Redistribution of Empathy

The concept of "Redistribution of Empathy," as articulated by Eric Weinstein, refers to a process in which empathy is selectively reallocated or directed away from certain individuals or groups experiencing harm, toward others who may be perpetrators of harm, claimants of victimhood for ideological reasons, or figures aligned with specific narratives. This reallocation is observed in cultural, social, and ideological contexts where empathy becomes a tool for social signaling, moral competition, or ideological enforcement rather than a balanced response to suffering.

In Weinstein's framework, this phenomenon distorts justice and rational discourse by prioritizing empathy for those responsible for wrongdoing, thereby diminishing attention to or support for actual victims. Examples include redirecting empathy from groups such as Europeans, straight individuals, Christians, conservatives, Israelis, cis-gendered people, Ahmadis, police, or the wealthy, while emphasizing it for others in a manner that appears selective or politicized.

Weinstein contrasts this with authentic empathy, which he describes as thoughtful, comprehensive, and guided by responsibility, rather than manipulated for purposes like cult-like behaviors, appeals to authority, or revolutionary ideologies disguised as progressive movements. He illustrates this in discussions of movements like "Abolish the Police," "No Justice No Peace," Anti-Racism, Antifa, and Black Lives Matter, suggesting they operate in a "dreamworld" where their stated goals mask a redistribution that withdraws empathy from certain parties.

Description

Weinstein defines redistribution of empathy as a cultural trend where empathy is misused to favor those committing harm or claiming victimhood ideologically, at the expense of genuine victims. This creates a competitive dynamic for moral superiority, overshadowing actual suffering and eroding rational discourse. He contrasts this with authentic empathy, which should be comprehensive and not weaponized for social or ideological purposes.

In podcast discussions, Weinstein describes it as a false "expansion of empathy," where empathy is withdrawn from traditional recipients and reassigned, contributing to societal divisions. He ties it to "revolutionary thinking" perceived as pro-empathy but actually selective, confined excesses to campuses, and misconceptions about progressive goals.

There's a point about sanctimony and appearing to do good while doing evil. That is different from the need to parent and protect. Part of what's going on is a redistribution of empathy, which is being called an expansion of empathy, right? So the idea is we are going to be extra specially sympathetic with some groups and empathic with their trauma, their pain. And we are going to take away compassion from other groups. So, for example, if you look at suicide statistics in the United States, from all of the rhetoric, you would think that young Black, Asian females would be at the top of the suicide statistics. But it's really middle aged white men who are killing themselves in incredible numbers. And you bring up the statistic, and there's an exchange rate in terms of human misery that is measured in suicide. It's a pretty unfudgable thing when you kill yourself, you're probably in an extremely negative state of personal trauma. So what does the compassion group think about the fact that the group most likely to end their own lives is exactly the group that is faulted, you know, for the patriarchy? It's astounding. "Oh, poor little white men in the Midwest had their privilege taken away." What the hell are you talking about? You're talking about people killing themselves. You're talking about fathers and grandfathers dying. What we're talking about is a redistribution of compassion. We're talking about taking compassion away from people of European descent. We're talking about taking compassion away from men. We're talking about taking compassion away from a business person like Steve Jobs, who might have pancreatic cancer and be dying from it in his 50s because he had the privilege of building billion dollar companies.

Who the hell are you? What is your problem? Come out of the shadows and admit to what you want. You want a redistribution of compassion. You're calling this empathy. It is anything but empathy. Empathy would be an expansion of our understanding of each other's problems and woes. This is basically saying that these people are worthy of compassion, and these people aren't. The child who might have been wronged for not having a clear gender identity—and that would have happened under any era in any circumstance—that's one life, and then you have a bunch of lives over here that are children who are pushed toward sexual reassignment surgery and are sexually mutilated for no reason at all because of developmental, you know, reasons that they got bad advice from adults while they were trying to assemble themselves. And you're compassionate about this and you're not compassionate about that? I don't want you anywhere near a school. If you're not willing to deal with type one and type two error, you don't belong around our children. If you don't understand that human development is important and that it is very hard to improve on the gender binary that is, even if there are edge cases, the gender binary is there for a reason and you don't have a clue how complicated the gender binary is. You probably haven't even studied sexuality in different species that assign gender. You know, flatworms assign it based on a contest. The winner is male and the loser is female. You don't like that? Tough luck. You know, bedbugs only practice traumatic insemination. You don't like that? I'm sorry. How are you going to engineer the entire world around your crazy theories of gender and sexuality? We need these people away from children. They're working out their own stuff. We need to recognize that homosexuality, particularly among men in an obligate fashion, is a normal, conserved part of the human experience. Basically there is a gender binary, there is a small number of edge cases at a hardware level, there's a small number of cases meant at a software level.

