Compassion as a Weapon: Moral Blackmail

by Armando Simón (November 2025)

Things have been going on for a long time now that have paralyzed people with frustration. The paralysis is due principally to not having word for it, so what we experience becomes incomprehensible. This, incidentally, is a common psychological phenomenon. Decades ago, I myself was confused over something I was experiencing. I had no idea what was happening to me. I was experiencing “burnout,” but the word “burnout” had not been coined yet to describe my emotions, so I was perplexed. Likewise, Princess Diana believed the royal family looked down on her due to her mental distress. Years later, she stated that the disdain she felt by her in-laws was due to her “postpartum depression,” a term which had not been yet created to describe the emotional turmoil that sometimes occurs in mothers of newborns.

Confucius is said to have stated, “One picture is worth a thousand words.” Similarly, one label is worth a thousand words.

Morally superior

“Compassion as a weapon.” That is, compassion is being used as a weapon. This occurs when A relies on one’s sense of decency and one’s sense of compassion in order to get away with an act that is detrimental, even repugnant, to B, whom A despises.

In the past two decades we have seen this weapon being repeatedly and effectively used in a myriad of ways, always resulting in A getting away with mayhem while leaving B flabbergasted and frustrated. Additionally, the aggression is dressed in sentimental, benevolent words thereby having the added benefit of appearing virtuous and morally superior compared to the victim and further distracting B.

Roadblocks

On roads, we have seen people blocking traffic, surrounding cars while shouting slogans at the drivers. We see it in the UK with climate warming activists glueing their hands to the highway during rush hour, or, also on roads, Muslims kneeling and putting their rear ends in the air as they pray. As of late, some drivers have become fed up with the antics and driven through the people blocking the roads, thusly appearing to be the villain. In Florida, it has even been legalized, to the drivers’ glee and the shock of protestors.

Inclusivity

We see it in North American schools where neurotic teachers and principals, some of them being outright perverts, promote homosexuality (“Pride”) in classrooms, or encourage gender dysphoria in children under the guise of “inclusivity” and “diversity.” School boards are staffed by the same type of people who, furthermore, look down with contempt at parents objecting to the perverts’ actions in the classrooms. These individuals are counting that parents, though incensed, will remain polite and not take a baseball bat to them and beat them to a pulp to the point the indoctrinators and their enablers will end up in the ICU. The parents never do because it would not be polite, so they do not defend their children, they just whine.

Illegal immigrants

We see it in the videos posted on TikTok, Instagram and other social media outlets recording ICE raids. In those videos, we hear family members, including children, crying their hearts out because a foreigner who is in this country illegally is being detained prior to being deported. The scenes are truly pitiful. Aside from the crying, we also often hear that the detainee was hardworking or had been in this country working for 20+ years (incidentally, this outpouring of lachrymose sympathy was noticeably absent when illegal aliens were being deported under the Clinton, Biden and Obama Administrations).

What is also being deliberately omitted is that the detainee broke the law; apparently, it is all right if American citizens are detained for committing white collar crimes, but illegal aliens should not be inconvenienced in any way.

Likewise, the Democrats have funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to provide free healthcare to illegal aliens. In fact, the present government shutdown centers on the fact that even as the Trump Administration is hellbent on deporting the illegal aliens, the Democrats want to keep spending Americans’ taxes on illegals—while simultaneously claiming that it is not taking place. They put illegal immigrants above American citizens, yet couch it in lachrymose terms.

Starving children

We see it in billboards that state that 1 in every 5 children, or 1 in every 3 children, or 1 in every 6 children in America go to bed hungry, so please give money to such an such organization, even though the claim is a blatant lie and the money is going into the pockets of the charity’s organizers. This tactic is also used internationally, and we see the same picture of an emaciated African child being used, decade after decade after decade, to solicit funds.

Likewise, when an earthquake struck Haiti and millions of dollars were collected to help the country—but mysteriously disappeared into the Clinton Foundation before even a penny got there.

Racial “reparations”

We also see compassion used as a weapon in race relations. Whites today are constantly being made to feel guilty by white Judas goats for something that was taking place one hundred and eighty-seven years ago and was a global institution, namely slavery. As a result, it is expected today that blacks receive preferential treatment in a number of situations.

Additionally, it is also being demanded that money be taken away from white people to be given to blacks under the pretense of “reparations.” That means that people who today do not own slaves—slavery is still very much the case in Africa—should be forced to give their money to people who today are not slaves (and whose ancestors almost certainly owned slaves themselves), even in states that never legalized slavery.

American blacks are also not demanding reparations from Africans because their ancestors captured and sold the slaves that ended up in colonial America and Muslim kingdoms. In short, whites must give money to blacks simply because they are black.

