Beware the New Rationalism

While the murderous ideology of Hamas, which delights in the slaughter and tormenting of its enemies only slightly more than in the deaths of Palestinians, stems from an extreme and perverse religiosity, radical secularism can be every bit as horrifying. Take, for instance, the Zizians, a group that seems to have stepped out of the pages of a Dostoevsky novel, and whose ideas combine a kind of extreme “rationalism” with belief that technology will replace humanity, transgenderism, and a smattering of hip Silicon Valley intellectual trends. The young man who murdered the health-insurance CEO in December, if not a Zizian himself, was influenced by the ideological morass that produced the movement. Christine Rosen explains: