No Speed Limit

Three Essays on Accelerationism

2015

 • 

Author: 

Steven Shaviro

Accelerationism is the bastard offspring of a furtive liaison between Marxism and science fiction. Its basic premise is that the only way out is the way through: to get beyond capitalism, we need to push its technologies to the point where they explode. This may be dubious as a political strategy, but it works as a powerful artistic program.

Other authors have debated the pros and cons of accelerationist politics; No Speed Limit makes the case for an accelerationist aesthetics. Our present moment is illuminated, both for good and for ill, in the cracked mirror of science-fictional futurity.

Forerunners is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital works. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.

$10.00 paper ISBN 978-0-8166-9767-0
$4.95 ISBN 978-1-4529-4508-8
86 pages, 5 x 7, 2015

https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/no-speed-limit

Is Consuming Like Crazy the Best Way to End Capitalism?

A conversation with philosopher Steven Shaviro about "accelerationism," which is essentially the belief that the best way to shorten capitalism's lifespan is to push it to the extreme.

By Charlie Ambler VICE
19.3.15



Hang out on Tumblr or in a dorm lounge long enough and eventually the talk will turn to ending capitalism. These discussions are all theoretical, of course—there have been endless attempts at shifting from our market-based economy to something more egalitarian and enlightened, but nothing has stuck, and some of the larger scale efforts have turned into horrific disasters. Anti-capitalists of various stripes haven't stopped coming up with theories about how this system could finally fall, however. One of these theories is called accelerationism—the idea is that hyper-stimulation of the market on a mass scale will end with the collapse of capitalism. Consume like crazy, only drink from styrofoam, and throw handfuls of dead batteries into our oceans so the impending apocalypse can hurry up and get over with.

The spread of this idea is rooted in Marx's belief that capitalism can't sustain itself forever and will eventually fizzle out. The means by which people will bring about its end are unclear, but that's where the ideas about accelerationism come from. Accelerationism is essentially the belief that the best way to shorten capitalism's lifespan is to push it to the extreme. If normal capitalism is Mick Jagger, accelerationism is Jim Morrison.

A while back, Steven Shaviro, who teaches at Detroit's Wayne State and studies the impact of technological capitalism on culture and everyday life, wrote an essay about accelerationism, explaining what it is in language that wasn't clouded by the usual academic jargon. Accelerationism has been explored by philosophers like Nick Land and Reza Negarestani, but Shaviro has become known as an authority on the topic—probably because he can articulate these complex philosophical ideas in a simple way that we plebs can understand. Shaviro just finished up a book out on accelerationism called No Speed Limit, so I called him up to learn more about the theory and see whether my Amazon Prime addiction is actually helping society.

VICE: Accelerationism confuses me, but what I do understand is really interesting. Can you tell me a little more about it?

Steven Shaviro: Broadly defined, "accelerationism" is the idea that the only way out is the way through. If we want to get beyond the current social and economic order and reach a post-capitalist future, then we need to push through all the messy complications of capitalism, rather than revert to something supposedly older and purer.

Accelerationism rejects certain ideas currently popular on the left, like "small is beautiful," and the Luddite enmity towards new technologies. Instead, it urges us to embrace and repurpose all the most advanced technologies.

If computational technologies are eliminating millions of jobs, then the best response is not to demand the jobs back, but to spread the wealth—to give back what the 1 Percent has stolen from everybody else—so that people can afford to lead comfortable lives without always worrying about the cost of housing or the size of their credit card bills.

Fascinating. I always thought accelerationism basically said that the most impactful anti-capitalist was the captain of industry. Like, pushing the system faster and increasing inequality even more will help destroy it. But maybe that's not the case? How can the redistribution of wealth be considered an accelerationist move?

There are different varieties of accelerationism. At one extreme, accelerationism might embrace the idea that the worse things get, the better the prospect for a revolution to overthrow everything. This seems obviously foolish to me, and I don't think that it is actually advocated by many accelerationists.

Much more subtly, Marx claimed that the contradictions that beset capitalism would eventually lead to a struggle between workers and capitalists. He hoped that this struggle would end in the establishment of communism, but he warned that it could also result in "the mutual destruction of the contending parties."

Are you saying that the end is near?

Marx was saying that, due to its inherent strains and stresses, capitalism will lead to catastrophe if it isn't somehow overcome. This is an accelerationist view, to the extent that it sees the possibilities for overcoming capitalism arising out of the very development of capitalism as a world system. But this doesn't happen in any mechanistic or predetermined way.

As for how redistribution of wealth might be related to accelerationism—when somebody like Thomas Piketty argues for global taxes in order to force a redistribution of wealth, he is trying to save the capitalist system from its own self-destructive excesses. But as Slavoj Zizek has observed, the rich will never pay such a tax voluntarily; so just getting such a tax enacted would involve other changes as well, indeed radical ones that would change capitalism substantially.

This is fascinating, for someone who was spoon-fed a lot of simplified Marxism in college. What further reading would you recommend on the topic?

Read #Accelerate—The Accelerationist Reader, edited by Robin Mackay and Armen Avanessian, for important essays about accelerationism, and Malign Velocities, by Benjamin Noys, for a critique of accelerationism. My short book on the topic, No Speed Limit: Three Essays on Accelerationism, has just come out from the University of Minnesota Press.

Cool. Can you explain what your other book, The Universe of Things, is about?

The book is about speculative realism—a recent philosophical movement that tries to consider what it would really mean to consider the universe as it exists in and for itself, apart from us. Psychologists have shown that our perception of the world is never objective; it is molded by our own needs and interests, both on the individual level, and in general, evolutionary terms. We notice what matters immediately to us, and often fail to notice what doesn't.

Speculative realism asks how it might be possible to approach things in the world, apart from the meanings and classifications that we impose upon them. If we were truly able to do this, what would we find?

Sounds like a good humanity-wide exercise in humility. How'd you get into it?

"Speculative realism" only became a term in 2007, when a philosophy conference was held with that title. The thinkers grouped under this title are very different from one another, and often have sharp disagreements. But they all question the notion that "man is the measure of all things."

They urge us to pay more attention to nonhuman entities, even nonliving entities, and to consider how all these entities are not just tools we use, or impediments to our actions, but "actants"—as the French sociologist Bruno Latour calls them—in their own right. They have their own tendencies, desires, and needs.

That's especially important at this point in history.

Right! At a time of impending ecological catastrophe, it is important for us to recognize as fully as possible the presence of the entities that share the world with us.

SMOKERS’ CORNER: BIG TECH'S BIG RUSH

Accelerationism emerged in the 1990s from the fringes of British academia as a postmodernist take on Marxism. 

Nadeem F. Paracha 

 February 9, 2025 

EOS/DAWN

Illustration by Abro

Everyone seems to be in a hurry. This impatience is not about what was once called ‘the rat race.’ The rat race was towards a well-defined goal. Yet, it was cyclic for most. Round and round they went. The faster they ran, the stronger the system that they were a part of got. The race was organised by a well-oiled bureaucracy, and overseen by governments and corporations that provided incentives for people to stay in the race.

Increasingly, however, people are dropping out of the old rat race. It had turned them into nuts and bolts in a machine. Their goal was to survive and race up a mechanical hierarchy, even though most just kept going in circles. From the late 1920s till the early 1970s, the rat race remained to be a thing.

However, from the 1990s, when digital technology first began to expand, it introduced itself as the tool with the potential to dismantle the old machine and free the people trapped inside it. Instead of people going in circles to achieve ‘meaningless’ goals, the new technology was to ‘empower’ them to become individuals who could write their own destinies.

The creators of this technology promised that it would unleash “direct democracy”, increase “real communication” and usher in a system in which anyone willing to use their imagination, creativity and “dream big” would have the opportunity to prosper.

Technological advancements come with the notion that they are liberating people from the old, soulless forms of capitalism. But are people being duped and led towards societal collapse and an authoritarian techno-capitalist future?

But, eventually, the new technology ended up creating a whole new machine: “Techno-capitalism.” Being part of this machine is not as ‘soulless’ as it was in the old one. In fact, the new machine is addictive. It feeds illusions of freedom and power to what are still nuts and bolts. People flock inside it like sheep, but with each believing they are “different”, “unique”, and “special”.

The capitalism that was active from the 1930s till at least the early 1970s was constantly modified to co-opt various aspects from ideas that were actually opposed to capitalism. This was done to keep those in the rat race from causing any disruption.

