Thoughts on Vox’s article on Accelerationism.
With the world in lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is time aplenty to revisit some previous articles on accelerationism that appeared towards the end of 2019. One such example is from November last year. Zack Beauchamp writing for Vox penned a lengthy article on accelerationism. Or more specifically the use of the term accelerationism in certain far-right circles. It was titled Accelerationism: the obscure idea inspiring white supremacist killers around the world.
Beauchamp had the chance here to write a thought-provoking and well-researched article, but it falls down sadly on a number of counts when exploring the topic. Not because of what it includes, but because of what it doesn’t.
We won’t delve into the nuances and arguments over what makes something alt-right versus alt-lite etc. That’s not the focus of this piece. Rather it is to examine the weaknesses around the substitution of accelerationist for Nazi that litter Beauchamp’s article, without providing the wider context of the terms contemporary and historical usage.
For a synopsis of the alt-right if you need some background, we direct you to the ADL’s website and their article Alt Right: A Primer about the New White Supremacy.
In this critique we will, however, touch on the origins of the CCRU (Cybernetic Cultural Research Unit), the Dark Enlightenment, Neo-Reaction (NRx) and Nick Land’s later writings in conjunction with the rise of Left accelerationism (L/ACC). This is arguably where the emphasis of Beauchamp’s work could have been, if he wanted to present a fair background of accelerationist terms in modern usage, before delving into whatever definition Neo-Nazi groups may have conjured up.
More importantly, we’ll argue the article would have benefited from charting the cross-over of non-accelerationist views with those of an accelerationist pedigree and the co-opting of terminology by the former, as well as any use of the term in a different context that came to bleed into the latter.
While the Dark Enlightenment and Neo-Reaction (commonly shortened to NRx)are discussed, the Vox article fails to clarify some important points, which only clouds the situation further. Namely, it fails to discern the adoption and rejection of some earlier CCRU inspired accelerationist work into the cannon of NRx, while also failing to note this fledgling movement was in opposition to the parallel rise of L/ACC at the time. We will emphasize the term accelerationist should not be used as a universal stand-in for fascist. The evidence manifest demonstrates that Left-wing groups are also using it and additionally, it has a broad and long history of non-political usage. This non-political usage has continued in the form of U/ACC.
To be fair had Beauchamp written a piece solely on NRx and the Dark Englightenment and its cross-overs, he might have found it has been done to death already. Case in point being, Olivia Goldhill writing for Quartz penned an article titled: “The neo-fascist philosophy that underpins both the alt-right and Silicon Valley technophiles” back in 2017.
Goldhill’s article isn’t without its flaws (misstating that the Dark Enlightenment was a philosophy started in the 1990s. In fact Land’s series of essays, as the article later notes didn’t appear until 2012) but it does a pretty good job at providing some context (with input from Benjamin Noys) around the alt-right, its association with NRx and also Nick Land’s stance on it.
Further still to this, the now-defunct The Awl provided perhaps one of the best investigations into NRx titled The Darkness Before the Right. If you are interested in learning more, do check out the archived Awl article.
We, therefore, believe it is imperative to clarify the term accelerationism in relation to Vox’s article and provide some context around the topic for those interested. In an age where an online article can be taken at face value and grow virally, providing a level-headed response is a must. The risk faced is that if using accelerationist as a synonym for Nazi becomes the norm, any debate and analysis around accelerationist theories will be seen as apologetics for fascism.
Accelerationism — sowing chaos and creating political tension?
Beauchamp’s piece starts off well explaining the horrors of recent terrorist acts perpetrated by Neo-Nazis and their fellow travelers, such as the Christchurch mosque massacre, the murder of Blaze Berstein and the El Paso Walmart mass shooting
Shortly after this, however, the article veers off into the subject of accelerationism. It’s here things will feel they are going awry for many readers versed in the history of the CCRU and similar.
[The Far Right is] tightly connected to a newer and more radical white supremacist ideology, one that dismisses the alt-right as cowards unwilling to take matters into their own hands.
It’s called “accelerationism,” and it rests on the idea that Western governments are irreparably corrupt. As a result, the best thing white supremacists can do is accelerate their demise by sowing chaos and creating political tension. — Vox
For anyone familiar with the topic of accelerationism as it is commonly used, and the various strands of thought that would coalesce to form it, his statements here will feel not only puzzling but appear to be outright wrong. Unless he is talking about a parallel new movement that happens to share the same term (more on this later) those familiar with the subject area will notice it completely skips over a long and complex history and boils it down to one very narrow definition.
So to take a step back. The modern roots of accelerationism as a body of thought/theory can be found in England at the beginning of the 1990’s. However, many of the texts that would inform this early accelerationist milieu date back much further.
