Latest news with #nihilism
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
What is nihilism? A teen charged in a mass shooting plot and a car bomber subscribed to the same ideology, authorities say
An Oregon teen arrested last month in connection with an alleged mass shooting plot targeting a mall in southwestern Washington subscribed to a 'nihilistic violent extremist ideology,' according to officials. Similarly, FBI officials said Guy Edward Bartkus, the man accused of bombing a Palm Springs, California, fertility clinic last month, 'had nihilistic ideations.' It's this 'preoccupation with themes of violence, hopelessness, despair, pessimism, hatred, isolation, loneliness, or an 'end-of-the-world' philosophy' – as the FBI defines nihilistic ideation – that allegedly drives these individuals to violence. Here's how experts and authorities describe nihilism. 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. Retired senior FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole, who has researched past violent actors to provide the FBI with its initial definition of nihilistic ideation, describes nihilism as 'something on a continuum.' 'A person's outlook on life is never black or white,' O'Toole told CNN. 'Over the years, there have been some people that have planned mass violence, where their nihilistic thinking, or view of the world, was very extreme, and then you have some where it's less extreme.' Both FBI investigators and Justice Department prosecutors have recently deployed a new specialized term to describe those radicalized by nihilism – Nihilistic Violent Extremists, or NVEs. In court records on a separate case, the FBI defines NVEs as '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 definition continues. Investigators have found these types of extremists often use social media platforms to 'connect with individuals and desensitize them to violence … corrupting and grooming those individuals towards committing future acts of violence … for the purpose of accelerating the downfall of society.' CNN's Elle Reeve, in her book 'Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics,' describes the way individuals on social media platforms like 4chan deal in explicit nihilism – with the 'black pill' concept. 'The black pill is a dark but gleeful nihilism: the system is corrupt, and its collapse is inevitable. There is no hope. Times are bad and they're going to get worse. You swallow the black pill and accept the end is coming,' Reeve described. 'You start searching for evidence to prove to yourself that you're correct, and it's easy enough to find … The hardships and heartbreak you've faced can now be explained as the inevitability of a sweeping historical force,' she wrote. 'You spend more time in blackpilled online forums, where the darker the commentary, the more attention it gets, so you compete to write the most creative description of the depravity,' Reeve continued. 'Incels traffic in explicit nihilism too, with the '(black pill)' concept providing an ideological veneer to cover their self-loathing and isolation,' a Just Security article explains. 'Incel,' short for 'involuntary celibate,' describes someone, usually a male, who is frustrated by their lack of sexual experiences. 'Many school shooters and incels display and act upon the same suicidality that also characterizes much nihilist activity. For instance, incels have adopted a phrase, 'going ER,' to describe the phenomenon of taking one's own life in a bloody murder-suicide plot against society,' according to the article. The phrase refers to Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old who in May 2014 killed six people in Isla Vista, California, before fatally shooting himself. O'Toole says decades ago, the concept of nihilism and holding nihilistic ideations was a phenomenon – but added the 'black pill' terminology first popularized over the last 15 years shows how normalized the nihilistic worldview has become. 'Twenty-five years ago, the shooters that we looked at … didn't have social media, so they couldn't compare notes, and so that didn't give them the opportunity to say, 'Hey, do you feel the same way I do? Yeah, I feel the same way you do,'' O'Toole said. 'Behaviors that were really anecdotal 25 years ago are now being normalized because other people share them.'
