Where It Came From and Why It's In Such a Hurry
Origins of Accelerationism
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- Accelerationism, a philosophy originating from Nick Land, advocates for intensifying capitalism’s own mechanisms until it collapses, leading to varied political interpretations from both left- and right-wing groups.
- Right-wing Accelerationists aim to weaponize technology, particularly AI, to break capitalism’s limits and align with neo-reactionary movements, while left-wing Accelerationists seek to harness capitalism as a springboard toward a post-capitalist future, focusing on egalitarian and environmental concerns.
- Nick Land, through the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), merged philosophy with cybernetics, science fiction, and pop culture, envisioning a future where technology surpasses human control, inspiring both radical political movements and artistic communities.
- The ideology draws from Marx, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Deleuze & Guattari, incorporating theories on capitalism’s self-destruction, radical self-overcoming, dialectics, and schizoanalysis to justify technological and societal acceleration.
- Accelerationism, despite being relatively obscure, has influenced underground extremist movements and broader technological discourse, raising urgent questions about humanity’s role in shaping the future amidst rapidly evolving technology.
Not a lot of people know about the philosophy radicalizing terrorists, or where it came from. We should though. Because hate groups around the world are getting ready to make those ideas your problem.
The sentiments for Accelerationism, fathered by Nick Land, who we'll get into shortly, come from a place of resentment toward capitalism. But not any power to overcome it. Resistance is futile because there's no defeating the behemoth ideology ingrown into the global infrastructure. Reform is a cute joke. We've been trying something along those lines for decades while bailouts, wage disparity from corporate sales, and rising costs make it clear we can't reform it. So Accelerationism prescribes we just go through it. Stress test the shit out of capitalism until it collapses. Speed up capitalism's own mechanisms to the point of dysfunction and implosion particularly with the use of technology.
Naturally the notion is vague enough that a variety of political alignments have adopted it. Meaning there's more than one radical path to becoming an Accelerationist.
I.
Right-wing Accelerationists are a very special kind of short bus thinkers. By weaponizing techno-capitalism they seek to break the ceiling on capitalism. Their fascination with technology is mostly around AI. According to some far-right racists Dr. William Allchort surveyed, his sentiment analysis reveals the 4 main conversations they have around AI are that they believe it's biased against the right, a part of a anti-semitic conspiracy theory, or--
Sorry, I had to laugh. Or strategies to break the limits of AI, or malicious use of AI. Which is such a brutally hilarious combination. They have conspiracy theories about their perceived enemy using AI against them, when they are actually doing that. Talk about an IMAX projection. Mental gymnastics that would make Simone Biles blush.
Of course right-wing Accelerationism fits like a glove around Dark Enlightenment or neo-reactionary (NRx) movement fathered by Land's close friend Curtis Yarvin. Right-wing Accelerationism and Dark Enlightenment align along shared values like techno monarchism, anti-democracy, and anti-egalitarianism. I've written more on Dark Enlightenment by Land's friend which you can read more about here:
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Left-wing Accelerationism, on the other hand, comes from a place of dissatisfaction with the strategies of leftists that came before them. Now they're reenvisioning capitalism, not as an obstacle to be overcome, but as a springboard to launch into a post-capitalist scenario.
They're using Accelerationism to outpace certain crises like global climate change, financial crisis caused by neoliberalism, and the privatization of public life. And unlike their right-wing counterparts they don't seek to weaponize AI. They're rather wary of the impacts of AI and automation on the workforce. However, they're not completely opposed to technology either. They just take a more conscientious approach to assuring their use of tech takes an egalitarian and democratic role that serves human-centric ends.
Both ends of the spectrum matter because technology is evolving faster than we can keep up with, and as a society we haven't made up our mind about the role of emergent technologies we don't fully understand. Advancements in AI and transhumanist biotech like brain cells used as computational circuitry are man made horrors beyond our comprehension.
Those technologies are developing at exponential rates that outpace the normative sensibilities of legislators to regulate it. Accelerationism largely concerns itself with the role of technology in the future of our society. And Accelerationists happen to have been spending a lot of time thinking about it while the rest of society waits to see what will become of these advancements. Maybe we should think about this role of technology as a society more often.
II.
The philosophy was fathered by Nick Land from Warwick University in the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU). A think tank of conservative-minded tech-focused academics. Land was an eccentric known for screaming into the microphone while blasting electronic jungle music during CCRU's gatherings. Being the philosophy's father, he's also an example of its far-right wing. His ideas are anti-humanist and pro-capital putting profits before people while preaching the inevitability of capital and technology as an autonomous force that will exceed humanity on its own. I like nuts. But not this nut.
The CCRU was a short-lived movement that blended interdisciplinary notions like post-structuralism, cybernetics, science fiction, and rave culture. With Land's leadership the unit would give rise to notions like "hyperstition," or self-fulfilling prophecies born from the cyber space collective belief of the past that affect the real world in the future. Their unique blend of pop culture aesthetics and futuristic messaging made it popular among artists, writers, and producers.
Which I can't argue with. His stuff is really trippy and lends itself well to memetic culture. Take his 1995 essay, Meltdown, where he paints a sensational picture of a techno takeover of the planet. Cloning, genetic modification, and cybernetic enhancement evolve technology into something that doesn't even need human participation to function anymore. That as markets and machines become more intelligent supply and demand can be created without human involved economics at a rate that leave regulators in the dust. The entropic half-life of the biological era is accelerated by something like a technossaurus period. Okay, I made that word up to paraphrase him, but that's what he sounds like. And Land envisions a future where humanity doesn't survive the immanent ascent of autonomous technology to a singularity. A writer's wet dream.
