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The Rise of Right-Wing Nihilism
The New York Times ^ | Aug. 21, 2025 | David Brooks

Posted on 08/22/2025 6:01:46 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum

Democratic friends, let’s try a thought experiment. Imagine you woke up one morning and all your media sources were produced by Christian nationalists. You sent your kids off to school and the teachers were espousing some version of Christian nationalism. You turned on your sports network and your late-night comedy, and everyone was preaching Christian nationalism.

That’s a bit how it feels to be more conservative in the West today — to feel drenched by a constant downpour of progressive sermonizing. What would you do in such circumstances? Well, at least at first, you’d probably grit your teeth and take it while silently seething.

In 2018, I happened to watch the Super Bowl at a sports bar in West Virginia. President Trump was about a year into his first term, and the corporate advertising world was churning out ads with vaguely progressive messages. I watched the guys in the bar sort of hunch over, grim-faced, their body language saying: This is the crap we have to put up with to watch a football game.

The next year I helped organize a conference of people building local communities. We made sure that at least 30 percent of the participants were from red states. But during our discussions, the progressives in the room seemed to assume that everybody there thought like them. They dominated the conversation and left almost no space for other opinions. I watched the red-state folks just hunch over. For three days they barely spoke.

This progressive/conservative disconnect — which is also, frequently, an elite/non-elite disconnect — is a problem across the West. For reasons I don’t fully understand, educated elites are more socially progressive than non-elites.

The German economist Laurenz Guenther...


(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Humor
KEYWORDS: 4thestate5thcolumn; agitprop; aidandcomfort; arrestcarlosslim; biasmeanslayoffs; censorship; considerthesource; davidbrooks; demagogicparty; dnctalkingpoint; dnctalkingpoints; fakenews; godwinslaw; mediawingofthednc; mexicanownedrag; ministryoftruth; newyorkslimes; nytsedition; nyttreason; partisanmediashill; partisanmediashills; propaganda; sedition; treason; trysellingthetruth
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

21 posted on 08/22/2025 6:37:32 PM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: x

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/MXm3v

As Skyler and I exchanged emails, I was reminded of an essay the great University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter wrote last year for The Hedgehog Review. He, too, identified nihilism as the central feature of contemporary culture: “A nihilistic culture is defined by the drive to destroy, by the will to power. And that definition now describes the American nation.”

He pointed to our culture’s pervasive demonization and fearmongering, with leaders feeling no need to negotiate with the other side, just decimate it. Nihilists, he continued, often suffer from wounded attachments — to people, community, the truth. They can’t give up their own sense of marginalization and woundedness because it would mean giving up their very identity. The only way to feel halfway decent is to smash things or at least talk about smashing them. They long for chaos.

Apparently, the F.B.I. now has a new category of terrorist — the “nihilistic violent extremist.” This is the person who doesn’t commit violence to advance any cause, just to destroy. Last year, Derek Thompson wrote an article for The Atlantic about online conspiracists who didn’t spread conspiracy theories only to hurt their political opponents. They spread them in all directions just to foment chaos. Thompson spoke with an expert who cited a famous line from “The Dark Knight”: “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”


22 posted on 08/22/2025 6:38:19 PM PDT by DoodleBob (Gravity's waiting period is about 9.8 m/s²)
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To: Lurker

You left out ‘self-annointed’ between ‘arrogant’ and ‘elitist’. Otherwise, spot-on!


23 posted on 08/22/2025 6:38:58 PM PDT by curious7
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To: gundog

Thanks for the meme.

Any Big Lebowski reference makes it a good day here.


24 posted on 08/22/2025 6:44:37 PM PDT by frank ballenger (There's a battle outside and it's raging. It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls. )
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To: DoodleBob

Brooks wrote an article about nihilism for the Atlantic back in April. It’s not hard to get around their paywall. This article may just be a rehash of that earlier one.

There is a lot of cynicism about government and its claims now. People today are less likely to believe what the government, the Establishment, and progressives want them to believe. I don’t think that amounts to nihilism for most people though. We go on with our lives and aren’t taking up guns for no reason.


25 posted on 08/22/2025 6:47:28 PM PDT by x
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

What a waste of electrons!


26 posted on 08/22/2025 7:19:52 PM PDT by aquila48 (Do not let them make you "care" ! Guilting you is how they. control you. )
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To: frank ballenger

To not believe is the nothingness of the modern Left is to be a “nihilist” ... as holding to truth and beauty (or even just facts) make us “nihilist” in the minds of those who reject all facts ... as well as truth and beauty,

Or to put a paraphrase in their Left wing, mealy mouths: I may not know art but I know so I know what it looks like just the same ... and it’s drag queen story hour!

To quote Arthur Dent : “I think I’ll go have a little lie down somewhere...”


