The Nihilism Epidemic

Defeating fascism requires building a world people can believe in

In a moment that was shocking even for Fox News, host Brian Kilmeade advocated for killing mentally ill homeless people, and both of his co-hosts agreed. As his co-host spoke about the homeless, saying they ought to be locked up, Kilmeade interjected: “Or involuntary lethal injection… or something. Just kill ‘em.”

It’s one of those unspeakably horrible statements that are all too common now. We should never hear anything like this in a functional society, but in our dysfunctional society the talking heads on the right pepper us with these inhuman ideas on a regular basis. And between the fascist regime in power, and the neoliberal approach to homelessness, we know that those in government already dehumanize folks without housing to a terrifying degree. But what flies a little more under the radar is the way that consuming this type of rhetoric produces nihilism, and the way a deep nihilism produces this rhetoric.

This era is filled with cynicism and nihilism. People look around and see little to hope for, little in the way of purpose or meaning. Individualism and capitalism contradict and shoot down our social drive, the future looks grim, and spiraling inequality has taken decent lives away from so many. Fascism rises in this vacuum, so beating back the far-right and ending the wave of violence threatening society means reckoning with rampant nihilism.

Mass shootings and school shootings emerge from the nihilistic vacuum as much as any other source. They are the most immediate and shocking manifestations produced by a system of deep and systemic political violence. Tyler Robinson, the young man who allegedly killed Charlie Kirk, appears to have been deeply jaded and chronically online. He allegedly inscribed bullet casings with references to memes and video games, and may have shot Kirk in part because of the influence of deeply nihilistic corners of the internet.

Although we don’t know much yet, this shooting may be one of, if not the first case of a killer ironically assassinating someone. As a whole the young, online far-right is deeply jaded and nihilistic. Whether or not Robinson was in this sphere, the inscriptions on the bullet casings show a young man who was certainly influenced by the currents that pervade the darker corners of the internet.

Nearly every mass shooter in recent years has been radicalized on forums that are deeply disturbing, and almost entirely far-right. These cold, dark places are the ultimate example of what can happen when purposeless people reach for anything resembling community, anything resembling meaning. In place of empathy (a term Kirk called “new age” and “made-up”) these forums offer a shrill laughter at suffering. Pissing people off becomes a group activity, and they futilely try to find something that approximates meaning in their trolling. In time this deep cynicism culminates again and again in killings fueled by hatred and nihilism.

Photo by Alek Olson on Unsplash

The kid who shot up his school in Colorado less than an hour after Kirk was killed in Utah is a revealing, and now typical, example of all of this. Evergreen High shooter Desmond Holly’s online presence is littered with references to mass shootings and antisemitic views, The Denver Post found. Holocaust denial, references to Columbine, overt Nazi content — Holly was radicalized just like numerous other school shooters and mass shooters, through the online far-right pipeline.

As Shayan Sardarizadeh wrote after the Buffalo mass shooting in 2022:

“All of the recent far-right assailants cite the internet as the starting place for their journeys towards radicalisation. Their manifestos and writings show they were well-versed in the online subcultures, conspiracy theories and memes, and used those to deliberately ‘troll’ or misinform. Notably, all of them are committed anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, and cite a wide range of conspiracy theories. Nearly all of them reference ‘white genocide’ and ‘white replacement’ conspiracy theories, as well as their resentment of immigrants and minority groups, as the bedrock of their belief system and the main motivation for their violence.”

Disturbingly little has changed. The Evergreen High School shooting is yet another in this pattern that has repeated itself far too often. From New Zealand to Buffalo to Texas to Colorado the list of far-right mass shooters following the same online radicalization process is too long to convey. And nothing has been done. Not only has there been legislative inaction, the Nazi shooter pipeline has gone undisturbed. Under the guise of free speech, far-right forums and influencers have been allowed to recruit young people, primarily young white men, into becoming mass killers.

