From: fedora@fea.st   
      
   On Mon, 9 Feb 2026 09:43:13 -0800, Dude  wrote:   
      
   >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.   
      
   So say those who understand nothing.   
      
   >   
   >>> 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   
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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