In his post from Tuesday, Nihilism in Action, "real" conservative Daniel Larison joins movement conservatives in rejecting any political attribution of the bald, smirking assassin :

The atrocity in Tucson on Saturday was a horrifying act of political nihilism. ... Nihilism is a charge that a lot of people have thrown around in the last few years, and it has usually been wrong. There are so few actual nihilists that it is usually a mistake to label someone this way, but it seems appropriate in this case. Nihilism is usually the wrong word to use because nihilism is “far removed from politics as we normally understand it,” to use Brooks’ phrase describing Loughner’s thinking, but if anything describes Loughner’s ideas that would seem to be it.

Quoting Brooks is usually a bad start.

Aside from repugnant opportunism, the main reason why some liberals have tried connecting this atrocity with conventional Republicans and Palin’s demagoguery is that the assassin’s actual politics are so strange and unfamiliar. ... What is disturbing about Loughner’s attack is that it most likely could have been directed against any public official who happened to draw his ire.

While I agree that Loughner was a loose cannon, I and a lot of commenters (below) took offense at Larison's charge of "repugnant opportunism."

No one really knows what to do with someone who takes the view of Bazarov when he says, “Aristocratism, liberalism, progress, principles….Just think, how many foreign…and useless words!” For that reason, many people tend to turn to convenient scapegoats and default villains.

I felt all tingly because I actually got the reference to Bazarov. I read through quite a few short stories by Turgenev a few years ago, and then picked up his novel, Fathers and Children, usually translated as Fathers and Sons. I didn't see the young intellectual Yevgeny Bazarov as a nihilist, just politically dissatisfied, socially disaffected and possibly an Aspy. Not that different than Gaston Lachaille, who thinks everything is a bore until he falls in love with Gigi. In any case, I actually liked Bazarov, and while he was scornful of most others and even fought a duel, he didn't murder people indiscriminately.

For his criticism of movement conservatives, Larison draws a lot of moderate and liberal viewers (like me) and they didn't hold back:

American but not Conservative: …It’s insulting to dismiss liberals’ criticism of conservative demagoguery as “repugnant opportunism” or “extremely convenient.” ... it’s silly to ignore the context of the last 2-3 years, in which the conservative base and even office-holding Republicans’ whole attitude has grown more violent, threatening, and apocalyptic. ... they have fomented a culture of violence, resentment, paranoia and egotism that dehumanizes political opponents and condemns Americans who seem different from the right’s norms. We’ve had one reference after another about “2nd amendment remedies” and other deadly tactics, many of them gun-related. Right-wing extremism is becoming mainstreamed, while the most extreme right-wingers have created an indisputable uptick in politically motivated killings and violence.

CDT: Sorry, but there’s no “repugnant opportunism” by liberals here. There’s genuine concern about the endless stream of violent rhetoric by leading GOP politicians and conservative media figures. Routine employment of such rhetoric is the repugnant opportunism.

HL Williams: I’ll join the chorus here. You can’t just willfully ignore the poison the Limbaughs, Coulters and Becks of the rightwing wurlitzer have spread over the past 25 years. Demonize and dehumanize, demonize and dehumanize, demonize and dehumanize. ... While the rightwing hate machine didn’t cook this murderous meal, they most definitely set the table.

I had no idea the movement jamie describes below even existed:

jamie: While I’d definitely agree Loughner is deranged, I’m really not sure he’s a nihilist. Most of his ramblings, as I’ve read them, are recognizable to anyone who’s done reading on the weird underground of the sovereign citizen/redemption movement. The emphasis on language and mind control comes directly from David Wynn Miller, a quite sane charlatan who claims that if you speak English with his grammar you can extract yourself from any legal claim; the goldbug-ism and anti-federal paranoia plainly comes from the various strains of redemption ideology and the sovereign citizen movement. Most sovereign citizens are identified as radical right-wingers, because most of the time their ideology is identified with racist and fundamentalist movements, and the movements birth in the Posse Commitatus racial movement of the 60s, but there are many people in the sovereign citizen movement that are very socially liberal “hippies” who try to use admiralty law and their knowledge of House Joint Res. 192 of 1933 to get themselves out of traffic tickets.

I’ve been following the movement since the father-son Kane murders last year, and many of the things Jared Loughner talks about would be completely recognized and understood by someone like Jerry Kane. These people aren’t crazy, they’ve fallen prey to an ur-grift perpetrated on the poor and uneducated for decades.