggressive, militant white masculinity that serves as the thread binding them together into a coherent whole.
The Fascist Attack on Empathy
As a significant “philosophical rationalization” for this cruelty, a number of fascist Trump supporters, including Elon Musk as well as Charlie Kirk, have directly attacked the whole concept of empathy: the character (or ability) to understand and identify with the feelings of another. Such empathy, they insist, will lead to a situation where people who (according to these fascists) have no legitimate place in this country—people who represent “alien” cultures and ways of life—will be sympathized with and allowed to remain in this country and destroy the white, masculine, Christian way of life and “superior Western civilization” on which this country must be based. This includes:
- People like immigrants from “shithole countries,” as Trump has described non-European nations. (Recall how, during the 2024 election, Trump and Vance repeatedly made the outrageous claim that Haitian immigrants were eating the pets of “regular” people in Ohio.)
- People with different religious beliefs, and in particular Muslims. (Think of the irrational claims by fascist lunatics about how the prospect of Muslims imposing “Sharia Law” poses an immediate and grave danger.)
Empathy for people like this—for those who are “alien” to “the superiority of Western civilization and tradition,” and in any case people whom they regard as inferior to white, masculine Christian fundamentalists—empathy for such people will, according to the warped and depraved view of the fascists, lead to the destruction of everything that this country must be about and everything that makes it “god’s chosen nation,” which must rightly dominate the world.
As for people who have historically been systematically discriminated against and brutally oppressed in this country—Black people, Native Americans, Latinos and other people of color, women and LGBT people—empathy for them, on the part of the larger society, will, according to these fascists, lead to a situation where they will be given rights and “privileges” that they do not deserve. (This is why, for example, Charlie Kirk insisted that Civil Rights legislation passed in the 1960s was a very bad thing, a terrible mistake. It is why a number of influential fascists have insisted that giving women the right to vote was also a terrible act, and something that should be reversed. It explains the crude and vicious attacks on Trans people by Trump and the fascists generally.)
Fascist Cruelty and Unrestrained, Rapacious Capitalism
There is a definite “philosophical” connection between the fascist attack on empathy and the denunciation of altruism by right-wing writer Ayn Rand, who (even after her death) continues to have significant influence particularly among a number of tech titans and other billionaire executives. According to Ayn Rand, altruism—regard for others...unselfish concern for the well-being of others—is a poisonous corrosive force that corrupts society and undermines the necessary operation of capitalism, as the best possible system. In fact, Ayn Rand was an advocate of unrestrained, rapacious capitalism. This is something that strongly resonates with many tech bro billionaires and others who think of themselves as brilliant innovators, far superior to the rest of society, but whose fortunes in reality are dependent on capitalism-imperialism as a system of vicious exploitation and super-exploitation of masses of people throughout the world, including 150 million children, especially in the Third World of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. 2
While Ayn Rand was herself an outspoken atheist, there is now a kind of “unholy alliance” between “Ayn Randist” billionaires and the fundamentalist “Christian nationalists” who are the backbone and driving force of MAGA fascism—Christian fascists who invoke the Old Testament god of the Bible to justify their vengeful hatred for all those they regard as inferior and “alien” to white, masculine Christian fundamentalism. This “unholy alliance” is, in a meaningful sense, concentrated in the person of Donald Trump, who is a shameless and aggressive advocate and practitioner of rapacious capitalism, and who, at the same time, has recognized that, in order to achieve and maintain his position of power, he has to rely on and cater to the Christian fundamentalist fascists (even as his own personal beliefs have historically not been in line with Christian fundamentalism, to greatly understate things).
In all this, it can be seen why the attack on empathy, as well as altruism, is a powerful compulsion and important component of the Trump regime and the whole MAGA fascist phenomenon.
The New Communist View of Empathy
The ability to empathize—to understand and identify with the feelings of another—is a capability that human beings develop at a relatively early age, and is one of the defining qualities of human beings as a species. In an overall sense, empathy is a quality, a positive moral good, that should be encouraged in any decent society—and in any society where empathy is not encouraged, but is vilified and attacked, this will lead to a situation where people’s basic humanity will be suppressed where it is not fully corrupted.