27 posted on 08/22/2025 8:04:21 PM PDT by Rurudyne (Standup Philosopher )
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To: Yardstick
Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.


28 posted on 08/22/2025 9:03:37 PM PDT by Theophilus (covfefe)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
But during our discussions, the progressives in the room seemed to assume that everybody there thought like them.

True! Never bumped into a stranger who almost immediately began assuming that I was a fellow conservative, opposed to the Dem Party. But have had numerous encounters with strangers (taxi drivers, random pedestrians, shoppers, etc.) who, at the drop of a hat, immediately launched into invective directed at President Trump, smugly assuming that I shared their feelings.

Even my Fidelity investment broker sent an e-mail to us (and presumably to her entire clientele) last November explaining what a "troubling time" it was, and that she would understand if we needed "space" to "process our trauma." She didn't explicitly reference Trump, but it was obvious what she meant.

Regards,

29 posted on 08/23/2025 1:44:18 AM PDT by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
I want to smash the Establishment not because I'm a nihilist and think nothing will arise to replace rotten/corrupted institutions, but because I think a basic common sense conservatism/respect for history and tradition will rise from the bottom up to replace the socialist orthodoxy that has descended on the institutions. What we had before say, the 1960s was normal and natural. What we've seen since then is not. Much like when Buckley said he would rather trust the first 400 people randomly chosen from the phone book than the faculty of Harvard to run the government, I think we'd do better nuking the Establishment from orbit and starting all over than we would if we let the Establishment go on as it is.

What do I mean in practical terms? Abolish much of Academia, government bureaucracies, the intel agencies, everybody in the military O5 on up, Big Pharma, Big Food, the Fed, Hollywood, Big Tech, international organizations. Gut what remains. Cut it back to the bone.

30 posted on 08/23/2025 2:14:21 AM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: Yardstick

Ya gotta remember he’s speaking to a Leftist audience given its the NYT. He’s trying to make them imagine what it might be like to have to be bathed in what they imagine to be horrible all the time, everywhere and in everything. That’s what its like to be a non Gaia Worshiper and non Socialist. The endless propaganda they try to shove down your throat at every turn in everything. You can’t even get away from it at the movies, in sports, anytime you turn on the TV, in school, etc. Its all pervasive.


31 posted on 08/23/2025 2:17:20 AM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
Is David Brooks still pretending that he is a Republican centrist?

My thanks to the New York Times for allowing me to read his entire essay with no pay wall.

Unfortunately, after reading the entire essay, I still have no idea what Right-Wing Nihilism is.

32 posted on 08/23/2025 3:51:29 AM PDT by zeestephen (Trump Landslide? Kamala lost the election by 230,000 votes, in WI, MI, and PA.)
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To: Texas Eagle
I happened to watch the Super Bowl at a sports bar

Yeah... She was sipping Cosmos and skinny margaritas with her girlfriends while watching The View.

33 posted on 08/23/2025 3:59:07 AM PDT by Sirius Lee ("Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

More diarrhea from Brookes. No clicky from me, I don’t do NYT. Screw them. Screw Brooks.


34 posted on 08/23/2025 4:13:28 AM PDT by paulcissa
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

The soon-to-be Islamic caliphate of western Europe awaits if you don’t care for Christian nationalism.

You’d be praying five times a day. It would be easy to think of things to pray for.

When the sun shines bright in summer, you’ll might be able to wash burkas.


35 posted on 08/23/2025 4:45:04 AM PDT by Brian Griffin
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To: paulcissa

“I don’t do NYT”

It is amazingly easy to do without the NY Times.

I have even tried to read an article online for years.

I glance at the paper copy in the library for about a minute.


36 posted on 08/23/2025 4:48:07 AM PDT by Brian Griffin
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Who reads/subscribes to this crap?


37 posted on 08/23/2025 5:16:34 AM PDT by The_Media_never_lie
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To: FLT-bird

Yep I know that’s what he’s doing but it’s remarkable that he’d use such an obnoxious term without any indication that he finds it objectionable. It just shows what a predicament he’s in over there at the NYT — how constrained he is. It actually would be interesting to send him an email asking him how he feels about the term “Christian nationalist”. I suppose it’s possible he’s so immersed in that bubble that he isn’t just playing along with it but actually has come to accept it to some degree.


38 posted on 08/23/2025 5:22:53 AM PDT by Yardstick
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To: Rural_Michigan

Outstanding pull.


39 posted on 08/23/2025 5:24:02 AM PDT by RinaseaofDs (Imagine what we'll know tomorrow.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Mr. Brooks realizes the tide is turning & is now coming back towards conservatism to remain relevant.


40 posted on 08/23/2025 6:35:13 AM PDT by Twotone ( What's the difference between a politician & a flying pig? The letter "F.")
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