Actual Discussion

Honestly, there's a lot of writing about this sentiment already which explains it in great depth. To understand it, that would be a good place to start.

But, yes, I absolutely believe it's true in many cases. For example, the criminal justice system, from police brutality to prisons. There are many proven alternative methods to rehabilitate, reduce crime, and make society safer, and a certain political persuasion utterly refuses to consider any of it. Digging into their arguments, the only internally consistent explanation is that they want people to punish. It doesn't matter if crime could be prevented and everybody made better off. In short, the cruelty of the punishment is the point, even if it means that we have more crime victims as a result.

Do you believe this? If so, why?

Is it true / false in some or all scenarios?

Is it with certain groups or regarding certain things?

These three go together for me, as the phrase is frequently used to highlight the fact that the policies or practices are based on people who are 'other' and serve no beneficial purpose to society in general while also negatively impacting people. Things like banning stuff like LGBTQ+ events or activities, banning DEI, creating laws that punish people for seeking out healthcare are all things that only exist to punish someone for being different or making choices for themselves. The vast majority of the time I see the phrase it is about some conservative initiative to rile their base by targeting the minority group of the week with laws and policies that actively harm people.

It is sometimes used incorrectly because any terminology gets used incorrectly.

Do you feel that speech like this is conducive to fixing societal issues?

Yes, because it is a response that stresses the fact that a lot of actions taken that sound like they could be a mistake are actually intentionally harmful to a subset of the population. The war on drugs for example is on record as being promoted to put minorities and hippies in jail for example. Language that opposes harm doesn't need to be calm, it should be forceful and provoke a response because it both promotes action from those that agree because there is a strong front and it can sway people who might not be aware of the negative impacts of whatever is being criticized.

It does not matter if it doesn't sway the people who are in favor of the harm because it isn't framed in a nice way. They are already on board with harm.

Yes, some people go overboard but that doesn't invalidate the message any more than someone who takes anything too far.

Is what is considered “kind” always the best course of action?

Pointing out something is harmful doesn't mean the opposite is kind. In most cases not doing anything at all would be the opposite of the harmful actions, and not doing anything is not kind any more than not punching someone in the stomach isn't being kind.

Wonder why you used this language to start the conversation:

Generally this is referencing any policy that is contrary to a leftist belief that the thread discusses.

I don't really believe this is ever true, except insofar as the cruelty accomplishes some goal. Anti-homeless spikes are, in my opinion, cruel- I would prefer we found some way to address homelessness directly instead of hiding the homeless. But the people who installed them, approved the installation, and came up with the idea aren't trying to be cruel, they're trying to keep the homeless from being visible in public spaces.

The cruelty isn't the point, it's a means of reaching the point.

I generally disagree with the phrase. In some cases, it is true-- any human behavior is true for someone out there, or maybe even a large group of someones-- but generally I think the truth is far more underwhelming: the people who are being cruel simply do not care. They will cause cruelty if it makes their own lives more convenient in the slightest. That being said, for some topics (generally relating to identity politics), the ratio of people who are simply cruel because they want to make other people miserable is higher imo.

Do you feel that speech like this is conducive to fixing societal issues?

I think accurately identifying the nature of peoples' beliefs and intentions is conducive to helping fix societal issues. In this case, that means identifying intentional cruelty where it truly is, so we can combat it more aggressively in regards to the perpetrators, and identifying indifference where that truly is, so that we can take a smarter/softer approach of changing incentives to discourage the undesirable behavior. If people aren't actually being cruel on purpose, it's more effective to make them not want to do the thing with cruel side effects than it is to convince them to change their cruel actions, or even to convince them that they are being cruel in the first place, since it can be unintentional.

Is what is considered “kind” always the best course of action?

No, but I'm not sure how much that's because actions that are unkind to a small class of abusive people and kind to a large class of victims are often still considered "unkind". I do think that considering kindness in the approach is useful, and often leads to superior outcomes (ie. providing housing and food to lower crime rates).

No, I do not personally believe this. I believe that this phrase is one of the shortest-form strawman "arguments" that exist and is usually spoken by itself with zero justification or understanding of the issue referenced.

And beside that, it should be obvious that it is very often not true. Most of the time with issues "the point" is cost-saving, stubbornness, cause & effect disagreements, or difference of opinion on how to carry things out. If there is cruelty involved, it is a side-effect, not the point. Even then, the side being accused may feel the cruelty lay on the opposing side because cruelty is a moral argument, and you can not apply morals universally.

The phrase is like saying "the point of drinking water is to touch your genitals while peeing." It actively avoids the real point in order to make the entire act seem absurd and is a bad faith argument from the jump.

A good way to find out if "cruelty is the point" is to do a thought experiment. "If they could do / remove the crux of the issue and the perceived oppressed group would still be happy some other way, would this still be an issue?"

For example (and I am not passing a value judgment here, I'm simply doing the thought experiment with a real-world example), if a state passed an anti-transitioning law, but found a single pain-free pill to remove all dysphoria from the affected group, would they allow that pill? If yes, then the cruelty didn't factor into the decision - the issue and how to deal with it did.

