accelerationism

The term accelerationism was first used in Roger Zelazny's 1967 novel Lord of Light.{{Cite web |date=2014-11-21 |title=Every Which Way but Loose |url=https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/every-way-loose/ |access-date=2024-09-14 |website=Los Angeles Review of Books}} It was later popularized 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.{{cite book |last=Noys |first=Benjamin |title=The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |year=2010 |page=5 |jstor=j.ctt1r276g}}

English right-wing philosopher and writer Nick Land, commonly credited with creating and inspiring accelerationism's basic ideas and concepts,{{cite journal |last1=Chistyakov |first1=Denis I. |last2=Игоревич |first2=Чистяков Денис |date=2022 |title=Philosophy of Accelerationism: A New Way of Comprehending the Present Social Reality (in Nick Land's Context) |journal=RUDN Journal of Philosophy |volume=26 |issue=3 |pages=687–696 |doi=10.22363/2313-2302-2022-26-3-687-696 |doi-access=free}} cited a number of philosophers who expressed anticipatory accelerationist attitudes in his 2017 essay "A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism".{{Cite web |last=Colquhoun |first=Matt |date=4 March 2019 |title=A U/Acc Primer |url=https://xenogothic.com/2019/03/04/a-u-acc-primer/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://archive.today/20200602005245/https://xenogothic.com/2019/03/04/a-u-acc-primer/ |archive-date=2 June 2020|access-date=2021-04-08 |publisher=Xenogothic.com}}{{Cite web |last=Land |first=Nick |date=25 May 2017 |title=A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism |url=https://jacobitemag.com/2017/05/25/a-quick-and-dirty-introduction-to-accelerationism/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180113012817/https://jacobitemag.com/2017/05/25/a-quick-and-dirty-introduction-to-accelerationism/ |archive-date=13 January 2018 |access-date=20 February 2018 |work=Jacobite Magazine}} 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."{{cite book |last=Strong |first=Tracy |year=1988 |title=Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration |url=https://archive.org/details/friedrichnietzsc00stro_449 |url-access=limited |location=Berkeley |publisher=University of California Press |page= 211}} Taking inspiration from this notion for Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari speculated further on an unprecedented "revolutionary path" to perpetuate capitalism's tendencies, a passage which is cited as a central inspiration for accelerationism:

{{blockquote|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.|author=Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari|title=Anti-Oedipus{{cite book |last1=Deleuze |first1=Gilles |last2=Guattari |first2=Félix |year=2004 |title=Anti-Oedipus |location=London |publisher=Continuum |page= 260}}}}

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:

{{blockquote|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.|author=Karl Marx|title=On the Question of Free Trade{{Cite book |title=Karl Marx: Selected Writings | editor1=David McLellan | date=2000 | page= 296 | publisher= Oxford University Press| isbn= 9780198782650}}}}

Robin Mackay and Armen Avanessian note "Fragment on Machines" from Grundrisse as Marx's "most openly accelerationist writing".{{Cite book |last1=Mackay |first1=Robin |title=#Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader |last2=Avanessian |first2=Armen |date=May 2014 |publisher=Urbanomic |isbn=978-0957529557 |editor-last=Mackay |editor-first=Robin |location=United Kingdom |pages=1–46 |language=en |chapter=Introduction |editor-last2=Avanessian |editor-first2=Armen}} Noys states of Marx's influence, "it favors the Marx who celebrates the powers of capitalism, most evident in The Communist Manifesto (cowritten with Engels), over the Marx who also stresses the difficulty of transcending and escaping capital, the Marx of Capital", also characterizing the accelerationist view of Marx as filtered through Nietzsche. On Lyotard, Deleuze, and Guattari, he states "at this point, what we can call accelerationism is dedicated to trying to ride these forces of capitalist production and direct them to destabilize capitalism itself."

Mark Fisher notes the same excerpt from Anti-Oedipus as Land, along with a section from Libidinal Economy which he describes as "the one passage from the text that is remembered, if only in notoriety", as "immediately [giving] the flavour of the accelerationist gambit":

{{Blockquote|text=The English unemployed did not have to become workers to survive, they – hang on tight and spit on me – enjoyed the hysterical, masochistic, whatever exhaustion it was of hanging on in the mines, in the foundries, in the factories, in hell, they enjoyed it, enjoyed the mad destruction of their organic body which was indeed imposed upon them, they enjoyed the decomposition of their personal identity, the identity that the peasant tradition had constructed for them, enjoyed the dissolutions of their families and villages, and enjoyed the new monstrous anonymity of the suburbs and the pubs in morning and evening.|author=Jean-François Lyotard|title=Libidinal Economy}}

Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams additionally credit Vladimir Lenin with recognizing capitalist progress as important in the subsequent functioning of socialism:

