From: fedora@fea.st   
      
   On Mon, 9 Feb 2026 12:37:17 -0800, Dude  wrote:   
      
   >On 2/9/2026 10:15 AM, Noah Sombrero wrote:   
   >> 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.   
   >>   
   >It's a perfect example of self-destruction: lives given up for a   
   >religious cause. Wasted lives now with a cult following, into nothingness.   
      
   Moral indignation does not need religion.  It only needs a conscience.   
   No conscience, you think protesting bad shit is a wasted life.  The   
   rest of us think that life counted for something.   
      
   >>   
   >>>   
   >>>>> 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   
      
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