The No-Human Future
New piece out in Aeon Magazine
“It surfaces in terrorism reports and tech presentations, in the manifestos of mass shooters and the public declarations of billionaires. What is ‘accelerationism’? Over the past decade, especially the past few years, this term has migrated from the dark corners of the internet into mainstream politics and culture — and in the process has split into two dominant forms that could not be more contradictory. One group of accelerationists dreams of burning down the world and building a white ethnostate from the ashes. The other dreams of new technologies lifting humanity towards something close to paradise. Both have it wrong. Accelerationism stretches across an abyss. Will we look down?
In August 2024, ASIO, the national security agency of Australia, raised its terrorism threat level from ‘possible’ to ‘probable’. When asked what threats the agency had in mind, ASIO’s director-general Mike Burgess listed off the usual suspects: far-Right extremists and Islamic jihadists. But he also added a new candidate: ‘accelerationists’…”
Read the rest over at Aeon.
This is a really excellent piece. Thank you Vincent. A clear and helpful reading of D&G. And a terrifyingly cogent analysis of Land.
Very good (and also terrifying)