The capitalism produced by the new machine glorifies everything digital. It glamorises artificial intelligence (AI) and popularises words such as “disruption”. It has made billionaires out of the ‘nerds’ who oversee its workings. The new machine’s nuts and bolts are unlike those of the old machine. These ones are made to believe that they are functioning of their own free will. They really aren’t.

The billionaires who oversee the workings of the new machine are not like old capitalists who were only interested in profit, but were also willing to modify their ambitions to mitigate the possibility of the nuts and bolts rebelling against the machine. Unlike the owners of the old machine, those running the new one are “incurable idealists.” Yes, you read that right. At least this is how they often portray themselves.

They position their businesses not as enterprises gunning for profit, but as conscientious projects which — through cutting-edge technology— will end environmental degradation, disease, poverty etc. This is often referred to as “techno-optimism.” To its critics, though, it’s a scam.

For example, techno-optimists have been touting electric vehicles as an effective means to mitigate greenhouse gases. But The Guardian reported in January 2023 that, in the US alone, transition to electric vehicles could require three times as much lithium as is currently produced for the entire global market.

Techno-optimists have also been hailing the potential of AI to resolve various long-standing problems. But, according to a July 2023 report in Scientific America, AI technology is likely to get worse, because the shoddy AI-generated content that is already on the internet is corrupting the training data for models to come.

The Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis refuses to call tech billionaires, ‘techno-capitalists.’ According to him, capitalism is being replaced by “feudalism in a digital guise” or “techno-feudalism.” Millions of people serve big tech overlords by handing over data to access their ‘cloud space.’ To Varoufakis, the consumers of tech giants are modern-day serfs.

In January this year, at Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration ceremony, heads of major American tech companies were seen posing for a photograph. This is the same event in which the billionaire Elon Musk was accused of making the Nazi salute. He is a declared Trump supporter, but the alleged Nazi salute saw some of his critics claim that he was an “accelerationist”.

‘Accelerationism’ is a philosophy that seeks to speed up the intensification of societal collapse, to create a new order. Accelerationists look to use digital technology and its social, economic and political impact to bring forward a collapse that they say is inevitable.




Accelerationism emerged in the 1990s from the fringes of British academia as a postmodernist take on Marxism. Whereas the 19th century philosopher Karl Marx’s prediction of capitalism collapsing under its own weight, followed by a communist utopia, failed to materialise, the expansion of digital technology in the 1990s excited a group of young British academics who saw the end of capitalism caused by the “liberating” potentials of digital technology.

One of the leading thinkers of accelerationism was Nick Land. Convinced that the new technology would puncture capitalism, he advocated its acceleration through various means, so that a new, “more equitable order” that he and his colleagues were anticipating would arrive much earlier.

Land eventually ended up living in China, which he claimed was “the most accelerationist state.” Interestingly, though, on his return to England, Land’s accelerationism wasn’t seeking a more equitable order anymore. It was now seeking authoritarian city-states, with each being ruled by CEOs.

Land then went on to become a guru of sorts for far-right groups. He also became popular among big tech heads. He urged his followers to bring populists such as Trump to power.

To accelerationists, right-wing populists became important because they (the populists) seek to do away with “limitations” such as economic regulations and “worn out” government and state institutions.

Apparently, this, coupled with tech giants and their technology, will bring forward a future controlled by authoritarian CEO types in charge of technologically advanced city-states. The presence of big tech folk at Trump’s presidential inauguration has sparked fears that this dystopian version of accelerationism has seeped into big tech companies.

It won’t be far-fetched to assume that people’s impatience today is being triggered by accelerated digital technology, on its way to land the world in an authoritarian techno-capitalist future. So do stop and smell the flowers every now and then. Slow down.

Published in Dawn, EOS, February 9th, 2025

#Accelerate
The Accelerationist Reader
Robin Mackay
Armen Avanessian
(Editors)

ORIGINAL EDITION
£20.00 / $24.95
Paperback
175×115mm
536pp
E-book also available
Published with Merve Verlag
Cover Design: Leaky Studio
Type: Norm

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Accelerationism
Artificial Intelligence
Capitalism
CCRU
Cyberpunk
Singularity
Technology

An engaging, eccentric anthology…it’s refreshing to encounter a ‘left’ project for the future that wants to reclaim the idea of technology, industry and planet-scale thinking.
—JJ Charlesworth, ArtReview

Accelerationism is the name of a contemporary political heresy: the insistence that the only radical political response to capitalism is not to protest, disrupt, critique, or détourne it, but to accelerate and exacerbate its uprooting, alienating, decoding, abstractive tendencies.

#Accelerate presents a genealogy of accelerationism, tracking the impulse through 90s UK darkside cyberculture and the theory-fictions of Nick Land, Sadie Plant, Iain Grant, and CCRU, across the cultural underground of the 80s (rave, acid house, SF cinema) and back to its sources in delirious post-68 ferment, in texts whose searing nihilistic jouissance would later be disavowed by their authors and the marxist and academic establishment alike.

On either side of this central sequence, the book includes texts by Marx that call attention to his own ‘Prometheanism’, and key works from recent years document the recent extraordinary emergence of new accelerationisms steeled against the onslaughts of neoliberal capitalist realism, and retooled for the twenty-first century.

At the forefront of the energetic contemporary debate around this disputed, problematic term, #Accelerate activates a historical conversation about futurality, technology, politics, enjoyment and capital. This is a legacy shot through with contradictions, yet urgently galvanized today by the poverty of ‘reasonable’ contemporary political alternatives.

CONTENTS
REVIEWS/PRESS
Introduction Robin Mackay Armen Avanessian PDF
Anticipations
Fragment on Machines Karl Marx
The Book of the Machines Samuel Butler
The Common Task Nicolai Fedorov
The Machine Process and the Natural Decay of the Business Enterprise Thorstein Veblen
Ferment
The Two Modes of Cultural History Shulamith Firestone
Decline of the Capitalist Mode of Production or Decline of Humanity? Jacques Camatte
The Civilized Capitalist Machine Gilles Deleuze Félix Guattari
Energumen Capitalism Jean-François Lyotard
Every Political Economy is Libidinal Jean-François Lyotard
Power of Repetition Gilles Lipovetsky
Fictions of Every Kind J.G. Ballard
Desirevolution Jean-François Lyotard
Cyberculture
Circuitries Nick Land
LA 2019 Iain Hamilton Grant
Cyberpositive Sadie Plant Nick Land
Cybernetic Culture CCRU
Swarmachines CCRU
Acceleration
Terminator vs Avatar Mark Fisher
#Accelerate Alex Williams Nick Srnicek
Some Reflections on the #Accelerate Manifesto Antonio Negri
Red Stack Attack! Tiziana Terranova
Automated Architecture Luciana Parisi
The Labor of the Inhuman Reza Negarestani
Prometheanism and its Critics Ray Brassier
Maximum Jailbreak Benedict Singleton
Teleoplexy Nick Land
Seven Prescriptions for Accelerationism Patricia Reed

HATEWATCH

Texas Man Arrested on Charges of Terroristic Threats Ran White Power Telegram Channel

June 16, 2021
Cassie Miller and Hannah Gais


A Texas man arrested on charges related to an alleged plot to carry out a mass shooting at a Walmart ran a white supremacist Telegram channel enamored with terrorism, Hatewatch has learned.

Police arrested Coleman Thomas Blevins on May 28 in Kerrville, Texas. The Kerr County Sheriff’s Office stated in a press release that they had issued a warrant for Blevins’ arrest and charged him with making a “terroristic threat to create public fear of serious bodily injury.” Blevins’ connections to the white supremacist movement are blatant: Police published a photo displaying a number of texts associated with the white power movement, including William Luther Pierce’s “The Turner Diaries,” as well as a Confederate flag and another bearing a Sonnenrad, a type of sunwheel commonly used as a neo-Nazi symbol.

Blevins has a history of drug offenses. Police allege he had a stash of firearms, ammunition and concentrated THC at the time of his arrest. Authorities decided to hold Blevins in the Kerr County Jail on a $250,000 bond. Like many of the perpetrators or suspected perpetrators of some of the most recent acts of white supremacist terror, Blevins was immersed in a violent digital subculture where users can simultaneously affiliate with a variety of white power communities.


