Newswire: 6/11/2020
- Why were some of the people who protested stay-at-home orders wearing Hawaiian shirts? As incongruous as it seems, the shirts have become a symbol of the extreme right and of belief in “accelerationism,” a radical ideology that encourages any action that will hasten the breakdown of the political and social order. (The Economist)
- NH: Once upon a time, the ideological dividing line in western societies was simple. On the one hand, you had liberals, whose pursuit of greater justice or equality led them to push for somewhat faster or broader improvements of the existing social order. On the other hand, you had conservatives, whose satisfaction with the status quo led them to favor restraining the pace of change in favor of what we already have.
- Ah, those were simpler times! In recent decades, both the generic liberal and the conservative positions have been weakened by the emergence of extremists (mostly over age 35: thanks, all you Boomers and Xers) who want nothing less than a complete and utter break from the current social order.
- On the left, we see dissatisfaction with anything short of a post-capitalist or even (for the hard greeners) post-industrial world. On the right, we see equal impatience with anything that doesn't return us to some sort of hierarchical pre-modern world. Both schools are not just pessimistic but profoundly apocalyptic about our current social trajectory. Both are bitterly hostile to the "elites" whom they believe are paid to brainwash the rest of us. And neither have anything good to say about modernity or about democratic liberalism (at least the way we currently experience it or practice it).
- Why has this extremism arisen? This is a difficult question. Let me just mention, among generational drivers, a growing impatience with any real-world "system" or "authority" that restricts the will of the individual. The spreading influence of cultural gnosticism, the belief that the natural universe is itself intrinsically hostile to the human spirit. (See "Conservatives Turn on Big Tech.") And the rise of conspiracy thinking about hostile classes that want to enslave the rest of us. (See "Are Americans Losing Their Minds?")
- One distinctive trait of this apocalyptic outlook is the doctrine that, if current trends are leading to disaster and if a better world lies beyond that disaster, it may actually be a good idea to help "accelerate" current trends--hateful as they are--so we all get their faster. Hence the term "accelerationism."
- Karl Marx may have been the first "accelerationist" on the left, since he advocating speeding up the progress of capitalism, oppressive as it was, so that it would collapse all the sooner under the weight of its own contradictions. (To be sure, history proved him wrong: The first "workers' revolution" came to one of the most backward economies on earth.) Friedrich Nietzsche has been called the first "accelerationist" on the right, since he famously urged that "the leveling process of European man is the great process which should not be checked: one should even accelerate it..." History-ending theories about technological evolution--for example, Raymond Kurweil's singularity thesis--have been borrowed by accelerationists on both the left and the right.
- Today, on the left, evidence of accelerationism may be seen in the surprising share of Bernie Sanders supporters in 2016 who later voted for Donald Trump in the general election. (See "Did Berniacs Push Donald Trump Over the Top?") Or in antifa's ready resort to violence during demonstrations to provoke the other side to retaliate. "It's going down," is the antifa battle cry.
- But, as the Economist story points out, the most striking rise in accelerationism has been happening on the right. These are the alt-right reactionaries, white supremacists among them, who welcome violence and disorder so long as it pushes history way forward--or in their case, way backward. As with all such groups, they like to speak in code. So what's with the Hawaiian shirts underneath their gun slings? That stands for the "big luau," celebrating pig ("police") roasts. It also stands for "boogaloo," a pop culture reference for a repeat performance or sequel. What performance do they want to see repeated? The Civil War.
- Commenting on their recent appearance at anti-shutdown rallies, the article's explanation is worth quoting in full: "The shirt-wearers are usually adherents of accelerationism, a strange marriage of Marxism and neo-Nazism which holds that the contradictions of the economic and political order will cause it to collapse. From the ruins, a nation built on blood and soil will arise. They see the virus both as proof of accelerationism’s truth and an excellent opportunity to hasten the system’s demise."
- Last weekend, an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll found that 80% of Americans agreed that "things in this country are out of control." Only 15% said "under control" and other 3% said "some of both." As often happens, the American public has it about right.
