“We live under a politics of cruelty that seeks to normalize what we once could not stomach”

“There is a politics of cruelty under way,” says Enrique Díaz Álvarez, describing a public climate in which images of suffering are no longer hidden but displayed openly. He argues that such images should provoke disgust, shame and a sense of collective responsibility, even as many people grow accustomed to them.

The Mexican philosopher opens his book “The Intolerable: Disgust, Shame and Collective Responsibility in the Face of Contemporary Cruelty” with a brutal scene involving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Inside a car, a man embraces his crying baby while an ICE agent's hand grips the man's neck through the window as he convulses.

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There is a politics of cruelty under way.

Díaz Álvarez says the testimony of people who experience violence is central to his thinking about power. In his book, he gives testimony particular weight because it remains the last resource available to people who have little besides their own words. He says victims must be made visible and accompanied, especially in an era when society is becoming accustomed to atrocious images.

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think with the whole body

He uses the term “politics of cruelty” to describe what he says has appeared in recent years through the genocide in Gaza and Donald Trump's policies, which he says criminalize and imprison migrants. His concern extends beyond the violence itself to the indifference with which many people respond to the suffering of others.

For Díaz Álvarez, the response requires people to “think with the whole body.” Disgust, indignation and shame should not be suppressed, he argues. They can instead become emotions that awaken collective responsibility. He discussed these ideas with BBC Mundo during the Hay Festival in Querétaro, Mexico.

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It is very important to listen to the victims of violence.