Coleman Thomas Blevins booking photo via Kerr County Sheriff's Office

The collection of extremist symbols also pointed to Blevins’ involvement with the online white power movement now flourishing on Telegram. Police showed evidence of two T-shirts, both bearing the logos of racist Telegram channels. One channel, which Hatewatch has elected not to name so as to reduce its visibility, uses a logo of a white syringe encircled by a shield. There, Blevins posted under the variations on the username “Korb.” Another T-shirt bears the logo of the National Partisan Movement (NPM), a youth-targeted neo-Nazi group with members in the U.S. and abroad, according to Hope Not Hate. While it is unclear whether Blevins was a member, he did say during a self-described “free speech” podcast recorded in March that his Telegram channel was “affiliated” with NPM, and his own channel has frequently shared their propaganda.

Blevins did not respond to a request for comment. As of the morning of June 17, Blevins' Telegram channel appeared to be banned for a violation of the platform's terms of service agreement.

Blevins’ case is indicative of a broader shift within the white power movement. Far-right extremists are increasingly congregating on decentralized online spaces such as Telegram. Dedication to white supremacy and accelerationist strategies – which presume terroristic violence to be the sole means of ushering in a white ethnostate – takes precedent over a commitment to any particular organized group.
Blevins’ footprint on Telegram

Following Blevins’ arrest, a number of channel operators on Telegram began posting in support of the arrested man, referring to him as “Korb.” Some far-right extremists – including from a channel claiming to be the Estonia-based neo-Nazi group Feuerkrieg Division – adapted Blevins’ mugshot into propaganda. In a channel belonging to a podcast associated with the white nationalist podcasting network The Right Stuff, a moderator claimed Blevins had tried to join one of their chatrooms in summer 2020 while posting under the username Kørb Seppükrieg. The post implied he was booted out for trolling.

Hatewatch identified Korb as one of the main contributors to that channel through chatter on Telegram after his arrest, the presence of a shirt bearing the channel’s logo, and the fact that his channel was set up to show the usernames of contributors whenever they posted to the channel. (Telegram allows channel moderators to show their usernames at the bottom of each post, in order to allow users to know exactly who has posted a piece of content.) Though Korb changed his display name on a number of occasions, all variations of the username included “Korb” in some capacity. Korb left other clues to his identity. In a video “Korbe” posted on the channel associated with one of the T-shirts police seized during Blevins’ arrest on April 10, a man wearing a skull mask said he was “ready to fucking die” in front of a stone wall with a cutout of the state of Texas, where Blevins lives. Another image, posted on April 30 by “Kørbe,” matched three of the books seized by authorities, including the same edition of “The Turner Diaries.”

Blevins’ Telegram channel was created on Feb. 1, after the company carried out a widespread purge of white supremacist channels on the platform in an apparent response to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. His group’s propaganda blended a variety of themes, using imagery associated with Hitler’s Germany, the “war on terror” and the Eastern Orthodox Church. In late February, Blevins began posting original content, featuring the group’s logo and name, created by a number of young female artists.

Blevins has used the “Korb” moniker outside Telegram as well. For instance, in March, he appeared on a podcast streamed live on Facebook and other platforms as a representative of the National Partisan Movement.
Accelerationism moves out of the fringes

Blevins’ views are in many ways representative of recent trends within the white power movement. His Telegram channel subscribed to the strategy of accelerationism, making several references to an impending bloody breakdown in society. “You know you want holy war now,” he posted on May 13. Accelerationism as a tactic embraces terroristic violence with the goal of sparking a revolutionary race war, and contradicts the wing of the white power movement that seeks political power through electoral politics.

While accelerationists sat at the fringes of the white power movement during the early years of Trump’s presidency, their ethos now occupies a prominent place within the movement, exemplified by the proliferation of cell-style groups and networks with explicitly revolutionary goals.

Telegram has become the preferred platform of white power accelerationists in recent years. There, administrators can create public “channels,” where they can post text, images and videos up to two gigabytes. Users can also join private and public encrypted chats with up to 200,000 members. Telegram and companies such as Apple have made some attempts to remove or quarantine violent white supremacist channels, either on the app or on specific devices. But, as SPLC research has shown, this has had minimal effect on these channels’ membership. Channel administrators have found simple workarounds, and many of the accelerationist channels that had been restricted in some way experienced triple-digit growth throughout 2020.

Blevins’ channel shared an aesthetic with a Telegram network that its followers call “Terrorgram.” That network, which started as only a few dozen channels, solidified on the platform around mid-2019. Users and channels associated with the network advocate for political terror, express reverence for past acts of white supremacist terrorism, venerate white supremacist killers such as Dylann Roof as “saints” and share information about how to construct explosives and homemade firearms through posts, PDFs, memes and videos. The platform has helped facilitate the emergence of an increasingly decentralized movement, where individuals can move fluidly between different groups and subsets of the white power movement without ever having to officially join an organization.

The diffuse nature of the movement has allowed individuals such as Blevins to claim they represent “a conglomeration of seemingly disparate creeds” – or, at the very least, seemingly disparate influences.

Eclectic religious influences with standard white power fare

Neo-Nazi paraphernalia and texts were seized during the arrest of Coleman Thomas Blevins. (Photo via Kerr County Sheriff's Office)

While he said that the group had no Muslim members, Blevins said that its “contributors” ranged from the violent white power group The Base “to the Mujahideen.” A professed “fanatic Christian,” Blevins has an online presence littered with references to jihadism, and a photo from the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office made public at the time of his arrest show officers found a Saudi flag in Blevins’ home alongside neo-Nazi paraphernalia. But right-wing extremists are opportunists who have, at times, co-opted revolutionary violence across the globe as their own, resulting in an apparent surface-level affinity for guerrilla fighters and international terrorist organizations originating in the Middle East. White power groups such as Atomwaffen Division and Feuerkrieg Division have used images of Osama bin Laden and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria propaganda videos, respectively, in propaganda of their own.

This same tendency toward eclectic influences extended to Blevins’ apparent interest in symbolism associated with the Eastern Orthodox Church. Police found a banner in the style of a calvary cross. The symbol is a variant of the Orthodox three-bar cross – which features three horizontal crossbeams instead of one – that is situated on a small platform intended meant to represent Calvary, the site where Christians believe Jesus Christ was crucified. The particular banner that police found in Blevins’ house “bears a striking resemblance to the garments worn by Russian Orthodox schema monks,” Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, a postdoctoral fellow in the “Recovering Truth” project at the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Arizona State University, told Hatewatch in an email. However, a commentator in a chatroom associated with Blevins’ Telegram channel noted shortly after his arrest, “To be honest, he could not distinguish Russia from Ukraine either.”

Riccardi-Swartz, whose forthcoming book studies American converts to Russian Orthodoxy in the United States, saw parallels to other far-right extremists who have taken an interest in the Orthodox Church, particularly among men.

“In the U.S. we see increasing interest from radicalized males (those who consider themselves white nationalists, America First groypers, neo-Southern secessionists etc.) in Russian Orthodoxy, in the Tsar Nicholas II, and in Vladimir Putin,” she noted.

“Part of this is a desire for authoritarian strongman rule, part of this is an expression of toxic masculinity and whiteness preservation, and part of this is existential angst over social changes and progressive social politics in the United States.”

However, many of the texts police found in Blevins’ possession are standard fare within the radical right. In addition to “The Turner Diaries,” Blevins had a copy of Italian philosopher Julius Evola’s "Revolt Against the Modern World." Evola’s 1934 book argues for “traditionalism,” built on social and racial hierarchy, and insists that “total catharsis and a radical ‘housecleaning’” are necessary responses to the modern world. Admired by Benito Mussolini, Evola has gained influence within the far right in the last decade, thanks in part to praise from Steve Bannon and to white nationalist presses who have republished his work.

The same police images showed that Blevins had a copy of “Harassment Architecture,” an accelerationist fantasy self-published by former Breitbart contributor Mike Mahoney (under the pen name Mike Ma). Mahoney’s 2019 book has made him a darling of accelerationists, as “Harassment Architecture” is full of violent fantasy and exhortations. “Kill someone important! Burn something down! Cut yourself for attention! Anything! The gas pedal is waiting to be stepped on,” he writes.
‘This is a doomsday cult’

Blevins described participation in far-right extremism as a remedy for personal suffering. “It is sobriety to enact the 14 words,” he said, speaking as “Korb” on a March podcast with the National Partisan Movement. The 14 words is a phrase popularized by neo-Nazi terrorist David Lane. He continued, “Extremism and purpose is the only way to abstain from bad habits.” He attributed the group’s logo to the fact that he envisioned it as an “extremist alternative to the Twelve Step Program.”

