From: julianlzb87@gmail.com   
      
   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? 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.   
      
   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   
   justice” and illustrated him with a halo and other trappings of   
   Christian iconography. Never mind that Thompson’s assassination will   
   have zero effect on American healthcare reform. Real change isn’t the   
   point – it’s bright flashes of brutality that light up a phone screen to   
   interrupt hours of scrolling.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)