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Accelerationism

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For the concept from future studies, see accelerating change.

Accelerationism is a range of revolutionary and reactionary ideas in left-wing and right-wing ideologies that call for the drastic intensification of capitalist growth, technological change, infrastructure sabotage and other processes of social change to destabilize existing systems and create radical social transformations, otherwise referred to as "acceleration".[1][2][3][4] It has been regarded as an ideological spectrum divided into mutually contradictory left-wing and right-wing variants, both of which support the indefinite intensification of capitalism and its structures as well as the conditions for a technological singularity, a hypothetical point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible.[5][6][7]

Various ideas, including Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's idea of deterritorialization, Jean Baudrillard's proposals for "fatal strategies", and aspects of the theoretical systems and processes developed by English philosopher and later Dark Enlightenment commentator Nick Land,[1] are crucial influences on accelerationism, which aims to analyze and subsequently promote the social, economic, cultural, and libidinal forces that constitute the process of acceleration.[8] While originally used by the far-left, the term has, in a manner strongly distinguished from original accelerationist theorists, been used by right-wing extremists such as neo-fascists, neo-Nazis, white nationalists and white supremacists to increasingly refer to an "acceleration" of racial conflict through assassinations, murders and terrorist attacks as a means to violently achieve a white ethnostate.[9][10][11][12]

While predominantly a political strategy suited to the industrial economy, acceleration has recently been discussed in debates about humanism and artificial intelligence. Yuk Hui and Louis Morelle consider acceleration and the "Singularity Hypothesis".[13] James Brusseau discusses acceleration as an ethics of innovation where humanistic dilemmas caused by AI innovation are resolved by still more innovation, as opposed to limiting or slowing the technology.[14] A movement known as effective accelerationism (abbreviated to e/acc) advocates for technological progress "at all costs".[15]

Background and precursors

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The term "accelerationism" was first coined by professor and author Benjamin Noys in his 2010 book The Persistence of the Negative to describe the trajectory of certain post-structuralists who embraced unorthodox Marxist and counter-Marxist overviews of capitalist growth, such as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their 1972 book Anti-Oedipus, Jean-François Lyotard in his 1974 book Libidinal Economy and Jean Baudrillard in his 1976 book Symbolic Exchange and Death.[16]

English right-wing philosopher and writer Nick Land,[1] commonly credited with creating and inspiring accelerationism's basic ideas and concepts, cited a number of philosophers who express anticipatory accelerationist attitudes in his 2017 essay "A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism".[17][18] Firstly, Friedrich Nietzsche argued in a fragment in The Will to Power that "the leveling process of European man is the great process which should not be checked: one should even accelerate it."[19] Then, taking inspiration from this notion for Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari speculated on an unprecedented "revolutionary path" to further perpetuate capitalism's tendencies that would later become a central idea of accelerationism:

But which is the revolutionary path? Is there one?—To withdraw from the world market, as Samir Amin advises Third World countries to do, in a curious revival of the fascist "economic solution"? Or might it be to go in the opposite direction? To go still further, that is, in the movement of the market, of decoding and deterritorialization? For perhaps the flows are not yet deterritorialized enough, not decoded enough, from the viewpoint of a theory and a practice of a highly schizophrenic character. Not to withdraw from the process, but to go further, to "accelerate the process," as Nietzsche put it: in this matter, the truth is that we haven't seen anything yet.

— Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus[20]

Land also cited Karl Marx, who, in his 1848 speech "On the Question of Free Trade", anticipated accelerationist principles a century before Deleuze and Guattari by describing free trade as socially destructive and fuelling class conflict, then effectively arguing for it:

But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.

— Karl Marx, On the Question of Free Trade[21]

Land attributed the increasing speed of the modern world, along with the associated decrease in time available to think and make decisions about its events, to unregulated capitalism and its ability to exponentially grow and self-improve, describing capitalism as "a positive feedback circuit, within which commercialization and industrialization mutually excite each other in a runaway process." He argued that the best way to deal with capitalism is to participate more to foster even greater exponential growth and self-improvement via creative destruction, believing such acceleration of those abilities and technological progress to be intrinsic to capitalism but impossible for non-capitalist systems, stating that "capital revolutionizes itself more thoroughly than any extrinsic 'revolution' possibly could."[18]

