Both left-wing and right-wing proponents of accelerationism wish to bring down the existing liberal and democratic order of society in favour of a totalitarian order. Silicon Valley accelerationists, through their pursuit of advancing technological innovation, particularly in the field of Artificial Intelligence, are being described as ‘Tech-Fascists’ due to their support for authoritarian politics, mass surveillance, artificial intelligence, and transhumanist technologies.

In 1967, American science fiction writer Roger Zelazny published a novel, Lord of Light, in which fictional Earth colonists use high-tech machinery and physical upgrades to become demigods. In the novel, the group of revolutionaries who wanted to take their society ‘to a higher level’ through technology were called the Accelerationists.[1] Although the novel did not gain popularity in Zelazny’s lifetime, critical theorist Benjamin Noys revived the novel’s term ‘Accelerationism’ and used it in his 2010 book The Persistence of the Negative to describe the ideology of the 1970s post-structuralist thinkers Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Jean-François Lyotard. [2]

According to Noys, these post-structuralist thinkers believed in pushing capitalist and technological processes to their extreme and opposed any form of regulation or public restriction on their development. Since then, ‘accelerationism’ has been associated with the socio-political theory of taking capitalist and technological processes to the extreme without supervision or regulation, in line with the left-wing ideology of Deleuze and Guattari.[3]

Left-Wing Accelerationism

Surprisingly, these early accelerationists trace the ideological origins to classical Marxism. Notably, Marx recognised capitalism as a historically revolutionary stage necessary for human development; he even praised it as a progressive force that develops massive productive capacities, but he also argued that capitalism is riddled with internal contradictions. To end the social inequalities and frequent economic downturns caused by capitalism, Marx suggested several strategies to destroy capitalism and usher in a communist order. One of these strategies was to accelerate capitalism’s own processes to generate systemic crises within its incoherent internal dynamics (such as overproduction, alienation and abstraction).

In the context of bringing down capitalism, Marx explicitly argued for unchecked free-market capitalism in an address delivered to the Democratic Association of Brussels in 1848. Thus he said, “The free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, Gentlemen, that I vote in favour of free trade”.[4] Marx discusses the same idea again in the section ‘Fragment of Machines’ in his famous Grundrisse, a series of notebooks published posthumously.[5]

Thus, while Marx viewed automation as a brutal tool of worker exploitation under capitalism, he also maintained that technological advancement through automation is necessary for a post-capitalist society. This probably explains China’s apparent embrace of capitalism, which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) itself states is the ‘first stage of communism’ in its official pronouncements.[6]

Even moderate left accelerationists of our times, like Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams (who co-authored the 2015 book Inventing the Future: Post-Capitalism and a World Without Work),[7] advocate repurposing modern technology, automation, and mass media away from corporate profit motives and towards a post-work, post-scarcity future (and call for universal basic income).[8] They argue that contemporary left-wing politics is ineffective and transient because it is politics of small-scale resistance, as exemplified by protest movements like Occupy Wall Street. Instead, they propose that the Left harness the productive and technological forces of modern capitalism (such as automation) to move beyond its ineffectual politics and align with Marxist strategies for achieving a post-capitalist utopia.[9]

Far-Right Militant Accelerationism

In reaction to left-wing accelerationism, an even more radical and disconcerting trend has developed in the accelerationist movement. Known as right-wing accelerationism, this branch embraces fascist and neo-Nazi ideologies and has now become the most publicly visible form of the accelerationist movement.

In fact, militant accelerationism first grew out of the white supremacist writings of James Mason in the 1980s, which call for the use of violence to engineer societal collapse to demolish the present democratic political order, which is necessary for the creation of White supremacist ethno-states. It argues that modern society cannot be redeemed because of the alleged decadence caused by the principles of liberalism, democracy and multiculturalism. In the collected essays of his book Siege, Mason explicitly calls on his followers to carry out lone-wolf terrorism, infrastructure sabotage, and the total collapse of Western democratic governments to then form White ethnostates.[10]

Over the years, militant accelerationism has spread its tentacles globally and has been found responsible for carrying out deadly terrorist attacks like the Christchurch Mosque Shootings in New Zealand (15 March 2019), the El Paso Walmart Shooting in Texas, USA (3 August 2019), Buffalo Tops Supermarket Shooting in New York (14 May 2022) and Bratislava Tepláreň Bar Shooting in Slovakia (12 October 2022).

Silicon Valley Accelerationists: Anti-Democratic Futurist Vision

However, several researchers, journalists and tech experts allege that right-wing accelerationism is not limited to its militant version. Still, its more insidious tech-oriented version now infests many Silicon Valley corporations, which also seek to replace democratic systems with a form of corporate dictatorship or ‘network states’.

According to research organisations like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Silicon Valley’s economic/technological accelerationism and far-right militant accelerationism share a troubling ideological overlap: a desire to dismantle existing democratic regulations, laws and public institutions.[11] Journalist Gil Durant’s book The Nerd........

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