We have to be compassionate about all that, but we can't take compassion away from everyone else. And that's a message to both the Left and the Right. Stop saying there are only two sexes. It's offensive. And stop forcing people to say something so simplistic because you're threatening their children.

- Eric Weinstein on Modern Wisdom

On X

2018

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

1/ @ezraklein has written an important essay. A Rosetta Stone for SJWs/Non-SJW Left/Conservatives.

This piece on the @nytimes’ hiring of gender & race-baiter @sarahjeong is also spectacular in that it somehow manages to combine deep insight with barely believable cluelessness. https://x.com/ezraklein/stat/ezraklein/status/1027173350819459072

3:31 PM · Aug 8, 2018

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

2/ @ezraklein describes “Feminist Twitter” (which doesn’t of course actually exist by virtue of Twitter’s open design) as a place where the words #KillAllMen came to mean simply “it would be nice if the world sucked less for women.”

You sorta have to read it to believe it:

3:46 PM · Aug 8, 2018

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

3/ As you can see from @ezraklein’s emotive shadings, he’s deeply troubled by patriarchy, yet only mildly annoyed at #KillAllMen feminism. What I would call open racism/sexism against whites/men is to him a kind of edgy snarky in-group lingo, but weirdly sent in the open to all.

3:58 PM · Aug 8, 2018

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

4/ What’s so interesting about @ezraklein’s line of thought here is that he is describing a massive transfer of empathy. We are asked to understand @sarahjeong’s wild gender & race baiting as snark in the context of alleged oppression as she and her group police micro-aggression.

4:13 PM · Aug 8, 2018

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

5/ What @ezraklein is describing to conservatives here is a recently mainstreamed Left I’ve never seen before...and I’m on the Left. The woke-network got confused that by breaking into the big time, #KillAllMen level privilege is scrutinized out of network as STRAIGHT-UP-BIGOTRY.

4:38 PM · Aug 8, 2018

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

6/ Also, I learn on “Social Justice Twitter”, @sarahjeong & her ilk don’t mean “white people” when they say “white people.” They mean “the dominant power structure”, & anyone with an iota of self awareness gets this on the Left.

That’s the mother of all memos I missed. If true.

5:07 PM · Aug 8, 2018

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

End/ This is hard to believe if you haven’t read it yourself. I almost feel like I’m making it up. But right now @sarahjeong in her new job at the @nytimes IS the dominant power structure. And by Ezra’s claims on SJW lingo, is therefore, improbably, a white male. Fight the power.

5:15 PM · Aug 8, 2018

2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Bari Weiss has now resigned from the @nytimes. And that is not even “The Story”. I‘ve just spoken to Bari & learned that I‘m finally free to tweet.

Her letter hints at the real News: the *loss* of the News is now *the* News, and the News cannot cover it.

https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter

5:59 PM · Jul 14, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

On 6/1/17 Ms Weiss was the only journalist covering “The News”. Only she was doing it from the opinion section because the NYT refused to find interesting that there was a racist Maoist insurrection at a public college where police would be stood down: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/when-the-left-turns-on-its-own.amp.html

5:59 PM · Jul 14, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

At that moment Bari Weiss became all that was left of the “Paper of Record.” Why? Because the existence of Black Racists with the power to hunt professors with Baseball Bats and even redefine the word ‘racism’ to make their story impossible to cover ran totally counter-narrative.

5:59 PM · Jul 14, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

At some point after 2011, the NYT gradually stopped covering the News and became the News instead. And Bari has been fighting internally from the opinion section to re-establish Journalism inside tbe the NYT. A total reversal of the Chinese Wall that separates news from opinion.

5:59 PM · Jul 14, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

This is the paper in 2016 that couldnt be interested in the story that millions of Americans were likely lying to pollsters about Donald Trump.

The paper refusing to ask the CIA/FBI if Epstein was Intelligence related.

The paper that can’t report that it seeks race rioting:

5:59 PM · Jul 14, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

I have had the honor of trying to support both @bariweiss at the New York Times and @BretWeinstein in their battles simply to stand alone against the internal mob mentality. It is THE story all over the country. Our courageous individuals are being hunted at work for dissenting.