Though Blevins did not reference his own history with substances, public records indicate he has been charged three times in the past on drug-related offenses – first in February 2014, then in October 2015, and finally in late 2016. A news report from Blevins’ 2015 arrest said that authorities had found heroin in his car after they pulled him over for a traffic violation.

Far-right extremist groups do tend to use people’s hardships as a recruitment mechanism, claiming to offer a way to alleviate loneliness through racial camaraderie, explain personal shortcomings by blaming out-groups, and boiling down large societal changes to simple, conspiratorial explanations. Blevins’ self-help-inspired recruiting technique is not new within the world of far-right extremism, but spaces like Telegram may afford him a far larger audience than was available in the past.

On Telegram, his goals were more explicitly bound up in violent accelerationism.

“I’m grooming all of you for terrorism. This is a suicide cult because I hate most of my friends, but for the ones I like this is a doomsday cult,” Korb Taran wrote on Telegram on May 24, four days prior to Blevins’ arrest.

Photo illustration by SPLC

Fascists Impersonate Climate Group to Say Coronavirus is Good for Earth

The white supremacist group Hundred-Handers appears to be impersonating Extinction Rebellion.

By Ben Makuch 26 March 2020


A Twitter account claiming to be the regional arm of climate change activist group Extinction Rebellion (XR) tweeted photos of an apparent postering campaign promoting the coronavirus as a natural "cure" to the human "disease", causing a swift backlash online.

The problem: The group says it does not recognize the Twitter account and tweeted "far-right groups have put out stickers with messaging" that is not in line with the group's beliefs. In an email, Extinction Rebellion spokespeople clarified that they don't actually know who is behind the account, but social media posts by a neo-Nazi group viewed by Motherboard shows them gloating about flyers and claiming that the group impersonated Extinction Rebellion in the past.

“Earth is healing. The air and water is clearing,” reads the post by an account going by @xr_east and claiming to be the East Midlands chapter of XR, which rose to prominence last year when the group organized mass climate change protests that brought London to a standstill. “Corona is the cure. Humans are the disease!”

“The Twitter account in question is not recognised by Extinction Rebellion East Midlands or Extinction Rebellion UK and we do not support in any way the positions expressed on that account," spokespeople said in an email. "In terms of the Twitter account, we aren’t aware who is behind it. XR is a decentralised, autonomous movement, with hundreds of groups worldwide. At first glance it looks legitimate – it uses XR branding, and has retweeted a number of XR tweets. But, we have spoken with our regional coordinators and they [knew] nothing about it before today."

Motherboard is aware of an anonymous white supremacist group called the Hundred-Handers, which was recently active in the UK and has already bragged online in the past of impersonating XR posters.

“Be a real shame if our latest archive contained elements and fonts required to create extinction rebellion stickers,” says a January Telegram post from the group viewed over 8,000 times, accompanying a photo with a series of anti-immigrant and racist stickers bearing the XR logo that resemble those tweeted by the @xr_east account.

On the same day the Hundred-Handers channel then posted: “Send us your best XR edits and we'll post them and include them in our archive."

The anonymous Hundred-Handers group, which is known for its stickering campaigns around the UK and the US, takes its name from a many-headed monster in Greek mythology with a hundred hands. Members are required to download racist sticker templates promoting white supremacism and nativist ideologies prevalent among the far-right.

Though Motherboard can’t confirm that the latest posters in the East Midlands were the work of the Hundred-Handers, another recent post by the group points to more impersonations of XR.

On March 7, a photo posted in its Telegram channel shows a sticker posted in what appears to be the London Tube bearing the the XR symbol with the slogan: “White Brits a minority by 2066, preserve an endangered species.”

Some of the propaganda Hundred-Handers espouses centres on the absurd ecofascist principle that overpopulation in countries outside of Europe and North America has caused the brunt of the climate crisis.

Fascists co-opting the novel coronavirus pandemic to their advantage isn’t new. Last week, Motherboard revealed how neo-Nazi accelerationists see the global crisis as an opportunity to hasten the collapse of society, plotting to use the climate of fear surrounding the pandemic to carry out terrorist attacks.

Extinction Rebellion itself is controversial among environmentalists, activists, and leftists, with critics saying that it naturally lends itself to ecofascist ideologies; in the past, ecofascists have used the organization's name to spread their racist views. The group is also overwhelmingly white, with activists of color saying that one of its core mechanisms of action – asking people to get arrested during environmental protests – is inherently unsafe for people of color, who disproportionately have violence perpetrated against them by the police.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Experts Say Neo-Nazi 'Accelerationists' Discuss Taking Advantage of Coronavirus Crisis
"While this is online chatter, the fact that it’s seeking to take advantage of and exacerbate a crisis is alarming."By Ben Makuch Mar 18 2020

AN IMAGE FROM A MILITANT NEO-NAZI TELEGRAM CHANNEL.

While ISIS has instructed its members to steer clear of Europe and to constantly wash their hands in hopes of avoiding contracting the novel coronavirus, far-right extremists are discussing how this could be their moment to capitalize on what they see as a potential collapse of society.

The conversations, many of which are taking place on encrypted and closed Telegram channels, gives a glimpse into how the militant neo-Nazi movement—the organized sections of which have been facing increased pressure from federal law enforcement—is reacting to the global pandemic.



Though a lot of the talk is wrapped in troll culture with users sharing absurd anti-semitic theories for the virus’ origins and memes about the supposed hygienic superiority of Nazis, some online neo-Nazis are openly seeing the potential opportunity the pandemic brings to their movement: the chance for violent insurgency if authorities struggle to maintain control over society during a prolonged lockdown of the public.

“I hope it’s almost time boys,” reads one Telegram post on a known neo-Nazi account viewed hundreds of times and featuring the selfie of a man clad in military attire, combat vest and a skull mask.

Another post from an infamous channel linked to neo-Nazis fighting in eastern Ukraine shows a man with a hazmat suit, gas mask, and carrying a Kalashnikov assault rifle with the words (in Ukrainian), “ready for virus and parasite control” while standing with a portrait of the Christchurch shooter hanging to his right.

The same account tells followers in Ukrainian to: “Buy ammo and get ready to rob banks. All is well.”

That neo-Nazis are at least discussing they want to be violent during times of pandemic isn’t altogether surprising nor is it evidence that actual physical violence is likely—online chatter is often purely hypothetical, though disturbing nonetheless.

In recent years, adherents of ultra violent brands of white supremacism have preached ‘accelerationism,’ which holds that western governments are currently teetering on disintegration and vulnerable to operations sowing chaos and creating societal pandemonium. Neo-Nazi movements have always tried to take advantage of times of great uncertainty, and some members of far-right extremist networks see the pressure of coronavirus as a possible trigger for the “boogaloo”; a hypothetical second civil war.

“Extreme right-wing accelerationist and neo-Nazi Telegram chats and channels have increased their frequency of calling for violence related to the coronavirus since the president’s declaration of a national emergency on March 13,” said Joshua Fisher-Birch, a research analyst at the Counter Extremism Project, a U.S.-based terrorism watchdog. “The violent rhetoric also increased on March 16 as economic damage from the coronavirus has increased.”

In a post captioned “ACCELERATION REMINDER,” one well known neo-Nazi channel that provides tradecraft to evade authorities online warns followers to beware of the possible presence of National Guard units across the country if the pandemic worsens and the Trump Administration deploys troops inside the U.S.

Some posts are less violent, but recommend things like aimlessly firing off their guns in city centers, without a target, to promote panic among the public.

The many far-right extremists populating these Telegram channels are taking advantage of the moment to ramp up their rhetoric, but as Fisher-Birch cautions that, so far, is only online chatter.

“As more Americans have been reported as infected in the past few days and stock exchanges have fallen, the administrators of these chats and channels seem to have realized that this is a moment to increase their calls for disorder and advocacy for violence, whether it is against the government, against people of color, or against Jews and Muslims,” said Fisher-Birch. “While this is online chatter, the fact that it’s seeking to take advantage of and exacerbate a crisis is alarming.”

Of late, accelerationism has become more organized. For example, members of The Base and Atowmaffen Division, two neo-Nazi terror groups under a recent nationwide FBI probe resulting in several arrests of members who plotted assassinations and mass shootings, are major proponents of accelerationism.

Both groups undertook several paramilitary training camps with dozens of members in the U.S. and preached the values of survivalism in preparation for when, “shit hits the fan”—or a time of complete social decay—and plotted ways to hasten it.

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=ECOFASCISM

ACCELERATIONISM
Pandemic accelerated occupation shift trends, US Labor Department data shows

(Reuters) - Many of the fastest-growing occupations held by U.S. workers in the run-up to the pandemic, such as management, finance and transportation, gained even more ground in the first two years of the health crisis, government data released on Tuesday showed.


FILE PHOTO: People return to work in Philadelphia© Thomson Reuters

The Labor Department's annual snapshot of occupations and what they pay also showed that a number of job categories that were already struggling to attract workers before the pandemic found those trends continued or accelerated in the chaotic job market that emerged following the brief but historic employment losses in the spring of 2020.

Indeed, the annual Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics report appears to show the pandemic was a trend-hastening event rather than a trend disrupter. A larger share of jobs reshuffled across occupations from 2016 to 2019 than did so between 2019 and 2022, as the economy emerged from the pandemic.


Only a handful of the major occupation groups that had held steady or shown growth in their share of total employment from 2016 to 2019 flipped to losing share from 2019 to 2022. And all of those that had lost the most ground before the health crisis - office and administrative support jobs, sales roles and personal care-related services - saw further erosion in its aftermath.

The report is released each spring and provides a snapshot from the prior May of more than 800 occupations, showing how many people held those jobs and what each paid.

The data also shows the onset of the wage growth dynamics that increasingly have become a worry for the Federal Reserve in its fight to contain inflation. Across all occupations, average hourly wages rose by 15.7% between May 2019 and May 2022, roughly double the increase in the three years from May 2016 to May 2019.

(Reporting By Dan Burns and Howard Schneider; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

David Cunningham · A Marxist heresy?: Accelerationism and its discontents (2015) (radicalphilosophy.com)

PROMOTING RACE WAR

Maryland woman pleads guilty to conspiracy in alleged extremist plot to attack Baltimore power grid

Greg Wehner
Tue, May 14, 2024

A Catonsville, Maryland, woman pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiring to damage or destroy electrical facilities near Baltimore, which she and a co-conspirator planned to execute for white supremacist reasons intended to help to break down society.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a release that 36-year-old Sarah Beth Clendaniel pleaded guilty to conspiracy, while a co-conspirator, Brandon C. Russell of Florida, awaits trial on the same charge.

Clendaniel and Russell became acquainted with each other in 2018, and both advocated the white supremacist ideology of "accelerationism." The concept is based on the white supremacist believing that the current system is irreparable and without a political solution. Therefore, violent action is required to spawn a government collapse, the DOJ explained.

Between December 2022 and February 2023, Clendaniel, Russell and others allegedly planned to attack energy facilities in the Baltimore region to disrupt the distribution of electricity to the city.

FBI ARRESTS MAN, WOMAN WITH ‘EXTREMIST’ VIEWS IN ALLEGED POWER GRID ATTACK PLOT TARGETING 5 SUBSTATIONS

A woman believed to be Sarah Beth Clendaniel holds an ammunition clip and wears tactical gear while posing with a rifle.

When Clendaniel pleaded guilty, she admitted to communicating and planning to carry out the attacks on energy facilities, using encrypted communication applications.

Both Clendaniel and Russell allegedly told a confidential human source (CHS-1) of their plans to attack the Baltimore power grid, the DOJ said. Plans began to come together on Jan. 12, 2023, when CHS-1 and Russell discussed the attack, which involved hitting multiple substations at the same time.

Clendaniel used the screen name "Nythra88" to send a message to CHS-1, confirming that she supported the attack.


Sarah Beth Clendaniel, left, is seen in another photo included in the affidavit of the Joint Terrorism Task Force ("JTTF") in the FBI Baltimore Division.

Clendaniel told the source she lived near Baltimore, that she was a felon, and unsuccessfully tried to obtain a rifle. Clendaniel asked CHS-1 to purchase a rifle for her within the next couple of weeks to "accomplish something worthwhile."

Throughout the conversations, Clendaniel told the source she had identified a few possible locations to target, adding the source would have to be the driver while she would be the shooter.

On Jan. 29, 2023, Clendaniel told the source she planned to target five substations, including Norrisville, Reisterstown, and Perry Hall, the DOJ said. She described how there was a "ring" around the city of Baltimore, and if they hit several of the substations in the same day, they "would completely destroy this whole city."

BALTIMORE POWER GRID ATTACK SUSPECT HAD ‘WISH LIST OF GUNS, SOUGHT TO ’COMPLETELY DESTROY THIS WHOLE CITY'


Sarah Beth Clendaniel is one of two people suspected of planning to attack five substations in Maryland.

The substations Clendaniel planned to take out were what she called "cores," saying a "good four or five shots through the center of them" should "destroy those cores, not just leak the oil…"

"It would probably permanently completely lay this city to waste if we could do that successfully," Clendaniel allegedly told the confidential source.

The DOJ also said that during the conversation between Clendaniel and the confidential source, Clendaniel sent five links to the "Open Infrastructure Map," showing the locations of five specific Baltimore, Gas and Electric (BGE) electric substations. BGE utilizes substations like those targeted by Clendaniel, to produce and distribute energy.

NEO-NAZI LEADER CHARGED IN MARYLAND POWER GRID ATTACK PLOT ARRESTED YEARS AGO AFTER ROOMMATES' DOUBLE MURDER

While three of the five substations were in Norrisville, Reisterstown and Perry Hall, the other two were in Baltimore City.

The DOJ claims Russell and Clendaniel were under the belief that taking out these five substations would serve as "accelerationism" and help break down society.

Law enforcement officials executed a search warrant at Clendaniel’s residence on Feb. 23, 2023, and ultimately recovered various firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Since Clendaniel is a convicted felon for robbery in 2006 and attempted robbery in 2016, she is unlawfully permitted to possess firearms.

She pleaded guilty to conspiracy and felony possession of firearms charges.

Clendaniel is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 3, and could face up to 20 years in prison for the conspiracy charge and 15 years for the possession charge.

She also faces a lifetime of supervised release for the conspiracy charge.

Original article source: Maryland woman pleads guilty to conspiracy in alleged extremist plot to attack Baltimore power grid

UPDATED 

White supremacists are encouraging members to infect Jews with coronavirus: FBI

March 23, 2020 By Brad Reed


The FBI is warning that white supremacists have started encouraging their followers to contract COVID-19 and then intentionally spread it to police officers and Jews.

ABC News reports that the FBI’s New York office sent out an alert recently that warned neo-Nazi groups are pushing members to spread the virus though “bodily fluids and personal interactions” to their perceived enemies.

“The FBI alert, which went out on Thursday, told local police agencies that extremists want their followers to try to use spray bottles to spread bodily fluids to cops on the street,” ABC News reports. “The extremists are also directing followers to spread the disease to Jews by going “any place they may be congregated, to include markets, political offices, businesses and places of worship.”

Michael Masters, the head of Secure Communities Network that coordinates security for synagogues, tells ABC News that neo-Nazis have been claiming that Jews are responsible for the spread of the virus in the United States.

“From pushing the idea that Jews created the coronavirus virus to sell vaccines to encouraging infected followers to try to spread the illness to the Jewish community and law enforcement, as the coronavirus has spread, we have observed how white-supremacists, neo-Nazis and others have used this to drive their own conspiracy theories, spread disinformation and incite violence on their online platforms,” he explains.
White supremacists discussed using coronavirus as a bioweapon
Federal law enforcement document reveals 

Hunter Walker and Jana Winter
22/3/2020 
WASHINGTON — White supremacists discussed plans to weaponize coronavirus via “saliva,” a “spray bottle” or “laced items,” according to a weekly intelligence brief distributed by a federal law enforcement division on Feb. 17. © Provided by Yahoo! News Right-wing extremists in Berlin in 2017 commemorate the 30th anniversary of the death of Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess. (Maurizio Gambarini/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)

Federal investigators appeared to be monitoring the white nationalists’ communications on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app that has become popular with neo-Nazis. In the conversations, the white supremacists suggested targeting law enforcement agents and “nonwhite” people with attacks designed to infect them with the coronavirus.

