Accelerationism is the proposed solution against the decay, corruption, and populism brought by “the Cathedral” (which includes state administration, universities, the press, and NGOs, and functions as an immanent religion—a progressive religion that subdues and punishes any contrary opinion.) Accelerationism means unleashing the energies of capitalism, freeing the forces of production, and replacing the republican system with a technologized monarchy.
BY Mihnea Măruță ON SUBSTACK / READ AND SUBSCTIBE TO Mihnea Măruță ON SUBSTACK
“We declare that the splendour of the world has been enriched with a new form of beauty: the beauty of speed. A race-automobile adorned with great pipes like serpents with explosive breath… a race-automobile which seems to rush over exploding powder is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace. (…)
Why look back since we must break down the mysterious doors of Impossibility?
Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the Absolute for we have already created the omnipresent eternal speed.”
These lines were written more than a century ago, in 1909. They belong to an Italian writer named Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and are part of a text called The Manifesto of Futurism.
The Italian futurists, most of them literary figures, despised women, fought against moralism, and wanted museums and libraries to be destroyed because they sheltered the past.
They glorified technology, patriotism, and war – which they described as “the only true hygiene of the world”.
It’s no surprise that the style of these texts later became a source of inspiration for Mussolini’s fascism.
But what I propose we take from the passage above is this idea: the desire to move at great speed into the future, to hasten things, to swallow up time, to eliminate everything that may seem hesitant, meditative, doubtful—everything that hinders or delays the possible domination of humanity over the external world.
We focus on this idea to understand what has been happening since Donald Trump became President of the United States again.
Almost all signs point to this trend: the new American politics appears to be radically different from what we expect or from what we know from the last 80 years of history.
The new American politics seems more and more inspired by the ideas of some people who, on the one hand, no longer believe in democracy, and, on the other hand, no longer have the patience to live in this global present.
The new American politics no longer glorifies speed, as in the dreams of the early 20th-century Futurists, but directly chooses acceleration: pressing the pedal of technology to achieve as quickly as possible a future imagined as the crown of efficiency.
I will try, in what follows, to support this hypothesis.
I started with a few key figures around Donald Trump to see whether their ideas share anything in common—if there is or isn’t a philosophical core to this new American power.
From a doctrinal perspective, the most important figure is not Elon Musk. He would be the “queen” allowed to roam freely on the chessboard, and given the freedom to implement strategic decisions, but not the strategist himself.
From the perspective of bringing the future into the present, the most important figure seems to be another billionaire: Peter Thiel.
Born in Germany, emigrated to America as a child, with exceptional inclinations toward mathematics, a Stanford philosophy graduate, a disciple of René Girard (who was also his neighbor), co-founder of PayPal—a prominent member, in fact, of the group known in the global tech “folklore” as the “PayPal Mafia”—the first external investor in Facebook, owner of a fortune estimated at over $11 billion, Peter Thiel founded multiple startups, tech companies, and investment funds operating in areas connected to the future: artificial intelligence, weaponry, data analysis (the famous Palantir), life extension, or building settlements on the high seas (seasteading).
Through one of these funds (Founders Fund), Peter Thiel was among the early investors in two of Elon Musk’s famous businesses: SpaceX (transport and space exploration) and Neuralink (brain implants).
In other words, in their relationship, the upper hand does not belong to Musk. Perhaps quite the opposite.
But what is Thiel’s connection to Trump?
(In the meantime, most major Silicon Valley investors have switched sides; another tech tycoon explains why in this podcast.)
Back in 2016, Thiel also spoke at the Republican National Convention in favor of Trump. Once elected, Trump rewarded Thiel by appointing one of his protégés, Michael Kratsios (who had worked at Thiel Capital), as Chief Technology Officer of the United States.
But even more interesting are the figures connected with Peter Thiel whom Donald Trump has co-opted into his new leadership team.
For the most important of these figures, we have to go back to 2011, when Thiel gave a lecture at the Yale Law School.
Among the students was a young man from Ohio who had served as a journalist in the Marine Corps for four years and already held a degree in philosophy. His name: James David Vance.
Their meeting then, in 2011, would lead, a few years later, to Vance’s employment at one of Thiel’s companies, Mithril Capital (a name linked to Thiel’s passion for Tolkien’s books), and a few years after that, to a $15 million campaign fund, thanks to which, and with Donald Trump’s support, JD Vance became a senator from Ohio in 2022.
The decisive moment in the relationship between Trump and Vance took place in 2021: accompanied by Peter Thiel, JD Vance was received at Mar-a-Lago and “forgiven” for his 2016 statement in which he compared Trump to Hitler and added, “I’m a Never Trump guy.”
Today, JD Vance is Vice President of the United States and, according to some American commentators, one of Peter Thiel’s most successful “investments.”
But Vance is not the only former Thiel employee or partner to reach the inner circle around President Trump. At least two more names should be mentioned:
– David Sacks, former CEO at PayPal, is the new “AI and crypto czar” at the White House, the position that manages Artificial Intelligence and cryptocurrency projects;
– Jim O’Neill, former CEO of the Thiel Foundation, was chosen by Trump to be Chief Operating Officer of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
What do these appointments tell us, along with others in the same category?
