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In an effort to continue “pulling the string” on the recent OODA Network Member Meeting discussion of domestic political extremism and violence with Brian Jenkins, we took a look at the research product of and community of practice represented by the Accelerationism Research Consortium (ARC):
We are excited to announce the formation of the Accelerationism Research Consortium, a brand-new collaborative initiative to bring empirical, in-depth research and creative solutions to the study of insurrectionary accelerationism.
— Accelerationism Research Consortium (@TheARConsortium) December 22, 2021
ARC's operations are supervised by a steering committee composed of Chief of Staff @meghaneconroy, Managing Director @mattkriner, Director of Policy Research @Jon_Lewis27, Director of Technical Research @AlexBNewhouse, and Director of Innovation and Outreach @deebashadnia.
— Accelerationism Research Consortium (@TheARConsortium) December 22, 2021
Launched in December 2021, the Accelerationism Research Consortium (ARC) is “dedicated to a collaborative, empirical approach to understanding and addressing the threat of accelerationism to democratic societies, by cultivating a cross-sector and cross-discipline alliance centered around thought leadership, knowledge sharing, and passing the mic to previously undervalued voices.” (1)
By Matthew Kriner on behalf of the ARC Steering Committee
In the past two decades, the militant accelerationism movement has been responsible for dozens of terrorist attacks worldwide. Despite the rapid growth of this phenomenon, no definitional consensus exists which can situate and contextualize militant accelerationism today. This gap has complicated efforts to craft effective policy responses and leverage proper law enforcement mechanisms and has limited the efficacy of research streams seeking to explore this complex problem set.
In this article, we offer a straightforward, approachable definition of militant accelerationism and explain why that definition requires a network-based analytical model. This definition serves as the foundation upon which future research can accurately take into consideration the nuances of militant accelerationism’s digital presence, network structure, terroristic manifestations, ideological origins, and more.
In the past two decades, the militant accelerationism movement has been responsible for dozens of terrorist attacks worldwide. Despite the rapid growth of this phenomenon, no definitional consensus exists which can situate and contextualize militant accelerationism today. This gap has complicated efforts to craft effective policy responses and leverage proper law enforcement mechanisms and has limited the efficacy of research streams seeking to explore this complex problem set. In this article, we offer a straightforward, approachable definition of militant accelerationism and explain why that definition requires a network-based analytical model. This definition serves as the foundation upon which future research can accurately take into consideration the nuances of militant accelerationism’s digital presence, network structure, terroristic manifestations, ideological origins, and more.
Accelerationism as a philosophical and social concept is most broadly understood to be a recognition that modernity, liberalism, and capitalism’s inherent flaws are the source of their own inevitable and accelerating demise. Militant accelerationism, however, embraces political violence and/or terrorism in pursuit of the destruction of the physical manifestations of these concepts. The use of the term militant accelerationism is not arbitrary, as individuals have begun self-identifying as such in recent years. While militant accelerationism retains a similar critique of capitalism’s inherent contradictions with liberalism as other philosophical forms of accelerationism – such as the technology-centric visions of Nick Land and the anti-colonial liberationist theories of left-accelerationists – adherents of militant accelerationism believe they can and should expedite the collapse of capitalist and liberal civilization. To these actors, their role is not to sit and wait for some accelerating convergence of technology and humanity, or for liberalism and capitalism to collapse under their own weight. Instead, adherents see a militant path as the only viable option for achieving social rejuvenation. Based on this understanding of militant accelerationism, we offer a basic definition:
Militant accelerationism is a set of tactics and strategies designed to put pressure on and exacerbate latent social divisions, often through violence, thus hastening societal collapse.
Over time, this set of tactics and strategies grew to include various ideological currents, the most dominant of which is neofascism. Individuals in this milieu that embraced neofascist accelerationism soon coalesced into an in-group identity that acknowledged their adherence to social collapse and in doing so built ideological structures around their shared embrace of militant accelerationism’s tactics and strategies (e.g., SIEGE culture). Today, a dualistic dynamic exists with respect to militant accelerationism wherein an explicit self-identification as accelerationist (e.g., Atomwaffen Division) exists alongside an implicit adherence to the tactics and strategies without a strict identification as accelerationist (e.g., Boogaloo).
ARC’s Network-Centric Framework
Militant accelerationism is a fractal, diverse movement that is decentralized but deeply interconnected. In many respects, it is the best example of emerging post-group, post-organizational dynamics within violent extremism more broadly. Actors within this landscape are increasingly engaged in loose coalitions that do not always fall into neat categories based on membership within a hierarchical group. Instead, militant accelerationist actors embrace a strategic organizing approach of collapse, reshuffle, and re-emergence – a tactic that numerous transnational cells which adopted the Atomwaffen, Base, Feuerkrieg, or other skull mask brands, displayed without any meaningful structural links between them and the original core network of organizers.