{{Blockquote|text=Socialism is inconceivable without large-scale capitalist engineering based on the latest discoveries of modern science. It is inconceivable without planned state organisation which keeps tens of millions of people to the strictest observance of a unified standard in production and distribution. We Marxists have always spoken of this, and it is not worth while wasting two seconds talking to people who do not understand even this (anarchists and a good half of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries).|author=Vladimir Lenin|title=“Left Wing” Childishness}}Accelerationism was also influenced by science fiction (particularly cyberpunk) and electronic dance music, with Fisher and Mackay noting Terminator, Predator, and Blade Runner as particular sci-fi works; and jungle music as a particular electronic music genre. Mackay and Avanessian also note the Neuromancer trilogy, with Iain Hamilton Grant stating "Neuromancer got into the philosophy department, and it went viral. You’d find worn-out paperbacks all over the common room." Fisher states of Land's "theory-fictions" from the 1990s, "They weren’t distanced readings of French theory so much as cybergothic remixes which put Deleuze and Guattari on the same plane as films such as Apocalypse Now and fictions such as Gibson’s Neuromancer." Mackay also notes Russian cosmism and Erewhon as influences, while Noys notes Donna Haraway's work on cyborgs.

The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), a philosophy collective at the University of Warwick which included Land, Mackay, Fisher, and Grant, was one of the most significant parts of the movement.{{cite book |last1=Schwarz |first1=Jonas Andersson |title=Online File Sharing: Innovations in Media Consumption |publisher=Routledge |year=2013 |location=New York |pages=20–21}} Fisher described the CCRU's accelerationism as “a kind of exuberant anti-politics, a ‘technihilo' celebration of the irrelevance of human agency, partly inspired by the pro-markets, anti-capitalism line developed by Manuel DeLanda out of Braudel, and from the section of Anti-Oedipus that talks about marketization as the 'revolutionary path'."{{Cite web |last=Wilson |first=Rowan |date=January 16, 2017 |title=They Can Be Different in the Future Too: Mark Fisher interviewed |url=https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/3051-they-can-be-different-in-the-future-too-mark-fisher-interviewed |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250217195507/https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/3051-they-can-be-different-in-the-future-too-mark-fisher-interviewed |archive-date=Feb 17, 2025 |access-date=2025-02-20 |website=Verso Books |language=en}} Other significant members include Sadie Plant and Ray Brassier. The group stood in stark opposition to the University of Warwick and traditional left-wing academia, with Mackay stating "I don’t think Land has ever pretended to be left-wing! He’s a serious philosopher and an intelligent thinker, but one who has always loved to bait the left by presenting the ‘worst’ possible scenario with great delight...!" As Land became a stronger influence on the group and left the University of Warwick, they would shift to more unorthodox and occult ideas. Land suffered a breakdown from his amphetamine abuse and disappeared in the early 2000s, with the CCRU vanishing along with him.

The Guardian has referred to #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, a 2014 anthology edited by Robin Mackay and Armen Avanessian, as "the only proper guide to the movement in existence." They also described Fanged Noumena, a 2011 anthology of Land's work, as “contain[ing] some of accelerationism's most darkly fascinating passages." Mackay credits the publishing of Fanged Noumena with an emergence of new accelerationist thinking. In 2015, Urbanomic and Time Spiral Press published Writings 1997-2003 as a complete collection of known texts published under the CCRU name, besides those that have been irrecoverably lost or attributed to a specific member. However, it is not actually complete, as some known works under the CCRU name are not included, such as those in #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader.{{Cite book |last=CCRU |title=Writings 1997-2003 |publisher=Urbanomic, Time Spiral Press |year=2015 |isbn=9780995455061 |location=United Kingdom |language=en}}{{Cite book |title=#Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader |last2= |first2= |publisher=Urbanomic |isbn=978-0957529557 |editor-last=Mackay |editor-first=Robin |edition=1st |location=United Kingdom |publication-date=May 2014 |pages= |language=en |chapter= |editor-last2=Avanessian |editor-first2=Armen}}

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Accelerationism consists of various and often contradictory ideas, with Noys stating "part of the difficulty of understanding accelerationism is grasping these shifting meanings and the stakes of particular interventions". Avanessian stated "any accelerationist thought is based on the assessment that contradictions (of capitalism) must be countered by their own aggravation", while Mackay considered a Marxist "acceleration of contradictions" to be a misconception and stated that no accelerationist authors have advocated such a thing. Harrison Fluss and Landon Frim note that accelerationists make extensive use of neologisms, either original or borrowed from continental philosophy. Such terminology can obscure their core arguments, exacerbated by the fact that it can be highly inconsistent between thinkers.

Noys characterizes accelerationism as engaging with posthumanism, stating "the impulse is to use or repurpose technology to transcend or escape what the science-fiction writer William Gibson calls the 'meat'–the human body." He also notes Nietzche's Übermensch as a posthumanist influence. Fluss and Frim state that it tends towards antihumanism, with left-accelerationists such as Peter Wolfendale and Reza Negarestani using the term "inhumanism".