5:59 PM · Jul 14, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Before Bari resigned, I did a podcast with her. It was chilling. I‘d make an innocuous statement of simple fact and ask her about it. She‘d reply “That is obviously true but I’m sorry we can’t say that here. It will get me strung up.” That‘s when I stopped telling her to hang on.

5:59 PM · Jul 14, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

So what just happened? Let me put it bluntly: What was left of the New York Times just resigned from the New York Times. The Times canceled itself. As a separate Hong Kong exists in name only, the New New York Times and affiliated “news” is now the chief threat to our democracy.

5:59 PM · Jul 14, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

This is the moment when the passengers who have been becoming increasingly alarmed, start to entertain a new idea: what if the people now in the cockpit are not airline pilots? Well the Twitter Activists at the @nytimes and elsewhere are not journalists.

5:59 PM · Jul 14, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

What if those calling for empathy have a specific deadness of empathy?

Those calling for justice *are* the unjust?

Those calling “Privilege” are the privileged?

Those calling for equality seek to oppress us?

Those anti-racists are open racists?

The progressives seek regress?

5:59 PM · Jul 14, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Bari and I agree on a lot but also disagree fiercely. And so I have learned that she is tougher than tough. But these university and journalistic workplaces are now unworkable. They are the antithesis off what they were built to stand for. It is astounding how long she held out.

5:59 PM · Jul 14, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Read her letter. I have asked her to do a make-up podcast & she has agreed. Stay tuned If you don’t want to be surprised again by what‘s coming understand this: just as there has been no functioning president, there‘s now no journalism. We‘re moving towards a 🌎 of pure activism.

5:59 PM · Jul 14, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Prepare to lose your ability to call the police & for more autonomous zones where kids die so that Govenors & Mayors can LARP as Kayfabe revolutionaries. Disagree with Ms Weiss all you want as she isn’t perfect. But Bari is a true patriot who tried to stand alone. Glad she’s out.

5:59 PM · Jul 14, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

We are not finished by a long shot. What the Intellectual Dark Web tried to do MUST now be given an institutional home.

Podcast with Bari on The Portal to come as soon as she is ready.

Stay tuned. And thanks for reading this. It is of the utmost importance.

Thank you all. 🙏

5:59 PM · Jul 14, 2020

2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

I don’t like to block people I disagree with. But here are common reasons i block:

A) Personal attacks.
B) Deliberate misportrayal
C) Misuse of ridicule
D) Trying to get to @joerogan.
E) I can’t afford to get the person therapy.
F) Desire to spar from an anonymous account.

8:00 PM · Jan 30, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

G) The account is trying to drag me towards reputational quicksand.
H) The account is focused on “pick a side” level analysis
I) Repeated appeals to authorities.
J) Use of invariant phrases (e.g. “I’m going to invite you to sit in your own discomfort”) associated with cults.

8:00 PM · Jan 30, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

K) Someone pretends to be pro empathy when they are trying to redistribute empathy away from some people in pain.
L) I could program an Eliza program to deliver the level of challenge.
M) The account makes arguments where Refutation requires divulging personal details.
Etc...

8:00 PM · Jan 30, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

The basic point is this: if you’re absolutely determined to get blocked there are many ways to do it, but It won’t happen lightly or by accident. And if that means that you have triumphed in your own mind, I feel sad for who you could have become.

But I’ll now gift you your win.

8:00 PM · Jan 30, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

People die because of what Twitter, Facebook and Google do when censoring truth. So we aren’t going to stop. Even if it’s futile.

@jack is a brilliant interesting soul. One of these days he’s going to wake up like @ggreenwald, @mattyglesias and others who realized their errors.

5:20 PM · Jun 14, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@mymundanemind

I can't tell if these appeals from you and @EricRWeinstein to people like @jack, @TeamYouTube, etc. are genuine attempts at futilely reasoning with people who don't give a shit about you, or simply getting the receipts to show you tried. But you need a plan B, dude.

4:47 PM · Jun 14, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

That’s not a dig at @jack, @ggreenwald or @mattyglesias. There seems to be some dreamworld where you think “Abolish the police isn’t really a thing.” or “They don’t really mean no justice no peace.” In the dream You think TheLancet is objective. That Peer Review is pro-science.

5:20 PM · Jun 14, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

In the dreamworld you think revolutionary thinking is a pro empathy movement rather than a redistribution of empathy away from others. You imagine excesses are confined to college campuses and that people grow out of it when they get mortgages. That progressives want progress.

5:20 PM · Jun 14, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Inside the dream, anti-racism is anti racist rather than a form of racism. Antifa is simply against fascism. Black Lives Matter is about nothing more than Black Lives Mattering.

