One of the most dangerous ideas creeping into our culture right now is the notion that empathy can — or should — be conditional. That empathy should be extended only to the people who “deserve” it, to those who think like us, vote like us, believe like us, live like us. This mindset isn’t just toxic on a personal level. It’s authoritarian. It’s the exact strategy used by totalitarian governments, whether they come wrapped in the flag of the far right or cloaked in the rhetoric of the far left.
When empathy is conditional, it becomes a tool of control. It creates an in-group and an out-group, and suddenly, compassion is rationed out only to those who follow the party line. That’s what authoritarian systems thrive on — dividing people into categories of the “worthy” and the “unworthy.” If you’re inside the circle, you’re treated with dignity. If you’re outside, you’re dehumanized, discarded, or outright crushed.
This logic is not new. Fascist regimes weaponized empathy by telling citizens who counted as “true members of the nation” and who didn’t. Authoritarian communists did the same thing, labeling dissenters as “enemies of the people.” The result in both cases was the same: persecution, violence, and cruelty justified by the false idea that certain people weren’t “worthy” of being treated as human beings.
And that’s what makes conditional empathy so dangerous when it shows up in our everyday lives. When we decide we don’t have to show empathy to someone because of their politics, their mistakes, their background, or their identity, we are playing into the same logic used by totalitarians. We may not be running a government, but we’re reinforcing a mindset that fuels oppression and division.
True empathy, real compassion, is unconditional. That doesn’t mean we excuse harm or ignore accountability. It doesn’t mean we accept injustice or stay silent in the face of abuse. What it does mean is that we recognize everyone as human first — even those we disagree with, even those who hurt us, even those whose actions we despise. Accountability and empathy are not opposites. In fact, empathy makes accountability stronger, because it forces us to see the complexity of others rather than reducing them to caricatures.
If we want to resist authoritarianism in all its forms, we have to reject conditional empathy outright. We have to say: no, everyone gets empathy. Everyone gets compassion. Because the moment we start carving out exceptions, we’re speaking the language of the oppressors we claim to stand against.
Radical empathy isn’t weakness. It’s resistance.