Amerika

Nihilism joins other scapegoats — children of Azazel — in being excuses for human bad behavior. Humans blame those instead of correcting the bad behavior. This enables humans to exist in a more perfect solipsistic state where anything that goes right is their genius and anything that goes wrong is unfair arbitrary injustice.

Humans fear that without a book written about God, people will have no moral basis or believe life has a point in itself. Cultural relativists like to point out that these things are specific to cultures and not shared by all humans, which is why even the same religion is interpreted differently in different countries.

From a more stable perspective, however, human morals not only arise from culture, but are commonsense adaptations to the goals and environment of that culture. Humans are not the same. Individuals differ, but so do groups, which is why groups have different cultures. This is written in their DNA.

Someone who loses any sense of grounding, morality, or perspective simply because they did not read a holy book was never a person inclined toward functional behavior in the first place. Even without God or science, basic morals are common sense, even if common sense varies between cultures.

The philosophy of nihilism addresses the idea that humans must have something like a holy book controlling them. A deep dive reveals a philosophy of life beyond human emotions and socializing:

Nihilists refuse to accept the human projection of a consensual hallucination that asserts absolute, universal, and objective forms of truths, values, morals, and communications.

In other words, we think the only “fact” is the world itself, and it is unequally understood among a population that is often anti-realistic or opposed to reality because it challenges their individualism. There are no truths shared among all of humanity, so appealing to “truth” is a lost cause and a distraction.

The government and media currently want to demonize nihilists because they see people with formless rage as a form of nihilist:

Nihilistic violent extremism is a relatively new term introduced by federal authorities to describe actors who commit violence without allegiance to any clear political ideology. Instead, they are characterized by a generalized hostility toward societal institutions and a desire to inflict harm or chaos.

Goldenberg explained that NVE is meant to describe individuals or networks driven by generalized animosity toward society, not just those who defy easy categorization. “They’re not right or left,” he said. “Nihilistic violent extremism isn’t one group but an umbrella term. Some are organized, some aren’t. Some are just people who fall through the cracks.”

The FBI’s use of the NVE framework has increased since the high-profile takedown of “764,” an online network that federal authorities say distributed violent content and exploited minors. Prosecutors said members of that group engaged in digital extremism with the explicit goal of dismantling societal order, much in the way the anarchists of the pre-internet era used to operate.

These people are more accurately described as fatalists who believe in accelerationism. That is, they have no hope of things getting better, and want to burn everything down in order to get out of this diseased and pointless time of legitimized parasitism.

Apparently, the law sees these aimless and destructive people as having a philosophy of non-philosophy, which makes them a terror cell among Americans:

Nihilist Violent Extremist first appeared in two court filings earlier this month warning of “the overarching threat of NVE.” One is an FBI affidavit alleging Nikita Casap, a 17-year-old high schooler in Wisconsin, murdered his parents as part of a plan to assassinate President Trump and foment a civil war. The second document, a criminal complaint accusing California man Jose Henry Ayala Casimiro of coercing children into producing child sexual abuse material as part a plan to bring about the downfall of the world order.

Both documents define the term as criminality intended to bring about societal breakdown. Per the filings:

Nihilistic Violent Extremists (NVEs) are individuals who engage in criminal conduct within 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.

The warrant also alleges Casap was in touch with the Order of Nine Angles, a Satanic neo-Nazi group that espouses accelerationism, a fancy word for the belief that destabilizing the social order allows for radical change. That is pretty heady stuff to ascribe to a 17 year old, and ends up having the feel of an episode of Altered Carbon.

Finally they mention accelerationism. Accelerationists generally accept that our system has tied its own hands. It cannot fix its problems because it has too many precedents and prohibitions on necessary methods. Therefore it is doomed. As the prophet said:

What is falling, push!

However, accelerationists tend to aim toward political subversion more than randomly harming people, which like the acts of the anarchists decades ago tends to make people double-down on “safe” perspectives instead of broadening their own. Accelerationism requires changing minds not solely terrifying them.

Interestingly, the black metal genre (history) features in this departure from conventional morality:

A fan of black metal music, he started frequenting online forums where others shared his interest. But in those spaces, Dana said, there were also predators looking for vulnerable people. At first, she said, they seemed to be friendly and supportive to her son. But eventually, they began to direct Elliott to dark online content, known as “gore” sites, that reshaped his perception of the world around him.

He parroted the ideology of accelerationist extremists, who frame Western civilization as decadent and corrupt and who promote the idea that total societal collapse is necessary to establish a new fascist order. At times, he would talk about wanting to start “an order.”

“He was talking a lot about there was no meaning to anything. It was hopeless. Everything was meaningless. There was no purpose,” she said. “And that was, again, very unlike him. He’s always been very clear about having meaning and purpose.”

If everything is meaningless, there is no point killing an Arab on a beach; if anything, the only reasonable activity would be to embrace non-attachment.

However, the black pill revels in not just pointlessness, but an assurance of doom, which is contrary to nihilism as a philosophy:

Nihilism, which is usually defined as a philosophical concept rather than a set of actions, is the belief that “all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated,” according to Alan Pratt, professor emeritus at Embry-Riddle University.

Nihilism is “associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence,” Pratt wrote in a philosophical definition. “A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy.”

Nihilism is also often connected to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who argued that “its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions,” according to Pratt.

We do not need values to live. We need only food, water, and shelter. Would this connect to an impulse to destroy? Probably not, because there is no point in that, either.

