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  • There are definitely people out there like that, like channers.

    However, they're not really organized. The closest they seem to get is being riled up and mobilized by existing movements like MAGA. It is, ironically, the administration making a fuss about "nihilistic violent extremists" that is actually fomenting violence among them to turn them into a relevant force in the first place.

  • If that were applied accurately it does actually describe some subset of fascists, who are so incoherent and built on load-bearing warrior vibes that all they want is to actualize themselves through hurting others and destroying things. There's a long history of the most incoherent fascists adopting the label of nihilist, as well as of outright neo-nazis adopting it to try to smuggle their ideology in under a new label and/or to be able to keep the "N" in the acronym they want without admitting that it stands for "Nazi".

  • “Nihilistic Violent Extremists (NVEs) are individuals who engage in criminal conduct with the United States and abroad, in furtherance of political, social, or religious goals that derive primarily from a hatred of society at large and a desire to bring about its collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and social instability. NVEs work individually or as part of a network with these goals of destroying civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable populations, which often include minors.”

    1980's it was the satanists

    1990's it was doom

    2000's it was rap music

    2010's it was islamists

    2020's it's nihilists?

    • Oh no, some 20 something with ennui!

      Wait, that's a school shooter.

    • It has been nihilists pretty much the whole time, at least when it comes to school shooters. While they ape aspects of far-right ideology, they don't actually have the ideological wherewithal to pursue that. It is always a purely reactionary ideology to whatever is making people publicly clutch their pearls. Communism is no fun for them because you will be immediately censored from public discourse but everyone loves to be seen hating Nazis. All they care about it the exercise of power, and that usually means manipulating children and the mentally ill. They're basically the FBI without the ideological pretense of national security.

      That said, what creates this is, of course, capitalism.

  • jokes aside nihilism is very misunderstood and theoretically a nihilist could seek out adventurism for no other reason than the simple pleasure of it with no further goal in mind except to do more adventurism for the simple pleasure of it

16 comments