Early 90’s Cyber-theory, for lack of a better description, was a glorious mashup of rave culture, the works of feminist academic Sadie Plant, and the seedlings that would sprout into the CCRU at Warwick university. Wired magazine had come into prominence, the Web burst onto the scene and everyone was buying up Windows 95 PCs and Microsoft stock like they were hotcakes.
It was out of this period of flux, experimental new ideas that blended continental philosophy with a variety of contemporary media inputs would come into being.
Simon Reynolds’s talks of those early days, prior to the founding of the CCRU in an interview with some of its members from 1998. This was re-published on Mark Fisher’s K-punk blog in 2005, and provides an interesting background:
OD’s collective debut was a multimedia installation at London’s Cabinet Gallery. What began as a catalogue for the show escalated into an astonishing 437 page book, Cyberpositive. Like Plant’s Zeros + Ones, Cyberpositive is a swarm-text of sampled writings that aren’t attributed in the text. But where Plant offers footnotes; OD merely list the “asked” and “un-asked” contributors at the end. Published in 1995, Cyberpositive serves as a sort of canon-defining primer for the CCRU intellectual universe, placing SF and cyberpunk writers on the same level as post-structuralist theorists. “We treat Burroughs as clearly as important a thinker as any notional theorist,” says Nick Land, “At the same time, every great philosopher is producing an important fiction. Marx is obviously a science fiction writer.” For her part, Sadie Plant regards the Eighties cyberpunk novelists like Gibson and Cadigan as “more reliable witnesses,” precisely because, unlike theorists, “they don’t have an axe to grind.” — Simon Reynolds, Interview with CCRU 1998 — K-Punk
Accelerationism is therefore certainly not new and the above merely scratches the surface and wasn’t even give the name until Benjamin Noys coined the term in the 21st Century…
I would say in light of the most recent articulations a simple one-line definition might be: “Accelerationism is the engagement and reworking of forces of abstraction and reason to punch through the limits of an inertial and stagnant capitalism. — Benjamin Noys,crash and burn: debating accelerationism — 3:AM Magazine (2014)
… however, as a set of overlapping philosophical texts, artistic experiments, and musical endeavors, it was very much in existence prior to then.
Accelerationism became the synthesis of Deleuzian philosophy, economics, post-Thatcherite British culture, cyberpunk fiction, Hollywood cinema, 90’s electronic music, gothic literature, and pre-Y2K Internet culture into a mechanism to probe the rapid expansion of the future into the present.
In essence, the concept explored the growth of global capitalism meeting Moore’s law and the rapid deterritorialization of the 20th Century. It was a challenge to traditional philosophical methods and the academy.
Accelerationism never rested on the foundations that Western governments are irreparably corrupt (although certainly did battle against the stasis of the academy). This line of thinking seems to have been adopted to a greater or lesser degree in the NRx texts of Curtis Yarvin, later Nick Land and their Libertarian fellow travelers.
NRx ire is broader than just Western governments and is underpinned by the concept of the Cathedral. This is not a subject we will explore at length here but can be thought of as a combination of the post-WW2 Western welfare state, academia, media, and its intellectual supporters.
Understanding this makes it easier to chart a course between the anti-academy attitude of Land in the ’90s and his adoption of the Cathedral concept with his more recent writings.
Beyond the NRx types, the idea of Western governments collapsing into some kind of city-states, micro-nations, and Sovereign Individuals is not particularly novel either.
William Rees-Mogg (father of the Brexit supporting politician Jacob) and James Dale Davidson discuss this concept with eerily accurate predictions at times in their controversial book The Sovereign Individual. This text apparently having had an impact on Pete Thiel’s line of thinking, was the subject of a Guardian piece, Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand.
The NRx movement, therefore, is larger than just R/ACC with a city-state government. It’s blended a variety of concepts from across right-wing political thought into a new (now old) online movement, which also draws on a number of sources for inspiration and seems to involve a cross-pollination of ideas from non-accelerationist sources (The Awl article lists PUA “culture” as another example) and a nod towards Monarchism. It should be noted that this expansion into the “monarchy concept” has also been questioned by those who are far more influenced by the R/ACC angle too. There isn’t even uniform agreement among the NRx tribe, on what NRx is.
It might be that monarchs have some role to play in this, but it’s by no means obvious that they do. — Nick Land — Re-Accelerationism — Xenosystems.
Many writers have penned hours of articles on R/ACC and its subsumption into NRx. It was the attempt to apply/discern a praxis to accelerationist theory that gave birth to the R/ACC trend initially which in turn found its way into this fringe movement. Not everyone was happy with this turn of events, however. U/ACC was a rejection of this political inclination.
