Woman posing as 'harmless church girl' identified as spearhead for MAGA's 'war on empathy'

An analyst Monday called a MAGA influencer's weaponization of her gender and crusade against empathy "especially dangerous."

Salon's Amanda Marcotte wrote in an opinion piece about far-right Christian pundit Allie Beth Stuckey and how "the right’s modern war on empathy really began with a woman."

Stuckey, a creationist and podcaster, has tried "scaring women into stopping birth control by falsely portraying it as dangerous" and has captured the attention of MAGA with her 2024 book “Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion,” Marcotte wrote. The concept for her book originated on her podcast "Relatable."

“Feeling too much for someone can blind us to reality,” Stuckey said. “It can cause us to ignore the truth, the objective truth, in favor of how a person feels.”

Stuckey has argued that women should submit to men, being gay is wrong and immigrants are a threat to people in the U.S., Marcotte added.

"Stuckey’s ability to package her work as fluffy girl stuff worked well on the New York Times’ Ross Douthat, who presented her to his well-meaning but gullible liberal audience as a harmless church girl whose podcast is the equivalent of a Sunday afternoon ladies brunch," Marcotte wrote.

"He gushed about her 'strong parenting and motherhood and female life element,' portraying her as reaching 'younger religious women' with content about 'sunscreen and parenting styles and the secret to fixing your period.'"

This message has a particularly harsh ramification, Marcotte added, and Stuckey's "sinister genius was in using her gender to make these tired gambits seem fresh and modern."

"Stuckey is just one of many far-right female commentators who have realized that they can use hyper-feminine aesthetics to conceal what would immediately register as dystopian, even fascistic sentiments if they came from a man. But what makes her especially dangerous is that she applies this strategy to the concept of empathy," Marcotte explained.

Making women the face of anti-feminism has been a strategic move on the right — and "Stuckey’s spin is even more abstract, but the same tactic," the writer argued.

"Whether consciously or not, Stuckey grasps that 'empathy' tends to be coded as a feminine virtue. When men attack empathy, it comes across as sexist and condescending. But a woman opposing empathy is counterintuitive. In our era of vibes over facts, that twist makes her message feel more persuasive, especially to those who already are sick of hearing that being mean to other people is bad," Marcotte wrote.