“Some men just want to watch the world burn”
Stephen Spencer Pittman, was charged after allegedly firebombing a synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi
Welcome back to Mr. Right, a newsletter about navigating modern manhood for normal guys in a not-normal world.
This week, I take another look at the digital realm of Groypers and what happens when a nihilistic ideology clashes with the real world.
Hint: Nothing good comes of it.
Most of us are familiar with this famous quote from the 2008 Batman movie, The Dark Knight. For those of you readers who aren’t Batman fans, have never seen the movie, or are not as nerdy as yours truly … Bruce Wayne’s butler, Alfred Pennyworth, is spinning some yarn about a mercenary in Burma, when he compares this person to the movie’s anarchic villain, the Joker. Bruce is trying to parse the Joker’s motives for terrorizing Gotham, but Alfred believes it’s a fool’s errand.
Alfred: With respect, Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man that *you* don’t fully understand, either. A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So, we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never met anybody who traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.
Bruce: So why steal them?
Alfred: Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
People labor all their lives thinking, writing, and talking about why humans do certain things. Pundits analyze the motivations of political actors as if every decision they make is “rational.” But this Dark Knight scene cuts through all the noise and illuminates a harsh truth about human nature that people, including myself, loathe to admit: Humans have an infinite appetite for escapism, violence, and destruction.
With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that the online right-wing movement of “Groypers,” white nationalists who hate Jews and think Hitler was awesome, has become so popular. We like to think that history and moral progress are linear, but truthfully, societies can backslide within a generation. It wasn’t a century ago that the Nazis shipped Jews to gas chambers, and the Bolsheviks sentenced kulaks to gulags.
Recently, a promising young man, Stephen Spencer Pittman, was charged after allegedly firebombing a synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi. He was a varsity baseball player in high school and went on to play for a local community college. Yet, he threw his life away to allegedly target a Jewish house of worship because he was so possessed by the truly antisemitic ideology of the Groypers and white nationalists.
Pittman reportedly went down the Pepe Pipeline, embraced hardcore Christian Nationalist ideology, and other habits of the online right that include the consumption of raw eggs, “testosterone optimization,” and “Scripture-backed fitness.” He also reportedly told investigators that the synagogue he allegedly set on fire, Beth Israel Congregation, was a “synagogue of satan.” A Biblical phrase, “synagogue of satan” has been co-opted by modern white supremacist groups, antisemites, and Nick Fuentes’ followers, the Groypers.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with “Scripture-backed fitness,” trying to boost your T-levels through unorthodox means, or eating raw eggs, per se. But there is certainly something wrong with the Groypers. They have no interest in society. They have no desire to engage in good-faith political debates. They take glee in trolling and sowing online chaos. They love to watch mainstream media set their hair on fire because of something whacky Nick Fuentes said on a livestream.
The Pepe Pipeline might not be a problem if it just stayed online. In the end, it’s just a dark fantasy, a perverse community for people whose real-world lives are impoverished – economically, romantically, or spiritually – to escape into. But, occasionally, the digital might leap into the world of the flesh, and acts of violence and hatred get carried out by these online dorks.
The saddest part is that the influencers and antisemitic conspiracy theorists at the top who peddle all this garbage might not even believe it themselves. As Alfred told Bruce, some probably do seek financial gain. Like everyone in America, some are just trying to make a buck and get rich, cashing in by appealing to our most base human feature: the desire to escape, destroy, and inflict harm on others. Some Groypers, though, couldn’t care less. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. They just want to watch the world burn, and watch others burn it for them.
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