In brief, U/ACC returns to the original concepts that the CCRU attempted to describe. To quote Xenogothic’s U/ACC primers:
In this sense, U/Acc isn’t a new mutation. It’s the original idea brought back to the fore after the woeful distractions of its left and right divergences — which led to its explicit dumbing down and dilution rather than being understood simply as “capitalist” and “anti-capitalist” variants. If U/Acc attempts to separate itself from these discussions, that’s only to shift focus to the further work done to exacerbate and rigorise the ‘Philosophy of Time’ elements that were buried in the writings of the Ccru and glossed over far too quickly by the subsequent L/R discussions. — Xenogothic
Ultimately the U/ACC aspect that haunts us, is that accelerationism at its core is not concerned with humanity. The original CCRU texts and those operating in its orbit demonstrate as much.
It is well documented that Land often wrote and lectured from the perspective of the human experience being no more important than, say that of rats. Yuxi Liu covers this in a piece on LessWrong called Accelerate without humanity: Summary of Nick Land’s philosophy which includes a link to one of Land’s old students discussing his lectures in Prospect Magazine :
“Nick Land uses schizoanalysis by considering very non-human viewpoints. For example, he once gave a talk about studying the Black Death from the perspective of rats” — Yuxi Liu, Accelerate without humanity: Summary of Nick Land’s philosophy — LessWrong
The CCRU and early progenitors of accelerationism were really no different in this regard, in so much as they approached the subject from capital’s or technology’s angle, rather than a humanistic one.
There seems to be a perverse and literally anti-humanist identification with the “dark will” of capital and technology, as it “rips up political cultures, deletes traditions, dissolves subjectivities.” — Simon Reynolds
These concepts can found outside of any accelerationist groupings as well. Most recently in fact under the form of “gods” as discussed in Aaron Z. Lewis blog post Metaphors we believe by: the pantheon of 2019. A couple of examples from this article include the Uruk Machine, a god of heartless market forces and Benjamin Bratton's The Stack — a god of systems thinking.
However, back on the subject of political praxis, the Vox article continues with the following:
Accelerationists reject any effort to seize political power through the ballot box, dismissing the alt-right’s attempts to engage in mass politics as pointless. — Vox
In this paragraph, Beauchamp has cast away 25+ years of literature, discussion, and analysis from critics and supporters alike. He has once again substituted accelerationist for Nazi, as if all streams of thought related to accelerationism, are born from his narrative that accelerationism is a Neo-Nazi ideology. A cursory look at Left accelerationist thought would immediately render such a generalized statement absurd.
Having firmly cemented his view on politics and accelerationism into the minds of the reader, many perhaps being unfamiliar with it’s long and complex history, Beauchamp finally hints that the backstory might be a bit more complex than presented so far…
Bizarre origins in academia?
The ’90s is certainly a pivotal point when academics and popular culture collide to form the zeitgeist of accelerationist thought but does accelerationism truly begin as an academic topic of study?
Accelerationism has bizarre roots in academia. But as strange as the racist movement’s intellectual history may be, experts believe it has played a significant and under-appreciated role in the current wave of extremist violence.
— Vox
If we take #Accelerate — the accelerationist reader as a guide, a solid case could be made that accelerationist concepts pre-date the ’90s synthesis of popular culture and continental philosophy. It arguably pre-dates academic study of the topic at Warwick or later at Goldsmiths, as it is the sum of many parts, some of which were absolutely not academic in the sense of coming from or being studied within the academy.
Marx on the left of the spectrum is presented as an accelerationist, in that he wished to see the contradictions of 19th C capitalism lead to a breaking point, in turn creating an opening for Communism.
Much later in the early 1920s, the proto-fascist Futurists are then provided as examples of embodying accelerationist thought. Land and CCRU were fond of adapting Lovecraftian imagery into their texts. Lovecraft, of course, was largely ignored during his life by the major publishing houses. He’d die young and poor, he was not a tenured academic (although certainly academically inclined). That’s not to mention the Apocalypse Now, William Gibson, Bladerunner, and Terminator references.
It is fair to say then, that the concept of a feedback loop involving technology and capital was a theme across multiple spectrums from the 19thC onwards. From the Cosmist writers of the early Soviet Union to Lyotard’s writings, this feeling that a force that is emergent from the combination of technology and capital is charting its own course has existed and infects humanity.
This then brings us to Sadie Plant’s early work, and the others hinted at so far in relation to Cyberpositive, such as 0(rphan)d(rift>). It’s at this point in time that the concepts we call accelerationism start to take form.
