From: punditster@gmail.com   
      
   On 2/9/2026 5:59 AM, Noah Sombrero wrote:   
   > 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.   
   >   
   We studied theories of Christian nihilism in Bible School:   
      
   The one name to remember is Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, 1743–1819.   
      
   Apparently, he introduced the term "nihilism" into philosophy. He was   
   critical of the Enlightenment for reducing knowledge to nothingness.   
      
   Jacobi coined the term to argue that all rational philosophy leads to a   
   total lack of meaning, urging a return to faith.   
      
   The death of that ICU nurse and that lady named Good was meaningless in   
   the final analysis. It was suicide.   
    >   
      
   >> 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?   
   >>   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)