To be absurdist, if you feel they wouldn't allow the "pill fix", and cruelty is still the point, then why have they not made the suffering worse? They could say "you can have whatever treatment you want, but only if you allow us to torture you for 6 hours per day!"

If a person eats meat, but is grossed out by factory farming and avoids it, is the point the cruelty or the ease, nutrients, and flavour of a standard omnivorous diet? Rationally, do you really feel that their first thought before biting into a burger is "Fuck this cow, I hope it died screaming."

No. That would be insane.

Thinking and speaking in this fashion only removes the ability to deal with difficult situations in a meaningful or rational way and simply shows others that you can't even pretend to fathom other people. It shows that the speaker is not empathetic in the slightest, but sure would like to be perceived as such by their in-group.

Do you believe this? If so, why?

Yes, I do. And I don't view it as a "left" vs. "right" false bifurcation either. (The Americas need to grow up and realize there's more than two directions!) There are policies that match however, the phrase and, although usually originating from the so-called "right" in the west are not universal to it and are the product of a very specific subset of that right. (And can be found in other cultures on what would be called the "left" by simplistic-minded western political thought.)

These policies cannot be meaningfully interpreted as attempting something and being cruel as a byproduct since it's trivial to show they don't actually accomplish their purported aims. You have to look elsewhere for the goal, and the one consistent thing across all of them is that they hurt an "out" group.

So you don't believe this "the cruelty is the point" exists?

Tell me, then, what the point of this was if it wasn't the cruelty? (And be glad I picked a mild example. There are some truly horrific photos of this horrifically cruel institution out there.) Lynching was a cultural backlash of people resentful of having lost mastery—of having lost power over a group they considered (and still do!) subhuman—lashing out to cause that group misery and to inculcate fear in that group.

I could find similar kinds of photographs (including far worse ones) from Nazis ("right"), Maoists ("left"), Islamists (left and right begins to break down here), criminal gangs (even more ridiculous to label with left or right), the Japanese in Nanjing ("right"... I guess?), etc. etc. etc. In all such cases the cruelty is, in fact, the very point of the action or policy

It's terrorism, to put it into a single word, and in all terrorism the cruelty is, in fact, the very point.

And right now in the USA in particular there's a single group prone to lashing out at perceived (and actual) loss of standing, power, and influence. A group prone to wearing red baseball caps. (Yes, I'm talking about MAGAts here.) A group that is noted for instituting policies simply to be cruel to an out group that they perceive as somehow "replacing" them. (Yes, I'm alluding to the Great Replacement bullshit that festers in MAGAt circles.)

So yes, indeed, the cruelty is very much the point.

Is it true / false in some or all scenarios?

The statement "it is true in some situations, not true in others" can be made about literally any philosophy, political slogan, or pithy expression.

Is it with certain groups or regarding certain things?

"The cruelty is the point"-style politics are likely older than civilization. You can see "the cruelty is the point" policies and actions in the very first things ever written down. So it is, yes, tied to a certain group: humanity.

As to what it typically applies to, well, that is also a sad fact of human nature: it is an exercise of power. To many people you don't have power unless you are making other people feel misery. This isn't universal across humans, but there is a large chunk of humanity that believes this. We call them "sociopaths" or "psychopaths" or other such terms, and they are alarmingly common in human society. Some estimates place them at about 1 in 20 people. And by their nature they crave positions of power and thus strive for them, leading them to be over-represented in the corridors of power. Hence policies that appeal to sociopaths and psychopaths being so common.

Do you feel that speech like this is conducive to fixing societal issues?

Yes.

If you believe that policies are enacted to accomplish goal X and set out to prove that it fails to accomplish goal X, the argument is ineffective if the real goal is goal Y. For any value of goals X and Y. Even if goal Y is "cause suffering".

To combat something and effect change, you have to know what that something really is, not the polite lies told about what it is.

Is what is considered “kind” always the best course of action?

No. And yes.

To an individual sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind to society at large. For an extreme example, I'm sure that being tossed in the slammer with the key thrown away is unkind to the "kicks" murderer, but it is kind to society at large to stop more people from dying and more people from mourning their losses. For a less extreme example, sending that hedge fund guy who ran a Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of people of their life savings off to jail would be viewed as "unkind" to him. But it would be far less kind to society to let that kind of sociopath run free to do more fraud to more people.

Labeling non-cruel policies as "leftist" and "liberal" defeats any attempt at a Neutral Point of View. You see, those are often centrist policies, and one's reference point can be inferred.

As to whether cruelty is a goal, I would not suggest people actually exercising a plan we'd all consider to be cruel see it as cruelty: they may realize some cruelty in their plan, but would insist the cruelty is merely an acceptable by-product of their plan and not the goal.

I usually see such phrases when talking politics, and usually then about more conservative viewpoints. As those can be seen as perpetuating a status quo that made rich people richer or enabled very anti-consumer policies, the accidental victimization of non-rich people and consumers in the process of benefiting businesses and the upper class can be seen as cruel, for example.

Just as a rising tide lifts all boats, the ebbing tide will strand the last boats out of port.