The Covid farce

We saw it during the covid farce when we were screamed at to submit to accepting a toxic substance into our bodies—falsely labeled as a “vaccine” —because if we did not, we would get infected and thereby spread the covid virus to people who were supposedly immune from the virus because they had taken the vaccine. When many individuals began to develop adverse effects and even dropping dead after having taken the toxic substance, both the media hivemind and the Democrat politicians kept singing the compassionate tune

DEI

“Diversity,” “Equity,” and “Inclusivity” are slogans being used in the United States for leftists to accelerate the destruction of America under the banner of compassion. “Diversity” and “Inclusivity” are redundant slogans which on the surface sound benevolent because they are promoted as welcoming a heterogeneous group of people, particularly those who have been marginalized in society. In reality, white people, Christians, and conservatives are excluded from jobs, education, etc. It is simply discriminatory.

As for “Equity,” it is simply the promotion of mediocrity by pouring buckets of tears over the fact that the inept may not succeed at a task. This is where participant trophies come in.

Welfare

Welfare seemed like a good idea at the time, and it was. It was supposed to be a temporary lifeline to people who were experiencing hardship. But because it is a governmental task, temporary went out and it became permanent. Consequently, there are millions of people who decided not to work because they were getting a free ride. Any time that it has been proposed to cut abuses and/or limit the duration of help, results in a torrent of cries that people are suffering, that children won’t be able to eat, that they will not have a place to live in, etc. —while many of those crying are obese welfare recipients who do so on social media on their expensive cellphones while exhibiting their numerous expensive tattoos. The rest of us are supposed to buckle under because we are supposed to be compassionate.

The weapon of the progressives

Incidentally, it should be obvious by now that it is liberals who wield compassion as a weapon, not libertarians nor conservatives.

And it is liberals who deeply believe that anyone who says something that they do not approve of (i.e., who show a lack of compassion) should be censored, persecuted, even killed or put in a re-education camp because the words hurt their ears. Free speech applies to them, but not to anyone else. To liberals, free speech is Fascism. In short, a liberal is a person who knows there are people out there who think differently than him—but he is not going to stand for that! Implicit in this attitude is that others will not retaliate in kind against, say, Keith Olbermann, Ilhan Omar, or any of the ghouls who rejoiced at the murder of Charlie Kirk, due to our sense of decency and compassion.

And, of course, compassion as a weapon also applies in apolitical interpersonal relations.

Bankrupt countries

England, France, and other European countries are on the verge of bankruptcy, which will result in an international debacle. It is only a matter of time. The reason is quite simple: there are millions of people being given absurd entitlements to the point that the governments pay out more than they take in. Predictably, the groups receiving the entitlements demand that cuts be made to other groups, not theirs. They also demand that more money be taken away from producers of wealth (i.e., “the rich”) to pay for those entitlements. Or, that wealthier countries be guilted to send their money to the parasitical countries.

The lesson of what happened in Greece a decade ago is a foreshadowing of what will happen soon in other countries, such as France.

Foreign aid in America has been cynically described as when poor people in rich countries are forced to give their money to rich people in poor countries. However, the official mantra is: The rich countries must help the poor countries.

America is in debt to the tune of trillions of dollars.

Transgenders

The recent transgender movement is one that is a cult. For recruits, it has particularly targeted children to switch genders. This is done through persuasive brainwashing in those schools whose staff are part of the cult, as well as through the internet. When the child tells the parent that he/she is transgender and wants to transition through being injected with toxic substances and sexual mutilation (never put across in such a manner, of course, but instead using euphemisms), the parent is justifiably upset and/or confused. Cult members who are physicians or counselors usually convince the parent by appealing to their sense of compassion by voicing the mantra, “”Would you prefer a live boy or a dead girl who has committed suicide?”

On top of that, with transgenders we are supposed to go along—no, we must go along—with their delusions and call a man who is dressed as a woman as “she” and “her” and “ma’am” because if we don’t, it hurts their feelings. We are supposed to let these fake women go into girls’ bathrooms because otherwise it hurts their feelings. We have to let these men compete in women’s sports because if they are not allowed, it hurts their feelings (yet, liberals appear unconcerned about the real girls’ feelings).

The lesson of the Spanish Sahara

I will close by spotlighting a spectacular instance of effectively using compassion as a weapon in Africa.

In 1975, Spain was in the midst of arranging to withdraw from Spanish Sahara and there was contention as to who should rule the territory in Spain’s absence: the native insurgents, Morocco, or Mauritania. The Moroccan government arranged for 350,000 civilians to simply walk across the border into Spanish Sahara. Because they were unarmed, there was no resistance by the Spaniards since it would have resulted in a massacre. The invaders used the Europeans’ humanitarian feelings as a weapon against them, Morocco got the territory, doubling its size.

And a lesson from this particular incident is that just because the enemy does not have weapons while crossing the border does not mean that it is not an invasion. We are seeing it taking place in Western Europe and North America with a Muslim invasion, encouraged, aided and abetted by leftist rulers with an obsessive hatred of their countries, their religion and their own citizens.

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Armando Simón is a retired psychologist and historian, author of The U.

Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast