Nihilism as Rightwing Political Rhetoric

This paper advances a critical analysis of the neoconservative discourse on "nihilism" in the United States. The crisis of "nihilism" is tied to attempts to rollback civil rights, feminism, and multiculturalism. Manufacturing this crisis is part of a wider political theology that is in discontinuity with the philosophers most often evoked as its sources. Applying a hermeneutic approach to rightwing claims of nihilism reveals a defective philosophical anthropology and sociology of modernity. The paper concludes by arguing that rhetoric about nihilism helped buttress the surge of reactionary politics in America, which seeks to restore lost national greatness.