{"id":61463,"date":"2026-02-09T13:45:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T13:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/?p=61463"},"modified":"2026-02-09T13:45:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T13:45:16","slug":"moral-tourism-the-tyranny-of-distant-outrage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/moral-tourism-the-tyranny-of-distant-outrage\/","title":{"rendered":"Moral Tourism: The Tyranny of Distant Outrage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In such circumstances it\u2019s extraordinarily easy to judge. But that judgement, moral yet devoid of responsibility or depth of understanding, is precisely what I call moral tourism. (The term is not mine, but it is an excellent one. Not to be confused with ethical tourism.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

People \u2018visit\u2019 conflicts emotionally, pronounce their opinions, and then return to their own lives. Other people\u2019s suffering becomes a consumable, fleeting yet ethically tinted. No responsibility. No cost. No consequences. No danger. Only shallow indignation, virtue signalling, and irritation at \u2018bad\u2019 news, all masquerading as compassion: \u2018Sort it out properly at last, we\u2019re suffering so much because of this conflict.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not solidarity. It’s sanctimony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Complex realities are flattened into a black-and-white picture of villains, victims, and slogans. The history of the conflict, its internal problems, its compromises, the background and particularities of the opposing sides, all of this disappears, replaced by judgement that is superficial, yet loud and self-assured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo by Oskar Holm \/ Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It might seem to make little difference what Diego Garc\u00eda from T\u00e1rcoles or Zhang Wei from Gaochuan think about the war in Ukraine or the conflict in Gaza. But when there are many Diegos and Zhangs, the tyranny of the global audience begins. The parties to a conflict find themselves under worldwide pressure and must listen to people who bear no responsibility whatsoever for their words. They must heed norms formed in another reality, moral fashions that change week by week. Pragmatism is punished, maximalism rewarded, which does not ease suffering but prolongs it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People judge societies to which they don\u2019t belong, conflicts they can\u2019t influence and scarcely understand, if at all, and individuals, whom they will never encounter. Without acknowledging the limits of their knowledge or the possibility of error, without recognising that no one\u2019s right to judge is absolute, their pronouncements turn into a kind of moral colonialism: \u2018Do as I say because I am morally superior, and I know best.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Susan Sontag observed in Regarding the Pain of Others<\/em>, the mere contemplation of suffering, emotional consumption without responsibility, creates the illusion that to see is to understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twenty years ago the French writer Pascal Bruckner, in The Tyranny of Guilt<\/em>, wrote: \u201cNothing is more Western than hatred of the West\u2026 We Europeans are born with a burden of vices and ugliness that mark us like stigmata, for we have to recognise that the white man has sown grief and ruin wherever he has gone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bruckner calls this Western self-flagellation a form of moral exhibitionism performed at a safe distance, since those most eager to repent are precisely those least affected by the consequences of that endless repentance. Once again, moral tourism, a moral stance without real consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bruckner also notes an interesting paradox: Europe\u2019s very willingness to acknowledge its own faults often fuels hostility from societies that make no such painful attempt at self-examination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo by Slavcho Malezan \/ Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps a clear definition is in order. Moral tourism is a brief, emotional and noisy immersion in the moral landscape of other people\u2019s lives, without any obligation to understand and without consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three main elements define moral tourism:<\/p>\n\n\n\n