Nihilism (political ideology)

“ Although their programme may be found almost word for word in Proudhon, they profess to follow more closely Bakounine, the Russian nihilist, who separated himself from Marx and the Internationals, and formed secret societies in Spain, Switzerland, France, and elsewhere, and thus propagated nihilistic views; for anarchy and nihilism are pretty much one and the same thing when nihilism is understood in the older, stricter [147] sense, which does not include, as it does in a larger and more modern sense, those who are simply political and constitutional reformers. ”

“ Answer.—There is no authoritative definition of Nihilism. Certain of their leaders define it very differently from others. All of them seem to be pretty well agreed that society as now constituted is utterly wrong from foundation to turret, and most of them are in favor of overturning existing governments, casting to the winds the prevailing conceptions of individual, family, and social rights, and returning to a state of anarchy, if need be, to begin the work of reconstruction anew. ”

“ The Nihilistic party aimed at a total regeneration of society and at the destruction of its present organization in state, church, and social institutions, and it found its explanation and excuse in the widespread corruption, brutality, and despotism of the officials. It is a mistake to confound the Nihilists with the Liberals or even with the Socialists who are advocating reforms or the abolition of certain political{370} or social abuses. The Nihilists are not aiming at reforms ”

“ One might well tremble for the future of the race if such a despotism could exist without provoking the bloodiest resistance. I honor Nihilism; since it redeems human nature from the suspicion of being utterly vile, made up only of heartless oppressors and contented slaves. Every line in our history, every interest of civilization, bids us rejoice when the tyrant grows pale and the slave rebellious. We cannot but pity the suffering of any human being, however richly deserved ”

“ As regards the term Nihilism, we have to state that, even in Russia, what was, half a century ago, stigmatized as Nihilism, is no longer in existence, but supplanted by either practical Anarchism of a propagandistic kind, or revolutionary conspiracy of all classes, as far as their reflection has begun. ”

“ Constructive politics would seem, as yet, to be a cut above the nihilist’s intelligence; he is essentially a destructionary.16 He is so diligently engaged in unweeding the soil that he has not given a thought to what he will grow there. Nihilism may be defined as a policy of assassination tempered by reflections on Siberia. American sympathy with it is the offspring of an unholy union between the tongue of a liar and the ear of a dupe. ”

“ Nihilism is a sign that the botched and bungled [Pg 52] in order to be destroyed, that, having been deprived of morality, they no longer have any reason to "resign themselves," that they take up their stand on the territory of the opposite principle, and will also exercise power themselves, by compelling the powerful to become their hangmen. ”

“ We have ceased to believe in this or in that, not because we have studied the subject thoroughly and become convinced of the untenability of our views, but only because some author or another in Germany or England holds this or that doctrine to be unfounded. Our nihilism is a thing of a quite peculiar character. It is not, as in the West, the result of long falsely directed philosophical studies and ways of thinking, nor is it the fruit of an imperfect social organization. It is an entirely different thing from that. The wind has blown it to us, and the wind will blow it from us again. ”

“ Thus the possessors of the instincts of decline (of resentment, of discontent, of the lust of destruction, of anarchy and Nihilism) , as also the instincts of slavery, of cowardice, of craftiness, and of rascality, which are inherent among those classes of society which have long been suppressed, are beginning to get infused into the blood of all ranks. Two or three generations later, the race can no longer be recognized everything has become mob. And thus there results a collective instinct against selection, against every kind of privilege ”

“ Nihilism was a struggle for the emancipation of intelligence from every kind of dependence, and it advanced side by side with that for the emancipation of the labouring classes from serfdom. The fundamental principle of Nihilism, properly so-called, was absolute individualism. ”

“ To hold up the Russian government as being immaculate would be gross folly; but for foreigners to represent it to be so abhorrent as has long been the fashion to do, is equally incorrect and unjust. Nihilism means nothingness; and never was the purpose of a mad revolutionary combination more appropriately named. This murderous crew has been well defined by an English writer, who says, "The Nihilists are simply striving to force upon an unwilling people the fantastic freedom of anarchy." ”

“ The cultivated classes in their despair have grasped Nihilism as their weapon against the present insupportable state of things, and risk their lives again and again, with dynamite and revolver, with the dagger and the torch of the incendiary, to precipitate the country into that bloody chaos, which, in their delirium, they imagine must precede the establishment of a new system of society. The statesmen who are called upon to devise a cure for this horrible disease propose the most astonishing remedies. ”

“ Nihilism, the principles of a movement on the part of the educated classes in Russia which repudiates the existing creed and organisation of society, and insists on a root and branch wholesale abolition of them and a reconstruction of them on communistic principles, and for the purely secular and everyday ends of common life, subordinating everything in the first place to the feeding, clothing, and lodging of human beings in a manner worthy of their rank in the scale of being. ”

“ Nihilism is the righteous and honorable resistance of a people crushed under an iron rule. Nihilism is evidence of life. When "order reigns in Warsaw," it is spiritual death. Nihilism is the last weapon of victims choked and manacled beyond all other resistance. It is crushed humanity's only means of making the oppressor tremble. God means that unjust power shall be insecure; and every move of the giant, prostrate in chains, whether it be to lift a single dagger or stir a city's revolt, is a lesson in justice. ”

“ Some one mentioned the Nihilists. Thereupon Ferdinand Lind, in a quiet and matter-of-fact way, without appearing to know anything of the personnel of the society, and certainly without expressing any approval of its aims, took occasion to speak of the extraordinary devotion of those people.
"There has been nothing like it," said he, "in all the history of what men have done for a political cause. You may say they are fanatics, madmen, murderers; that they only provoke further tyranny and oppression; that their efforts are wholly and solely mischievous. ”