CNN
08-06-2025
- Politics
- CNN
What is nihilism? A teen charged in a mass shooting plot and a car bomber subscribed to the same ideology, authorities say
Federal agencies National security TerrorismFacebookTweetLink Follow An Oregon teen arrested last month in connection with an alleged mass shooting plot targeting a mall in southwestern Washington subscribed to a 'nihilistic violent extremist ideology,' according to officials. Similarly, FBI officials said Guy Edward Bartkus, the man accused of bombing a Palm Springs, California, fertility clinic last month, 'had nihilistic ideations.' It's this 'preoccupation with themes of violence, hopelessness, despair, pessimism, hatred, isolation, loneliness, or an 'end-of-the-world' philosophy' – as the FBI defines nihilistic ideation – that allegedly drives these individuals to violence. Here's how experts and authorities describe nihilism. 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. Retired senior FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole, who has researched past violent actors to provide the FBI with its initial definition of nihilistic ideation, describes nihilism as 'something on a continuum.' 'A person's outlook on life is never black or white,' O'Toole told CNN. 'Over the years, there have been some people that have planned mass violence, where their nihilistic thinking, or view of the world, was very extreme, and then you have some where it's less extreme.' Both FBI investigators and Justice Department prosecutors have recently deployed a new specialized term to describe those radicalized by nihilism – Nihilistic Violent Extremists, or NVEs. In court records on a separate case, the FBI defines NVEs as '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 definition continues. Investigators have found these types of extremists often use social media platforms to 'connect with individuals and desensitize them to violence … corrupting and grooming those individuals towards committing future acts of violence … for the purpose of accelerating the downfall of society.' CNN's Elle Reeve, in her book 'Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics,' describes the way individuals on social media platforms like 4chan deal in explicit nihilism – with the 'black pill' concept. 'The black pill is a dark but gleeful nihilism: the system is corrupt, and its collapse is inevitable. There is no hope. Times are bad and they're going to get worse. You swallow the black pill and accept the end is coming,' Reeve described. 'You start searching for evidence to prove to yourself that you're correct, and it's easy enough to find … The hardships and heartbreak you've faced can now be explained as the inevitability of a sweeping historical force,' she wrote. 'You spend more time in blackpilled online forums, where the darker the commentary, the more attention it gets, so you compete to write the most creative description of the depravity,' Reeve continued. 'Incels traffic in explicit nihilism too, with the '(black pill)' concept providing an ideological veneer to cover their self-loathing and isolation,' a Just Security article explains. 'Incel,' short for 'involuntary celibate,' describes someone, usually a male, who is frustrated by their lack of sexual experiences. 'Many school shooters and incels display and act upon the same suicidality that also characterizes much nihilist activity. For instance, incels have adopted a phrase, 'going ER,' to describe the phenomenon of taking one's own life in a bloody murder-suicide plot against society,' according to the article. The phrase refers to Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old who in May 2014 killed six people in Isla Vista, California, before fatally shooting himself. O'Toole says decades ago, the concept of nihilism and holding nihilistic ideations was a phenomenon – but added the 'black pill' terminology first popularized over the last 15 years shows how normalized the nihilistic worldview has become. 'Twenty-five years ago, the shooters that we looked at … didn't have social media, so they couldn't compare notes, and so that didn't give them the opportunity to say, 'Hey, do you feel the same way I do? Yeah, I feel the same way you do,'' O'Toole said. 'Behaviors that were really anecdotal 25 years ago are now being normalized because other people share them.'
New York Times
25-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
A Fringe Movement
The attack on a Palm Springs, Calif., fertility clinic last week surfaced some unsettling ideas. Guy Edward Bartkus, the 25-year-old suspect, had posted an audio clip explaining why he wanted to blow up a place that makes babies. 'I would be considered a pro-mortalist,' he said before detonating his Ford Fusion, killing himself and injuring four others. 'Let's make the death thing happen sooner rather than later in life.' Investigators called it 'terrorism' and 'nihilistic ideation.' Trump administration officials called it 'anti-pro-life.' Bartkus was indeed espousing an extreme ideology. But it belongs to a larger intellectual movement, still fringe for now, that is slowly gaining adherents. My colleagues Jill Cowan, Aric Toler, Jesus Jiménez and I have spent the past week reporting on what experts call 'anti-natalism.' Hundreds of thousands follow accounts and podcasts about it. It holds that procreation is immoral because the inevitability of death and suffering outweighs the odds of happiness. Today's newsletter explains. The idea The calculus is ancient — to be or not to be? A South African philosopher's 2006 treatise, 'Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence,' popularized the idea in its modern form. 