Contemporary accelerationism

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The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), an experimental theory collective that existed from 1995 to 2003 at the University of Warwick,[22] included Land as well as other influential social theorists such as Mark Fisher and Sadie Plant as members.[23] Prominent contemporary left-wing accelerationists include Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, authors of the "Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics";[6] and the Laboria Cuboniks collective, who authored the manifesto "Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation".[24] For Mark Fisher, writing in 2012, "Land's withering assaults on the academic left [...] remain trenchant", although problematic since "Marxism is nothing if it is not accelerationist".[25] Aria Dean notably synthesized the analysis of racial capitalism with accelerationism, arguing that the binary between humans, and machines and capital, is already blurred by the scars of the Atlantic slave trade.[26] Benjamin H. Bratton's book The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty has been described as concerning accelerationist ideas, focusing on how information technology infrastructures undermine modern political geographies and proposing an open-ended "design brief". Tiziana Terranova's "Red Stack Attack!" links Bratton's stack model and left-wing accelerationism.[27]

Left-wing accelerationism

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Left-wing accelerationism, commonly referred to as "L/Acc", is often attributed to Mark Fisher, a prior CCRU member and mentor for Srnicek and Williams.[28] Left-wing accelerationism seeks to explore, in an orthodox and conventional manner, how modern society has the momentum to create futures that are equitable and liberatory.[29] While both strands of accelerationist thinking remain rooted in a similar range of thinkers, left accelerationism appeared with the intent to use their ideas for the goal of achieving an egalitarian future.[28] In response to this strand of accelerationism and its optimism for egalitarianism and liberation, which departs from prior interests in experimentation and delirium, Land rebuked its ideas in an interview with The Guardian, saying that "the notion that self-propelling technology is separable from capitalism is a deep theoretical error".[1]

Other uses of the term

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Since "accelerationism" was coined in 2010, the term has taken on several new meanings, particularly by right-wing extremist movements and terrorist organizations,[10] that has led the term to be sensationalized on multiple occasions.[2] Several commentators have used the label accelerationist to describe a controversial political strategy articulated by the Slovenian philosopher, Freudo-Marxist theorist, and writer Slavoj Žižek.[30][31] An often-cited example of this is Žižek's assertion in a November 2016 interview with Channel 4 News that were he an American citizen, he would vote for former U.S. president Donald Trump as the candidate more likely to disrupt the political status quo in that country.[32]

Far-right accelerationist terrorism

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Despite its originally Marxist philosophical and theoretical interests, since the late 2010s, international networks of neo-fascists, neo-Nazis, White nationalists, and White supremacists have increasingly used the term "accelerationism" to refer to right-wing extremist goals, and have been known to refer to an "acceleration" of racial conflict through violent means such as assassinations, murders, terrorist attacks and eventual societal collapse, to achieve the building of a White ethnostate.[10][11][12] Far-right accelerationism has been widely considered as detrimental to public safety.[33] The inspiration for this distinct variation is occasionally cited as American Nazi Party and National Socialist Liberation Front member James Mason's newsletter Siege, where he argued for sabotage, mass killings, and assassinations of high-profile targets to destabilize and destroy the current society, seen as a system upholding a Jewish and multicultural New World Order.[10] His works were republished and popularized by the Iron March forum and Atomwaffen Division, right-wing extremist organizations strongly connected to various terrorist attacks, murders, and assaults.[10][34][35][36] According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks hate groups and files class action lawsuits against discriminatory organizations and entities, "on the case of white supremacists, the accelerationist set sees modern society as irredeemable and believe it should be pushed to collapse so a fascist society built on ethnonationalism can take its place. What defines white supremacist accelerationists is their belief that violence is the only way to pursue their political goals."[36]

Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings that killed 51 people and injured 49 others, strongly encouraged right-wing accelerationism in a section of his manifesto titled "Destabilization and Accelerationism: Tactics". It also influenced John Timothy Earnest, the perpetrator of the Escondido mosque fire at Dar-ul-Arqam Mosque in Escondido, California; and committing the Poway synagogue shooting which resulted in one dead and three injured, and influenced Patrick Crusius, the perpetrator of the El Paso Walmart shooting that killed 23 people and injured 23 others. Tarrant and Earnest, in turn, influenced Juraj Krajčík, the perpetrator of the 2022 Bratislava shooting that left dead two patrons of a gay bar.[37][10][38] Sich Battalion urged its members to buy a copy of Tarrant's manifesto, encouraging them to "get inspired" by it.[39]

