Sam Harris and the mindfulness of hate

Sam Harris is a grifter.

There is no other way to put it, even if that is a tough way to start a blog. For the last decade or so, Harris has moved away from his firebrand atheism to selling his mindfulness platform and his book Waking Up, which led to an app and more.

Now, does Harris practice mindfulness? Probably. I can see him meditating and maybe reflecting, and in reality, that’s fine. Even selling his app and books to his audience is fine; to each their own.

But seeing his name show up in places like 10% Happier with Dan Harris, being praised by people like Adam Grant, and being accepted by some prominent Buddhist thinkers, and yes, I know Sam Harris is anything but Buddhist, blows my mind.

If Buddhism is about reducing suffering for all living beings, then why are we promoting someone who argues for nuclear strikes and denies obvious genocide just because those being murdered are brown?

In a blog post in 2024, Harris denied that Israel was carrying out a genocide and wrote that, “The problem for Israel, and for the whole world, is that Jihadism is more dangerous than Nazism.”

In what world have so-called Jihadists carried out mass extermination of people for their beliefs? I know of a world in which Nazis have, and I am witnessing it being done right now by Zionists, but I am not witnessing it happen by Jihadists.

To be clear, Muslims, like all other major religions, have extremists who have carried out terrible acts of violence. That is not being denied. But to then write of Israel’s attack on Palestine, “if the IDF wanted to kill every person in Gaza next week—that is, actually commit genocide—it could,” is grotesque.

By this logic, the Nazis also didn’t commit a genocide because they didn’t kill every Jew. Harris then goes on to blame Hamas for most of the deaths, reciting the human shield fallacy and claiming Israel is doing everything it can to ensure lives are not lost, apparently while bombing hospitals.

But this kind of anti-Muslim rhetoric from Harris is not surprising, and not new. In his book The End of Faith, he called a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Muslim countries like Iran an “unthinkable crime,” but then argued it may be necessary for the sake of the West.

In the wake of white nationalist attacks in Charlottesville in 2017, Harris accused the left of starting the violence because they attacked “seemingly peaceful Nazis.” In an interview with Vox, Harris also claimed that Nazis, while doing evil experiments in concentration camps, did in the end uncover some truths, admitting that he believes Nazi science did good.

It’s no wonder he thinks less of Muslims than he does of Nazis. He seems to have a great deal of admiration for much of the Nazi’s work.

In the end, Sam Harris is a bad person, who is generally followed by and adored by other bad people. Yet, his name keeps coming up in Buddhist spaces, by respectable voices, which raises major red flags, since his belief system is not one that reduces harm but one that greatly increases it against specific groups, specifically Muslims, because he is scared of them and paints all Muslims with one broad stroke. That stroke erases the harm done to them and, in fact, promotes it.

Which Buddhist value is he then expounding that keeps his name relevant in these conversations?