Do you believe this? If so, why?

Yes, I do. And I don’t view it as a “left” vs. “right” false bifurcation either. (The Americas need to grow up and realize there’s more than two directions!) There are policies that match however, the phrase and, although usually originating from the so-called “right” in the west are not universal to it and are the product of a very specific subset of that right. (And can be found in other cultures on what would be called the “left” by simplistic-minded western political thought.)

These policies cannot be meaningfully interpreted as attempting something and being cruel as a byproduct since it’s trivial to show they don’t actually accomplish their purported aims. You have to look elsewhere for the goal, and the one consistent thing across all of them is that they hurt an “out” group.

So you don’t believe this “the cruelty is the point” exists?

Tell me, then, what the point of this was if it wasn’t the cruelty? (And be glad I picked a mild example. There are some truly horrific photos of this horrifically cruel institution out there.) Lynching was a cultural backlash of people resentful of having lost mastery—of having lost power over a group they considered (and still do!) subhuman—lashing out to cause that group misery and to inculcate fear in that group.

I could find similar kinds of photographs (including far worse ones) from Nazis (“right”), Maoists (“left”), Islamists (left and right begins to break down here), criminal gangs (even more ridiculous to label with left or right), the Japanese in Nanjing (“right”… I guess?), etc. etc. etc. In all such cases the cruelty is, in fact, the very point of the action or policy

It’s terrorism, to put it into a single word, and in all terrorism the cruelty is, in fact, the very point.

And right now in the USA in particular there’s a single group prone to lashing out at perceived (and actual) loss of standing, power, and influence. A group prone to wearing red baseball caps. (Yes, I’m talking about MAGAts here.) A group that is noted for instituting policies simply to be cruel to an out group that they perceive as somehow “replacing” them. (Yes, I’m alluding to the Great Replacement bullshit that festers in MAGAt circles.)

So yes, indeed, the cruelty is very much the point.

Is it true / false in some or all scenarios?

The statement “it is true in some situations, not true in others” can be made about literally any philosophy, political slogan, or pithy expression.

Is it with certain groups or regarding certain things?

“The cruelty is the point”-style politics are likely older than civilization. You can see “the cruelty is the point” policies and actions in the very first things ever written down. So it is, yes, tied to a certain group: humanity.

As to what it typically applies to, well, that is also a sad fact of human nature: it is an exercise of power. To many people you don’t have power unless you are making other people feel misery. This isn’t universal across humans, but there is a large chunk of humanity that believes this. We call them “sociopaths” or “psychopaths” or other such terms, and they are alarmingly common in human society. Some estimates place them at about 1 in 20 people. And by their nature they crave positions of power and thus strive for them, leading them to be over-represented in the corridors of power. Hence policies that appeal to sociopaths and psychopaths being so common.

Do you feel that speech like this is conducive to fixing societal issues?

Yes.

If you believe that policies are enacted to accomplish goal X and set out to prove that it fails to accomplish goal X, the argument is ineffective if the real goal is goal Y. For any value of goals X and Y. Even if goal Y is “cause suffering”.

To combat something and effect change, you have to know what that something really is, not the polite lies told about what it is.

Is what is considered “kind” always the best course of action?

No. And yes.

To an individual sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind to society at large. For an extreme example, I’m sure that being tossed in the slammer with the key thrown away is unkind to the “kicks” murderer, but it is kind to society at large to stop more people from dying and more people from mourning their losses. For a less extreme example, sending that hedge fund guy who ran a Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of people of their life savings off to jail would be viewed as “unkind” to him. But it would be far less kind to society to let that kind of sociopath run free to do more fraud to more people.