Although these right-wing extremist variants and their connected strings of terrorist attacks and murders are regarded as certainly uninformed by critical theory, which was a prime source of inspiration for Land's original ideas that led to accelerationism, Land himself became interested in the Atomwaffen-affiliated theistic Satanist organization Order of Nine Angles (ONA), that adheres to the ideology of Neo-Nazi terrorist accelerationism, describing the ONA's works as "highly-recommended" in a blog post.[40] Since the 2010s, the political ideology and religious worldview of the Order of Nine Angles, founded by the British neo-Nazi leader David Myatt in 1974,[10] have increasingly influenced militant neo-fascist and neo-Nazi insurgent groups associated with right-wing extremist and White supremacist international networks,[10] most notably the Iron March forum.[10]

Fascist accelerationist organizations

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  • Active Club Network is decentralized Clandestine cell system of white nationalists. It promotes mixed martial arts to fight against what it asserts is a system that is targeting the white race, as well as a "warrior spirit" to prepare for a forthcoming race war. Some extremism researchers have characterized the network as a "shadow or stand-by army" which is awaiting activation as the need for it arises.[41][42][43][44][45][46]
  • Atomwaffen Division is a neo-Nazi terror organization found in 2013 by Brandon Russell responsible for multiple murders and mass casualty plots. Atomwaffen has been proscribed as a terror organization in United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.[47]
  • The Base is a neo-Nazi, white supremacist paramilitary hate group and training network, formed in 2018 by Rinaldo Nazzaro and active in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and Europe. As of November 2021 it is considered a terrorist organization in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.[10]
  • Combat 18 is a neo-Nazi organization that has been proscribed in Canada and Germany and is tied to the assassination of Walter Lübcke and the 2009 Vítkov arson attack.[48][49][50]
  • The Manson Family was a doomsday cult, led by Charles Manson, responsible for the Tate–LaBianca murders, in which seven people were murdered between August 8 and August 10, 1969. Manson was a white supremacist and neo-Nazi[51][52] who prophesized about a race war in which African-Americans would rise up and exterminate all white people in the United States, with him and his followers hiding in safety. Afterward, the Family would rule over the Black population, with Manson as their "master," as he believed that Black people were not intelligent enough to govern themselves.[53][54] The Tate–LaBianca murders were an attempt to bring this scenario closer to reality, with Manson believing that the killing of people who he considered "pigs" would inspire Black people to do the same.[55]
  • Nordic Resistance Movement is a pan-Nordic neo-Nazi organization that adheres to accelerationism and is tied to ONA and multiple terror plots and murders, like the murder of an antifascist in Helsinki in 2016. There has been an international effort to proscribe NRM as a terrorist organization, and it was banned as such in Finland in 2019.[56][10][57] On 14 June 2024, the United States Department of State designated NRM and its leaders as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT).[58][59][60]
  • Order of Nine Angles is a neo-Nazi satanist organization that has been connected to multiple murders and terror plots. There has been an international effort to proscribe ONA as a terror organization. Further, the ONA is connected to the Atomwaffen and the Base, and the founder of ONA David Myatt was a one-time leader of the C18.[10]
  • Russian Imperial Movement is a white supremacist organization founded in Russia and proscribed as a terror organization in the United States and Canada for its connection to neo-fascist terrorists. People trained by RIM have gone on to commit a series of bombings and joined the separatist militants in Donbas.[61]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d Beckett, Andy (11 May 2017). "Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 11 May 2017. Retrieved 5 January 2021.
  2. ^ a b "What is accelerationism?". New Statesman. 5 August 2016. Archived from the original on 6 August 2016. Retrieved 5 January 2021.
  3. ^ Shaviro, Steven (2010). Post Cinematic Affect. Ropley: O Books. p. 136.
  4. ^ Adams, Jason (2013). Occupy Time: Technoculture, Immediacy, and Resistance After Occupy Wall Street. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 96.
  5. ^ Jiménez de Cisneros, Roc (5 November 2014). "The Accelerationist Vertigo (II): Interview with Robin Mackay". Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. Archived from the original on 9 November 2014. Retrieved 5 February 2015.