“ Nihil is a Latin word signifying nothing, and the name Nihilists is applied to these radical revolutionists by the world at large as indicative of the tendency of their doctrines and political operations, including as they do the assassination of rulers, the springing of mines, and the firing of palaces, government offices, and even towns and cities, in the effort to annihilate all existing doctrines and systems of government. Communism and Socialism were defined in these columns but a week or two ago. ”

“ Nihilism will manifest itself as a psychological condition, in the second place, when man has fixed a totality, a systematization, even an organization in and behind all phenomena, so that the soul thirsting for respect and admiration will wallow in the general idea of a highest ruling and administrative power (if it be the soul of a logician, the sequence of consequences and perfect reasoning will suffice to conciliate everything) . ”

“ The growth of nihilism and its reaction are carefully treated. Repressive measures failed to check it, the decline being due to the foundation of a liberal party. Nihilism found its warmest par- tisans among students, whose beautiful theories lacked the power of even sug- gesting concrete forms. The trans- formation of nihilism into socialism is attributed to Tolstoi's educational re- form, which brought the revolutionists into closer contact with western social- ism. ”

“ Whoever questions their arguments is considered incapable of understanding them; while those who do not enter into the question at all are despised, and taxed with profound ignorance.
At this time of transition, during the first years following the Emancipation, men’s ideas, too long repressed, were in a state of vertigo, of chaotic confusion. Some were buoyed up with the wildest hopes; others felt the bitterness of disenchantment, and many disappointed enthusiasts embraced Nihilism, which was taken up at this time by romance writers as well as by politicians. ”

“ It tolerates in its rulers and statesmen a haughty defiance of the simplest rules of social propriety, and it seems amused rather than astonished or indignant at the vagaries, the frenzies, and outrages, of those who in brilliant drawing-rooms or lecture-rooms preach the doctrines of what is called Nihilism or Individualism, [3] —viz., "that society must be regenerated by a struggle for existence and the survival of the strongest, processes which Nature has sanctioned, and which have proved successful among wild animals." ”

“ But this is the formula for every decadent style: there is always anarchy among the atoms, disaggregation of the will,—in moral terms: “freedom of the individual,”—extended into a political theory “equal rights for all.” Life, equal vitality, all the vibration and exuberance of life, driven back into the smallest structure, and the remainder left almost lifeless. Everywhere paralysis, distress, and numbness, or hostility and chaos both striking one with ever increasing force the higher the forms of organisation are into which one ascends. ”

“ Thus the idea of the book was to show that the strength of Nihilism lay, not in high dogmas and theories held by a large and well-organized society, but in the strength of the will of one or two men reacting on the weaker herd and exploiting the strength, the weakness, and the one-sidedness of its ideals, a herd which was necessarily weak owing to that very one-sidedness. ”

“ He saw in the history of human thought, the development of the [Pg 61] notion of the "true world," which to him was a mere subjective phantom, a superstition; but a reaction would set in, and he prophesied that the doom of nihilism would sweep over the civilized world applying the torch to its temples, churches and institutions. Upon the ruins of the old world the real man, the overman, would rise and establish his own empire, an empire of unlimited power in which the herds, i. e., the common people would become subservient. ”

“ Over all finer natures there have come a bitter depression and indignation at all political doing and dickering; they would rather stay and work at home where no one strives nor cries, than walk the streets so full of the uproar which politicians make. All souls, turned to within, the clairvoyants of the spirit and the fine tasters of life agree of course with Nietzsche, that “where the state ends, there man begins”! The state has its pattern and uniform for the “many too many,” for the superfluous who in great choruses bawl of the most superfluous that there is for man. ”

“ At the outset it is my earnest desire to disabuse the minds of English readers that the Narodnaya Volya, or the Party of Freedom, are mere murder leagues. Unfortunately, English writers, unacquainted with Russian life, ignorant of the true objects of the organisation, or of its inner working, and only recognising its far-reaching influence, have surrounded Nihilism with a glamour and mystery that would be highly amusing to us were it not for the fact that their sensational and sanguinary narratives injure our cause. ”

“ Any thing that will make the madman quake in his bedchamber, and rouse his victims into reckless and desperate resistance. This is the only view an American, the child of 1620 and 1776, can take of Nihilism. Any other unsettles and perplexes the ethics of our civilization. ”

“ It is a fashion and the fancy of the sham aristocracy in this country to inveigh against anything like socialism, nihilism, and anarchism in America. Should the presence of this dread monster, called nihilism, ever be felt in America, the blame would rest entirely upon the shoulders of the sham aristocrats, just as the Czar and his nobles in Russia are responsible for its presence in that country. There must be a vent for the pent-up indignation of the people ”

“ By 'Pure Reason' and transcendental idealism, Herzen and Bakunine, the first apostles of nihilism, were inspired. But the ideas brought from Europe to Russia soon allied themselves with an indigenous or possibly an Oriental element; namely, a sort of quietist fatalism, which leads to the darkest and most despairing pessimism. On the whole, nihilism is rather a philosophical conception of the sum of life than a purely democratic and revolutionary movement. ”

“ Nihilism is not only a meditating over the "in vain!"—not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one's shoulder to the plough; one destroys. This, if you will, is illogical; but the Nihilist does not believe in the necessity of being logical.... It is the condition of strong minds and wills; and to these it is impossible to be satisfied with the negation of judgment: the negation by deeds proceeds from their nature. Annihilation by the reasoning faculty seconds annihilation by the hand. ”