To, therefore, imply that it is a racist movement, entirely misses the point. A much more accurate description would have been to note that elements of the far-right have adapted ideas from accelerationism. That does not, however, make the term accelerationists a synonym for Nazis. Disappointingly Beauchamp seems to make this association prior to any effort to chart the history of the subject. But perhaps we are being unfair here, and this is more of a critique of the way he structured his piece rather than the content itself?
This type of loose application of terms is dangerous and disingenuous though. To emphasis this point, we point towards the co-opting of Green thought by the far-right. Sensibly this has been given its own term — Eco-fascism. We don’t generally see Environmentalist being used as a synonym for Nazi. That would, of course, be absurd.
There are numerous articles on this adoption of Green/Environmentalist concerns by the far-right. One that immediately comes to mind is GQs analysis of the El Paso and Christchurch attacks titled What Is Eco-Fascism, the Ideology Behind Attacks in El Paso and Christchurch?
Quoting from the El Paso shooter’s text, Darby provides evidence that in the minds of individuals such as Crusius, environmental concerns and nationalism are intrinsically linked. Numerous other articles out there chart the rise in Eco-Fascism and are worth exploring to understand the phenomena better.
So we should consider this. If the core teleology of the inhuman forces accelerationism analyzes is the rapid explosion of intelligence, capitalism, and technology combined, then ecocide and the disregard for humanity as a byproduct of said process is likely a fundamental issue that cannot be ignored. Reynolds riffs on this point when discussing the aforementioned Cyberpositive.
Throughout Cyberpositive there’s the recurrent exhortation “we must change for the machines;” while the book ends with the declaration — “human viewpoint redundant.” — Simon Reynolds, Interview with CCRU 1998 — K-Punk
This inhuman bowing to technology’s deterritorializing power is utterly at odds with any fascist calls for Blood and Soil with its focus on human concerns. It’s thus very easy to argue that accelerationism and Green politics are at odds with each other, or completely incompatible!
Next, Beauchamp goes on to briefly touch upon the CCRU and its history. However, by this point in the article, he has already associated in the minds of his reader that accelerationist === Nazi. Much later in the article Beauchamp occasionally uses the term Neo-Nazi accelerationism, but arguably the damage is done by then.
His historical overview is really just a referenced synopsis of the work of Andy Beckett’s rather extensive Guardian piece Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in. Following this toe-dipping into history a single paragraph is given over to left-accelerationism (L/ACC).
One was left-wing and academic, a school of Marxist thought focusing on how technology can be conscripted toward building a post-capitalist future. The other was right-wing, and in major part a product of Land’s mind.
Beauchamp has so far spent the bulk of his writing associating Neo-Nazism with accelerationism, yet dedicates barely a paragraph on perhaps one of the most important eras for reintroducing the concept and coining the very term itself.
Nick Srnicek, Alex Williams, Inventing the Future and the Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics are nowhere to be found! Noys’ analysis and Mark Fisher’s work? Nothing. K-punk, Kode9, Hyperdub? Not a word.
The writings of Kodwo Eshun? Negrastani? Brassier? Mackay? Once again nowhere to be found. Documenting this in any sort of depth would have immediately dispelled the notion that accelerationism as a base concept is a form of white supremacy, as much as documenting the work of George Monbiot or Greta Thunberg would dispel any notions that environmentalism is a synonym for Neo-Nazi, Eco-fascist terrorism.
The Dark Enlightenment and NRx
For Re-Accelerationist Neoreaction, escape into uncompensated cybernetic runaway is the guiding objective — strictly equivalent to intelligence explosion, or techno-commercial Singularity. Everything else is a trap (by definitive, system-dynamic necessity). — Nick Land — Re-Accelerationism — Xenosystems.
So now we come to the Cthulhu in the room. The Dark Enlightenment.
It would be impossible to be versed in accelerationist texts and not to have heard about the Dark Enlightenment, for the very simple reason that CCRU member Nick Land penned the set of essays going by the same name.
From mid-2000s onwards, Land had moved to Asia and left the world of the CCRU behind. Having escaped the “clawed embrace of the undead amphetamine god” and living in the Neo-China, his text Meltdown had alluded to, Land’s writing took a much different turn.