  6. ^ a b Williams, Alex; Srnicek, Nick (14 May 2013). "#ACCELERATE MANIFESTO for an Accelerationist Politics". Critical Legal Thinking. Archived from the original on 6 February 2015. Retrieved 5 February 2015.
  7. ^ Land, Nick (13 February 2014). "#Accelerate". Urban Future (2.1). Archived from the original on 29 September 2015. Retrieved 5 February 2015.
  8. ^ Wolfendale, Peter (2014). "So, Accelerationism, what's all that about?". Dialectical Insurgency. Archived from the original on 14 December 2014. Retrieved 5 February 2015.
  9. ^ "A Year After January 6, Is Accelerationism the New Terrorist Threat?". Council on Foreign Relations. 5 January 2022. Retrieved 15 July 2024.
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Upchurch, H. E. (22 December 2021). Cruickshank, Paul; Hummel, Kristina (eds.). "The Iron March Forum and the Evolution of the "Skull Mask" Neo-Fascist Network" (PDF). CTC Sentinel. 14 (10). West Point, New York: Combating Terrorism Center: 27–37. Archived (PDF) from the original on 27 December 2021. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
  11. ^ a b "White Supremacists Embrace "Accelerationism"". Anti-Defamation League. 16 April 2019. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
  12. ^ a b Bloom, Mia (30 May 2020). "Far-Right Infiltrators and Agitators in George Floyd Protests: Indicators of White Supremacists". Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law. Just Security.
  13. ^ Hui, Yuk; Morelle, Louis (2017). "A Politics of Intensity: Some Aspects of Acceleration in Simondon and Deleuze". Deleuze Studies. 11 (4): 498–517. doi:10.3366/dls.2017.0282.
  14. ^ Brusseau, James (2 April 2023). "Acceleration AI Ethics, the Debate between Innovation and Safety, and Stability AI's Diffusion versus OpenAI's Dall-E". arXiv:2212.01834 [cs.CY].
  15. ^ Chowdhury, Hasan (28 July 2023). "Get the lowdown on 'e/acc' — Silicon Valley's favorite obscure theory about progress at all costs, which has been embraced by Marc Andreessen". Business Insider. Retrieved 20 November 2023.
  16. ^ Noys, Benjamin (2010). The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory. Edinburgh University Press. p. 5. JSTOR j.ctt1r276g.
  17. ^ Colquhoun, Matt (4 March 2019). "A U/Acc Primer". Xenogothic.com. Archived from the original on 2 June 2020. Retrieved 8 April 2021.
  18. ^ a b Land, Nick (25 May 2017). "A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism". Jacobite Magazine. Archived from the original on 13 January 2018. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
  19. ^ Strong, Tracy (1988). Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 211.
  20. ^ Deleuze, Gilles; Guattari, Félix (2004). Anti-Oedipus. London: Continuum. p. 260.
  21. ^ David McLellan, ed. (2000). Karl Marx: Selected Writings. Oxford University Press. p. 296. ISBN 9780198782650.
  22. ^ "CCRU". V2_Institute for the Unstable Media. Archived from the original on 22 December 2015. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
  23. ^ Schwarz, Jonas Andersson (2013). Online File Sharing: Innovations in Media Consumption. New York: Routledge. pp. 20–21.
  24. ^ "After Accelerationism: The Xenofeminist manifesto". &&& Journal. 11 June 2015. Archived from the original on 17 October 2015. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
  25. ^ Mark Fisher (2014). "Terminator vs Avatar". In Robin Mackay; Armen Avanessian (eds.). #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader. Urbanomic. pp. 335–46: 340, 342.
  26. ^ Dean, Aria (December 2017). "Notes on Blacceleration". E-flux Journal (87).
  27. ^ Terranova, Tiziana (8 March 2014). "Red Stack Attack! Algorithms, Capital and the Automation of the Common" (in Italian). EuroNomade. Archived from the original on 11 February 2017. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
  28. ^ a b Gardiner, Michael E. (2020). "Automatic for the People? Cybernetics and Left-Accelerationism". Constellations. 29 (2): 131–145. doi:10.1111/1467-8675.12528. ISSN 1467-8675. S2CID 225363854.
  29. ^ Brassier, Ray (13 February 2014). "Wandering Abstraction". Mute. Retrieved 6 October 2021.
  30. ^ "Melenchon and Žižek; Accelerationism and Edgelordism – Infinite Coincidence". infinite-coincidence.com. 5 May 2017. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
  31. ^ Coyne, Richard (14 May 2017). "What's wrong with accelerationism – Reflections on Technology, Media & Culture". Archived from the original on 1 October 2017. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
  32. ^ "Slavoj Žižek would vote for Trump". zizek.uk. 3 November 2016. Archived from the original on 7 November 2016. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
  33. ^ Taub, Amanda; Bennhold, Katrin (7 June 2021). "From Doomsday Preppers to Doomsday Plotters". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  34. ^ Poulter, James (13 October 2020). "The Obscure Neo-Nazi Forum Linked to a Wave of Terror". Vice.
