John Anderson Media

Suicidal Empathy Is Destroying The West | Gad Saad

Professor Gad Saad argues that empathy directed at the wrong targets becomes a tool of civilisational self-destruction, and that every idea enabling this collapse was spawned on a university campus. Drawing on his own experience fleeing Lebanon as a Jewish child, Saad examines Britain's grooming gang scandal, the pathologisation of masculinity, and the incoherence of Queers for Palestine, noting Gaza practises what he calls a gravity-based conversion therapy. Gad Saad is a Lebanese-Canadian evolutionary behavioural scientist and professor of marketing at Concordia University in Montreal. Born in 1964 in Lebanon, he emigrated to Canada as a child. His academic work applies evolutionary psychology and Darwinian principles to consumer behaviour — he's a legitimate researcher with a substantial peer-reviewed publication record, not purely a public intellectual who drifted into academia. His public profile expanded dramatically through his podcast The Saad Truth, launched around 2014, and accelerated through his 2020 book The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense, which became a bestseller and cemented his position as a prominent voice in the anti-"woke" intellectual space. Purchase Gad's new book Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind here: https://www.amazon.com/Suicidal-Empathy-Dying-Be-Kind/dp/0063446537 Visit John's new substack here: https://www.ourcivilisationalmoment.com/ Sign up to John's newsletter here: https://johnanderson.net.au/contact/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 0:00 Cold open 2:02 Introducing Gad Saad & Suicidal Empathy 3:45 Empathy vs sympathy 6:46 Immigration as a case study 9:03 Growing up Jewish in Lebanon 11:57 Cultural relativism & idea pathogens 14:45 The British grooming gangs 20:02 Universities as the source of parasitic ideas 29:34 Selective empathy & wrong targets 35:21 Civilizational seppuku 48:28 Political fracturing & the elite divide 54:20 Trump as aesthetic injury 1:01:21 Masculinity under attack 1:09:08 Iran, the theocratic threat & Queers for Palestine 1:13:06 Can the West reverse course? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conversations feature John Anderson, former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, interviewing the world's foremost thought leaders about today's pressing social, cultural and political issues. John believes proper, robust dialogue is necessary if we are to maintain our social strength and cohesion. As he puts it; "You cannot get good public policy out of a bad public debate." If you value this discussion and want to see more like it, make sure you subscribe to the channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtnYSEGViOnb7k8ezUaWUww?sub_confirmation=1 And stay right up to date with all the conversations by subscribing to the newsletter here: https://johnanderson.net.au/contact/ Follow John on X: https://x.com/JohnAndersonAC Follow John on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnandersonac Follow John on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnandersonac/ Support the channel: https://johnanderson.net.au/support/ Website: https://johnanderson.net.au/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6Qh2fEsC7nEVxXxQzwTv54 2QH0QLLWRVNX5LFA -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gad Saad social media: Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/Dr.Gad.Saad YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/@UCLH7qUqM0PLieCVaHA7RegA X- https://x.com/GadSaad Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/doctorgadsaad/