Understanding evil without excusing it: the fight over empathy in history
September 29, 2026 · 23 min read
Darryl Cooper argues that understanding historical figures is not endorsing them, Vejas Liulevicius directly rebuts his account of World War II, and Michael Malice and Lex debate Holocaust comparisons and human nature. The disagreement shows where empathy sharpens historical insight and where critics say it slides into distortion.
The rules, numbers and steps worth keeping in front of you.
- Core line: empathy explains how people come to do evil; it must not explain away stated intent.
- Darryl Cooper: he will not tell a story until he can stand in its people's shoes.
- Cooper: people join destructive movements because their virtues are hijacked.
- Cooper: misread history leads to bad policy; shouting down questions backfires.
- Cooper admits limits: he is a storyteller, and early outlines proved wrong.
- Vejas Liulevicius: analyzing Hitler without Nazi ideology is doomed.
- Liulevicius: mass killing began with the invasion of Poland, not later.
- Liulevicius: the war served a plan for the East that required killing.
- Liulevicius also uses formative experience, to understand aims, not replace them.
- Michael Malice: the Holocaust is singular; loose comparisons cheapen it.
- Malice: the lesson is how extreme things get, and how fast.
- Lex Fridman: the communal desire for good outweighs the bad.
- Shared ground: nuance matters, and oversimplified Hitler analogies have sold new wars.
- Practical test: ask how they came to believe it, what they said they intended, what they did.
This is the short form. The full insight has every expert's reasoning, their own words and the sources.