Prometheanism is a term closely associated with accelerationism,{{Cite book |last1=Fluss |first1=Harrison |title=Prometheus and Gaia: Technology, Ecology and Anti-Humanism |last2=Frim |first2=Landon |date=March 2022 |publisher=Anthem Press |isbn=9781839980190 |pages= |language=en |chapter= |via=Cambridge University Press}} referencing the Greek figure of Prometheus. Fluss and Frim associate it with posthumanism and using innovation and technology to surpass the limits of nature, characterizing it as misanthropic in stating "for the Promethean, flesh-and-blood 'humanity' is an arbitrary limit on the unlimited powers of technology and invention." They also characterize accelerationism as adhering to nominalism (in disputing stable essences of nature and humanity) and voluntarism. Yuk Hui characterizes it as "decoupling the social critique of capitalism from denigrating technology and asserting the power of technology to free us from constraints and contradictions or from modernity." Ray Brassier's "Prometheanism and its Critics", compiled in #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, addresses Jean-Pierre Dupuy's Heideggerean critique of human enhancement and transhumanism. Critiquing the man-made vs. natural distinction as arbitrary and theological, Brassier expresses openness to the possibility of re-engineering human nature and the world through rationalism instead of accepting them as they are, stating "Prometheanism is simply the claim that there is no reason to assume a predetermined limit to what we can achieve or to the ways in which we can transform ourselves and our world."{{Cite book |last=Brassier |first=Ray |title=#Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader |publisher=Urbanomic |year=2014 |isbn=978-0957529557 |editor-last=Mackay |editor-first=Robin |location=United Kingdom |pages=467–487 |language=en |chapter=Prometheanism and its Critics |editor-last2=Avanessian |editor-first2=Armen}} Srnicek and Williams used the term in stating "we declare that only a Promethean politics of maximal mastery over society and its environment is capable of either dealing with global problems or achieving victory over capital”. Negarestani and Wolfendale use the concept of "inhuman rationalism" (or "rationalist inhumanism"), advocating reason to radically transform humans into something else.{{Cite journal |last=Kersten |first=Carool |date=August 4, 2023 |title=Inhuman Rationality: Speculative Realism, Normativity, and Praxis |journal=Sophia |volume=62 |pages=723-738 |via=SpringerLink}}

Hyperstition is a term attributed to Land and the CCRU, characterized by Fluss and Frim as the view "that our chosen beliefs about the future (however fanciful) can retroactively form and shape our present realities". Viewpoint Magazine used Roko's Basilisk as an example, stating "Roko’s Basilisk isn't just a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rather than influencing events toward a particular result, the result is generated by its own prediction". Noys stated "the CCRU tried to create images of this realized integrated human-technology world that would resonate in the present and so hasten the achievement of that world. Such images were found in cyberpunk science-fiction, in electronic dance music, and in the weird fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. The mechanism of hyperstition is understood as a form of feedback loop. According to Ljubisha Petrushevski, Land considers capitalism to be hyperstitional in that it reproduces itself via fictional images in media which become actualized. This phenomenon is viewed as a series of forces from the future which use capital to retroactively bring about their own existence, pushing humanity towards the singularity.{{Cite journal |last=Petrushevski |first=Ljubisha |date=2020 |title=The Fast and the Negative: Dialectics and Posthumanism |journal=Filosofija, Sociologija. |volume=31 |issue=1 |pages=16–23 |doi=10.6001/fil-soc.v31i1.4174 |via=EBSCO Information Services}} Fluss and Frim state that the left-wing perspective rejects pre-emptive knowledge of what a humane or advanced civilization may look like, instead viewing future progress as wholly open and a matter of free choice. Progress is then viewed as hyperstitional in that it consists of "fictions" which aim to become true.

Right-wing accelerationism (or right-accelerationism) is espoused by Land,{{Cite journal |last=Le |first=Vincent |date=2018 |title=THE DECLINE OF POLITICS IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE? CONSTELLATIONS AND COLLISIONS BETWEEN NICK LAND AND RAY BRASSIER. |journal=Cosmos & History |volume=14 |issue=3 |pages=31–50 |via=EBSCO Information Services}} with Fluss and Frim also noting Mencius Moldbug and Justin Murphy. Land attributes the increasing speed of the modern world 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 argues that the best way to deal with capitalism is to participate more to foster even greater exponential growth and self-improvement, accelerating technological progress along with it. Land also argues that such acceleration is intrinsic to capitalism but impossible for non-capitalist systems, stating that "capital revolutionizes itself more thoroughly than any extrinsic 'revolution' possibly could." In an interview with Vox, he stated "Our question was what ‘the process’ wants (i.e. spontaneously promotes) and what resistances it provokes", also noting that “the assumption” behind accelerationism was that “the general direction of [techno-capitalist] self-escalating change was toward decentralization.” Mackay summarized Land's position as "since capitalism tends to dissolve hereditary social forms and restrictions [...], it is seen as the engine of exploration into the unknown. So to be ‘on the side of intelligence’ is to totally abandon all caution with respect to the disintegrative processes of capital and whatever reprocessing of the human and of the planet they might involve."