At the same time, empathy cannot be separated from, and posed in opposition to, fundamental social relations. In a system based on slavery, for example, one cannot empathize with both the slave-owners and the slaves, for the basic reason that the conditions and the basic interests of the two are in fundamental and antagonistic conflict. It is possible, even important, to understand scientifically the outlook and interests of the slave-owners, in order to most effectively struggle to eliminate the system of slavery; but it is not possible to identify and sympathize with slave-owners without failing, in reality, to empathize with—without actually betraying—those who are enslaved.
The same is true with regard to the relations between the exploiters and exploited, oppressors and oppressed, in all systems based on exploitation and oppression, including capitalism. Only when the historic objective of the communist revolution has been achieved—the abolition and uprooting of all relations of exploitation and oppression, everywhere—can empathy be applied with regard to people generally.
Emancipation, Not Revenge
At the same time, a fundamental principle of the new communism I have developed is that the purpose and goal of the communist revolution is not revenge against exploiters and oppressors (or others with a “more privileged” position), but emancipation from all relations of exploitation and oppression, moving beyond all social inequality. And the means and methods of the communist revolution must be in line with and an expression of that basic orientation.
As I have strongly emphasized:
The new communism thoroughly repudiates and is determined to root out of the communist movement the poisonous notion, and practice, that “the ends justifies the means.” It is a bedrock principle of the new communism that the “means” of this movement must flow from and be consistent with the fundamental “ends” of abolishing all exploitation and oppression through revolution led on a scientific basis.3
This basic orientation is given expression in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which I have authored. For example: in the provision for due process, and a real emphasis on the presumption of innocence, and protection of the rights of the accused, in criminal legal proceedings, including with regard to people accused of actual criminal acts in opposition to the new socialist society...in the provision that, while prisons will remain necessary in this socialist society, the conditions in those prisons must be humane, and not degrading, as they are under the present capitalist dictatorship...in the prohibition against torture...in the abolition of the death penalty4...and in many other dimensions of this new, emancipating society.
It is a fact that, in order to achieve the ultimate goal of abolishing and uprooting all exploitation and oppression, everywhere, it is necessary to overthrow the state power—the dictatorship—of the capitalist-imperialist system that enforces this exploitation and oppression. And, in its place, as a transition to a society, a world, without any need or basis for dictatorship, of any kind, it is crucial that there be socialist state power (the dictatorship of the proletariat, the exploited class under capitalism, whose emancipation requires the ending of all exploitation and oppression throughout the world).
As I have written before:
All this speaks to why it is crucial that socialist state power be established and maintained, in order not only to prevent the destruction of the new, emancipating socialist society, but also and most fundamentally, to carry forward the advance toward the establishment of the conditions (economically, socially, politically, culturally—and internationally) which will mark, and make possible, the achievement of communism, worldwide.
Only with the achievement of communism, worldwide—with the ending of all economic relations of exploitation, all social and political relations of oppression, and the transformation of culture, including the prevailing morality, in line with these fundamental transformations, throughout the world—only then will there no longer be a need, or a basis, for a state, as the expression of antagonistic class and other social divisions among human beings and the exercise of dictatorship by the class which occupies the superior position fundamentally as a result of its domination of the economy.
The establishment and the ongoing exercise of socialist state power is a crucial and indispensable means for bringing into being the conditions that will make it possible for that state power, and a state (a dictatorship) in any form, to be finally abolished.5
And, once again, all this is an expression of the fact that the purpose and goal of the revolution envisioned, and actively striven for, with the new communism, is not revenge but emancipation—the emancipation of humanity as a whole from thousands of years of vicious exploitation and literally murderous oppression—emancipation from, and moving historically beyond, the long night in which human society has been divided into masters and slaves, and the masses of humanity have been lashed, beaten, raped, slaughtered, shackled and shrouded in ignorance and misery.
