Our Real Enemy in the Culture Wars Is Nihilism

I think he’s exactly right. It’s this lack of belief in the good, true, and beautiful that leads us down the paths of perpetual power struggle, to thirsting for nothing beyond the will to power, and to a dark abyss. We must not lose sight of that as we search for answers to what ails us, Brown writes.

Few of my college classroom experiences left an imprint upon me, but I will never forget April 20, 1999—the day of the Columbine High School shooting. That evening, I had a three-hour “Juvenile Delinquency” class adjuncted by a social worker from downtown Indianapolis. 

After a day of absorbing news of the massacre, my fellow students and I were eager to hear our instructor’s thoughts. He sighed heavily, shrugged his shoulders, and offered this unforgettable line: “It’s terrible. Truly terrible. And I see this same tragic violence and death every single day. The difference, however, is that what I see doesn’t make the news.”

His point is important. Violence is violence. And if humans have intrinsic worth and dignity, then the senseless, tragic death of one person is no worse than another.

Yet even amid the inescapable images of death and violence in our country, many have yet to experience an assassination of such a well-known figure as Charlie Kirk. Regardless of what one thought of his politics, the visibility of Kirk’s death, the ubiquity and magnitude of discussion thereafter, and its overall cultural impact have few 21^st-century comparisons, particularly for younger generations.

While many were quick to denounce political violence and its threat to democracy, responses to the assassination predictably began to contour around familiar frameworks and political narratives. Kirk’s alarming death raises the bar of shock and anger in a century roiled by cultural conflict.

In the early 1990s, sociologist James Davison Hunter coined the expression “culture war” as he described a country divided between competing moral visions of orthodox traditionalism and cultural progressivism. We are still in a culture war, says Hunter, but of a different character. “[B]eneath the apparent polarization, beneath our seemingly incommensurable differences, we increasingly inhabit a common culture,” he writes. One that is “chillingly nihilistic.” 

If Hunter is right, cultural battle lines cannot be neatly drawn between political typologies of left and right. In an After Virtue moment where, claims the late philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, universal norms no longer derive from traditional moral authorities so much as feelings and preferences, nihilism comes to occupy the space once held by transcendence.

This, says Hunter, is the essence of our war.

Nihilism’s root is nihil, Latin for “nothing.” No meaning. Empty; soulless. What we see is all there is. Nothing else. Nothing beyond. Nothing more. Nothing. What is the meaning? What is gained? What is lost? What is the point? Nothing.

Decades ago, Pope John Paul II popularized the phrase “culture of death.” A culture of death is a culture of nihilism. No meaning to life, nothing to aim toward or organize around, no intrinsic worth or dignity to each person, and no standard of what is good, right, and true to guide and govern us. “Annihilation,” says Hunter, “is the point.” 

We are still learning more about the motives of Kirk’s assassin, but, contends writer Freddy deBoer, his views were not formed around an earnest consideration of, and reaction to, competing intellectual ideologies. Perhaps he is better understood as a chaos agent whose malice was hardened in an ecosystem of resentment, spectacle, and unmoored grievance.

“[H]e had some sort of ideological urge, some sense that his violence should contain meaning, but his impulses and influences are incoherent,” writes deBoer. “[I]ndeed, that urge has been inculcated in online communities that are defined by nothing so much as, well, nothing … an endless race to the bottom of nihilism and self-hatred.” 

Journalist Adrienne LaFrance describes this as “salad bar extremism”—a kind of bespoke radicalism where agents select elements of fringe ideologies or internet-fueled conspiracies to suit their belief structure, producing incoherent doctrine that fails to meaningfully map to an established set of political beliefs. 

If deBoer is right, and LaFrance’s “salad bar extremism” shapes our understanding of this latest tragedy (and perhaps many others), the problem here is not just the presence of harmful ideology. It is the absence of productive ideology. It is nihilism, nothing.

And what, or who, is behind nothingness?

There is a story attributed to Rabbi Yisroel Bernath where he describes placing 100 red fire ants and 100 black ants from the Southwest desert in a jar. At first, he says, nothing will happen. But if you aggressively shake the jar and dump the ants back on the ground, they will fight to the death.

The red ants think the black ants are the enemy. The black ants think the red ants are the enemy. But the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. The story is likely inaccurate. But, importantly, the illustration is meant to invite us to reevaluate our true adversary. 

In C.S. Lewis’s 1942 book The Screwtape Letters, a senior demon coaches his nephew on how to demonize human subjects. To corrupt the soul of a person, he says, the apprentice demon must get his subjects to misidentify the enemy. Using satirical fiction, Lewis was warning readers not to confuse our real foe. 