As such, at ARC, we use an analytical approach that emphasizes the significance of networks rather than groups. This analytical framework provides a stronger understanding of the organizing dynamics exhibited by accelerationist actors today, wherein they operate as something more nebulous than discrete organizations. By conceptualizing ‘groups’ like Atomwaffen as brands that can be adopted and dropped for expediency, researchers, practitioners and law enforcement can develop more accurate assessments of movement dynamics, mobilization, radicalization pathways, and more.
A historical precedent exists for examining neofascist terrorism (the dominant strain of militant accelerationism today) through a network-based approach in post-WWII Italy, a period of severe civil unrest known as the Years of Lead. Here, the similarities to today’s neofascist accelerationism are stark. Far-right neofascist groups, such as the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR), leveraged armed spontaneity or stragismo (terrorist bombing campaigns)1 with the intention of instigating a collapse of the government and thus paving the way for a neofascist assumption of state control. According to historian Franco Ferraresi, armed spontaneity “consisted of a loose collection of overlapping and interacting groups forming for the purpose of a particular action and then disbanding just as quickly, highly violent but impermanent and poorly organized by design.”2
Ferraresi called this phenomenon the “archipelago strategy,” and illustrated how it is centered on “the notion of a ‘scattered attack’ against the system, one that ostensibly rejected the traditional conspiratorial model of the Right based on a double (covert and open) level of action.”3 This strategy resonates significantly with two pillars of far-right violent tactics that have found a home in militant accelerationism’s ideological pantheon: Louis Beams’ leaderless resistance and James Mason’s anti-systems views enshrined in SIEGE.
Figure 3. A visualization of the archipelago strategy.
Mobilizing Concepts
Today’s militant accelerationists are opportunists, seeking to leverage extremists of all stripes – including but not limited to neo-Nazis, neofascists, fundamentalist Christians, anarchists, Black liberationists, anti-government extremists, ethno-nationalists, eco-radicals, jihadists, and even cultists. While success in each targeted milieu has varied significantly, adherents of militant accelerationism believe that such a wide-reaching and inclusive framework of recruitment and engagement will provide the best chances for instigating a runaway feedback loop of social conflict aimed at collapsing American and Western liberal democracy. In this respect, the short-term goal of collapsing liberal democratic societies is more important than a longer-term ideologically-derived outcome, such as administering a post-democracy government.
Despite a diversity of actors in this particular landscape, those who adopt militant accelerationist tactics and strategies are often motivated by the same set of grievance narratives and target outgroups: Jewish people, liberal democracy, globalism, capitalism, and the United States. At the same time, the militant accelerationist landscape contains varied worldviews that are seemingly at odds with one another. To understand how these divergent ideologies can coexist in the same spaces, we look to the “mobilizing concepts” framework offered by Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Dr. Brian Hughes. Miller-Idriss and Hughes posit that mobilizing concepts provides diverse and even conflicting ideologies a shared vessel or mechanism by which to advance support around a set of abstract virtues or beliefs that cut across traditional ideological boundaries.
Because mobilizing concepts can address a “wide range of ideological frames or justifications” and build “cross-ideological support around a concept, rather than an ideology” it presents a stronger model for finding an analytical through-line in the diverse and obscured scope of activity in the militant accelerationism landscape. Like group versus brand, mobilizing concepts better positions the field in responding to the dynamics presented by actors that no longer adhere to “traditional ideological frameworks.”
Figure 5. Telegram post illustrating how some neofascists view militant accelerationism (2)
For the complete article, see An Introduction to Militant Accelerationism.
References:
Anna Cento Bull, “Italian Neofascism: The Strategy of Tension and the Politics of Nonreconciliation,” Berghahn Books, 2012.
Franco Ferraresi, “Threats to Democracy: The Radical Right in Italy After the War,” Princeton University Press, 1996, pg. 139.
Franco Ferraresi, “Threats to Democracy: The Radical Right in Italy After the War,” Princeton University Press, 1996, pg. 161; see also, Michael Loadenthal, “The Politics of Attack: Communiqués and Insurrectionary Violence,” Manchester University Press, 2017.
This is not an exhaustive list of targets, but rather represents a particularly common selection.
JM Berger, “Extremism,” MIT Press 2018, pg. 26.
Benjamin Teitelbaum, “War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right,” Harper Collins, 2020; and Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, “Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity,” NYU Press, 2003.
Teitelbaum, 2020.
Further OODA Loop Research and Analysis on Domestic Political Extremism.
The Accelerationism Threat Assessment and Research Initiative | Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey – Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC) “is home to one of the first dedicated research initiatives to the study of militant accelerationism, called the Accelerationism Threat Assessment and Research Initiative. Led by Senior Research Scholar Matt Kriner, this initiative is at the cutting edge of mixed-methods analysis for understanding, mitigating, and preventing accelerationist violence.”
It should go without saying that tracking threats are critical to inform your actions. This includes reading our OODA Daily Pulse, which will give you insights into the nature of the threat and risks to business operations.
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About the Author
Daniel Pereira is research director at OODA. He is a foresight strategist, creative technologist, and an information communication technology (ICT) and digital media researcher with 20+ years of experience directing public/private partnerships and strategic innovation initiatives.
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence