Army group and the Socialists, she eventually settled on nihilism as her guiding philosophy. Her perception of nihilism changed over time, as is indicated by a statement she made to the court in 1925. She stated, in reference to the strictly negative version of nihilism she originally pursued, that "formerly I said 'I negate life'... [but] my negation of all life was completely meaningless... The stronger the affirmation of life, the stronger the creation of life- negation together with rebellion. Therefore, I affirm life." However, she also takes care to define what this affirmation of life means for a nihilist, which she expects to be very different from the perspectives of the officials: "Living is not synonymous with merely having movement. It is moving in accordance with one's will… one could say that with deeds, one begins to really live. Accordingly, when one moves by means of one's own will and this leads to the destruction of one's body, this is not a negation of life. It is an affirmation." The anarchist cause that she eventually followed was supported ideologically by her rejection of nationalism and the idea of the emperor, as well as a pessimistic belief about the nature of revolutions. In her testimony at her trial, she explained that she and Pak "thought of throwing a bomb [at the emperor] to show he too will die like any other human being," and rejected "the concepts of loyalty to the emperor and love of nation" as "simply rhetorical notions that are being manipulated by the tiny group of privileged classes to fulfill their own greed and interests." Initially, this rejection of the emperor system may have led her to believe in an alternative political system, but after seeing the way members of other groups behaved, she came to believe that any leader, whether the emperor, or other government officials, or a completely new government under socialists, would equally abuse power dynamics and oppress the people. For her, "[revolution] simply means replacing one authority with another," and since she believed that no system of authority could or would operate without oppression, it is logical that she eventually directed her activities towards abolishing all authority. Though she believed, in line with nihilistic thought, that it was not possible to cure the evils in the world, her actions as an anarchist reflect her belief that "even if we cannot embrace any social