From: fedora@fea.st   
      
   On Mon, 9 Feb 2026 12:36:19 +0000, Julian    
   wrote:   
      
   >There’s something very religious about nihilism. For proof, look to the   
   >new capital of American nihilism, Minneapolis. A callousness toward   
   >death and danger has fallen over the city. Of the many disturbing videos   
   >to come out of Minnesota’s anti-ICE protests, one of the stranger   
   >examples shows a white man walking up to a line of heavily armed   
   >law-enforcement officers, shouting: “Shoot us in the fucking face! Shoot   
   >me in the fucking head!”   
   >   
   >What possesses someone to do that?   
      
   You do not understand.  You do not understand his moral outrage.   
      
   > I understand being against Donald   
   >Trump and Stephen Miller’s blitzkrieg deportation policy. And it’s not   
   >irrational, in the viral age, to protest theatrically. But this is   
   >psychotic. It is the death drive in overdrive. Suicidality is spread   
   >across these demonstrations, just as it was during 2020’s George Floyd   
   >riots.   
   >   
   >The fervor of this behavior is religious, but the end goal is simply   
   >destruction. This is Christian nihilism.   
      
   And here you show how a person can completely misunderstand the   
   situation.  If that is what they wish to do.  If their politics   
   requires them to have no understanding.   
      
   >Say this screaming protester really were to be shot. What would his   
   >death bring about? It wouldn’t stop any Venezuelan or Somali immigrant   
   >from being detained. I suspect someone might argue that his taking a   
   >bullet would call attention to what ICE is doing in Minnesota. But ICE –   
   >whatever else it is doing – isn’t opening fire at random on large   
   >crowds, so the protester would be asking ICE to start doing the very   
   >thing he supposedly wants it to stop doing. This man’s death would bring   
   >about no practical, material gains for anyone.   
   >   
   >It seems some spiritual motive is compelling him to beg for destruction.   
   >Is he looking to be martyred? If he were to be killed, it wouldn’t have   
   >been for committing any specific crime. As an innocent man, then, his   
   >murder would be analogous to the death of a scapegoat – or to Christ’s.   
   >And presumably he’d be spiritually rewarded for taking on the wrath of a   
   >wicked society, or something.   
   >   
   >His cry for the grave is like a twisted wish to fulfill Christ’s promise   
   >that “whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.” But the   
   >Christian God would never ask someone to throw their life away like   
   >this. A saint isn’t supposed to ask to be martyred. The rioter must be   
   >serving some other Christian-esque divinity, one who promises redemption   
   >via revolution. What he and the many, many ideology-obsessed Americans   
   >have done is adopt the self-sacrificing form of Christianity, but empty   
   >it of its contents.   
   >   
   >Violence serves a central role in Christianity: the hinge of history,   
   >the Crucifixion, is bloody. Christ endures the Cross to purify mankind,   
   >because he knows we crave purity. Revolutionary leaders have stolen this   
   >idea, given it a godless twist and sold it to their followers to   
   >encourage them to sacrifice themselves for whatever cause demands it.   
   >   
   >Examples of this abound. Frantz Fanon: “At the level of individuals,   
   >violence is a cleansing force.” Mao Zedong: “Revolutionary war is an   
   >antitoxin that not only eliminates the enemy’s poison but also purges us   
   >of our own filth.” Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: “We will glorify war – the   
   >world’s only hygiene.” The upshot is obvious: lay yourself (and others)   
   >on the altar of revolution, and in exchange you get some abstract   
   >purifying shower.   
   >   
   >At least in the case of Christianity the bargain is clear. Dying for the   
   >church earns you a nice mansion in the afterlife. Today’s bloodthirsty   
   >rioters expect no such reward. When they undergo their deadly purifying   
   >action, they expect to be made into nothing.   
   >   
   >This revolution-as-salvation fantasy has a strong grip on the   
   >imagination – certainly among the American elite, which remains   
   >permanently nostalgic for the political violence of the 1960s. Proof of   
   >this came last year in the glossy form of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One   
   >Battle After Another. Approaching three hours in runtime, this bulky   
   >film is about the supposed virtue of the French 75, a group of   
   >revolutionaries reminiscent of various 1960s terrorist cells such as the   
   >Weather Underground.   
   >   
   >Anderson’s villain is the loathsome Colonel Lockjaw, who leads a cruel   
   >anti-immigration campaign in the American streets. The French 75 resists   
   >him, which is all good and well in the context of the film as Lockjaw is   
   >in fact a monster. But the version of revolutionary politics presented   
   >here is no doubt idealized.   
   >   
   >Naturally, the critical class ate it up. The movie won four Golden   
   >Globes – Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress and   
   >Best Comedy/Musical – and has been nominated for 13 Oscars, including   
   >Best Picture.   
   >   
   >I hold the minority position that this movie’s pro-rebellion politics is   
   >in fact ironic and that Anderson is mocking revolutionaries and   
   >anti-revolutionaries alike. But that’s an article for another day, and   
   >in any case, if I’m right then most people did not pick up on the irony.   
   >Most critics have interpreted it as another glorious film about   
   >“radicals and their plans for revolutionary politics,” as a New Yorker   
   >critic put it.   
   >   
   >The practical effect is to affirm the hazy daydreams of overeducated   
   >elites and fuel the fantasies of dissatisfied young Americans, a group   
   >increasingly open to force as a means of achieving political ends: a   
   >recent Harvard poll found that 39 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds say   
   >they’re cool with violence for such purposes. Bloodthirst is super in   
   >right now – why should we be surprised to see people hopping on   
   >Instagram to proclaim Charlie Kirk had it coming?   
   >   
   >All this rage is for the purification of self and society, and the   
   >people willing to embrace death for this purification become canonized.   
   >The Christian nihilist movement is eager to turn them into icons and   
   >heroes. Cities across America commissioned heroic murals of Floyd after   
   >he was killed. His face was as unavoidable as the image of the Virgin   
   >Mary is in Catholic cities. Floyd didn’t deserve to die, but he   
   >certainly didn’t deserve to be canonized, either. What can you say of a   
   >country that venerates such a man except that it’s drifting toward some   
   >destructive end?   
   >   
   >After Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare CEO, was shot in December   
   >2024, my social media feeds were flooded with friends and peers turning   
   >Luigi Mangione, the suspected gunman, into a political and sex symbol.   
   >One Instagram account called him “the patron saint of healthcare   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)