Our New Culture of Cruelty
A crush of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.
Photographer: Dan Kitwood/Getty ImagesA culture of cruelty is sweeping the world and it cuts across ideological as well as national borders. In India last week, the murder of Gauri Lankesh, a prominent journalist and critic of Narendra Modi’s government, was met with euphoria by his online supporters. One of Modi’s own ministerial colleagues felt compelled to "strongly condemn & deplore," as he wrote on Twitter, "the messages on social media expressing happiness on the dastardly murder."
The left-leaning French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo responded to the catastrophic Hurricane Harvey with a cover cartoon that showed swastika flags and Nazi salutes poking out above floodwaters. The caption read, "God exists! He drowned all the neo-Nazis of Texas."