‘We have had universities making statements condemning Israel with no mention of Hamas… all done in the name of kindness for the oppressed.’ Dr Peter Hughes discusses a theory that extreme kindness to one group can mean cruelty to another.
Dr Peter Hughes is a psychologist and philosopher. Read his essay on this topic on Unherd where he makes the case that the cruel streak in progressivism has become dominant. See short verbatim extract below:
‘Acts of kindness bear witness to our shared suffering. But when kindness becomes pathological, it is cruel and divisive — as with these examples. And it is on the rise. In the West today, there are people whose suffering is deemed to be non-existent or of little value, and so judgement takes the place of understanding, punishment that of mercy. The result is a purity spiral whereby extreme kindness towards an in-group gives unlimited licence to act with cruelty towards an out-group. It’s this licence that gives progressive activists permission to clothe antisemitism as anti-colonialism.’
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