Accelerationism: the obscure idea inspiring white supremacist killers around the world

[Dennis Donovan]

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/11/11/20882005/accelerationism-white-supremacy-christchurch

How a techno-capitalist philosophy morphed into a justification for murder.

By Zack Beauchamp Updated Nov 18, 2019, 9:15am EST

Blaze Bernstein, age 19 at the time of his murder, loved to cook.

Before he traveled back to his home in California for the 2017-’18 winter break, the University of Pennsylvania sophomore had been elected managing editor of a campus cooking publication called Penn Appétit. It’s a position he ended up never filling.

On the morning of January 2, his parents noticed that he’d left their house in the Orange County community of Foothill Ranch and tried to contact him. When he didn’t respond, they checked his Snapchat account and found messages between their son and Sam Woodward, a former high school classmate. The two had planned to hang out at a local park.

Bernstein, who was gay and Jewish, texted friends that he and Woodward were meeting for a sexual encounter. Less than a week later, investigators discovered Bernstein’s body in the park, hidden by a tree branch and a mound of dirt. He had been stabbed 19 times in the neck.

Authorities quickly identified Woodward as a suspect and found Bernstein’s blood in his car and on a knife in his possession. They learned that Woodward was a member of Atomwaffen Division — one of the most extreme neo-Nazi groups in the country. He was arrested; he pleaded not guilty and is still awaiting trial.

The local Jewish community center celebrated Bernstein’s memory by naming its cooking school in his honor. Atomwaffen celebrated Woodward by making T-shirts emblazoned with his mugshot.

</snip>

More at link...

[Princess Turandot]

1. Accelerationism...

From the article:

These killings were often linked to the alt-right, described as an outgrowth of the movement’s rise in the Trump era. But many of these suspected killers, from Atomwaffen thugs to the New Zealand mosque shooter to the Poway synagogue attacker, are more tightly connected to a newer and more radical white supremacist ideology, one that dismisses the alt-right as cowards unwilling to take matters into their own hands.

It’s called “accelerationism,” and it rests on the idea that Western governments are irreparably corrupt. As a result, the best thing white supremacists can do is accelerate their demise by sowing chaos and creating political tension. Accelerationist ideas have been cited in mass shooters’ manifestos — explicitly, in the case of the New Zealand killer — and are frequently referenced in white supremacist web forums and chat rooms.

Accelerationists reject any effort to seize political power through the ballot box, dismissing the alt-right’s attempts to engage in mass politics as pointless. If one votes, one should vote for the most extreme candidate, left or right, to intensify points of political and social conflict within Western societies. Their preferred tactic for heightening these contradictions, however, is not voting, but violence — attacking racial minorities and Jews as a way of bringing us closer to a race war, and using firearms to spark divisive fights over gun control. The ultimate goal is to collapse the government itself; they hope for a white-dominated future after that.

It's particularly awful that the young man referenced in the article was murdered by someone who actually knew him and presumably planned to do so.

[Recursion]

2. Accelerationism was Charles Manson's thing, wasn't it?

They wanted to spark the racial holy war or whatever while white people still had a demographic advantage?

Also, man, the irony of these two being named "Woodward" and "Bernstein".

[Dennis Donovan]

3. I missed that!

[GeorgeGist]

4. Today's crackpots ...

remind me of yesterday's crackpots.

[Johnny2X2X]

5. Good read

It's a threat that I believe could wear itself out, but only if law enforcement is proactive. Trump inspires much of this violence, but I think the influence of Russian instigators is understated. Russian propaganda is an absolute key to this movement's growth in the US.

There's some truly sick people in this movement, they all need to be exposed.

[appalachiablue]

6. With this growing danger, some MSM focuses on Antifa?

>"Though violence is celebrated as the preeminent tactic, they’re willing to endorse non-violent means as well. Accelerationists have proposed distributing flyers for racist rallies alongside ones for a counter-rally, to stoke social division and create conflict.

They suggest you should always vote for the most radical candidate in any election, regardless of their position on the political spectrum, to undermine the system’s coherence.

One poster I saw even heralded the rise of Bernie Sanders, a Jewish socialist, on the grounds that his proposed expansions of the welfare state would bankrupt the US government and thus undermine its grip on power.

>In their view, any sort of increase in social tension is good as long as it accelerates us toward system collapse — and individuals have an obligation to do what they can to hasten us along this path. Even, or more precisely, especially committing murder.

“I would be willing,” as one Fascist Forge contributor put it, “to use all resources possible for accelerationism.”

[flying_wahini]

7. They are mad &craxy and will stop at nothing to become important to their cause.

They are the American Taliban.