If nihilism and evil are our true enemy, and if that is the essence of our battle, has our angst and anger been diabolically diverted in this present moment of violence? Who is shaking the jar? 

Consider just a few examples.

In a recent interview, technology ethicist Tristan Harris suggests the incentive scheme of an attention economy stokes and amplifies the worst of our pathologies. “[W]hen we are addicted, outraged, polarized, anxious, misinformed, validation seeking, and not knowing what’s true,” he says, “[we are] success cases of a business model that was trying to get … attention.” In other words, when we are most dysfunctional, it is because of and not in spite of someone’s business model.

The modern playbook for mobilizing others is to sow seeds of fear and harvest actions in service of someone else’s agenda. Such ground is fertilized, writes 20^th-century philosopher Hannah Arendt, under conditions of isolation. Loneliness, she says, heightened in an antisocial century, “prepares men for totalitarian domination.” Related, Kyla Scanlon writes, “Anxiety creates the psychological conditions that algorithms exploit.”

Author Rodney Clapp describes the “deification of dissatisfaction” that characterizes much of modern marketing. Related, James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, says, “You can go to hell without moving an inch, just focus on what you lack.” 

The New Testament book of James tells us, “Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it … ”

If we are always convinced that a superior and preferable state of affairs is within our reach, how could we ever be satisfied, content, and happy?

Modern politics seems more concerned with predicting how the end of the world would unfold “if the other side wins” instead of offering a real and earnest vision of the policies and prescriptions necessary to advance our country’s future. 

But does that really reflect the median American’s perspective? A Carnegie study from 2023 discovered that American voters are actually less ideologically polarized than they think they are. Yet, according to the study, even though Americans are not as ideologically polarized as they believe themselves to be, they are emotionally polarized. We don’t just disagree with each other, we hate each other, even though our political values are much closer than our emotions would suggest.

So, who is shaking the jar?

This is not just a public problem. As an employee for Asbury University, I was amazed at the broad range of negative responses to the 2023 revival there from self-described Christians. A Google search will return infinite complaints and unfounded accusations of emotionalism, gimmicks, and coordinated planning parading as an organic spiritual movement. Some videos have even suggested this student-centered revival was “of the Devil.”

What? Why was the most unified, God-honoring, apolitical, hungry-hearted, confessional, prayer-saturated, repentant, and graciously hospitable mass gathering at that point in the 21^st century met with pockets of cynicism or hostility—not outside, but within the faith?

For 16 days, I saw the best of Christ-followers. I saw men and women of all ages, ethnicities, cultures, languages, and classes—unified in fervent worship. I saw countercultural humility, sacrificial hospitality. I saw the loosened chains of a younger generation weary and unsatisfied with the empty scripts handed to them, desirous of something more. All that mattered seemed to be a right relationship with God and a right relationship with others. There was spiritual hunger, and hunger met.

Whatever else we may conclude, this is praiseworthy. Why wasn’t there uniform celebration from Christians?

Years ago, Duke theologian Stanley Hauerwas was invited to offer a prayer at a university luncheon event. He was counseled to provide a “civil prayer” so as not to offend anyone present. In that respect, they asked the wrong person. He opened his prayer by saying, “Dear God, we do not fear you, since we prefer to fear one another.”

He was right. Christian faith often reflects a rivalry of grievance. How? 

When unity is lost, when our bonds crumble, when we literally dis-integrate—who gains? Yes, promoters, programmers, platformers, propagandists, and politicians gain. But who else benefits, spiritually speaking?

I think we are in a war. And there are forces corrupting our souls and stirring our angst–shaking the jar. But let us not misidentify the enemy, which must be named: evil, sin, meaninglessness, and nihilism. Nothing. 

So, what do we do? How do we fight? Specifically, how do we fight nothing? 

We fight nothing with something. Christians point to something—they point to Someone. 

In the Gospel of John Chapter 6, the crowd following Jesus began to leave him. His teaching was hard. They did not like his absolutist claims. He failed to meet their expectations of the coming Messiah. Jesus asked the 12 disciples if they, too, wanted to leave. “Lord, to whom can we go?” responded the Apostle Peter. “You have the words of eternal life.” The most powerful response to nothingness is that which is eternal. Nihilism must not, will not, have the last word. Echoing Peter, Christians ultimately believe meaning, hope, and life are found in a person.

One of the antidotes to nihilism is service to others, which is the subject of Nadya Williams’ essay today on our site. The joy of church potlucks and meal trains is the essence of community—a concern for the other that reminds us we were not made to eat alone.

This has been a hallmark of the Christian church from its earliest days—drawing attention for the way it countered so much of Roman culture: