Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
Politics and Religion
The Nihilism Beneath the Surface

The Nihilism Beneath the Surface

Last updated on: May 10, 2024 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

0 Comments

The Nihilism Beneath the Surface 2024-05-05T17:30:26-04:00 Gene Veith

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

In his First Things article What the Pro-Palestinian Campus Protests Are Really About, Carl Trueman expresses skepticism about the demonstrators and their cause.

They aren’t really revolutionaries. “When, for example, did adult revolutionaries hold hunger strikes lasting a whole twelve hours or seize buildings and then demand that the university authorities give them food and water?” Trueman notes that Che Guevara, a real revolutionary, hid out in a Bolivian jungle. Never once did he whine to the Bolivian government he was trying to overthrow about the hard living conditions he was enduring or demand that he be supplied with food and water. “A cynic might say that even our revolutionaries are pathetic these days.” Nor are they really worried about Arab lives. Far more Arabs have died in Syria, but no one is demonstrating for them.

I would add that they are not really anti-war. As Ramesh Ponnuru says, in a Washington Post column about what to call the protesters, they are all for the war as waged by Hamas:

A leading group backing the demonstrations, Students for Justice in Palestine, exulted in the terrorist attack “against the Zionist enemy” on Oct. 7. Protesters at George Washington University and Cornell University have been chanting, “There is only one solution: intifada revolution.” (“Globalize the intifada” is another popular slogan.) Terrorist-group regalia has been spotted at protests at Yale, Princeton, Stanford and the University of Minnesota. . . .Jewish students have been subjected to such chants as “We don’t want no Zionists here!” and “the 7th of October is going to be every day for you!”

And they aren’t really “pro-Palestinian.” Says Ponnuru, “The massacres of that day have, after all, been a proximate cause of immense Palestinian suffering. The Columbia protesters have not hesitated, either, to shun Palestinians and Palestinian Americans they consider insufficiently confrontational.” How about “pro-Hamas”? Well, some protesters say they aren’t supporting that particular organization. “Anti-semitic”? Closer, but some Jews are among the protesters. Ponnuru says the best description that all would agree to is “anti-Israel.”

But Trueman goes beneath the surface rhetoric to find a deeper pathology. He says of all of the contradictions,

This also points to the nihilism that lurks just below the surface. When one notes the craziness of some of the protests—queers professing solidarity with Palestine, for example, or a drag queen leading children in pro-Palestinian chants—it becomes clear that, for all of the blather about “human rights,” these people share no common vision about what it means to be human. The thing that unites these groups is neither concern for Arab lives nor a respect for Islamic culture. They are united only in wanting to tear down. In short, these protests are a manifestation of the Mephistophelean spirit of negation or, in religious terms, the spirit of desecration. To borrow from Marx, all that is holy must be profaned. What is to replace it—Shariah law, drag queen story hour, Judith Butler reading groups—is anybody’s guess. There is no agreed moral vision here. There is only consensus on a hatred of Jews, of Israel, of America, and of what is. And ironically, it comes from those who enjoy some of the greatest privileges that America has to offer.

Hatred of what is.

As in the transgendered who hate the reality of their bodies and think that their self-identification, with or without the help of hormones and surgeries, can change “what is.” They too are among the protesters, even though their lives would be short if they went to the radical Islamic states they are championing.

Hatred of what is. That also explains postmodernist constructivism, the relativist view that we each create our own realities, as well as the other Gnostic rejections of reality that have become commonplace in people’s lives.

Hatred of what is manifests itself in the denial of all truth, goodness, and beauty, and the meaning of life. In short, as Truman says, in nihilism.

See also my post The Need for Chaos on the phenomenon of “political nihilism,” the impulse to just “burn it down,” which exists on the left but also on the right.

See also my post Progressive Nihilism, which discusses Ashley Frawley’s point that “the vanishing of a utopian horizon left only a politics of subversion, in which disruption became an end in itself.”

And yet another Cranach post, Horror and the New Nihilism, based on insights from my former student John Ehrett, who notes, among other things, how “the traditional “good/evil” dyad is replaced by the dyad “freedom/oppression.”

Illustration: Portrait of a Nihilist Student by Ilya Repin (1883), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Previous Post

May 10, 2024

DISCUSSION: "Then I Prefer My Mother"

Next Post

May 13, 2024 Monday Miscellany, 5/13/24

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"I know wired earbuds are making a comeback (I never stopped using them as I ..."

reg

Luther on Tools

"VCRs, tape decks, and cassette players are all having a revival among a segment of ..."

Tom Hering

Luther on Tools

"As a (retired) lawyer I see potential liability from sharing things like power or sharp ..."

reg

Luther on Tools

"I am not sure the items you mentioned, though disused, discontinued, discarded, could be considered ..."

reg

Luther on Tools

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category America Apologetics Art baseball Bible Blog Christ Church crime Culture Economics Education Ethics Family Food Football Government History Holidays Holy Week Humor International Islam Language Law Life Issues Literature Media Medicine Movies Music Nature News Personal Philosophy Politics psychology Reformation Religions Sacraments Science sex Social Science Sports technology television terrorism Theology Uncategorized Vocation war

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Commanded to go to Nineveh, I fled in the opposite direction on a ship to Tarshish. Who am I?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Jeremiah Elijah Hosea Jonah

Books by This Author Books by Gene Veith

See All Titles »