'You're stuck between having been born, which was a harm, but also not being able to end the harm by taking your own life, because that is another kind of harm,' the author, David Benatar, told us. This perspective draws partly on utilitarianism, a discipline of philosophy that asks how to achieve the most good for the greatest number. But even there, anti-natalism is seen as marginal. Besides Benatar, 'I don't know any other philosophers who share it,' said Peter Singer, an influential utilitarian. Online, however, anxieties including climate change and artificial intelligence have given it traction — as has the yearning for connection, even among people with antisocial tendencies. Scores of anti-natalist discussion boards, influencers and podcasts now debate whether all creatures should stop reproducing, or just humans. The concepts have bled into pop culture. Thanos, the supervillain in two films from Marvel's 'Avengers' franchise, wants to eradicate half of the universe's living beings because there are 'too many mouths to feed.' The number of Americans who don't want kids is rising, with many young people saying they don't want to hurt the environment. A few variants are even more extreme. An offshoot known as 'efilists' — that's 'life' spelled backward — argues that DNA should also be destroyed. Pro-mortalism, the position Bartkus staked out, is less well defined. But it suggests that birth should be followed as soon as possible by a quick, consensual death. Bartkus was a vegan from a small town in the California desert whose estranged father called him 'a follower, not a leader.' As a child, the father said, he loved rockets and once nearly burned the house down. As an adult, he set off explosions in the barren wilderness. Online, he had grown close to a woman who died last month in an apparent assisted suicide. Taking action That woman, Sophie Tinney, 27, was shot three times in the head on Easter Sunday near Seattle, according to court records. Officials have charged her roommate with second-degree murder. But Bartkus's manifesto says she was a suicidal anti-natalist — and may have persuaded the roommate, an Eagle Scout who liked to play Dungeons & Dragons, to shoot her in her sleep. (He has pleaded not guilty.) Bartkus said online that Tinney's death might have prompted the clinic bombing. 'I don't think I really knew how much it was going to affect me,' said a manifesto posted with the audio on a pro-mortalism website. Social media posts tied to him indicate that he had attempted suicide at least twice since she died. Then he videotaped a dry run for the bombing, mixing chemicals in the desert that could blow up his car. An F.A.Q. appended to his manifesto includes a list of pro-mortalist and efilist figures; at least two of them have killed themselves in recent years. This week, the moderator of an anti-natalism Reddit forum with nearly a quarter-million members called the bombing 'unjustifiable, incoherent, immoral and disgusting.' Benatar, the author, said that his philosophy explicitly abhors violence, the restriction of reproductive rights and, in almost all cases, suicide. But ideas have a way of twisting and transforming online. One such adaptation seems to have found a young man who loved pyrotechnics and hated life. War in Ukraine Democrats Trump Administration Five Years Since Floyd Other Big Stories Republicans want to add work requirements to Medicaid. Is that a good idea? No. Work requirements bury eligible people under paperwork to prove that they meet the new requirements. 'The most vulnerable will be made worse off, all to fund a tax cut that most benefits the rich,' Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan write for The Times. Yes. Work requirements improved the economy in the Clinton years, when people left welfare and went back to work. 'More workers in the economy will mean more people paying into Social Security and Medicare, preserving those programs for years to come,' Stewart Whitson writes for U.S. News & World Report. Zombie apocalypses are appealing because there's no better distraction from whatever currently ails you than something worse, Rachel Feintzeig writes. Here are columns by Maureen Dowd on Trump's crypto gala and Lydia Polgreen on the Oval Office meeting with South Africa's president. Believing: After childbirth put a woman into a coma, she forgot her husband and her faith. Read how she recovered. Wrecked: With an underwater drone, archaeologists are capturing images of sunken vessels in the Great Lakes. Roommate tales: Stories of New Yorkers living alongside slobs, witches and eventual lifelong friends. Summer vacation: Staffing cuts could make national parks a mess this summer. Here are five great state parks to visit instead. Divorcing? There's a coach for that. The Gecko Gallery: A tiny Brooklyn zoo is host to dozens of species from across the globe. See inside. Vows: Their friend rigged the gala seating chart. It worked. Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday showed 15 looks from the Cannes red carpet. Trending: The soccer team Real Madrid. The coach Carlo Ancelotti is leaving the club this weekend to become head coach of Brazil, the BBC reports. Lives Lived: Susan Brownmiller was a feminist author and activist who helped define the modern view of rape, debunking it as an act of passion and reframing it as a crime of power and violence. She died at 90. Read this week's magazine. Try a soul-nourishing Filipino chicken soup. Workout in 20 minutes. Watch these comedy specials over the long weekend. Know your charcoal before you start grilling this summer. In this week's Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Emily Weinstein suggests making a recipe she will have on repeat this spring: Melissa Clark's miso-chile asparagus with tofu. She also recommends lemon-pepper chicken breasts, a Somali coconut fish curry, and salmon and couscous salad. Here is today's Spelling Bee. Yesterday's pangram was expunging. Can you put eight historical events — including the creation of the laser, Mickey Mouse and Godzilla — in chronological order? Take this week's Flashback quiz. And here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. P.S. The Interview is off this weekend. It will be back next weekend. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Fertility clinic bombing in Palm Springs sheds light on nihilistic violence