The mainstream consists of people who require external stimulus to keep themselves in the range of normal behavior. They fear a lack of control mechanisms like herd morality. As a result they see nihilism as emptiness when in fact it is liberation from false somethingness:

“Nihilistic violence is destruction for its own sake,” Jonathan Alpert, a New York City-based psychotherapist, told Fox News Digital. “It isn’t about money, ideology, or revenge; rather, it’s violence born of emptiness.”

“Other acts of violence, however twisted, usually have a motive that can be identified,” he said. “Nihilistic violence is different because the act itself is the message: a statement of meaninglessness, a way of saying ‘nothing matters, so I’ll be destructive.’”

They tend to read their own motives into nihilists, such as hatred, and use that to explain these crazy shooters as nihilists, when in fact these people are fatalists who believe nothing can get better:

The network originated as an effort to accelerate the collapse of modern society by exacerbating social tensions and dividing society through violence, and has roots in white supremacy and fascism, Kriner said. But the groups have continually evolved, and most nihilistic violent extremists today don’t share a single strong ideology, instead relying on a hodgepodge of different motivations, he said.

“They just hate everyone,” he said. “They don’t really have a goal. The purpose is pain.”

But to a nihilist, the pain of another would have null meaning. It is what it is. It is also not relevant to the nihilist.

Some see these “nihilists” as “internet nihilists” which are as detached from reality as internet libertarians or internet Nazis. In fact, the common ground appears to be having no life except internet symbolism which like all symbolism leads away from accurate perception of reality:

Subcultures of nihilistic violence and ideologically-motivated extremist groups exist in overlapping spaces online. They often share aesthetics and symbols, and adherents are rarely a pure expression of either phenomenon. Members of extremist groups may be fundamentally motivated by a misanthropic worldview and see their participation as social rather than ideological. Conversely, those carrying out acts of nihilistic violence may have participated in extremist communities or even use extremist symbols or language. However, a deeper examination of their rhetoric (often including manifestos) and their target selection makes it clear that ideologically-motivated extremism is not the primary driver in their radicalisation or mobilisation to violence.

This blending reflects an overlap between these communities online. Most subcultures of nihilistic violence are loose networks that interact with other subcultures and extremist groups online, leading them to swap symbols, terminology and memes. For example, the manifesto of a 17-year-old who killed two at a Georgia (US) high school in January 2025 included racist comments, accelerationist concepts, and references to the Terrorgram Collective. However, a deeper examination of the manifesto and his social media accounts reveals that he was deeply immersed in non-ideological subcultures of nihilistic violence, and that his attack appeared to lack a coherent ideological purpose or political end-goal. While it is difficult to rule out any ideological influence entirely, the available evidence suggests that he may have drawn motivation from subcultures of nihilistic violence online.

Some even assign the same motives to race war killings like happened in Britain:

Indeed, nihilism has formed a key element of many online extremist movements for years now. Aside from Casap’s connections to the Order of the Nine Angles, a British-origin satanic network, governments are also growing increasingly concerned about 764, an esoteric movement that combines Satanic neo-Nazism with child sexual abuse glorification and encouragement of self-harm, up to and including suicide. “Victims are turned into abusers and recruiters who do unto others what was done to them,” Marc-André Argentino, Barrett G, and M.B. Tyler explain in their analysis of the 764 movement. Many online chatrooms have long been characterized by a “free-wheeling violent nihilism.”

Meanwhile, in Britain, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has led a national debate about the changing nature of terrorism in the wake of the July 2024 stabbings of several young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport. The perpetrator was seemingly inspired only by his lust for violence. “The blunt truth here is that this case is a sign. Britain now faces a new threat,” Starmer warned. “Terrorism has changed.” Like Casap, the attacker, also 17, similarly emerged from a new generation of digital extremists characterized in Starmer’s words as “loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom accessing all manner of material online, desperate for notoriety, sometimes inspired by traditional terrorist groups, but fixated on that extreme violence, seemingly for its own sake.”

The common denominator is that the public world — the shared consensual hallucination of democracy and its symbols — seems to be unbelievable to many, and some channel that into murder. Should we consider the possibility that democracy is a simulation of reality that removes vital detail?

In Plato’s allegory a group of prisoners spend their lives chained up in a cave and gaze upon its wall while, unbeknownst to them, guards project images cast by shadows, which the prisoners mistake for the true reality. The philosopher, according to Plato, is the one who ascends from the cave into the light of wisdom and dismisses those who cannot distinguish between “substance and shadow”. Yet increasingly we are unable to do so. As captives in a simulated, digital cave, we are so spellbound by the projections that we neglect the true reality beyond. Even the cave’s architects have become enthralled and, in their puppet show, see flickerings of a god-like intelligence.

The simulated world is making the real one redundant. Once physical things, such as banks and high-street shops, have dissolved into the digital world. Work and social life is increasingly mediated through online apps, whose slickness minimises contact with other people.

In the Age of Symbolism, tokens and the associated group emotions matter more than what is real. Symbols are not reality; by simplifying our representation of reality, they distort it, and over iterations/generations, this produces a totally unrealistic and reality-denying perspective.

Democracy is a simulation. In it, whatever gets votes is real; whatever the herd wishes to ignore, it will not vote for, and therefore that is not real in the symbolic context and collective consensual hallucination and projection that is democracy.

Perhaps this mentality, by enforcing the unreal as universal, produces people who are lashing out from hopelessness, fatalism, and misery. The most mentally unhinged act first, where the rest just languish in misery. But it is not nihilism.

Tags: accelerationism, extremism, fatalism, nihilism, nihilistic violent extremism