The Absence of Empathy: Elon Musk and the Nazi War Criminals. Evil that Crosses Generations

A Shared Trait that Cannot be Erased or Sugar Coated

Last week, Elon Musk told Joe Rogan “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. The empathy exploit. They're exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response…” he followed that up with a bit of boilerplate about how he thinks empathy can be good, but to add fuel to the fire he lit, Rogan’s responded: “Right. Understand when empathy has been actually used as a tool,” Musk replied: “Yes. Like it's weaponized. Empathy is the issue. Yeah, weaponized empathy. And. Yeah.”

In fact, there is no such thing as “weaponized empathy”. Empathy is not a weapon, it is a defense against the malignant harm and evil perpetrated against people who have no protections and few if any defenders by people who have no capacity of caring about anyone other than themselves or what they can gain from a situation. Empathy only serves the cause of compassion and unmerited love, the kind of love that Jesus described for one’s neighbor, in case J.D. Vance is reading this.

Captain Gustave Gilbert was an American Army psychologist assigned to the major Nazi war criminals being held before, during and after the trials of the International Military Tribunal, the forerunner of the International Criminal Court at Nuremberg from 1945-1946. He was not alone, but unlike the psychiatrists assigned to them, his job was not to give diagnoses to the court, but to build relationships with them, in part to keep them from committing suicide during the trial. In fact he got to know them better than most any other American. The key was that they understood that in spite of his loathing of everything they stood for, he cared about them as human beings.

Captain Gustave Gilbert (in uniform wearing glasses) listens to defendant Rudolf Hess at Nuremberg

In his book, Nuremberg Diary he wrote:

“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

His words were depicted on film by the actor Matt Craven in the television movie Nuremberg (2001). The film is quite compelling if you have the chance to watch, it can be viewed in its entirety on YouTube.

As a student of the Holocaust, the Nazi regime, and the post-war War Crimes trials, especially the major War Crimes trials of the International Military Tribunal and the 12 subsequent trials in the American zone of occupation, I find Gilbert’s definition of evil quite compelling.

Not one of the accused war criminals, in any trial by any jurisdiction ever demonstrated a hint that they felt any compassion for their victims, not one, even the allegedly “Good Nazi”, Albert Speer.

Thus, when I see someone like Elon Musk say that the “fundamental weakness of Western culture is empathy” I have to ask the three fundamental questions of what my Clinical Pastoral Education supervisor (think attending physician) at Parkland Memorial Hospital called, the hermeneutic of suspicion. Those questions are “why this, why me, why now?”

If you think about it, the answers are fairly simple:

Why this? Musk says that empathy is a weakness because he has been accused of having none.

Why did he tell this to Joe Rogan? That is also easy, Rogan is sympathetic to him, Trump, and MAGA.

Finally, why now? Also easy. Musk is facing pressure on numerous fronts, his business empire and his quasi governmental DOGE organization and its vicious attacks on the apparatus of government and the American people.

In all of this, Musk does not come across as a decent, honest, or trustworthy person. Instead, he comes across as a man bent on his own power and profit, while completely unconcerned about how his actions affect others. Thus, to survive, he must attack those that actually care about others and those who as one MAGA pastor said, commit the sin of “empathy.”

Likewise, Musk’s biggest benefactor, President Trump, has never in his life expressed one bit of remorse for any action that harmed his employees, contractors, lenders, or political backers, much less any empathy for anyone he or his supporters has ever harmed is now legendary. Even towards the Capitol and Metropolitan Police who were killed or wounded in the 6 January 2001 insurrection, which he urged on and did nothing to prevent or intervene against.

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Despite the protests of Elon Musk, it is clear to me that not only does he have no empathy, that he is a serial liar, incapable of telling the truth in any circumstance. Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, the son of South African Nazis is little different in character or behavior than than the Nazis at Nuremberg, the only difference is that he is not yet complicit in Genocide. Mark my words, if Trump and Musk continue to collaborate with Vladimir Putin and other fascist or authoritarian regimes, that too will happen.