Strategic Accelerationism – A Revolutionary Framework

GUEST POST: A study of the crisis since October 7 by Comrade Harry

A still from that fateful morning when Kataib al-Qassam broke the Gaza fence and the IDF alike.

Sometimes one intuitively knows an idea, but is still unable to break down and define what it means. It takes another person with fresh eyes and focus to do this, refining the original intuition, and making it legible and actionable. The simple idea becomes a real concept that can be put to use. Comrade Harry, an anti-Zionist activist, has done just that in this excellent piece, which he has kindly permitted me to post on this page. He defines the concept of “strategic accelerationism” in a way that not only helps us understand the crisis since October 7 but provides a real framework to guide our action to stop the genocide and weaken (if not defeat) American imperialism. First, some background on the concept.

“Strategic accelerationism” emerged out of my study of the Iraqi Insurgency, particularly my attempt to understand “Zarqawism.” When I first began studying this subject, I dismissed Zarqawi as a shortsighted, deranged zealot despite his talent as a tactician. It was this talent that should have alerted me that there was something much more dangerous about him. However, to the extent that “Zarqawism” existed, I viewed it as nihilistic bloodlust, nothing more. Reading Nibras Kazimi’s work, especially his book on Syria, made me pause and reconsider. He took Zarqawi seriously:

Strategic thinking is a hallmark of Zarqawism and its adherents. The old guard of Al-Qaeda never conceived of Iraq as a new and viable battleground, while al-Zarqawi did. The jihadist supporters of al-Zarqawi pushed the idea of “following the action,” finding gaps and opportunities in their war against the strategies of the West to maintain stability in the region.¹ [Emphasis mine]

This short passage completely reframed how I understood “Zarqawism.” I drew these conclusions:

1. It was strategically minded. One could justly say it was nihilistic, but not blindly so–it had a real (deeply malevolent) project.

2. It was intentionally unorthodox and “unrealistic.” The choice of Iraq defied jihadist “common sense,” and this was precisely what made the choice so powerful–few expected or understood it.

3. It rejected stability and embraced chaos as strategic imperatives. The Zarqawists assessed that stability in the Middle East meant unchallenged Western rule. The strategy, therefore, was to break this stability and induce chaos, thus creating new opportunities against the West.

Then, Kazimi’s comments on October 7 made me realize that “Zarqawism” was much bigger than Zarqawi and Iraq–the conclusions were not unique to jihadism. On October 9, Kazimi stated that the operation was due to a lack of imagination on the part of Israel. They could not fathom that Hamas would take such an extreme gamble.

And it’s not just the Israelis. Even the fire starters like some of the Iranians, who are going for bigger and bolder gambles, aren’t thinking these terms. Lines are being crossed and there’s never going to be a return to the familiar. And the past is of little use.

And because so little is clear, then the notion that you can purchase a stretch of peacetime by delivering a cascade of violence–leveling Gaza, for example–may not work this time. It may aggravate/accelerate a process that one isn’t even aware of as of yet. [Emphasis mine]

Then, on April 6, 2024, Kazimi commented:

Sinwar, following the Zarqawi model, wanted to short-circuit the status quo; the motherboard may catch fire but he was willing to take that gamble. And he did. […]

[October 7] happened, and now it’s taken Gaza, Israel, and the region into the realm of the unknown. Just like what Zarqawi kicked off in Iraq. [Emphasis mine]

He was right. Viewed in this light, the principles of “Zarqawism” were widely applicable and even transhistorical. I tentatively defined “Zarqawism” as “setting a fire so great and taking everyone so far into the unknown that only you can seize the opportunity–for only you see how wild the fire will become.” But Zarqawi did not invent this framework, he merely assimilated it to jihadist politics. There had been other adherents of this framework (e.g., Gavrilo Princip in Serbia, FLN in Algeria). It went well beyond Zarqawi, so it deserved a more general name. I proposed “strategic accelerationism” because the framework worsened or accelerated trends to serve a broader strategy. This helped identify the shared trait between Zarqawi and Sinwar, while still recognizing Sinwar’s great ideological distance and difference from Zarqawi. It also helped free the essential political insight from the disturbing context of jihadism. The concept of “strategic accelerationism” became central in my analysis of the regional (indeed global) crisis since October 7. However, it was unrefined and incomplete. Fortunately, comrade Harry has cleared up this confusion, and provided us with a powerful analytical tool to understand the Gaza genocide and the crisis ignited by it.

– Rob

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Introduction

The United States of America is an imperial power in decline. To be specific, it is an imperial power in exceedingly rapid decline. The American hegemon has long been past its heyday, but the pace of its self-sabotage has increased significantly in recent years. Domestically, the United States is a paranoid and antisocial population whose youth have traded literacy for Instagram Reels. Globally, whatever remained of America’s perception as a purveyor of freedom has been replaced by images of dead Palestinian children, killed by American bombs. The world is turning its eyes east, as countries such as China are now more favorably received than the Burger Empire. This is clearly not the American hegemon of post-World War Two or 1991.