“Violent extremists continue to make bioterrorism a popular topic among themselves,” reads the intelligence brief written by the Federal Protective Service, which covered the week of Feb. 17-24. “White Racially Motivated Violent Extremists have recently commented on the coronavirus stating that it is an ‘OBLIGATION’ to spread it should any of them contract the virus.”

The Federal Protective Service, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is a law enforcement agency responsible for protecting buildings owned or leased by the federal government.

The intelligence brief, marked for official use only, noted the white supremacists “suggested targeting … law enforcement and minority communities, with some mention of public places in general.” According to the document, the extremists discussed a number of methods for coronavirus attacks, such spending time in public with perceived enemies, leaving “saliva on door handles” at local FBI offices, spitting on elevator buttons and spreading coronavirus germs in “nonwhite neighborhoods.”

The February document appears to show that at least some white nationalists were already taking the threat of the coronavirus seriously at a time when some in government were downplaying the threat. On Feb. 26, President Trump said that he expected the cases to go down to zero in the United States in “a couple of days.” The Washington Post reported on Friday that intelligence agencies were issuing “ominous” warnings about the virus in January and February.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.

According to the Federal Protective Service intelligence brief, the discussion of spreading the coronavirus occurred in a channel on the app Telegram that is devoted to the “siege culture” philosophies of neo-Nazi author James Mason and “accelerationism.” Mason wrote a series of newsletters titled “Siege” in the 1980s that advocated for acts of racial terrorism in order to hasten a war that would cause the breakdown of society.

White Supremacist Corona by Sharon Weinberger on Scribd

In recent years, Mason’s writings became popular among members of the violent neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division and its offshoots. Mason could not be reached for comment. Growing numbers of white supremacists have also expressed interest in “accelerationism,” which involves advocating for extremist attacks with the express goal of provoking a larger societal conflict.

Nick Martin, who is the editor of the Informant, a newsletter focused on hate and extremist groups and a former investigative reporter at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Yahoo News that multiple newer neo-Nazi groups with younger members have brought Mason to prominence.

“There’s a whole branch of neo-Nazism that follows James Mason's writings and uses his work as kind of their bible. Atomwaffen is part of that, but there are multiple groups that would fall under the same category,” Martin said.

Homeland Security has identified white supremacist violence as one of the major domestic extremist threats facing the United State, and there has been a push to start tracking such groups the way U.S. intelligence agencies track foreign terrorists.

Atomwaffen Division has made headlines because of multiple criminal cases involving the group’s leadership. Martin, who has written extensively about the group, said some of his sources believe there is a possibility followers of Atomwaffen or similar groups could try to take advantage of the coronavirus pandemic.


“There is a big concern right now — including from people who work in counterterrorism — that it’s an opportune time for these accelerationist groups to strike,” Martin said.

---30---

Climate Upheaval, Mild or Severe, Who Really Cares?

Robert Hunziker

 February 14, 2025
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Image by Matt Palmer.

The onset of some level of climate upheaval or widespread destruction of biomes and human lives, mild or severe, has essentially been forecast by the world’s leading climate scientist James Hansen, Earth Institute, Columbia University who pronounced the 2C upper temperature limit that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says cannot be exceeded “dead on arrival.” But frankly, “who cares” is an overriding issue that impedes doing anything constructive.

Only recently several publications took notice of Hansen’s most recent communique: The Guardian, February 4, 2025: Climate Change Target of 2C is ‘Dead’ Says Renowned Climate Scientist.

If the 2C target is dead on arrival, then the worldwide climate system is headed for a wild trip that’ll make the past two years look like a cakewalk. If history is a guide, paying heed to James Hansen’s warnings is advisable. For example, if the US Senate, decades ago, would have listened and acted upon Hansen’s 1988 warning, articles like this that spell out scientific facts about an uncompromising challenging climate system would be stupid and unnecessary. Back then, Hansen told the US Senate: “The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.”

Wow, talk about a zinger: “changing our climate” should have shaken and rattled the rafters of the Capitol building with demands by senators for immediate research into what could be done about such shocking news. But nothing happened, until now, with a climate system threatening everything capitalism stands for, like homeownership, as major home insurers either back off coverage/drop coverage in states like Florida and California, or they crank up rates so fast, so high to nosebleed levels that many current and prospective homeowners are priced out of the market. Homeowner’s Insurance Costs Soar, Barron’s d/d January 22, 2025.

Significantly, it’s no small deal when RE is clobbered by a ravaging climate system in the states of Florida and California, as Florida’s $1.58 trillion GDP is comparable to Spain and California’s $4 trillion GDP comparable to India. Combined, GDP of the two states ranks alongside the US, China, Germany, and Japan as one of the five largest in the world.

Climate change is rapidly becoming too costly for insurers and for homeowners. Assuming Dr. Hansen is right once again, homeownership will become a relic of the American Dream. If and when “2°C is dead,” meaning surpassing pre-industrial temperatures, the repercussions will be so ugly, so dreadfully corpselike, and impossible to describe with a clear conscience. And, besides, who really cares anyway?

For two years running, the most influential sources of US political power have been dropping out of the green movement by the bucketload. They just don’t care and neither does the general public. According to a Gallup poll, 54% of Americans do not think global warming poses a serious threat during their lifetimes. Just wondering: Does the 54% mostly come from the over 50s crowd?

The world’s leading climate scientist, James Hansen, similarly addressed the issue of complacency and lack of interest based upon the title of a recent report: James Hansen, Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed? Earth Institute, Columbia University, Feb. 3, 2025.

Greenhushing has become the newest approach to climate change by corporations. Recent financial headlines tell the tale: JPMorgan, State Street Quit Climate Group, BlackRock Steps Back (Reuters, Feb. 15, 2024) Major Asset Managers Drop Climate Activism (Competitive Enterprise Institute, February 2024) And this is before Trump turned lose his attack dogs on the EPA and dropped out of Paris ’15, an agreement by the nations of the world to take measures to suppress CO2 emissions (which act as a blanket holding heat) to try to hold down rising global temperatures. So far, it’s been a massive failure and is now destined for the dustbin.

What about 2°C by 2050

Never before in Earth’s history has the planet been confronted by such a powerful force as the human footprint, e.g., human-generated climate change is changing the face of the planet in one human lifetime. That’s difficult to comprehend in the context of a planet celebrating 4.543 billion years. The human era 2.5m/yrs is merely a speck of time. Humans are 0.0006% of earth-time.

Several respected scientific studies claim “business-as-usual’ will take global temps up to 2°C above pre-industrial by 2050, possibly 2040-45, resulting in one-foot of sea level rise. Every 1 foot of sea level swallows up 100 feet of shoreline for most coastlines. The consequences will drive the cost of home insurance to the moon. Furthermore, the climate change issue is not only increasing sea levels; it’s massive wildfires, monster hurricanes, expansive floods, and barn-burning droughts. All of these events are happening at extreme levels of human history.

As a result, homeownership will no longer be a crowning feature of capitalism and will lose its safety valve effect of stabilizing society. Begging the question: Is the big fossil fuel CO2 emissions profit center worth the loss of valuation of large portions of real estate, the world’s biggest asset class, with a projected value of $613.60 trillion in 2023?

According to an article in USA Today, Feb. 3, 2025: Climate Risk Will Take Trillion-Dollar Bite Out of America’s Real Estate, Report Finds. According to the referenced report, Property Prices in Peril, “Climate abandonment’ areas are where climate risks and insurance premiums are high enough that population is declining; risky growth areas are where perils are high and premiums are rising.” This is the direct result of anthropogenic (originating in human activity) climate change.

It’s threatening America’s number one asset class and the existence of capitalism as a viable socio-economic system, which is already questionable. Can the system survive the climate change that Dr. James Hansen warned the US Senate about 37 years ago that’s now morphing into a lengthy extension that’s much more ominous than his 1988 warning? Moreover, today’s administration is poking the bear by abandoning green policies just as the worst of climate change approaches full stride, which will likely define the 2030s (distant cousin to the 1930s).