While elements of earlier CCRU thought are hinted at in Land’s Dark Enlightenment and his blog Xenosystems (which incidentally went quiet from Dec 2017 until October of 2019), Land has something of a break with his CCRU experiments at this juncture in time. Robin Mackay in his text An Experiment in Inhumanism contacted Land regarding the republishing of his CCRU era work:
When I contacted Land about the republication of his works, he did not protest, but had nothing to add: It’s another life; I have nothing to say about it — I don’t even remember writing half of those things … I don’t want to get into retrospectively condemning my ancient work — I think it’s best to gently back off. It belongs in the clawed embrace of the undead amphetamine god. — An Experiment in Inhumanism — Robin Mackay
While Land was distancing himself from his older passages, his newer writings on the Dark Enlightenment happened in parallel to the explosion of Left-wing accelerationist trends, namely the well-received Inventing The Future by Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek. This is sadly not mentioned in the article, yet Land critiques the rise of L/ACC:
It was only by introducing a wholly artificial distinction between capitalism and modernistic technological acceleration that their boundary lines could be drawn at all. The implicit call was for a new Leninism without the NEP — A Quick-And-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism — Nick Land
The modern manifestation of L/ACC, of course, cannot be discounted and the vein of thought it brought into being can still arguably be found in the works of Aaron Bastani and others.
As we alluded to earlier Beauchamp could have written a much better article if he had analyzed the Dark Enlightenment and NRx in relation to the far-right and Neo-Nazism, and made that one of the core topics of his piece. At one point he seems to go in this direction:
Members of the two movements didn’t agree on everything: While Land and Moldbug valorize capitalism and see democracy as the major barrier to a better future, alt-right ideologues like Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor valorize whiteness and see Jews and non-whites as the problem. — Vox
Before frustratingly switching back again:
It’s somewhat ironic, then, that “accelerationism” has displaced the alt-right in the eyes of many internet racists. — Vox
Unfortunately, no statistics are provided here, so we simply do not know how many, his “many” refers to? This is probably an important line of research, somebody with the expertise and time should conduct.
Undoubtedly had his piece focused on the NRx/Alt-right interplay he would have touched on accelerationism (it would have been unavoidable), but it is only one aspect of NRx, not the totality of it.
Such an article by Vox could also have been far more balanced as it would have been odd not to talk about L/ACC if discussing R/ACC in relation to NRx. NRx and L/ACC co-habit the same time period and are opposing ideological forces as we have pointed out more than once so far.
Subsequently, we might not have descended down the path of creating a narrow straw-man version of accelerationism acting as a stand-in for Neo-Nazis, and then have proceeded to beat it with a stick.
We’ll revisit the term Neo-Nazi accelerationism shortly, but first, let’s clear up what we mean with regards to right-wing accelerationism.
R/ACC — what do we mean?
In the second post on GHx this publication came up with a set of heuristics for understanding R/ACC, which is right-accelerationism. We argued that R/ACC was largely subsumed into NRx, however that need not have been the case. R/ACC itself is not intrinsically a Neo-Fascist position, something we will argue shortly.
In essence, R/ACC (also denoted Rx) can either be channeled from a right-wing perspective or fit to it. As a refresher the heuristics were:
Ax + R -> Rx
This denotes an existing right-wing school of thought that attempts to adapt accelerationist thought to it. We argued that is exactly what much of the NRx movement is an example of. A mashup of Libertarianism, Sovereign Individual type social arrangements, elitism and a dollop of Landian, Right-acceleration thrown into the mix. To re-quote the Hyposition blog:
So, to briefly summarize: R/ACC (Right Acceleration/Neo-Rx) is borne out of the reactionary fear that the future might not favor the kind of stability and social engineering that its proponents initially thought it would–it is an ideology in which the most fervent xenophilia (love of antihuman capital-AI demon) and xenophobia are cobbled together haphazardlly. It is an ideology of an aging speedfreak who fears pulmonary embolisms.
– Preliminary notes on Acceleration and the Body, Hypostition blog.
This is the opposite of:
R -> Ax -> Rx
Where the ideology is that accelerationism is a by-product of some set of right-wing economic and social variables (the market). Effectively an emergent property. We could argue here that this might be found among the Libertarians who support Ray Kurzweil's Singularity hypothesis, yet reject the racism of other elements of the right-wing spectrum. It could also be an argument that capitalism goes through periods of stagflation and recession, and that technological entrepreneurship in this period is what punches through to the other side, lifting us from the saddle point.
It’s logically possible to be a Libertarian and utterly opposed to fascism, and many ideological Libertarians would argue that “true” Libertarianism is the antithesis of the alt-right, Donald Trump and authoritarian states. Take the world-famous magician Penn Jillette for example and his thoughts on the term.
But I do know that if this is a government by the people, and I’m one of the people, and the government is the one with guns — I know that it is immoral for me to use the government to use force, to use guns, to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself. And that’s how I became a libertarian. — Penn Jillette — How I Became A Libertarian — Newsweek
And he’s not a big fan of the alt-right’s favorite Command in Chief either, as his spot with Bill Maher on HBO demonstrated. You can read the highlights here on the Deadlines website.