Sooner or later everyone wakes up. I don’t give up on any friends. And we need our top folks to wake.

5:20 PM · Jun 14, 2021

2024

Florida Man

@FLManBabyWoo

@GadSaad has a model for it. It's a parasitized mind plagued with suicidal empathy.

5:09 PM · Oct 23, 2024

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

My name for it is usually “Redistribution of empathy" or “Metastatic Maternity” or a bunch of related ideas of my own. I’m not sure that either @GadSaad or I really understand it. I can say a bunch of stuff to indicate that I get it. But I don’t deeply.

5:09 PM · Oct 23, 2024

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Lost this earlier. This is what I usually call “Redistribution of Empathy” where there is a competition to see who is the most compassionate by elevating the pain of the monster well above that of its victim.

The ability to map it and name it is not what I mean by my inability to understand it.

5:35 PM · Oct 23, 2024

Ben Shapiro

@benshapiro

You want to know why nobody cares about the Left-wing media's latest oppo dump? The answer is obvious: people care about the quality of their lives. And life is getting worse under Democratic governance.

Here's just a quick story.

We're in LA this week. So we decided to go out with some friends, a husband and wife. Nice area of the city, well lit, not too late at night.

We finish dinner at around 10:30 and head back to our car. Since my wife and I have 24/7 security, we're safe. Not so for our friends. They get to their car...

And as soon as they do, a Hyundai without plates speeds up and stops. Three young black guys jump out of the car (suspect description relevant because they're still at large!) and rush up to my friend, yank him out of his car, and grab his watch, phone and wallet. They then sprint around the car and grab his wife, start trying to pull off her jewelry. She screams and kicks, and presumably losing time, they take off in top gear down the street.

As stated, they're still at large. It took about 15 minutes for the cops to arrive. Not their fault -- LA is wildly understaffed, and the LAPD has been treated horribly by the city government, such that officers have been targeted for simply doing their jobs. I know and am friends with many of them. My friend and his wife weren't armed up, either, because it's nearly impossible to carry a gun in LA legally, and also because if you shoot a criminal in LA, there's a solid shot YOU end up in jail.

Now, here's the thing. My friend and his wife have lived in LA for decades. In the last several years, they've been assaulted more than once on the street. Zero arrests. Zero prosecutions.

This is just one of the reasons we left LA, where I had lived my entire life. And it's getting worse, not better.

This is why people increasingly don't give a shit about the media's latest horror story about Trump Saying Bad Things™. The same people who maintain that street crime is no big deal, or a reflection of institutional racism, or that inflation is hunky dory, or that biggest issue in American life is whether or not Billy has the right to be called Susan...these are not serious people. But people's lives are serious business. And bad governance means worse lives for people.

5:35 PM · Oct 23, 2024

2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

European lives don’t.
Straight lives don’t.
Christian lives don’t.
Conservative lives don’t.
Israeli lives don’t.
Cis-gendered lives don’t.
Ahmadi lives don’t.
Police lives don’t.
Wealthy lives don’t.

Etc. Etc.

This isn’t empathy.
It’s redistribution of empathy.

11:04 AM · Sep 8, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

5:28 PM · Sep 8, 2025

Adele Patti

@adelepatti

That poor woman was killed by a homeless schizophrenic with a history of violence. The other one was killed by a cop during an arrest. If you can't see the difference, I really don't know how to help you.

5:28 PM · Sep 8, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Shaver? Timpa?

I am not sure you have a point actually. I may be wrong on that. Sincerely.

As luck would have it, I am not seeking help. But thanks for the offer. I was making a different set of points.

7:06 PM · Sep 8, 2025

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

5:33 PM · Sep 8, 2025

Summary

Eric Weinstein argues that empathy, a crucial social and moral tool, is being misused or "redistributed" in ways that distort and erode justice, rational discourse, and the ability to make real societal progress. He sees this as part of a larger cultural and ideological trend where empathy is redirected toward individuals who commit harm or who claim victimhood for ideological purposes, often at the expense of actual victims or those who are genuinely suffering. This redistribution creates a competitive atmosphere in which individuals and groups vie for moral superiority by demonstrating excessive empathy toward those who are responsible for harm or criminality, thereby overshadowing the legitimate needs and suffering of the actual victims.

Eric's core concern is not with empathy itself but with how it is redistributed, misused, and manipulated. True empathy, in his view, should be thoughtful, broad, and informed by a sense of responsibility, not a tool for social signaling or a weapon of ideological coercion.

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