Prospects for Heat Waves: “Mortality from extreme heat could surpass that of all infectious diseases combined, and rival that of cancer and heart disease.” (Source: Why Heat Waves of the Future May Be Even Deadlier Than Feared, The New York Times, October 25, 2024)

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com

And Still Growth Is All They Talk About

Graham Peebles

February 14, 2025
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Image by Matt Palmer.

Every year of the past 10 has been the hottest on record, with 2024 topping the heat chart. It’s not only air temperatures that are climbing; in 2024, the oceans of the world also reached a new daily high. 2024 was the first year on record where global average temperatures exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. “From January to September, the global mean surface air temperature was 1.54°C above the pre-industrial average.”

The reason the planet continues to heat up is because not enough is being done to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Arising principally from burning fossil fuels (oil, coal, gas), it is GHG emissions that are clogging the lower atmosphere, resulting in global warming.

Limiting global warming to 1.5˚C was the target agreed upon by 196 countries at the Paris Climate Accords in 2016. The Paris Agreement “sets long-term goals to…. hold global temperature increase to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.” President Trump has taken the US out of the legally binding landmark agreement. This reckless and irresponsible step sets a dangerous example for other nations that wish to flaunt environmental commitments, and should be strongly condemned by governments throughout the world.

If the current warming trajectory continues, by the early 2030’s 1.5˚C is likely to become the norm, with higher temperatures a real risk.

Increases in average ground temperatures of 1.5 or 2 degrees centigrade doesn’t sound like much, but every additional fraction of a degree can bring more frequent and intense extreme weather, such as heatwaves and heavy rainfall. “Every tenth of a degree matters and climate impacts get progressively worse the more warming we have,” explains Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth.

Once established a 1.5˚C world would be hard to reverse, and the risks are manifold: an increase in extreme weather events – more frequent and intense heatwaves, droughts, heavy rainfall and storms; rising sea levels, which in turn increases the risk of costal flooding and erosion; coral reef loss – its estimated that 70-90% of coral reefs could disappear due to ocean warming and acidification; arctic ice loss, affecting ecosystems and global climate patterns; biodiversity loss – up to 14% of land species could face high risk of extinction.

If warming of 1.5˚C is normalised and becomes 2˚C (or higher), the impacts would be much worse — doubling the extinction risks, intensifying extreme weather, and making some regions uninhabitable, leading to mass displacement of people.

In addition to the environmental impacts, rising temperatures affect communities and economies. A heating planet means food and water shortages and increased risk of heat related illnesses and deaths. Businesses are impacted in affected areas and climate disasters cost trillions of dollars in infrastructure damage and reduced productivity.

Its all interconnected

Climate change is one aspect of the man-made environmental catastrophe, which is the biggest crisis humanity has ever been confronted with. It is unprecedented in seriousness and impact, short, medium, and long-term. The speed of change is surprising everyone, including climate scientists. “Both 2023 and 2024 temperatures surprised most climate scientists— we didn’t think we’d be seeing a year above 1.5˚C this early,” says Dr Hausfather.

In all developed and emerging countries, the environmental emergency should be the central issue around which all other matters— economy, development, geo-politics, etc.— are decided. How does this policy, this proposal, impact the planet? Does it have a negative or positive effect on the climate, on local ecosystems, on pollution, etc., or is it neutral? If the proposal increases greenhouse gas emissions, further weakens an endangered species or ecosystem, adds to air/water/soil pollution, or expands desertification. Then the proposal should immediately be dropped; this is what would happen in we were living in a world where responsible governance was standard practice. Sadly we are not.

The current crop of political ‘leaders’ are weak, unprincipled, and on the whole, completely inadequate to the colossal challenge that the man-made environmental catastrophe presents. Compromised by their indebtedness to big business, personal ambition, blind adherence to ideology, and complete lack of vision, not only do they consistently fail to address the issues of the day, but their actions routinely intensify the problems.

Far from environmental concerns sitting at the forefront of policy-making, irrespective of country or ideology, it is securing economic growth that exercises the minds of politicians, and the drive for profit that determines the actions of corporations. Growth that is strongly dependent on consumerism, and it is unconstrained consumerism within and by rich nations, that is in large part responsible for the environmental catastrophe.

Along with competition and social injustice, consumerism is one of the cornerstones of market fundamentalism. Excess is celebrated, selfishness and greed promoted. Not only has this crude materialistic way of life vandalised the natural world, it has encouraged narrow unhealthy behaviour and a set of social norms that have created unhealthy societies populated by frightened, confused people.

The health of the planet and the well-being of humanity, as well as the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms are all interconnected. It is one integrated eco-system, one life; infection in one area affects all other parts. There is no such thing as separation, on all levels life is one. Try telling that to the Clown In Chief ensconced in the White House.

Whilst governments and (most) corporations/businesses are not interested in putting the environment at the centre of everything, we as individuals can. This means protesting environmental abuse and taking personal responsibility for the way we live. Every decision – shopping, travel, heating, etc., should take into account the environmental impact; if everyone decided to only patronise environmentally responsible businesses, companies large and small would quickly change their strategies. The same applies to politicians, local and national, who are trying to persuade the electorate to vote for them.

Given the scale of the crisis such steps may appear tiny, but when adopted by enough people they can have an impact, and doing something rather than nothing alleviates to some degree the feeling of despair. Hope, which is so badly needed at this time, is not based on wishful thinking, but comes about through sustained action.

Graham Peebles is a British freelance writer and charity worker. He set up The Create Trust in 2005 and has run education projects in Sri Lanka, Ethiopia and India.  E: grahampeebles@icloud.com  W: www.grahampeebles.org

Two Books on Climate Change and Beyond

Joshua Sperber

 February 14, 2025
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Wauna Mill, Westport, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Malcolm Harris, What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis (Little, Brown and Company, 2025)
Anthony Galluzzo, Against the Vortex: Zardoz and Degrowth Utopias in the Seventies and Today (Zer0 Books, 2023)

One of the more predictable outcomes of Trump’s return to the White House is the common liberal assertion that leftist politics, particularly following the George Floyd protests, had gone too far. Even before the 2024 election, some writers were pointing to radical demands such as police abolition to explain why the effort to achieve significant national reforms failed. Trump’s victory, along with the dismantling of DEI programs across the government and private sector, seemed only to confirm the view that the rightwing backlash was the inevitable reaction to a movement that had outpaced its popular support.

It is therefore impressive that Malcolm Harris’s What’s Left forcefully and unapologetically argues that when it comes to climate change left politics in fact needs to go much further. A survey of three responses to the climate crisis, the book evaluates liberal, socialist, and communist strategies, arguing that any likely solution will incorporate portions of all three in a Venn diagram or “metastrategy of coherence” (Harris cuts to the chase by rejecting conservative and tech-utopian solutions prima facie, asserting that they are, respectively, discredited and delusional).

In the book’s first section, Harris examines the liberal strategy of marketcraft: the state’s manipulation of production toward green energy and away from fossil fuels and other flagrantly destructive resources. Harris is generous in his evaluation, focusing among other things on the ways in which the Biden Administration bypassed the traditional “regulation/deregulation” toolkit to instead affirmatively cultivate more climate-friendly policy outcomes through subsidies and incentivizing venture capital toward decarbonization. Harris uses metaphor nicely and describes marketcraft alternately as a steak thrown to redirect the hound of private investment and as the parent/state restricting the teenager/market’s freedom in the bedroom of the “state’s house.”

Assuming that it is even feasible to “trick” capitalists into “financing their own euthanasia,” there are of course, Harris notes, deep contradictions in attempting to direct private enterprise toward the public good, not least of which is that companies are motivated first and foremost by the pursuit of profit derived from the exploitation of labor and view the natural world as a cheap resource and dumping ground. Capitalists are therefore disinclined, no matter the subsidies, to invest in long-term projects – including the types of financially risky infrastructural projects required for transitioning to a “green economy” –and have no general interest, to put it mildly, in the common good.

Nowhere are marketcraft’s contradictions clearer than in the promotion of electric vehicles. While it might appear sensible at first glance to promote electric vehicles in order to jettison gas fueled cars, emissions, Harris emphasizes, primarily result from “indirect consumption of fossil fuels – through agricultural products, plastics, and basically everything we consume.…” This is not to mention the lithium, plastics, and endless rubber that are required for EVs and the unending wealth extracted from drivers to maintain subsidiary industries such as insurance companies, law firms, and the aesthetically and environmentally abominable parking lot industry.