“I know Donald Trump,” said Jillette, a 2012 Celebrity Apprentice contestant, “and whatever you think about Donald Trump, he’s worse than that.” — Deadline — ‘Real Time’: Former Celeb Apprentice Hopeful Penn Jillette Slams Donald Trump — Reporting on HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher.
Returning now to our previous article, and with the comment about Penn Jillette in mind, we also noted that it is helpful to see right-wing ideologies as a spectrum running from Libertarian, Anarcho-Capitalist thought through to socially collective, strong state, Conservative thought. Additionally, we noted these two groups at the far ends of the spectrum are likely hostile to each other, with some overlap among those closest to the center of the spectrum.
In other words Anarcho-Capitalists in favor of an unregulated free market, no social safety net, open borders and no state at all if they can help it, are the antithesis of Fourth-Reich, large authoritarian state, Neo-Nazis.
So where does this leave the “Neo-Nazi accelerationism” that Beauchamp discusses throughout his piece?
Accelerating the collapse?
A somewhat simplistic reading of accelerationism is that its proponents wish to accelerate the collapse of society. This definition has been pulled apart in numerous articles, but perhaps the best example of a critique is from Mark Fisher (and hat-tip to Xenogothic for sourcing this quote not so long back) in his article Postcapitalist Desire:
Capitalism is a necessarily failed escape from feudalism, which, instead of destroying encastement, reconstitutes social stratification in the class structure. It is only given this model that Deleuze and Guattari’s call to “accelerate the process” makes sense. It does not mean accelerating any or everything in capitalism willy-nilly, in the hope that capitalism will thereby collapse. Rather, it means accelerating the processes of destratification that capitalism cannot but obstruct. — Mark Fisher — Postcapitalist Desire
So what is the Vox article's thoughts around this? The author goes on to discuss accelerationism being in opposition to elements of the alt-right/white nationalism but makes the same mistake of pointing to a collapse motive. The very motive that Mark Fisher dispels above. However, at least at this point, it’s explicitly noted he is referencing some other version of accelerationism, through the use of a prefix:
Like neoreaction, neo-Nazi accelerationism holds that the liberal-democratic order is a failure — that we should move beyond it toward a better future, and that the task of political action should be to accelerate the speed of that transformation. Only in their view, that “better future” is not capitalist authoritarianism, but the total collapse of a degenerate and corrupt Western society — and the rebirth, out of its ashes, of a new political order more hospitable to white domination. — Vox
Really, here we are presented with the argument that accelerationism in its Neo-Nazi form is a separate but related entity to NRx. This is fine as arguments go. But do Neo-Nazis and NRx share the same definition of what accelerationism is? This is a really important question to answer.
NRx certainly has a link to R/ACC and certainly an intellectual pedigree that includes one former member of the CCRU (Land). But what does this Neo-Nazi accelerationism that Beauchamp discusses actually involve? Do they refer to a capitalistic, technomic explosion that leads to runaway feedback loops, forcing humanity to bend to technology’s will (Qwernomics) with the end “goal” being, whatever is playing us making it to level 2? Are they applying Fisher’s understanding of accelerating the process as seen through a Deleuzian lens?
Well, no probably not. Neo-Nazis may have come across the term accelerate on whatever message boards they inhabit, or from cherry-picking aspects of NRx to suit their whims, but their ideological position is the opposite of what at its core the phenomenon of accelerationism attempts to describe.
To quote the Xenogothic blog:
This talk about a self that is “being dissolved by the increasing speed and pace of modern life” remains the central interest of Accelerationism. When U/ACC balks at the violence of these alt-right nut jobs, that’s why! How many times have others said that these individuals are precisely the subjects that Accelerationism hopes to critique? These violent acts are responses to the sensation Accelerationism predicted! — Here We Go Again — Xenogothic
If NRx proponents understood accelerationism to be a run-away process and hoped for a flat tire to control it, then the individuals Beauchamp refers to, seem to want to dismantle the car and throw it over the cliff. At this point doesn't it cease to be accelerationist in any sensible form? Is it not just the re-use of a word and a new definition applied? Or perhaps the term has been used in a different context already for a long time, and the Vox article is just muddled? Is this a case of correlation being mistaken for causation?
The article continues on to discuss the types of stochastic terrorism that have sadly become all too familiar. In reference to Neo-Nazi James Mason and his interactions with the militant Neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Beauchamp notes:
The group was founded in 2015 and had long admired him; many of its members were on Iron March, a neo-Nazi web forum that was an early promoter of violent accelerationism. — Vox
Following this link takes us to a comprehensive article on the above named individual and group by the SPLC. It’s here we can arguably find the genesis of the Vox article’s use of the term. It’s difficult to know if Beauchamp started here and worked backward. If so that might explain why the article seems to have started at the premise that accelerationism === Neo-Nazis and shoe-horns in the CCRU then covers NRx.