In a healthy society, people who dedicate themselves to turning teenagers into murderers would have been stopped long ago. The whole apparatus would have been torn down. But we don’t live in a healthy society. That one fact is at the heart of all this. We live in a society plagued by alienation, hatred, and violence. These flaws have roots on our very foundation, roots so deeply embedded in some cases that pulling them out risks collapsing the entire edifice. And yet at this moment it feels more and more like the structure might come tumbling down regardless — not because foundational pillars are being yanked out but because we’re reaching the logical conclusion of our original sins.

I don’t mean original sins like Charlie Kirk might have, of course. I mean that a structure built largely on violence, oppression, and extraction gets increasingly shaky with time. I mean that we’ve reached an inevitable point of such massive inequality, a point where young people feel the future is curtailed, a point where we’re reaping the consequences sown by the ruling class long ago.

Only 15% of young people believe America is heading in the right direction. Less than half of us feel a sense of community, only 17% reporting deep social connection, and just 16% report doing well financially. Economic inequality is at higher levels than it was leading up to the French Revolution, and there’s no viable path to reversing that trend in the near future. Housing is wildly expensive, the cost of a car has skyrocketed, food prices are way up, childcare is exceedingly pricey. Young people having difficulty seeing a comfortable or even viable future aren’t being unreasonable — they’re accurately assessing the difficulty of living in this late stage of capitalism.

It should come as no surprise that these conditions are ripe for fascism. It’s widely accepted that the hyper-inflation and general economic difficulties of post-WWI Germany created fertile ground for the Nazis. As Albrecht Ritschl writes, Germany was “plagued by structural unemployment throughout the 1920s” and “the German economy went through a sharp contraction after 1929.” The Great Depression devasted people and economies around the world, but Germany was also plagued by the reparations demanded in the Treaty of Versailles. In this environment Hitler could rile up his base with talk of economic injustice, and countless people were more susceptible to his message.

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

Today we see again the susceptibility to fascism that comes in bleak times. With little hope in the future, with life growing more and more expensive with no sign of respite, it’s not surprising that young men are turning to far-right spaces. It’s infuriating, saddening, disturbing — but not surprising. Countless people have a burning anger at our system, a burning anger at the notion that their future has been foreclosed. So when a YouTuber or podcaster begins to suggest a solution people jump at it, and often begin their journey down the far-right pipeline.

There are relatively few mainstream answers to a loss of faith in the future, and the massive economic inequality that underlies this problem. Of the two political parties, one is offering a sense of purpose through hate and violence. The other is by-and-large offering nothing outside the continuation of the status quo, the continuation of the conditions that have created such widespread nihilism. Progressive and leftist alternatives have trickled into mainstream consciousness and into the Democratic Party in fits and starts, but it’s not remotely comparable to the way MAGA has normalized fascism to millions of people. Young men in particular are fed into the initial steps of the far-right pipeline constantly, and this ecosystem is funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Desperate people looking for meaning, or community, or to feel good for a moment are validated and given purpose in nihilistic forums and the fascist movement, horrific as that purpose may be. In the short term we need to present clear alternatives. Building community, offering purpose that fulfills and connects instead of destroying and tearing us apart, bringing people into organizing for a better world — all of this is a necessary beginning.

In the long term we need a reorganization of society. Nihilism can be replaced with meaning only when we’re able to live lives that are purposeful and connective. A society premised on oppression and mass political violence will always produce deep cynicism and the understandable belief that this is all meaningless. A society premised on life and care and freedom will produce human flourishing and connectedness and allow us to find purpose.

We see the products of capitalism, of endless greed, of the systemic investment in violence. We see it in the desire to eradicate the homeless and in countless school shootings. We see it in the success of fascism and in the hoarding of billionaires. Society has gone so far astray that abandoning hope is tragically understandable. So hope must be rebuilt. Purpose must be sought out and pursued and fought for. A world where we can find meaning with one another and find hope in the future is a world where people don’t turn to hatred and incomprehensible acts like shooting their classmates. It’s a world with a lot more peace and a lot less fascism. And we have to build that world. - JP