  35. ^ "Atomwaffen and the SIEGE parallax: how one neo-Nazi's life's work is fueling a younger generation". Hatewatch. Southern Poverty Law Center. 22 February 2018. Archived from the original on 24 February 2018. Retrieved 16 June 2020.
  36. ^ a b Miller, Cassie (23 June 2020). "'There Is No Political Solution': Accelerationism in the White Power Movement". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
  37. ^ "Aké je ideologické podhubie streleckých útokov". SME (in Slovak). 12 October 2022. Retrieved 13 October 2022.
  38. ^ Beauchamp, Zack (18 November 2019). "Accelerationism: the obscure idea inspiring white supremacist killers around the world". Vox. Vox Media. Retrieved 17 September 2020.
  39. ^ "The Russians and Ukrainians Translating the Christchurch Shooter's Manifesto". Bellingcat. 23 October 2022.
  40. ^ Land, Nick (11 October 2020). "Occult Xenosystems". Xenosystems.net. Archived from the original on 6 January 2018.
  41. ^ Yousef, Odette (19 July 2023). "'Active club' hate groups are growing in the U.S. — and making themselves seen". National Public Radio.
  42. ^ "Active Club Network". Anti-Defamation League.
  43. ^ Morgan Moon; Jon Lewis (1 September 2023). "Amid Robert Rundo's Extradition, the White Supremacist Active Clubs Network Remains a Threat". Just Security.
  44. ^ "Hiding in Plain Sight – The Transnational Right-Wing Extremist Active Club Network". Counter Extremism Project. 22 September 2023.
  45. ^ "Dangerous Organizations and Bad Actors: The Patriot Front". Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. 9 December 2023. Given the Active Club network's overt accelerationism and likely desire to engage in violence, it is concerning that PF has aligned itself and trained alongside these Active Clubs.
  46. ^ "The Right Fit: How Active Club Propaganda Attracts Women to the Far-Right". Global Network on Extremism and Technology. 9 December 2023. Individual far-right Active Clubs exist as part of a decentralised network of groups that conduct mental and physical combat training while promoting white supremacist, neofascist, and accelerationist ideologies.
  47. ^ "Backgrounder: Atomwaffen Division (AWD)". Anti-Defamation League. Archived from the original on 3 February 2018.
  48. ^ "About the listing process". www.publicsafety.gc.ca. 21 December 2018. Archived from the original on 5 October 2016. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
  49. ^ "Bekanntmachung eines Vereinsverbots gegen "Combat 18 Deutschland" vom 13. Januar 2020 (ÖSII3-20106/2#13) (BAnz AT 23.01.2020 B1)" (PDF) (in German). Bundesanzeiger. 23 January 2020. Retrieved 26 September 2020.
  50. ^ Patrik Hermansson (3 January 2023). "Accelerationism, Leaderless resistance and Combat 18". Hope not Hate.
  51. ^ Gill, Lauren (16 November 2017). "Remember, Charles Manson Was a White Supremacist". Newsweek. Archived from the original on 4 August 2020. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  52. ^ Thompson, Desire (20 November 2017). "Charles Manson & His Obsession with Black People". Vibe. New York City. Archived from the original on 13 August 2020. Retrieved 18 August 2020.
  53. ^ Whitehead, John W. (3 August 2010). "Helter Skelter: Racism and Murder". HuffPost. Archived from the original on 30 October 2020. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  54. ^ Beckerman, Jim (9 August 2019). "Charles Manson: 50 years later, murders have racist link to recent mass-killings". The Record. Archived from the original on 24 January 2021. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  55. ^ "People v. Manson". Justia Law. Archived from the original on 20 May 2018. Retrieved 11 May 2019.
  56. ^ "The case against the Nordic Resistance Movement in Finland: an overview and some explanations". University of Oslo Center for Research on Extremism. Retrieved 2 November 2020.
  57. ^ "Dangerous Organizations and Bad Actors: Nordic Resistance Movement". Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. 19 November 2022.
  58. ^ "Counter Terrorism Designations; West Bank-related Designation; Issuance of Amended Frequently Asked Questions". Office of Foreign Assets Control. 14 June 2024.
  59. ^ "Terrorist Designations of Nordic Resistance Movement and Three Leaders". state.gov. 14 June 2024. Today, the Department of State is designating Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, as amended.
  60. ^ Bergkvist, Frida (14 June 2024). "USA terrorstämplar nazistiska NMR". DN.se (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 14 June 2024. Retrieved 14 June 2024.
  61. ^ Johnson, Bethan; Feldman, Matthew (21 July 2021). "Siege Culture After Siege: Anatomy of a Neo-Nazi Terrorist Doctrine". International Centre for Counter-Terrorism: 1.
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