From reading both the SPLC articles we can see the term accelerationism is used in a narrow context that bears no resemblance to the Cyberpositive era origin of what most of us understand as accelerationism and doesn’t really gel particularly well with how accelerationism is used in the context of NRx or the Dark Enlightenment for that matter.
Even Beauchamp points this out with regards to Land’s stance if perhaps not Yarvin’s (although he skips the whole of Yarvin’s 2007 quote and doesn’t link directly to Yarvin’s post: Why I am not a White Nationalist which is arguably more damning of Yarvin when you read it, although Yarvin has gone to pains recently and previously to point out he is not a white nationalist).
“Although I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff,” as Moldbug once put it. (Land is somewhat more critical, writing in The Dark Enlightenment that “the opportunity for viable ethno-supremacist politics disappears into a logical abyss.”) — Vox
Turning back to the two SPLC articles, the context accelerationism is used can be seen. Here are two quotes, one from each piece:
The alleged killer also espoused a belief in “accelerationism,” the idea that violence should be used to push Western countries into becoming failed states. Adherents hope the collapse will give rise to radical, presently unthinkable changes in our society. — Michael Edison Hayden — New Zealand Terrorist Manifesto Influenced by Far-Right Online Ecosystem, Hatewatch Finds — splcenter.org
and
SIEGE, a manifesto originally published as a newsletter across several years during the 1980s, calls for terrorism and revolutionary acceleration in the cause of building a radical state only for whites.
Do these definitions provide any insight into whether the groups the SPLC mention are using the term in the same context as, well, everyone else? Is there any link between this definition and the CCRU?
A thought experiment, not a strawman.
Bare with us here but we believe this little thought experiment is important in order to dispel any arguments that perhaps the CCRU or early accelerationist thought was influenced by 1980s Neo-Nazis, before somebody gets the idea to go down that route.
We know that the CCRU simply didn’t exist in the 80s. And, Land, Plant etc. had drawn from largely Left-wing continental philosophy (Deleuze, Lyotard), feminist tracts and popular culture.
So, while it may be possible (at a stretch) members of the CCRU had access to an obscure American white-power newsletter from the 1980s, it seems incredibly improbable. Why or how anyone in England in the pre-Web days, when BBS usage was your only choice could have accessed these texts would be a mystery (unless they circulated in the types of far-right circles occupied by Combat 18 and similar, which we sincerely doubt and have absolutely no evidence that CCRU members did. Even suggesting it seems an absurdity).
It appears infinitely smaller in the probability that even if they had seen these letters, they could have influenced CCRU thought. And since Benjamin Noys retroactively applied the term Accelerationism onto the philosophical mashup that came from this period, it seems utterly utterly improbable that SIEGE had any impact what-so-ever on the definition or the content of what we have come to understand as accelerationism.
There’s simply no evidence that obscure far-right pamphlets from the 1980s have any relation to accelerationism as we know it, in genesis or content.
So with this in mind, we are going to argue that the term acceleration as used by Neo-Nazis refers to a different concept, but has co-incidentally through the cross over of the NRx and alt-right movements online lead to the adoption of certain terminology, but not as a continuation of our current understanding of a philosophical trend, but really as a set of loan-words adopted by individuals coming from an entirely different world view.
So this is where we somewhat disagree with Xenogothic rebuttal of Beauchamp's article:
To say this new alt-right Accelerationism isn’t Accelerationism at all is wrong. It’s not ours, but that in itself isn’t an argument against theirs. It’s as “valid” an offshoot as any other that the philosophical accelerationists around these parts continue to perpetuate for themselves. It might be the dumbest of them all but that doesn’t invalidate its usage of the term. I’m not sure anything can do that at this point. — Xenogothic
It doesn’t invalidate the term, but we argue in the context that Beauchamp uses it in reference to Nazi groups, it isn’t the same term. It doesn't share the same historical lineage or build upon/dismantle the philosophical concept of accelerationism using its own tools. It’s a parallel process that has possibly adopted some NRx language from blogs and message boards.
Much as members of the NRx came to adopt accelerationist terminology from Land, these Neo-Nazi groups may have adopted Dark Enlightenment concepts from NRx, largely it would seem without really understanding them. At this point the dilution of the original concept of accelerationism in the mix is so heavy, it’s closer to homeopathic in makeup.