The bombing of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs last weekend points toward a dark philosophical dead-end. The alleged perpetrator seemed to have a misanthropic, anti-life worldview. According to a report by the LA Times, a website that may be linked to the bomber advocated for 'sterilizing this planet of the disease of life.' A speaker there declared, 'I'm angry that I exist.' The fertility clinic was likely targeted as a symbol of birth, life and hope. The root problem here has been described as 'anti-life nihilism.' A more familiar term may be pessimism. The 19th Century pessimist, Arthur Schopenhauer, said life was an 'unprofitable episode disturbing the blessed calm of non-existence.' He suggested it would be a favor to the next generation to 'spare it the burden of existence.' It is easy to imagine this leading to violence. The Washington Post warns of a rash of nihilistic violence, claiming that 'nihilistic extremists are often motivated by a philosophy that seeks to hasten the world's downfall.' If you think existence is rotten, you may want to annihilate it all. Those who hate life may view life-affirming people with bitter animosity. But nihilism is not necessarily violent. If life stinks, indifference is as likely as hatred. Disillusionment and despair often give birth to apathy and listlessness. If nothing matters, then why bother with anything? Various solutions to nihilism have been proposed. Religion is an obvious one. The loving God of Christianity gives meaning and purpose to life despite suffering, sadness and death. In Buddhism, salvation is found in the insight that suffering is caused by attachment to the ever-changing world of experience. A different approach can be found in art, science and humanism, rooted in ancient Greek philosophy. Greek philosophers argued that human virtue and wisdom were intrinsically valuable, despite the indifference of nature and the gods. Modernity builds upon this. Scientific knowledge has value in itself. It is amazing to understand the immensity of the cosmos, the history of humanity or the inner workings of cells and atoms. The quest for knowledge makes life worth living. There is always something new to discover and more wisdom to be gleaned. The nihilist gives up on knowledge. One cure is to rediscover the joy of curiosity. Art also has intrinsic value. We can delight in the music of Mozart, the lyrics of Bob Dylan or the architectural wonders of the world. We can also actively create art. The fun of drawing, singing or writing is freely available. A nihilist might complain that nothing human lasts. But the energy of the creative imagination is an antidote to that complaint. We can also find value in friendship and love, as well as in natural beauty, physical pleasure or athletic achievement. Social life and purposeful activity provide deep wells of meaning. When nihilists reject life, they reject these basic goods. This indicates a broken spirit lacking in vision, compassion and ambition. The great American philosopher William James offered a cure for pessimism in an essay entitled 'Is Life Worth Living?' He said that pessimism results from too much thinking and not enough active responsibility. The gloomy, world-weary nihilist suffers from what James called 'speculative melancholy.' The solution is to stop whining, get out in the world and get to work. We have a choice in the matter of meaning. If life seems meaningless, remember that you are free to create something better. As James said, 'Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.' As we celebrate Memorial Day, we discover another remedy for nihilism. We can learn from the commitment of those who sacrifice their lives in service to others. We all die. But this gloomy fact need not undermine the will to live. Rather, faith in life is renewed by observing that the best lives are lived in uplifting others. Pessimism and nihilism are perennial problems. They indicate a deep challenge for the human spirit. We are the only beings in the universe — as far as we know — who wonder whether life is worth living. If we understand our unique capacity to ask this question, we may also realize how wonderful it is to exist as beings who think, question and create. Andrew Fiala is the interim department chair of Fresno State University's Department of Philosophy.
Times
21-05-2025
- Health
- Times
Antinatalist philosopher: The Palm Springs bomber proves my point
A philosopher whose beliefs on procreation are thought to have inspired the suspected bomber of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs told The Times the attack only 'underscored his point' that suffering is inevitable. David Benatar, a South African academic and author of one of the so-called antinatalist movement's most influential books, claimed suffering like that caused by Saturday's blast was a natural consequence of humans being born into 'misery'. Authorities in California are working to learn more about Guy Edward Bartkus's motives for the bombing, but have said the 25-year-old left behind nihilistic writings that suggested he held antinatalist views. In a manifesto published on his now-deleted website, Bartkus said he was going to bomb an in-vitro fertilisation clinic because he was angry