Vincent Le considers Land's philosophy to oppose anthropocentrism, citing his early critique of transcendental idealism and capitalism in "Kant, Capital, and the Prohibition of Incest". According to Le, Land opposes philosophies which deny a reality beyond humans' conceptual experience, instead viewing death as a way to grasp the Real by surpassing human limitations. This would remain as Land's views on capitalism changed after reading Deleuze and Guattari and studying cybernetics, with Le stating "Although the mature Land abandons his left-wing critique of capitalism, he will never shake his contempt for anthropocentrism, and his remedy that philosophers can only access the true at the edge of our humanity.{{Cite journal |last=Le |first=Vincent |date=March 23, 2018 |title="These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends": Decrypting Westworld as Dual Coding and Corruption of Nick Land's Accelerationism. |url= |journal=Colloquy: Text Theory Critique. |issue=34 |pages=3–23 |via=EBSCO}} Le and Fisher also note that Land utilizes Deleuze and Guattari's conception of capitalism as a deterritorializing process while disposing of their view that it also causes compensatory reterritorialization. Lacking Deleuze and Guattari's anthropic principles, Land pursues absolute deterritorialization, viewing capitalism as the Real consisting of accelerating deterritorialization, with the mechanism of accelerating technological progress. He states "reality is immanent to the machinic unconscious." Le states "since Land sees humanity’s annihilation as a solution to accessing the real rather than as a problem as it is for Deleuze and Guattari, he affirms that we should actively strive to become bodies without organs, not even if it kills us, but precisely because it kills us."

Denis Chistyakov notes “Meltdown”, a CCRU work and one of the writings compiled in Fanged Noumena, as vividly expressing accelerationism. Here, Land envisioned a technocapital singularity in China, resulting in revolutions in artificial intelligence, human enhancement, biotechnology, and nanotechnology. This upends the previous status quo, and the former first world countries struggle to maintain control and stop the singularity, verging on collapse. He described new anti-authoritarian movements performing a bottom-up takeover of institutions through means like biological warfare enhanced with DNA computing. He claimed that capitalism's tendency towards optimization of itself and technology, in service of consumerism, will lead to the enhancement and eventually replacement of humanity with technology, asserting that "nothing human makes it out of the near-future." Eventually, the self-development of technology will culminate in the "melting [of] Terra into a seething K-pulp (which unlike grey goo synthesizes microbial intelligence as it proliferates)." He also criticized traditional philosophy as tending towards despotism, instead praising Deleuzoguattarian schizoanalysis as "already engaging with nonlinear nano-engineering runaway in 1972."{{Cite web |last=Land |first=Nick |title=swarm1 |url=http://www.ccru.net/swarm1/1_melt.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241227105712/http://www.ccru.net/swarm1/1_melt.htm |archive-date=Dec 27, 2024 |access-date=Jan 31, 2025 |website=Cybernetic culture research unit}}{{Cite book |last=Land |first=Nick |title=Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007 |publisher=Urbanomic/Sequence Press |isbn=9780955308789 |editor-last=Kronic |editor-first=Maya |location=United Kingdom |publication-date=April 1, 2011 |pages=441–459 |language=en |chapter=Meltdown |editor-last2=Brassier |editor-first2=Ray}} Le states that Land embraces human extinction in the singularity, as the resulting hyperintelligent AI will come to fully comprehend and embody the Real of the body without organs, free of human distortions of reality.

Land has continually praised China's economic policy as being accelerationist, moving to Shanghai and working as a journalist writing material that has been characterized as pro-government propaganda. He has also spoken highly of Deng Xiaoping and Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, calling Lee an "autocratic enabler of freedom."{{Cite web |last=Kaiser-Schatzlein |first=Robin |date=2022 |title=How the "soft" dictatorship of Lee Kuan Yew became a template for the American right |url=https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/08/lee-kuan-yew-blake-masters-the-new-right/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250114180216/https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/08/lee-kuan-yew-blake-masters-the-new-right/ |archive-date=January 14, 2025 |access-date=2025-02-03 |website=Mother Jones |language=en-US}} Yuk Hui stated "Land’s celebration of Asian cities such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore is simply a detached observation of these places that projects onto them a common will to sacrifice politics for productivity."{{Cite web |last=Hui |first=Yuk |date=April 2017 |title=On the Unhappy Consciousness of Neoreactionaries - Journal #81 |url=https://www.e-flux.com/journal/81/125815/on-the-unhappy-consciousness-of-neoreactionaries/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240622063056/https://www.e-flux.com/journal/81/125815/on-the-unhappy-consciousness-of-neoreactionaries/ |archive-date=June 22, 2024 |access-date=2025-04-03 |website=e-flux |language=en}}

Land's involvement in the neoreactionary movement has contributed to his views on accelerationism. In The Dark Enlightenment, he advocates for a form of capitalist monarchism, with states controlled by a CEO. He views democratic and egalitarian policies as only slowing down acceleration and the technocapital singularity, stating "Beside the speed machine, or industrial capitalism, there is an ever more perfectly weighted decelerator [...] comically, the fabrication of this braking mechanism is proclaimed as progress. It is the Great Work of the Left.”{{Cite web |last=Haider |first=Shuja |date=2017-03-28 |title=The Darkness at the End of the Tunnel: Artificial Intelligence and Neoreaction |url=https://viewpointmag.com/2017/03/28/the-darkness-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-artificial-intelligence-and-neoreaction/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250128001456/https://viewpointmag.com/2017/03/28/the-darkness-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-artificial-intelligence-and-neoreaction/ |archive-date=January 28, 2025 |access-date=2025-02-21 |website=Viewpoint Magazine |language=en-US}} Le states "If Land is attracted to Moldbug’s political system, it is because a neocameralist state would be free to pursue long-term technological innovation without the democratic politician’s need to appease short-sighted public opinion to be re-elected every few years." Land has advocated for accelerationists to support the neoreactionary movement, though many have distanced themselves from him in response to his views on race.

