Nihilist poseurs and tiresome decadent rebels?

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

DM Mitchell, who written some books and edited Creation's Starry Wisdom series of Lovecraft anthologies tried to brutally murder his friend and the victim escaped with awful injuries and said Mitchell was laughing when attacking him. Mitchell offered no explanation in court why he attacked his friend.
I think years ago this would have been a way bigger story used for pro-censorship ends and I'm surprised I only just found out about it.

[qcrisp]

Quote Originally Posted by James

I would wager there are more people out there pretending to be happy than there are pretending to be unhappy.

Although this is almost certainly true, because misery is largely only attractive at a distance, I think it should be pointed out that neither nihilism or decadence are the same thing as unhappiness. Whether or not they imply unhappiness is a question that people might disagree on.

I know, and I have often argued that on this very forum. I was responding to the thread of conversation decrying people acting negative, dark or angry to appear edgy.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

I think I've said earlier that being a poseur or showy or a virtue signaller doesn't really prevent one from being intelligent, or a good artist, or generally sincere about what they talk about. It's just that there's some amount of dishonesty in service of creating a certain image of themselves.

I actually like a lot of stuff created by some of these people so I don't intend this thread as some damning judgement.

If someone could produce a study on edgelords I would be interested but I'm not able to capture enough of them for my lab testings. I need to go to more Lars Von Trier screenings and Boyd Rice concerts and lure them with something suitably edgy.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

I'll tell them I'm going to write what will be the new Apocalypse Culture for our age and I'm just going to meet Gaspar Noe for an interview and they might want to come along and I'll drop hints that I just might be a Nazi.

[ToALonelyPeace]

I recently watched a Louis Theroux documentary about the Nazi that might interest you. One of the main guy, an ex-leader of the KKK, has an on/off hardcore persona. He seems to enjoy the attention his extreme values attract, though he doesn't enforce them on himself seriously.

The Nazis - Louis Theroux BBC Nazi Documentary - YouTube

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Fascism and cowardice Paul StJohn Mackintosh

Mackintosh again.
Features some of our familiar interests and maybe goes towards explaining why we've occasionally had extremists here. It is a little unsettling that so many of our interests have these connections.

[ToALonelyPeace]

Quote Originally Posted by Robert Adam Gilmour

Fascism and cowardice Paul StJohn Mackintosh Mackintosh again. Features some of our familiar interests and maybe goes towards explaining why we've occasionally had extremists here. It is a little unsettling that so many of our interests have these connections.

I read the post. In general, I agree that an inner world collapse, general hysteria and paranoia of the Other's contamination contribute to fascism. However, the rest sounds very much like a call to arm. I quote:

Quote

"There are many reasons to despise fascism, but for me, one of the most telling is its cowardice. I could be wrong, but I don’t ever remember anyone describing Marxism, Maoism, or any other Left totalitarianism as creeds of fear. Senseless cruelty and brutality to others has been practised often in the name of the highest motives, however warped, but nothing invalidates and damns a creed from the roots like craven, despicable cowardice – above all, when that creed claims to embody the exact opposite."

What about the Great Purge? Is it called bravery when it's in the "name of the highest motives"? History doesn't lack brave men and women with their "highest motives" and killing fields (Crusaders, Mao's Red Guards). I don't believe their causes are anymore validated than the cowards.

Quote

Unfortunately for the fascist, though, group identity has no coherent, rational wholeness. Since no group identity is the product of a rational, articulate, structure, without internal contradictions, the fascist is driven by all the force of fear to embrace irrational, inarticulate, contradictory values to elevate the random accumulation of chance developments and local facts that make up a group identity into the invulnerable totem of strength [...] Fascism’s aggression, permanent state of tension, and death wish stems partly from the stress of sustaining its internal contradictions [...] There’s a special, personal brand of fear that motivates the fascist intellectual. Fascist thinkers of all stripes follow a fairly common trajectory through doubt, disbelief, narcissistic retreat into themselves, and eventual re-emergence into fascism. Nihilistic fascists, those solitary and sensitive individuals who escape from the terrors of solipsism, scepticism, and existential despair by fetishising authority and unreason, worshipping tradition and the nation, are classic manifestations of this: Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Emil Cioran, Julius Evola, Knut Hamsun, Lucien Rebatet – and for modern successors overwhelmed by their own subjectivity, Michel Houellebecq and Karl Ove Knausgård. Houellebecq, one representative misanthrope, misogynist, and anti-rationalist, declares: “Good, evil, morality, sentiments? Pure ‘Victorian fictions.’ All that exists is egotism. Cold, intact, and radiant.”

I don't know if authority and unreason can be worshipped together. One thing lacking in all this is the role Hope plays. Celine, a misanthrope, a broken man after the WWI horror he witnessed--I sometimes wonder why he came to believe a simple solution "Get rid of the Jews" would fix France's problems.