From the Capitol riots to the current murder trial of teenage extremist Kyle Rittenhouse I’m sure you feel an uneasy connection between the frequency and scale of right-wing terror.

You’re not wrong. Like the villain in a Scooby Doo episode, once you pull back the mask on these attacks you find one driving force, accelerationism.

Accelerationism, in far right terms, is a set of tactics for stressing the systems of society until they break and in the social media era it’s become the preferred method for destroying modern civilization. 

To talk about accelerationism we need start with Nick Land, former professor at University of Warwick and current fringe lunatic living in exile. Before he was shunned out of society and started living a lifestyle that makes John McAfee look well-adjusted, Land was developing theories around how capitalism could potentially unravel if the political forces which kept it in check were rendered ineffective. He famously called politics, “the last great sentimental indulgence of mankind.”

Inspired by a fictional faction called “accelerationists” from the 1960s sci-fi novel Lord of Light, he advocated for unbridled technological advancement to disrupt political systems while stressing capitalist markets to the breaking point.

“In our politically febrile times, the impatient, intemperate, possibly revolutionary ideas of accelerationism feel relevant, or at least intriguing, as never before.”

Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

In his later articles he advocates explicitly for capitalism to give way to a new kind of system… a sort of oligarchy ruled by technologist billionaires operating in a lawless entropic hell of hyper-competition with no regard for human rights.

This idea, a techno-authoritarianism, as you can imagine, is very alluring to certain people like Trump backer and silicon valley libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel. But how could an economic theory which centers billionaire technocrats be responsible for so many populist uprisings around the world? That’s where things become interesting. It should be said that Land’s last teaching position ended in 2017 when the New Centre for Research & Practice dismissed him over bigoted tweets… so if we pretend there isn’t a racist component to this we’d be fooling ourselves. 

“We all live in an operating system set up by the accelerating triad of war, capitalism and emergent AI,” says Steve Goodman, a British accelerationist who has even smuggled its self-consciously dramatic ideas into dance music, via an acclaimed record label, Hyperdub. “Like it or not,” argues Steven Shaviro, an American observer of accelerationism, in his 2015 book on the movement, No Speed Limit, “we are all accelerationists now.”

 

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In 1978, infamous white nationalist leader William Luther Pierce published his book The Turner Diaries, which serves as a foundational text for modern fascism. The book describes societal collapse and the emergence of a new social hierarchy where militia movement neo-nazis sit firmly at the top of the food chain. How does it claim this will be achieved? Through a network of decentralized small cell terror groups whose attacks put direct pressure on the existing society to the point where either the government reacts with overreaches leading to mass revolt or the government appears impotent and rampant civil unrest forces every day people to look elsewhere for solutions.

The FBI says domestic terrorism and violent extremism are “metastasizing” in the U.S.

Streaming now on @paramountplus, @LaurieSegall speaks with a man who says he was part of an “accelerationist” group that espoused white supremacy and mass violence. https://t.co/i2zIAZJoB3 pic.twitter.com/L5sTjYVPQF

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) March 8, 2021

Either scenario is a win / win for the overall movement because, they assume, in such a time of crisis people will turn to them ⁠—  well-armed doomsday-prepper demagogues. They fantasize about women, and some necessary men, begging them for shelter, security, and access to their vast supply of Alex Jones-brand protein powder. Naturally, the “soy-boy” leftist urbanites will be picked off by violent racial groups and eventually starve in the rotting husk of their cities when the trucks stop driving in food from the heartland. This, of course, is naive wish-fulfillment, but if you’re an accelerationist you see this as an opportunity.

The Turner Diaries is basically a playbook for proponents of accelerationism to incite disparate hyper-local groups and lone wolves to action. The real end game is that key power players will have positioned themselves in such a way that they hope to control the splintered infrastructure of the fallen state. It’s a dangerous grift, but it’s working. Don’t believe me? If these really are organic grassroots revolutions, why were leaders of the Proud Boys, founded by digital media mogul Gavin Mcinnes (Vice), photographed celebrating with political power-broker Roger Stone right after his pardon? 

Accelerationists recruit not by asking people to follow a group, a specific ideology, or charismatic leader. The elegant cynicism of accelerationism is that it doesn’t matter what the societal issue might be as long as it has the potential for violence and fits some vague connective tissue to white supremacy. An accelerationist doesn’t build a movement, they inject themselves into one like a parasite. A good example of this was how Steve Bannon, one of the most visible accelerationist actors, championed the gamergate controversy very soon after its inception, helping to infuse violent political rhetoric about the broader culture into this very niche complaint. We see this pattern repeat around sovereign citizens, QAnon, blue lives matter, incels, terfs, anti-vaxers, the Jewish question, and any fringe group with the potential to cause chaos. Through memes and coded language accelerationists can connect the dots from almost any grievance to their own political enemies and slowly get people acclimated to violence as the only solution. 

An accelerationist looks for powder kegs and throws matches at them, directing the explosive energy toward strategic goals. This is illustrated by the hodgepodge of ideological groups who converged for the January 6th Insurrection.