But for those of us who aren't trying to come up with next week's best-selling sci-fi, it's a wee bit dangerous. Accelerationism has been embraced by a wide variety of neo-Nazi groups, like Atomwaffen Division and The Base, whose radical values align with the philosophy. They share a vision of an irredeemable society they seek to violently destabilize in order to bring about it's collapse. But that's a story for another article, because there's a lot more that goes into the origins of Accelerationism.
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III.
Although Nick Land brought us Accelerationism through the CCRU at Warwick University, he credits a few historical thinkers for laying the foundation. You wouldn't expect a right-wing figure to be inspired by Karl Marx, but if there's one thing the left and right wings of Accelerationism have in common it's their resentment toward capitalism.
Land liked the Marxist notion that capitalism dug its own grave with the proletariat (or the working class) through unending worker exploitation. That capitalism sort of brings about its own demise through the way it treats its servants. Capitalism through its ceaseless expansion would lay the weight of its own growth on the backs of those who were no longer willing to carry it. A sort of Accelerationist resonance. Marx's work on capitalism as self-destructive, in a way that could be sped up, was a sort of proto-Accelerationist notion that would become a cornerstone to Land's outlook.
Friedrich Nietzsche isn't one of my favorite thinkers, but it makes a lot of sense why he's on Land's heavy repeat. One of his staples to history was Nietzsche's, Beyond Good and Evil, which challenged traditional morality through radical self-overcoming; or what he liked to call "selbstüberwindung". He phrased morality from the critical perspective of the slave-morality vs. master-morality.
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Arguing that Christianity represented a resentment toward non-Christian hegemony, but hiding that resentment due to an inability to overcome its opponent while claiming higher morality, is that controversial stuff that puts Nietzsche on the top shelf for Land. Because they both align on the idea that social norms need to be dismantled to make space for new values foreign to the current mainstream. His popular notion of Übermenschs translating to "overmans" is about transcending the normative moral hegemony of Christianity to enable self-actualization of the individual. Which prefigures Land's ambition to the push the envelope to post-humanist or anti-humanist levels.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Dialectics also built the road Land's philosophy would run on. Hegel's dialectics are a little tricky and shouldn't be subject to reductionism, but it can be summarized as a process of thesis-antithesis-synthesis in the context of the evolution of ideas and society over time. For example, a society may have preexisting social norms (thesis), which gives rise to its opposition that wants to change those norm (antithesis), and over time society integrates new values concurrently with the old ones (synthesis). Or at least it tries to. The modern culture wars might argue about how well the synthesis part goes. Marx would pick up Hegel's work and introduce material conditions which brings us to the notion that radical social change can arise from such dialectics. Which is a combination that foreshadows the process of radical change Accelerationism would call for.
IV.
Deleuze and Guattari are also on the roster, and these guys start to bring some of the catchy modern vocabulary. Like schizoanalysis, for example. Where psychoanalysis is the study of the individual's processes, schizoanalysis is the study of the various processes that flow through a society. Deleuze and Guattari referred to capital, ideas, technology, and people moving through society flows. Schizoanalysis is the mode of acceleration through that system rerouting around what they called the break-flows, or obstacles to the flows.
Where traditional capitalism is limited by its self-imposed boundaries, schizoanalysis finds a way around the breakflows under the assumption that blockages in the flows would lead to a buildup that would adapt and seek new paths through society. Land took this idea and ran with it considering that the break-flows in the system encourage acceleration as the schizoanalysis increasingly finds ways to expand the flows as break-flows arise. Much like the immanent flows of river water that adapt new channels when one is blocked. Deleuze and Guattari would consider schizoanalysis both the diagnosis of capitalism's issues and it's cure.
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Gilles Deleuze was a French philosopher and Felix Guattari was a French psychoanalyst. Although they had excellent careers distinct from one another their collaborative work would be a great inspiration to philosophy history. The CCRU would later take D&G's abstractions as a green light to accelerate capitalisms mechanisms to the breaking point of their stress limits. Schizoanalysis also lends itself well to the Accelerationist tendency to view the world as immanent principalities and powers becometh rather than an ecosystem of individuals. Which helps Land paint his pieta of the singularity.
V.
Nick Land's development of Accelerationism has had a massive impact on the underground terrorism ring around the world, but its origins are often obscure or misunderstood. Still there aren't a lot of people that have even heard of the philosophy. But it does have an impact on the world around us today. Which is why it's worth raising awareness about where these ideas came from, and where they're headed.
Many of Land's ideas take a right-wing position while building on leftist texts which is what makes it neo-reactionary (NRx) proper. However, the left-wing has adopted their own flavor of Accelerationism. Much of Accelerationist identity begins to form the moment you begin to consider the appropriate role of technology in your life. Do you prefer to use AI to get the upper hand over your opponents while viewing the expansion of capital and technology as immanent? You might find yourself fitting in with Nick Land at the CCRU. Do you prefer to use AI to serve egalitarian and pro-environmental ends? You might find yourself at home among the left-wing Accelerationists.
Surprisingly, adoption of Accelerationist views predates the rise of the popular OpenAI tool, ChatGPT. Perhaps the LLM is even an example of hyperstitious manifestation. But one thing's certain. There's a lot of folks that have been taking a lot of time to consider the ramifications of technologies that many of us haven't even begun to reckon with. Much less our elderly legislative regulators. And it's a discussion that's long overdue before the exponential growth of tech outpaces any conversation we can have about it. The future is on our doorstep. And maybe like the Accelerationists, we should be forming our own views on how that relationship should go before techno futures can outpace our discussion.
