The disturbing rise of “violence without a cause”

The disturbing rise of “violence without a cause”

• US investigators face attacks with no clear political or ideological motive
• "nihilistic violent extremism" describes violence driven by societal disgust
• Online communities reinforce and admire attackers, fueling a cycle of violence

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After a string of shootings, bombings and assassination plots in the US, investigators across the country have run into the same frustrating problem: they can’t pin a clear cause on some of the attackers.

These aren’t easy cases to sort into the usual boxes. The suspects aren’t clearly aligned with Democrats or Republicans. They aren’t claiming jihad, waving white supremacist symbols as their central creed, or pledging loyalty to a named group. In their writings, what shows up instead is something broader — disgust with society itself.

US federal prosecutors have started using a new phrase for it: “nihilistic violent extremism.” It sounds clinical. What it really means is violence driven less by a structured ideology and more by a belief that nothing matters — or that everything deserves to fall apart, the Washington Post reported.

Hatred aimed everywhere

Take the 15-year-old girl who opened fire at her Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin. In a manifesto titled “War Against Humanity,” she described people as “filth” and wrote about her contempt for the world around her. She didn’t single out one political party or one ethnic group. Her rage was aimed at humanity itself.

Investigators later discovered she had spent time in online communities that obsess over mass killings. In those corners of the internet, attackers are sometimes referred to as “saints.” The violence isn’t praised because it advances a policy goal. It’s admired because it shocks, disrupts and creates spectacle.

Within weeks of that shooting, other teenagers were posting about her online. One referred to her as a “saint” before carrying out his own attack.

That ripple effect worries researchers. The admiration becomes part of the cycle.

Collapse as a goal

In other cases, suspects have written about wanting to bring down the system entirely.

A young man accused of plotting to destroy Nashville’s power grid allegedly wrote about triggering “the start of the end” of the interconnected world. Another teenager, charged in a separate case, allegedly killed his parents to fund plans to assassinate political leaders and spark chaos.

Some of these individuals describe themselves as “accelerationists,” people who believe society is beyond repair and should be pushed toward collapse. Others don’t even bother with a label. They simply write about destruction as if it’s inevitable — or necessary.

Still, not all experts agree on how to categorize them. Some point out that racism, antisemitism or misogyny still show up in certain manifestos. Calling everything nihilism, they argue, risks overlooking those older, more familiar hatreds.

The internet’s shadow

What’s different now is how easily isolated anger can find reinforcement online.

In earlier decades, extremist violence often involved groups with leaders and structure. Now, someone can spend hours scrolling through violent content, absorbing grievances, learning technical details and finding others who feel the same way — without ever joining an organization.

Some attackers appear to crave notoriety as much as impact. In one recording recovered after a school shooting, the teen predicted: “You will see us on the news.”

The attack becomes both statement and performance.

A deeper unease

There’s a reason investigators find these cases so hard to explain. People want a motive that makes sense. A political grievance. A religious doctrine. A target that fits a narrative.

But in some of these attacks, the writings circle back to something emptier. One man who killed two children at a church wrote in his journal: “The message is there is no message.”

That line lingers. It suggests not just anger, but a kind of void.

For law enforcement, that unpredictability is unnerving. It’s easier to track organizations than moods. Harder to counter a belief system when the belief system is that nothing has meaning.

And for communities left behind, the absence of a clear “why” can be just as haunting as the violence itself.