Left-wing accelerationism (or left-accelerationism) is espoused by figures such as Fisher, Nick Srnicek, Alex Williams,{{Cite journal |last=Gardiner |first=Michael E. |date=2020 |title=Automatic for the People? Cybernetics and Left-Accelerationism |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8675.12528 |journal=Constellations |language=en |volume=29 |issue=2 |pages=131–145 |doi=10.1111/1467-8675.12528 |issn=1467-8675 |s2cid=225363854 |url-access=subscription}} Ray Brassier, Reza Negarestani, and Peter Wolfendale. Fisher, writing on his blog k-punk, had become increasingly disillusioned with capitalism as an accelerationist, citing working in the public sector in Blairite Britain, being a teacher and trade union activist, and an encounter with Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, whom he considered to be using similar concepts to the CCRU but from a leftist perspective. At the same time, he became frustrated with traditional left wing politics, believing they were ignoring technology that they could exploit.

Noys characterizes Fisher's position as "a cultural accelerationism", connecting it with his work on hauntology and noting his essay "Terminator vs Avatar" as an example. Here, Fisher claimed that while Marxists criticized Libidinal Economy for asserting that workers enjoyed the upending of primitive social orders, nobody truly wants to return to those. Therefore, rather than reverting to pre-capitalism, society must move through and beyond capitalism. Fisher praised Land's attacks on the academic left, describing the academic left as "careerist sandbaggers" and "a ruthless protection of petit bourgeois interests dressed up as politics." He also critiqued Land's interpretation of Deleuze and Guattari, stating that while superior in many ways, "his deviation from their understanding of capitalism is fatal" in assuming no reterritorialization, resulting in not foreseeing that capitalism provides "a simulation of innovation and newness that cloaks inertia and stasis." Citing Fredric Jameson's interpretation of The Communist Manifesto as "see[ing] capitalism as the most productive moment of history and the most destructive at the same time", he argued for accelerationism as an anti-capitalist strategy, criticizing the left's moral critique of capitalism and their "tendencies towards Canutism" as only helping the narrative that capitalism is the only viable system.{{cite book |last=Fisher |first=Mark |title=#Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader |date=2014 |publisher=Urbanomic |isbn=978-0957529557 |editor-last1=Mackay |editor-first1=Robin |pages=335–46: 340, 342 |chapter=Terminator vs Avatar |editor-last2=Avanessian |editor-first2=Armen}}

Srnicek befriended Fisher, sharing similar views, and the 2008 financial crisis, along with dissatisfaction with the left's "ineffectual" response of the Occupy protests, led to Srnicek co-writing "#Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics" with Williams in 2013.{{Cite book |last1=Srnicek |first1=Nick |title=#Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader |last2=Williams |first2=Alex |publisher=Urbanomic |isbn=978-0957529557 |editor-last=Mackay |editor-first=Robin |edition=1st |location=United Kingdom |publication-date=May 2014 |pages=347–362 |language=en |chapter=#Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics |editor-last2=Avanessian |editor-first2=Armen}} They posited that capitalism was the most advanced economic system of its time, but has since stagnated and is now constraining technology, with neoliberalism only worsening its crises. At the same time, they considered the modern left to be "unable to devise a new political ideological vision" as they are too focused on localism and direct action and cannot adapt to make meaningful change. They advocated using existing capitalist infrastructure as "a springboard to launch towards post-capitalism", taking advantage of capitalist technological and scientific advances to experiment with things like economic modeling in the style of Project Cybersyn. They also advocated for "collectively controlled legitimate vertical authority in addition to distributed horizontal forms of sociality" and attaining resources and funding for political infrastructure, contrasting standard leftist political action which they deem ineffective. Moving past the constraints of capitalism would result in a resumption of technological progress, not only creating a more rational society but also "recovering the dreams which transfixed many from the middle of the Nineteenth Century until the dawn of the neoliberal era, of the quest of Homo Sapiens towards expansion beyond the limitations of the earth and our immediate bodily forms." They expanded further in Inventing the Future, which, while dropping the term "accelerationism", pushed for automation, reduction and distribution of working hours, universal basic income, and diminishment of work ethic.{{Cite book |last1=Srnicek |first1=Nick |title=Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work |last2=Williams |first2=Alex |publisher=Verso Books |year=2015 |isbn=9781784780968 |location=United Kingdom |pages=67 |language=en}}

Land rebuked its ideas in a 2017 interview with The Guardian, stating "the notion that self-propelling technology is separable from capitalism is a deep theoretical error." Noys characterizes Aaron Bastani's Fully Automated Luxury Communism as taking up the Manifesto's "call for utopian proposals". Michael E. Gardiner notes Fully Automated Luxury Communism, PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future, and The People's Republic of Walmart as united in the left-accelerationist belief in detaching cybernetics from capitalism and using it towards liberatory goals.

Feminist collective Laboria Cuboniks advocated for the use of technology for gender abolition in "Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation", which has been characterized as a form of left-accelerationism.{{Cite web |date=11 June 2015 |title=After Accelerationism: The Xenofeminist manifesto |url=http://tripleampersand.org/after-accelerationism-the-xenofeminist-manifesto/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151017070050/http://tripleampersand.org/after-accelerationism-the-xenofeminist-manifesto/ |archive-date=17 October 2015 |access-date=9 October 2015 |website=&&& Journal |language=en}} Noys states "The relationship to accelerationism is not direct or discussed in detail, but certainly similar points of reference are shared in a rupture with naturalism and an integration of technology as a site of liberation". Fluss and Frim state "Xenofeminists seek to undermine what they perceive as the basis for essentialism itself: Nature."

Effective accelerationism (abbreviated to e/acc) takes influence from effective altruism, a movement to maximize good by calculating what actions provide the greatest overall/global good and prioritizing those rather than focusing on personal interest/proximity. Proponents advocate for unrestricted technological progress "at all costs", believing that artificial general intelligence will solve universal human problems like poverty, war, and climate change, while deceleration and stagnation of technology is a greater risk than any posed by AI. This contrasts with effective altruism (referred to as longtermism to distinguish from e/acc), which tends to consider uncontrolled AI to be the greater existential risk and advocates for government regulation and careful alignment.{{Cite web |last=Chowdhury |first=Hasan |date=28 July 2023 |title=Get the lowdown on 'e/acc' — Silicon Valley's favorite obscure theory about progress at all costs, which has been embraced by Marc Andreessen |url=https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-tech-leaders-accelerationism-eacc-twitter-profiles-2023-7 |access-date=2023-11-20 |website=Business Insider |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |last=Torres |first=Émile P. |date=2023-12-14 |title='Effective Accelerationism' and the Pursuit of Cosmic Utopia |url=https://www.truthdig.com/articles/effective-accelerationism-and-the-pursuit-of-cosmic-utopia/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241227175025/https://www.truthdig.com/articles/effective-accelerationism-and-the-pursuit-of-cosmic-utopia/ |archive-date=December 27, 2024 |access-date=2025-02-01 |website=Truthdig |language=en-US}}

In a critique, Italian Marxist Franco Berardi considered acceleration “the essential feature of capitalist growth” and characterized accelerationism as "point[ing] out the contradictory implications of the process of intensification, emphasizing in particular the instability that acceleration brings into the capitalist system." However, he also stated “my answer to the question of whether acceleration marks a final collapse of power is quite simply: no. Because the power of capital is not based on stability.” He posited that the “accelerationist hypothesis” is based on two assumptions: that accelerating production cycles make capitalism unstable, and that potentialities within capitalism will necessarily deploy themselves. He criticized the first by stating “capitalism is resilient because it does not need rational government, only automatic governance”; and the second by arguing that while the possibility exists, it is not guaranteed to happen as it can still be slowed or stopped.{{Cite web |last=Berardi |first=Franco |date=June 2013 |title=Accelerationism Questioned from the Point of View of the Body - Journal #46 |url=https://www.e-flux.com/journal/46/60080/accelerationism-questioned-from-the-point-of-view-of-the-body/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240424200456/https://www.e-flux.com/journal/46/60080/accelerationism-questioned-from-the-point-of-view-of-the-body/ |archive-date=Apr 24, 2024 |access-date=2025-02-19 |website=www.e-flux.com |language=en}}

Benjamin Noys is a staunch critic of accelerationism, initially calling it "Deleuzian Thatcherism". He accuses it of offering false solutions to technological and economic problems, considering those solutions “always promised and always just out of reach."{{Cite book |last=Noys |first=Benjamin |title=Malign Velocities: Accelerationism and Capitalism |date=October 31, 2014 |publisher=Zer0 Books |isbn=978-1782793007 |location=United Kingdom |language=en}} He has also said "Capitalism, for the accelerationist, bears down on us as accelerative liquid monstrosity, capable of absorbing us and, for Land, we must welcome this." Noys is also critical of left accelerationism, positing a tension between its liberatory tones and the reactionary and elitist tones of its influences, stating "the risk of a technocratic elitism becomes evident, as well as the risk we will lose the agency we have gained by aiming to join with the chaotic flux of material and technological forces."

In The Question Concerning Technology in China, Yuk Hui critiqued accelerationism, particularly Ray Brassier’s “Prometheanism and its Critics” from #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, stating “if such a response to technology and capitalism is applied globally, [...] it risks perpetuating a more subtle form of colonialism.” He argues that accelerationism's "Prometheanism" tries to promote Prometheus as a universal technological figure despite other cultures having different myths and relations to technology.{{Cite book |last=Hui |first=Yuk |title=The Question Concerning Technology in China |date=September 2, 2016 |publisher=Urbanomic/Mono |isbn=978-0995455009 |language=en}} Further critiquing Westernization, globalization, and the loss of non-Western technological thought, he has also referred to Deng Xiaoping as "the world's greatest accelerationist" due to his economic reforms, considering them an acceleration of the modernization process which started in the aftermath of the Opium Wars and intensified with the Cultural Revolution. In "A Politics of Intensity: Some Aspects of Acceleration in Simondon and Deleuze", Yuk Hui and Louis Morelle analyzed Deleuze and Simondon from an accelerationist perspective.{{Cite journal |last1=Hui |first1=Yuk |last2=Morelle |first2=Louis |date=2017 |title=A Politics of Intensity: Some Aspects of Acceleration in Simondon and Deleuze |url=https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/dls.2017.0282 |journal=Deleuze Studies |volume=11 |issue=4 |pages=498–517 |doi=10.3366/dls.2017.0282|url-access=subscription }}

Slavoj Žižek considers accelerationism to be “far too optimistic”, critiquing it as retroactively deterministic and contrasting it with Freud's death drive and its lack of a final conclusion. He argues that accelerationism considers just one conclusion of the world's tendencies and fails to find other “coordinates" of the world order.{{Cite web |last=Žižek |first=Slavoj |date=2023-09-12 |title=The Dialectic of Dark Enlightenment |url=https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-dialectic-of-dark-enlightenment/ |access-date=2025-02-23 |website=Compact |language=en}}

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.{{Cite web |last=Terranova |first=Tiziana |date=8 March 2014 |title=Red Stack Attack! Algorithms, Capital and the Automation of the Common |url=http://www.euronomade.info/?p=2268 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170211075914/http://www.euronomade.info/?p=2268 |archive-date=11 February 2017 |access-date=9 February 2017 |publisher=EuroNomade |language=it-IT}}

Aria Dean, proposing an alternative to both right and left accelerationism, synthesized racial capitalism with accelerationism in "Notes on Blacceleration", arguing that the binary between humans and capital is already blurred by the scars of the Atlantic slave trade.{{Cite journal |last=Dean |first=Aria |date=December 2017 |title=Notes on Blacceleration |url=https://www.e-flux.com/journal/87/169402/notes-on-blacceleration/ |journal=E-flux Journal |issue=87}} Fluss and Frim state that it emphasizes "the historical exclusion of black people from white humanist discourses, and the historical process whereby capitalism has engendered the 'black nonsubject.'"

Since "accelerationism" was coined in 2010, the term has taken on several new meanings. Several commentators have used the label accelerationist to describe a controversial political strategy articulated by Slavoj Žižek.{{cite web|date=5 May 2017|title=Melenchon and Žižek; Accelerationism and Edgelordism – Infinite Coincidence|url=https://infinite-coincidence.com/2017/05/05/melenchon-and-zizek-accelerationism-and-edgelordism/|access-date=12 August 2020|website=infinite-coincidence.com}} 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 U.S. president Donald Trump, despite his dislike of Trump, as the candidate more likely to disrupt the political status quo in that country.{{cite web |date=3 November 2016 |title=Slavoj Žižek would vote for Trump |url=https://zizek.uk/slavoj-zizek-would-vote-for-trump/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161107061736/http://zizek.uk:80/slavoj-zizek-would-vote-for-trump/ |archive-date=7 November 2016 |access-date=12 August 2020 |website=zizek.uk}} Richard Coyne characterized his strategy as seeking to "shock the country and revive the left."{{cite web |last=Coyne |first=Richard |date=14 May 2017 |title=What's wrong with accelerationism – Reflections on Technology, Media & Culture |url=https://richardcoyne.com/2017/05/14/whats-wrong-with-accelerationism/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171001173244/https://richardcoyne.com/2017/05/14/whats-wrong-with-accelerationism/ |archive-date=1 October 2017 |access-date=12 August 2020}} The term has also been used to advocate for making capitalism as destructive as possible in order to cause a revolution against it.{{Cite web |last=Ambler |first=Charlie |date=2015-03-19 |title=Is Consuming Like Crazy the Best Way to End Capitalism? |url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/is-consuming-like-crazy-the-best-way-to-end-capitalism-050/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250223175355/https://www.vice.com/en/article/is-consuming-like-crazy-the-best-way-to-end-capitalism-050/ |archive-date=Feb 23, 2025 |access-date=2025-02-23 |website=VICE |language=en-US}} Chinese dissidents have referred to Xi Jinping as Accelerator-in-Chief (referencing state media calling Deng Xiaoping "Architect-in-Chief of Reform and Opening"), believing that Xi's authoritarianism is hastening the demise of the Chinese Communist Party and that, because it is beyond saving, they should allow it to destroy itself in order to create a better future.{{Cite web |title=Accelerationism - China Digital Space |url=https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Accelerationism |access-date=2025-02-04 |website=chinadigitaltimes.net}}

