Last week I came across a disturbing CNN.com article with the cheery title “Is the US on the brink of another civil war?” This article covers many frightening aspects of today’s far right and its violence-prone politics — and one of the most disturbing is something I hadn’t yet heard about: the far right’s increasing embrace of fervent ‘accelerationism.’
That’s quite a mouthful, but it’s actually a pretty simple concept. ‘Accelerationism’ refers to the spreading far-right and evangelical belief that we’re in or nearing the ‘end times,’ and that our society is SO corrupt and immoral that it all needs to be torn down and totally replaced ASAP. Plus, it’s the clear duty of true Christians and ‘patriots’ to hasten this process.
Thus, the name ‘accelerationism.’ A growing set of diverse factions within the U.S. (thankfully, still a fairly small minority) wants to deliberately accelerate social and political collapse, so they can then step in and impose their long-desired Christo-fascist society and government.
Of course, they don’t see it as fascist or oppressive — rather, they see it as restoring God’s vision for humanity and the U.S., and doing God’s will.
The trouble is, their version of ‘God’s will’ is White-centric, racist, misogynist, and intolerant. It’s a repressive and regressive ‘vision’ for America — yet it’s becoming absorbed into main-stream thinking and planning on the right and, increasingly, among Republicans in general.
That’s why accelerationism is so dangerous. That’s why we Americans should be worried about it.
Not all sedition is accelerationism — but all accelerationism IS seditious
The short definition of ‘sedition,’ according to Merriam-Webster, is: “incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority.”
When discussing accelerationism, it’s clear that this belief system is all about encouraging the downfall and replacement of our current systems and government — and actively doing everything possible to make this happen, up to and including possible violence.
Thus, it has to be said: accelerationism is a form of sedition. The concept of ‘accelerationism’ fosters outright sedition — as well as ‘patriotic’ social and political violence. It’s not even subtle about it. (For a truly terrifying, in-depth Vox article about it, go here.)
Yet over the past decade — primarily since Trump became our president in 2016 — accelerationism has been increasingly accepted and embraced by the far right, as well as devout Christian ‘end times’ believers.
This is very, very bad news for our society — for it shows that many right-wing or ‘conservative’ elements in our society are coalescing into a potent, informal ‘sedition party’ that’s dedicated to the overthrow of the U.S. and our modern, multi-cultural society.
Free speech may prove to be our undoing
Yet stopping or slowing this movement is proving to be quite difficult, in large part because our ‘free speech’ laws and our vaunted ‘freedom of religion’ give powerful cover to these aspiring seditionists.
Unless they come right out and publicly say “We need you to go out next Friday and BOMB your state capitals,” or openly direct people to go kill Jews at a specific temple, it’s very hard to ‘prove’ sedition. Absent direct, specific instructions or overt incitement to violence, it all gets subsumed under the far-too-lenient blanket of ‘free speech’ or ‘religious freedom.’
And these seditious ‘accelerationists’ KNOW that — and take full advantage of our overly-permissive laws. That’s another reason this movement is so dangerous: they’re quite clever, they’re determined, and they’ve become adept at using our laws against us and outwitting our legal and justice systems.
Plus, they’ve gotten VERY good (they learned from the master, Donald Trump) at inciting anti-government anger and implying that good, ‘patriotic’ Americans should rise up and ‘take back our country’ — violently, if necessary — without ever directly telling them to actually DO IT.
Their seditious intent is crystal clear — but proving it in a court of law is challenging at best, and impossible at worst.
‘Christian’ and far-right accelerationism are now MERGING
The relationship of accelerationism to Christian fundamentalism and American evangelicals is particularly disturbing. Last November I wrote about Christian ‘end times’ beliefs, and briefly examined their inherent desire to hasten and encourage societal collapse — in order, of course, to bring on and hasten ‘the Rapture.’
But since that article came out, I’ve become much more aware of just how powerful this belief system is among American Christians, in particular. And as already noted, I only became aware of the full extent of the accelerationist belief system quite recently.
Scarily, when we put these two dangerous trends together, they reinforce each other’s messages and desired outcomes. Even worse, they amplify each other so that the combined belief system becomes far more potent and influential than the mere sum of its parts.
And this is not hypothetical conjecture: these accelerationist and seditious belief systems are rapidly merging and growing, all across the U.S. Just as bizarre far-right conspiracy theories like Q-Anon have spread and become largely normalized, so is accelerationism spreading, growing, and rapidly getting normalized.
An extremely dangerous sociopolitical precedent and predicament
As a society, we don’t seem to realize it yet — but this is a very ominous and dangerous turn for the far right.
The U.S. is now in an extremely dangerous sociopolitical predicament. We’re caught between a rock and a hard place: with the ‘rock’ being our overly-lenient ‘free speech’ laws and norms, and the ‘hard place’ being rising Christo-fascism and far right sedition.
The way things are going, “something’s gotta give” (to quote a famous movie title) — and with a right-wing Supreme Court in place, and right-wing provocateur Donald Trump again running for president, it looks more and more likely that what’s going to ‘give’ (be undermined/destroyed) is American society and our semi-democracy.
That’s how dangerous and out-of-control our politics have become. And the upcoming November election will undoubtedly upend our society and politics even further — which, unfortunately, will play right into the hands of the Christo-fascists, seditionists, and accelerationists.
At this critical juncture, it seems we can only hope and pray that we’re not already living through the accelerating ‘end times’ of the United States of America.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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