AHC make nihilism a political movement

Galba Otho Vitelius

Make nihilism a real political movement, with at least as high a profile as anarchism, positivism, or social credit. This is in this folder because even if nihilism becomes more prominent in the 20th century, you probably need a 19th century POD.

The goal is to either/ both get a government to have nihilism as its official governing philosophy, or have a "Nihilist Party" run in elections and run candidates. Like with Social Credit, the Nihilists could wind up doing the standard politician stuff if they ever get power.
 

TRH

Perhaps it could be similar to Impossibilism? They have some ideal they stand for, but they don't see any way to proactively achieve it, so they're just going to wait until the conditions for their preferred state emerge organically, at which point they'll act. Allegedly. And Impossibilism had a weird following in British Columbia IOTL, so you could have Nihilism get big in local politics somewhere in a similar fashion.
 
Concavenator

Concavenator

A literal nihilist movement sounds like a bit of a contradiction, but 19th Russian anarchists were called Nihilists, in the sense, I suppose, that they opposed every existing institution and value; does it count?
 

Mort the Reaper

They'd better be careful around angry Vietnam vets.

Jokes aside, I'm not sure what kind of platform a "nihilist party" would even have.
 

stevej713

Why would followers of an ideology espousing universal meaninglessness have any motivation to gain political power? It would be a waste of time according to their own viewpoint.
 

Wolttaire

TRH said:
Because why not, I guess?
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why not for a nihilist would be a wast of time too in fact even if the nihhilist ran and spent a enough time forming a party why would any subset of the population vote for it if nihhilst became powerful enough and had enough support no one would vote becuase it would be a waste of time
 

TRH

Wolttaire said:
why not for a nihilist would be a wast of time too in fact even if the nihhilist ran and spent a enough time forming a party why would any subset of the population vote for it if nihhilst became powerful enough and had enough support no one would vote becuase it would be a waste of time
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But no more wasteful of time than literally anything else, if you're a proper nihilist.
 

Wolttaire

TRH said:
So what? Time and resources are equally meaningless.
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they have no motvation ethier to run or speand that much time they ahve no moviation to do nothing the only logical actions nihhilist to take is to kill them selves id they think everything is meaningless
 

SwampTiger

Banned
Bah! None of this world matters! Everything is meaningless.

How exactly does this become a viable political movement?

Might as well drink ourselves to death?
 

telynk

It seems almost like a nihilist party would sort of be a joke party. They would run candidates on satirical platforms to demonstrate how absurd and meaningless the political exercise is.... Maybe they might somtimes win in local electioms (like the Monster Raving Loony party has in the UK), but they wouldn't win through having an ideology or a good platform but just by either being considered a funny choice, by the strength of candidates' personality, or by the disgracr of the competition.
 
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