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.{{cite news|author=Bloom|first=Mia|date=30 May 2020|title=Far-Right Infiltrators and Agitators in George Floyd Protests: Indicators of White Supremacists|publisher=Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law.|agency=Just Security|url=https://www.justsecurity.org/70497/far-right-infiltrators-and-agitators-in-george-floyd-protests-indicators-of-white-supremacists/}} Far-right accelerationism has been widely considered as detrimental to public safety.{{Cite news|last1=Taub|first1=Amanda|last2=Bennhold|first2=Katrin|date=2021-06-07|title=From Doomsday Preppers to Doomsday Plotters|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/07/world/accelerationism-qanon-day-x.html|access-date=2021-12-10|issn=0362-4331}} 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. 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.{{cite news |last1=Poulter |first1=James |title=The Obscure Neo-Nazi Forum Linked to a Wave of Terror |url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-obscure-neo-nazi-forum-linked-to-a-wave-of-terror/ |work=Vice |date=13 October 2020 |language=en}}{{Cite web|date=22 February 2018|title=Atomwaffen and the SIEGE parallax: how one neo-Nazi's life's work is fueling a younger generation|url=https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/02/22/atomwaffen-and-siege-parallax-how-one-neo-nazi%E2%80%99s-life%E2%80%99s-work-fueling-younger-generation|url-status=live|access-date=16 June 2020|website=Hatewatch|publisher=Southern Poverty Law Center|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180224055840/https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/02/22/atomwaffen-and-siege-parallax-how-one-neo-nazi%E2%80%99s-life%E2%80%99s-work-fueling-younger-generation |archive-date=24 February 2018 }}{{cite news|last=Miller|first=Cassie|date=23 June 2020|title='There Is No Political Solution': Accelerationism in the White Power Movement|work=Southern Poverty Law Center|url=https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/06/23/there-no-political-solution-accelerationism-white-power-movement|access-date=13 October 2020}} Far-right accelerationists have also been known to attack critical infrastructure, particularly the power grid, attempting to cause a collapse of the system or believing that 5G was causing COVID-19. Some have encouraged the promotion of 5G conspiracy theories as easier than convincing potential recruits that the Holocaust never happened.{{Cite web |last=Ebrahimji |first=Alisha |date=2024-11-08 |title=What is accelerationism, the White supremacist ideology promoting power station attacks |url=https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/08/us/accelerationism-meaning-manifesto-theory-accelerationist/index.html |access-date=2025-02-01 |website=CNN |language=en}}{{Cite web |last=Hummel |first=Kristina |date=2023-05-23 |title=The Targeting of Infrastructure by America's Violent Far-Right |url=https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-targeting-of-infrastructure-by-americas-violent-far-right/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250116095101/https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-targeting-of-infrastructure-by-americas-violent-far-right/ |archive-date=Jan 16, 2025 |access-date=2025-02-01 |website=Combating Terrorism Center at West Point |language=en-US}} 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."

Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the perpetrator of the 15 March 2019 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". Tarrant's manifesto influenced John Timothy Earnest, the perpetrator of both the 24 March 2019 Escondido mosque fire at Dar-ul-Arqam Mosque in Escondido, California, and the 27 April 2019 Poway synagogue shooting which resulted in one dead and three injured; and it also influenced Patrick Crusius, the perpetrator of the 3 August 2019 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.{{cite web |title=Aké je ideologické podhubie streleckých útokov |url=https://komentare.sme.sk/c/23032476/ake-je-ideologicke-podhubie-streleckych-utokov.html?ref=w_neprehl |website=SME |access-date=13 October 2022 |language=sk-SK |date=12 October 2022}}{{cite news |author=Beauchamp |first=Zack |date=18 November 2019 |title=Accelerationism: the obscure idea inspiring white supremacist killers around the world |url=https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/11/11/20882005/accelerationism-white-supremacy-christchurch |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250210123938/https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/11/11/20882005/accelerationism-white-supremacy-christchurch |archive-date=Feb 10, 2025 |access-date=17 September 2020 |work=Vox |publisher=Vox Media}} Sich Battalion urged its members to buy a copy of Tarrant's manifesto, encouraging them to "get inspired" by it.{{cite web|url=https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/08/14/the-russians-and-ukrainians-translating-the-christchurch-shooters-manifesto/|title=The Russians and Ukrainians Translating the Christchurch Shooter's Manifesto|work=Bellingcat|date=23 October 2022}}

Vox pointed to Land's shift towards neoreactionarism, along with the neoreactionary movement crossing paths with the alt-right as another fringe right wing internet movement, as the likely connection point between far-right racial accelerationism and the term for Land's otherwise unrelated technocapitalist ideas. They cited a 2018 Southern Poverty Law Center investigation which found users on the neo-Nazi blog The Right Stuff who cited neoreactionarism as an influence. Land himself became interested in the Atomwaffen-affiliated theistic Satanist organization Order of Nine Angles (ONA) which adheres to the ideology of Neo-Nazi terrorist accelerationism, describing the ONA's works as "highly-recommended" in a blog post.{{cite news|author=Land|first=Nick|author-link=Nick Land|date=11 October 2020|title=Occult Xenosystems|work=Xenosystems.net|url=http://www.xenosystems.net/occult-xenosystems/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180106084441/http://www.xenosystems.net/occult-xenosystems/|archive-date=6 January 2018}} 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, have increasingly influenced militant neo-fascist and neo-Nazi insurgent groups associated with right-wing extremist and White supremacist international networks, most notably the Iron March forum.

• Accelerating Change
• Christian Identity - Revolutionary violence
• Ecofascism - Association with violence
• Ethnic conflict
• Futures studies
• {{annotated link|Great Acceleration}}
• {{annotated link|Non-simultaneity}}
• {{annotated link|Speculative realism}}
• {{annotated link|Strategy of tension}}
• {{annotated link|Terrorgram}}
• {{annotated link|Time–space compression}}

{{Reflist}}

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