They all showed up, ready for violence, believing that whatever their pet outrage issue might be, the same specific politicians are behind it. One person might think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is satanic pedophile, another might think she’s a radical feminist wanting to castrate all men, others might think she’s a secret communist selling the US to China… she, and other focal points of accelerationist propaganda, are whatever they need to be to incite the mob. This is why you can’t keep up with all the Southern Poverty Law Center designated hate groups you hear on the news.

Boogaloo boys, proud boys, 3% militia, latinos4trump, QAnon, Atomwaffen, and the seemingly endless stream of other factions are just wind-up toys marching in a single direction set by a handful of nihilistic ultra rich mad men. Once one group outlasts their utility a new one is right there to take its place in the news cycle. 

Admittedly, this all sounds very conspiratorial and without solid evidence directly naming people who are using these accelerationist methodologies to steer widespread violence you could make the argument that accelerationism doesn’t exist.

ALL HATE GROUPS HAVE BELIEFS OR PRACTICES THAT ATTACK OR MALIGN AN ENTIRE CLASS OF PEOPLE, TYPICALLY FOR THEIR IMMUTABLE CHARACTERISTICS.

The Southern Poverty Law Center

That’s the point. It’s the “blockchain” of terrorism. This is a feature, not a bug. The more organic the movement feels, the more momentum it has. That said, it’s almost embarrassing how transparent it is to see which rich conservative trolls are using online spaces to connect with and harness extremists as tools in an accelerationist framework.

VOX: Blaze Bernstein, age 19 at the time of his murder, loved to cook. Before he traveled back to his home in California for the 2017-’18 winter break, the University of Pennsylvania sophomore had been elected managing editor of a campus cooking publication called Penn Appétit. It’s a position he ended up never filling. On the morning of January 2, his parents noticed that he’d left their house in the Orange County community of Foothill Ranch and tried to contact him. When he didn’t respond, they checked his Snapchat account and found messages between their son and Sam Woodward, a former high school classmate. The two had planned to hang out at a local park. Bernstein, who was gay and Jewish, texted friends that he and Woodward were meeting for a sexual encounter. Less than a week later, investigators discovered Bernstein’s body in the park, hidden by a tree branch and a mound of dirt. He had been stabbed 19 times in the neck. Authorities quickly identified Woodward as a suspect and found Bernstein’s blood in his car and on a knife in his possession. They learned that Woodward was a member of Atomwaffen Division — one of the most extreme neo-Nazi groups in the country. He was arrested; he pleaded not guilty and is still awaiting trial.

Tech businessman Jim Watkins, operating out of the Philippines, purchasing controversial forum 8chan shortly before the QAnon conspiracy began on the platform? Steve Bannon making a fortune using overseas labor to “mine” and resell virtual gold in the MMO game World of Warcraft before promoting a video game-centric hate movement? Accelerationism, as a doctrine, is thriving in the libertarian tech sphere.

As apocalyptic as this may be, there are tactics that can be employed to fight back. Alongside traditional deradicalization strategies, which bring individuals out of dangerous subcultures there’s a new style of mass-deradicalization happening on YouTube and Twitch. Two of the largest streamers who compete with the alt-right for younger audience share are Hasan Piker and Vaush.

LOL https://t.co/NKYBrmDcEN

— Vaush (@VaushV) November 21, 2021

Vaush, a queer streamer from Los Angeles, who puts his anti-fascist message front and center to hundreds of thousands of Zoomers, even makes a point to publicly praise content creators who’ve abandoned far right ideologies. 

READ: The Role of Video Games and Online Platforms in Terrorist Radicalization and Recruitment

ISIS uses ‘GTA 5’ in a new teen recruitment video.

Another strategy for combating accelerationism is by exploiting the patchwork nature of far-right coalitions. Most of these disconnected groups are built upon conspiracy theories and that means that we could potentially set a kind of back-fire against them. If you can make the argument that they’ve been manipulated by a greater conspiracy, there’s a chance that the unholy Voltron of fringe movements might lose some cohesion.

READ: Violent Extremism in America Interviews with Former Extremists and Their Families on Radicalization and Deradicalization

We’re already seeing this in message boards where militia movements are shunning Q supporters and saying that anyone following Q is the victim of an FBI PsyOps. These fissures need to be exploited when they appear. Most think pieces on January 6th focus on how we could deradicalize individual people, but I’m more pragmatic than that. I think a more attainable next step is focusing energy on building wedge issues within these extremist alliances. We might not be able to turn them against each other, but we could “decelerate” the frequency of right-wing civil unrest by having them question the motives of their accomplices.

READ: LEAKED DATA SHOWS EPIK REGISTERED SITE ASSOCIATED WITH NEO-NAZI TERROR

The last and most powerful tool is by using the mechanisms of our society while they still function, even if they’re imperfect. Make sure to vote. Make sure to participate in local or regional community business. Make yourself present in the process. The more people who are engaged and understand how government works, the harder it is to break those systems. Our society may not be perfect, but as we learn with every new anti-democratic headline, there are far greater dangers waiting to replace it.

Dekker Dreyer is #GAYNRD’s Arts & Technology editor and creator of Phantom Astronaut. He lives in Los Angeles.