In short, people who have led vast entities and know how to make money. People who, like Trump, see the world almost exclusively through “CEO lenses.”
And with this preference, we reach the doctrinal core of the new power at the White House.
Let’s not forget where we started: the acceleration toward the future: separating from everything big capital perceives as stagnation.
In other words, the “takeoff” toward a horizon where “sabotage”—whether ideological or administrative—would no longer be possible.
What, in these investors’ view, is the main obstacle to freedom, the thing that would slow down or even prevent the realization of their vision of techno-efficiency?
Answer: representative democracy. The parliamentary system. Universal suffrage. Politics, in general, as this term has been understood in America over the last 100 years.
Peter Thiel stated this as early as 2009, in a lecture for a libertarian-oriented think tank:
“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. (…)
The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics.
Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.”
More recently, that same idea—that democracy is an obstacle—was explained by another Silicon Valley billionaire who went from the Democratic camp to Trump’s camp: Marc Andreessen.
In an interview from January 2025, Andreessen—who helped Trump with hiring interviews during the period between the presidential election and his inauguration—cites an Italian political scientist from the 20th century, Robert Michels, who proposed the concept of the “iron law of oligarchy.”
According to this concept, any form of social organization, no matter how democratic it tries to be at first, ends up becoming an oligarchy, meaning that true democracy is impossible, especially for large populations.
The explanation is that the masses cannot organize, and sooner or later, power is anyway seized by a narrow elite (a nomenklatura).
Ancient Greece and Florence during the Medici era were attempts at direct democracy, but both, according to Michels, failed miserably.
Finally, the most vehement critic of democracy is an eccentric thinker whose name has become relevant in America’s new political context because he is considered Peter Thiel’s “house philosopher.”
His name is Curtis Yarvin. He is 52 years old, but he looks and acts more like an immature teenager than a strategist with depth.
He’s friends with Thiel and JD Vance and became known mainly for a blog where he wrote under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug (a blog funded by… you guessed it).
In January 2025, after the inauguration of the new-old American president, Politico.com headlined:
“Curtis Yarvin’s Ideas Were Fringe. Now They’re Coursing Through Trump’s Washington.”
In that same month, in an interview with the New York Times, Curtis Yarvin said that democracy is very weak and used as an example the fact that, despite a solid majority opposing it, mass immigration continues.
But perhaps the most provocative lines from that interview, at least for the readership of the famous American newspaper, are these:
“I believe that voting is providing a sort of pornographic stimulus; it becomes more like supporting your football team.
And I think that what it means to most people today is that it provides a sort of meaning for them, it makes them feel relevant, it makes them feel like they matter in a sense.
I think that’s something deeply elusory about that sense of mattering, that goes up against the very important question that we need a government that is actually good.”
At this point, the essential question arises: are these ideas just random ramblings, or are we dealing with a structured concept, a consistent and coherent philosophical system?
I’ll try to simplify the answer, while also thanking you for reading this far. We’ve got a bit more to go 🙂
This movement, which considers democracy to have become an obstacle to capitalism, is called the neo-reactionary movement, abbreviated NRx.
It is also referred to as the “Dark Enlightenment.” That term belongs to the English philosopher Nick Land, and it’s also the title of one of his books.
And so we reach the philosophical heart of the matter, because, in fact, the most fitting explanation for everything that astonishes us in America today is a philosophical one, from which political, economic, and social consequences follow.
Born in 1962, Nick Land taught philosophy at the University of Warwick from 1987 until 1998, when he resigned.
He is a nonconformist and was long considered marginal, but his writings returned to relevance with the rise of right-wing parties and the spectacular progress of Artificial Intelligence.
Land was nicknamed the “godfather of accelerationism,” which is the concept we care about when talking about American politics (and see how it circles back to the Manifesto of Futurism).
Nick Land believes that the Western ideological system, called “the Cathedral,” which includes state administration, universities, the press, and NGOs, functions as an immanent religion—a progressive religion that subdues and punishes any contrary opinion.
So what is accelerationism?
It means unleashing the energies of capitalism, freeing the forces of production, and replacing the republican system with a kind of technologized monarchy.
Accelerating society toward the future, at full throttle—this would be the path envisioned by the neo-reactionary movement.
Why? Because…
“Capitalism and Artificial Intelligence are the same thing.”
That statement is Nick Land’s, and understanding it is key to comprehending what might be coming.
His argument goes like this: since we develop Artificial Intelligence simply because we can, without any plan, without knowing where we’re going, and therefore without giving it any purpose, it means Artificial Intelligence is its own cause!
This implies, going further, that it isn’t we, in the present, who outline and organize the future, but rather the future itself dictates today’s measures.
That implies, going further, that it’s as if Artificial Intelligence, coming from the future, solves and ensures its own arrival into existence.
Why would capitalism be equivalent to Artificial Intelligence?