Accelerationism in the context of the Vox article
Beauchamp continues on for several passages firmly using the term accelerationist in reference to fringe Nazis again and their attempt to promote lone-wolf style attacks. The problem is, using the term accelerationist constantly along with a lack of explanation of the depth or scope of usage by Nazi groups, really sheds no light on the substance of the term as used by individuals behind these horrific attacks.
The ADL, however, does provide some important clarification (the bolding is ours):
The concept of acceleration has existed for years as a fringe philosophy. Some of the earliest examples are rooted in a Marxist notion that the intensification of an unhinged force, such as capitalism, for example, will inevitably result in that force’s own self-destruction. However, some white supremacists have adopted the terminology and determined that a societal collapse is both imminent and necessary. — White Supremacists Embrace “Accelerationism” — ADL
So the ADL has pointed to the fact that the far-right has adopted terminology, but not the actual core content of the concept it would seem? We would agree with this angle, the term was adopted.
Thankfully their website has a number of articles, that shed far more light on the subject than the Vox article. Specifically, they provide a video/sound clip of former Republican candidate for congress Paul Nehlen.
As you can hear listening to this clip, Nehlen’s concept of accelerating a process is to tear down the Neo-Liberal state.
Neo-Liberalism and accelerationism are interwoven as it was the Neo-Liberal project which really put the pedal to the metal when it came to globalization (K-Dawn).
One of the implementors of Neo-Liberalism was undoubtedly Margaret Thatcher, and Land had interestingly enough been called a practitioner of Deleuzian Thatcherism by Benjamin Noys.
This does demonstrate that the Neo-Nazi groups, the ADL and SPLC have been reporting on, are coming from an angle which is a paradox in the usage of the term accelerationism, beyond a basic definition of the word— to accelerate a/any process.
We have to ask, if out of the vast amount of hate-filled rhetoric communities like this spew, why the comments that use the term accelerate or accelerationist are given prime place in the Vox article, to the detriment of other doctrines these individuals may have held, that were just as, if not more important than any reference to acceleration? When did these groups even start adopting the term?
In fact, overall we have no idea if this term and concept featured particularly prominently versus the eco-fascist terms discussed in the article we referenced earlier? Beauchamp possibly hints at this towards the end of the essay:
It’s tricky to say definitively that accelerationism “caused” Blaze Bernstein’s murder, other acts of Atomwaffen violence, or the three white supremacist mass shootings of 2019. There is almost always a complex web of personal reasons for why an individual chooses to kill; It’s possible they would have turned violent regardless of what ideas they were exposed to. The influence of accelerationism is clearer in some of the killers’ writings than in others (Crusius’s manifesto, in particular, doesn’t seem too indebted to the theory). — Vox
We know that Nazis and other white supremacists in the past have engaged in lone-wolf style attacks. One of the most prominent is the nail bombings by David Copeland in London during 1999. The concept of lone-wolf attacks, leaderless cells etc. has been discussed at great length and covers individuals and groups long before the term accelerationism entered the picture.
One particular researcher is Assistant Professor of US History and the College at the University of Chicago — Kathleen Belew. Belew recently completed her book Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (Harvard, 2018), on white nationalist militias in the US and the concept of leaderless resistance among the far-right during the 1980s and 1990s. The acts of the Christchurch shooter and others seem to be a continuation of this trend.
So with regards to the Vox article stating:
Accelerationism is a diffuse idea, and it’s best to think of its influence as such. Neo-Nazis didn’t need accelerationism to be violent, but rather the doctrine’s omnipresence in online far-right spaces makes it more likely that both groups and individuals are inspired to embrace terrorism as a tactic. — Vox
It is arguable we have a large body of evidence, that had the term accelerationist not be co-opted by online Nazi groups, these types of attacks would have continued in one form or the other.
Since there appears to be no body of work around Nazi-accelerationism that these individuals can tap into, it’s hard to describe it as an ideology, and more a tool or method for articulating existing ideas along the lines of the ones Professor Belew describes.
Thus, in summary really what we are seeing is, as noted the adoption of the term applied to a current in far-right circles that has existed for at least 4 decades which has now manifested itself in increasing waves of violence.
So where do we go from here with this darn phrase?
It’s going to be really important for reporters to do their job going forward and make sure, when they reference accelerationism in the context of Neo-Nazis, they are clear that it is at best the adoption of terms from NRx and fellow travelers, and not to be confused with the publications of Urbanomics or U/ACC and similar. It would also be helpful to prefix the term as well, rather than use the generic accelerationism, so as not to confuse it with the vast body of work that has no link with Neo-Nazism what-so-ever.
Even better would be to critique whatever definition these groups are using, to demonstrate their lack of understanding of the origin of the term.