The shift to EVs does not merely represent a missed opportunity for developing more rational forms of travel and city design – say, ones that contain large and attractive open spaces where humans could comfortably move without fear of being honked at or killed. Our move to EVs also indicates the extent to which our political decision making, lives, and imaginations are held hostage to the needs of capital, leaving us in a world in which “saving the environment” becomes a meaningless (and erroneous) abstraction amid an ever-lengthening rush hour (sic) where cars sit backed up for miles, their drivers, stressed and aching, fearing collision with a Cybertruck or simply being rear-ended by a phone-addled commuter. Who would want to save the environment, instead of drive over a cliff, in such a world?

Necessary but not sufficient, marketcraft, Harris argues, needs to be supplemented by other, more radical, strategies. Public power, in contrast to marketcraft, bypasses the short-term and narrow interests of private investors and enables the state to engage in comprehensive planning for the benefit of, if not all, at least the majority. Public power’s deployment of nationalization, for example, could enable the federal government to not only expand the electrical grid but also redirect it for rational use outside the myopic and astronomically wasteful incentives of private profit. Calling on the work of Matt Bruenig and other analysts, Harris notes that there already exists public power infrastructure that could simply be expanded and repurposed toward clean energy production and decarbonization: a green and nationally extended Tennessee Valley Authority. Similarly, labor unions – “the subject and object of the public power strategy” – already provide the organizational structure and class-orientation required to politically challenge the fossil fuel industry and other entrenched polluters. Acknowledging that some unions are politically conservative, Harris stresses that radical political consciousness cannot be assumed but instead must be “built.” That is, the heart of the battle over climate change is ultimately neither organization nor strategy but values that must be fought for.

Nevertheless, as with marketcraft, public power contains its own contradictions, first and foremost concerning just what “the public” entails. The TVA, for example, destroyed Native American burial sites and refused for decades to return the remains. As Harris notes, “Native social metabolic orders are distinct sets of values” that can conflict with not only capitalism but also public power itself. Emboldening state power in the name of a preconceived “public” can exclude if not destroy the particular in the name of the general and forfeit opportunities to incorporate indigenous capabilities into a reconfigured and more environmentally sustainable world. Public power, Harris continues, can also overlook existing social divisions and their implications on constituency-building. Why would men, say, support eliminating a status quo that furnishes them a variety of household and workplace privileges? Alternatively, how do you get unions to overcome Joshua Clover’s “affirmation trap,” in which labor, fearing for its survival, embraces its own exploitation? Harris ultimately circumnavigates such questions by relocating the central site of struggle from the workplace to his third and final strategy: the commune.

The commune, for Harris, is distinct from the first two strategies since it does not attempt to compete against capitalism from within but is external to it. Unlike public power, it does not prioritize the working class’s control over work but seeks to abolish a system in which “work itself (is) the center of life… a strategy in which the planet’s exploited people abolish capital’s system of Value and impose a new world social metabolism based on the interconnected free association and well-being of all – and not just humans.”

The orienting principle of the commune, Harris writes, is not capitalism’s “Oil-Value-Life chain” but the revolutionary dictum: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Adhering to the principle of need to ensure that all are housed, clothed, and well-fed would allow us to eschew the mumbo jumbo of a merit-based society, while focusing on ability – versus, say, equality – would enable us to stop imagining that an 80-year-old woman and a 25-year-old man are equally capable of manual labor and thereby equally deserving of the remuneration that accompanies it. Harris’s second orienting principle for the commune is another Marxist dictum: The ruthless criticism of everything existing, an epistemological orientation recognizing that answers to our problems are frequently as suspect as our problems themselves, if only because the answers emerged from the same conditions and ideological presuppositions that helped produce the problems in the first place. A revolution in permanence, guided by the principle of collective well-being, is a prerequisite for escaping the trap.

What’s Left is at its most subversive, however, when addressing the question of the police and violence. Harris identifies the police as the primary impediment to revolutionary change, rejecting the notions that the police are merely fellow workers and what has been called the pathology of non-violence. Harris specifically invokes so-called Rose Theory in observing that all living creatures are designed to protect themselves (a la the rose’s thorns) and that it is only natural and proper for humans too to defend themselves from, in this case, life-threatening pollution and heat. Historically speaking, the efficacy of political violence is relatively uncontroversial, as even adherents to non-violent civil disobedience, famously Gandhi and MLK, have leveraged the threat of external violence to advance their goals. That is, violent and non-violent resistance are not mutually exclusive but symbiotic. Prima facie rejecting out of hand the former represents not only bad history but is also morally irresponsible, as it is our duty, no less than the rose’s, to defend ourselves.

Notably, Harris insists that these three strategies must all be included in the plan in order to combat climate change (practically speaking, he assumes that you won’t convince liberal marketcrafters to become communists and vice versa), but it is not entirely clear what is to stop the strategies from combating each other. Marketcraft preserves capitalism, which of course never stops accumulating and would like nothing better than to privatize the nationalized sectors promised by public power. At a minimum, the tripart strategy can only be made for the short-term befitting an “emergency siren” (or “brake”). Still, one wonders about the long-term dangers of such an unholy alliance, and Harris isn’t always convincing here. Harris counsels, for instance, that we exploit divisions within capitalists, noting that even John Brown received support from anti-slavery capitalists (John Brown, though, was not a communist). However, in his criticism of marketcraft Harris notes that British commerce’s successful abolition of West Indian slavery was followed by its quick embrace of U.S., Cuban, and Brazilian slavery. That is, exploiting capitalist divisions, fighting merely over which commodities to use, can squander our own energies while sidestepping the problem.

While Harris refers to the superior environmental practices of many indigenous societies, he is wary of romanticizing the pre-Columbian past and is quick to invoke José Carlos Mariátegui’s assertion that “the past is a foundation not a program.” Yet, in concluding that we cannot go backwards, which we of course cannot, it can be tempting to overlook the ways in which the destruction of the environment is an outcome of not merely capitalism but modernity itself. Putting aside the debate over whether the USSR was authentically socialist, Chernobyl was one of the biggest environmental catastrophes in world history, not mentioning the pollution produced by other non-capitalist states. We might not be able to exit the 21^st century, but we should surely cultivate critical detachment from the hegemonic ideologies of the modern world.

In this regard, Anthony Galluzzo’s Against the Vortex provides a critical supplement to the discussion. Criticizing the “rational-empiricist yet implicitly religious logic of modernity,” Galluzzo argues that the source of the ongoing destruction of our physical environment is not capitalism per se but the “developmentalist imperative that defines the modernization process,” representing a revolt against finitude, limits, and death itself. This process spans the ideological spectrum, informing Musk and other tech oligarchs’ transhumanism as well as the so-called “fully automated luxury communism” and accelerationism of significant portions of the left. Developing his discussion through a critical viewing of John Boorman’s cult classic Zardoz, Galluzzo argues that, “flourishing starts with an embrace of our mortality and natality, our embodiment and animality, of our fragility and the interdependence that follows from this.”

Harris apparently rejects none of this, but the incorporation of marketcraft and public power into an otherwise revolutionary response to our climate catastrophe reproduces forms of domination that helped get us into this mess in the first place. Communism, too, which expresses a necessary and appropriate self-confidence in humans’ capacity to shape and improve our world, can slide into hubris. Nowhere perhaps is this more evident than in Harris’s discussion of family abolition. It is not difficult to imagine how such a policy would develop in our current political reality, that is, in the hands of opportunistic reformers who in grafting utopian solutions onto an existing dystopia wreak havoc and discredit revolutionary politics for years. Even in a revolutionary scenario, it is debatable, to put it modestly, whether not just men but most people would welcome the abolition of our most intimate form of social organization.

Addressing the heart of the matter, Galluzzo asks: “How to exit the dead end of industrial modernism and its legitimating fictions – utilitarianism, Prometheanism, productivism and its ecocidal dreams of endless growth or secular immortality – in the face of interrelated material, ecological, and spiritual crises but without sliding into the reactionary antimodernism that, for example, led certain disillusioned Western intellectuals to embrace the Iranian revolution at the end of the Seventies?” Harris provides many answers, some of them exceptionally valuable: without revolution we are doomed. Yet without humility we are lost.

Joshua Sperber teaches political science and history. He is the author of Consumer Management in the Internet Age. He can be reached at jsperber4@gmail.com