Both capitalism and Artificial Intelligence feed on what in cybernetics is called “positive feedback”: both expand when attacked, contested, and disrupted.
Thus, if we accept the premise that humanity is inexorably heading toward a stage in which Artificial Intelligence will become the dominant “species,” then any attempt to prolong our agony is pointless.
Therefore, the accelerationist vision is to speed things up, to unleash a hyper-capitalism, a total techno-capitalism, an anarcho-capitalism—call it what you like—a system of private governance of a monarchical type, in which the president is the general manager, the CEO of a community-company, and citizens become shareholders of that state, transformed and run according to capitalist principles of efficiency and profit.
In the accelerationist view, nation-states are obsolete and need to be replaced by a global network of city-states and autonomous territories, if possible built from scratch.
Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin call this network a “patchwork.”
And if it sounds to you like these might be utopias, here’s some news: the billionaires I mentioned are already building such cities, buying land and organizing communities from the ground up.
This movement is tied to a theory called “The Network State,” described in a book published in 2022 by another key entrepreneur in the tech world: Balaji Srinivasan—former CTO of Coinbase.
The concept has solid theoretical and technical foundations—a dedicated website and a conference held in a city that is a similar model of organization: Singapore.
It starts with digital communities (groups with shared values united in a network—both technically and “spiritually”) and culminates in physical communities, cities that are optimized from a cybernetic standpoint.
Any blockchain project, for example, is also a “network state”: it has a “creed” (expressed in a “whitepaper”), a mission, a community, its own economy, etc.
In this new paradigm, classic institutions such as schools, the press, courts, and banks can be replaced by private entities, run on capitalist bases.
For more details, you can look at a few existing projects: Culdesac in Arizona, Prospera in Honduras, Cabin in Texas, Neighborhood SF, NOMAD, or Praxis.
One of the investment funds that buys land in various regions of the globe and is already developing new autonomous cities is called Pronomos. This fund is managed by an investor named Patri Friedman, who is in business with Peter Thiel.
Over 15 years ago, Thiel financed Friedman’s institute that studied the possibility of creating dwellings on the high seas (Seasteading Institute).
Another investor who has already built a new town is the Iranian-American Shervin Pishevar. In a 2020 article called “The Rise of City States,” he wrote:
“My prediction for 2050 is that many nation-states may fail — financially, politically, militarily, intellectually, morally, and spiritually.
Conversely, small communities (often called ‘city states’) will be in control of their own prosperity, with citizenship as ownership. The citizens of these local communities will evenly share responsibility for the GDP that will drive the city states’ market capitalization.”
Maybe now it’s clearer how the idea of turning the Gaza Strip into the “Eastern Mediterranean Riviera” might become feasible…
If we’ve reached Israel and Palestine: this accelerated movement toward the future also appeals to influential Jewish circles in Washington, and it’s embraced by evangelical Christian groups, which are extremely powerful within the Republican Party.
The reason lies in that branch of theology called eschatology, which deals with the end of the world.
Thus, both conservative Jews and evangelical Christians are millennialists, meaning they want the Messiah to come as soon as possible and save humanity: the Jews are still waiting for the First Coming, while the evangelicals are eager for the Second Coming of Christ.
In summary, the accelerationist doctrine would “reconcile” capitalism and millennialism— the wealthy and the poor, the pragmatists and the believers.
This might explain the seemingly paradoxical combination of religious dogmas with the futuristic approaches promoted by the new Trump administration, alongside many tech leaders.
The world is changing before our eyes, and it’s essential that we understand in which direction. We’re not just dealing with whims or improvisations.
It seems no coincidence either that the new American administration is targeting the bureaucratic apparatus (see the dissolution of USAID) and the media (see the statements by Musk and Co. about Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, NPR, Politico… and about journalism and “legacy media” in general).
Bureaucracy and the press are two entities of the “Cathedral” that, in the new vision, obstruct accelerationism.
If these elements disappear (or are totally discredited), it will very likely be the turn of the universities and NGOs.
All these institutions are considered outdated, and there will be attempts to replace or reinvent them with parallel institutions that use more Artificial Intelligence, and are run like private companies.
More profitable. But is it better?
Not by chance, in his conversation with the podcaster Lex Fridman, Marc Andreessen raised provocative questions like:
“What if the state of California were owned and operated by Apple?”
Regarding democracy, the signs show the dawn of a possible corporate-type American republic, led by a “monarch” with quasi-unlimited powers.
Andreessen himself said it in the interview mentioned above: the solution to prevent a repetition of the identity politics of the last ten years is a kind of “sandwich,” in which the “monarch,” on one side, and the population, animated through social media, on the other, will squeeze the administrative apparatus in the middle.
Eliminating the “Cathedral” for turbo-capitalism, building city-states from scratch with private institutions instead of the classic ones, getting rid of nation-states and communities united by a common language, turning the citizen, through blockchains and tokenization, into a shareholder who participates in profit, embracing Artificial Intelligence and accelerating its arrival—
this is accelerationism!
“Why look back since we must break down the mysterious doors of Impossibility?”