Imperial strategists have long understood that the American Empire would not remain the unchallenged unitary global power forever, and have developed varying strategies of how to manage the loss of hegemony. While there has been rife debate within the imperialist managerial class over the best course of action, I believe that there emerged two main strategies: the Wolfowitz strategy and the Bernie Sanders strategy. The former believes that the empire’s strength derives from the ability to pose a credible military threat and follow through on those threats, with the overall goal of maintaining permanent American hegemony and preventing the rise of another power. The latter believes that imperial strength is derived from stability, both internally through social-democratic reforms and externally through a (relatively) less antagonistic foreign policy stance. The Bernie Sanders wing has traditionally been weak, and has often gone hand-in-hand with the Wolfowitz strategy as evidenced by the New Deal and Bernie under the Biden Presidency. But this strategy had a brief window of opportunity during the 2016 and 2020 Bernie Sanders presidential candidacies. Bernie, a patriot and imperialist, saw the writing on the wall for the American Empire. His effort to enact a modicum of social democracy was, thus, a last-ditch effort to save the Empire from itself. In response, the liberal and fascist wings of capital formed a united front to prevent any threat to unimpeded capital accumulation.

I believe that this intellectual history of imperial management is vital to understanding our current juncture, as this decade’s growth of the American Left and its successive waves of radicalization can be closely traced to the intra-bourgeois class struggle over imperial maintenance. In other words, as imperial managers became increasingly radicalized, so have we. The managers have made up their minds: if the Empire is going down, it is bringing human civilization down with it. This position, which I call American accelerationism, is paranoid, nihilistic, and most importantly it is hegemonic among the ruling class.

What is the American Left’s response? Well, it’s varied. Certain parts of the Left (using this term very broadly) still believe in the long-past Bernie Sanders/AOC dream of imperial restructuring to implement social-democratic (or what they call democratic socialist) policies. This dream was decisively killed on October 7–as Dylan Saba put it, the left-liberal alliance shattered alongside the Gaza Fence. Other parts of the left, aware that the accelerationist train has left the station, do not believe that America can be saved but do not know how to respond to this reality, either.

Comrade Rob Ashlar, inspired by Operation Al Aqsa Flood, has put forward a framework called strategic accelerationism. I believe this framework has meaningful explanatory and strategic power, and honestly the American Left might not have any other options—again, these are the objective conditions that have been imposed upon us. After all, American accelerationism has the potential to end human civilization; it is not an exaggeration to say that our ability to meaningfully damage the Empire from within has ramifications for every living creature on earth. We have a world-historic duty to adopt a correct strategy, and strategic accelerationism is a framework we need to seriously consider. I’ll briefly explain the framework’s underlying logic, its origins, some examples of its contemporary use both abroad and at home, and considerations of future use.²

Strategic Accelerationism: A Desperate Subjective Intervention*

“We struck the enemy with a massive preemptive strike after its planning had reached a major [stage] against the resistance.” – Abu Ubaydah

“We don’t care: Make it a World War!” – Yemeni Masses

As a concept, strategic accelerationism is a framework that emerged in response to American accelerationism, but as a concrete strategy, it emerged among the Sunni jihadists in the Iraqi insurgency. In other words, it is a subjective intervention in an extremely awful set of objective circumstances. The objective circumstance, American accelerationism, has a simple logic: a declining empire plans to conduct a civilizational murder-suicide rather than die quietly (Americans and Israelis really are so whiny, aren’t they?). If they could, the Empire would orchestrate this murder-suicide in one fell swoop, but this gamble would be unlikely to succeed. The whole world would turn against them, and the United States would surely be destroyed. Thus the Yankees are forced to compromise and conduct mini-civilizational murders. In reality, this strategy is to the Empire’s benefit, as they are able to concentrate the whole of their imperial might on a smaller enemy. The result: total elimination that is maximally contained, allowing the empire to conduct industrial slaughter at massive scales and relatively efficiently. Though it is sadistic, it makes sense; it’s better to face your enemies one-by-one than all at once. Notably, Israel also adopted this framework in its swift destruction of the Axis of Resistance—maybe it should be called Zionist accelerationism? Similarly, it is no coincidence that strategic accelerationism emerged during the Iraq War, during the broader Global War on Terror, which can be seen as the beginning of American accelerationism. This also highlights the politically agnostic nature of strategic accelerationism–any actor with the guts to ignite an uncontrollable flame, be they left or right, can use it.

To combat American accelerationism’s logic of maximum elimination and maximum containment, strategic accelerationism attempts to minimize elimination—it can only do this so successfully when facing a genocidal hegemon—and, more importantly, attempt to achieve absolute minimum containment. Put simply, a strategic accelerationist framework seeks to maximize exposure to accelerationist adventures, leaving none unscathed and forcing all to respond. It creates, expands, and intensifies the realm of the unknown, enveloping all actors and influencing the course of their action through the worsening crisis. By initiating the crisis and thus removing control from all actors, the “protagonist” (in this case, Hamas) is able to set the pace and scope on their own terms. Others can either go along with the protagonists (like anti-zionists) or they can go against them (like zionists). How one relates to the “protagonist” is the decisive factor in determining one’s strategy. By maximizing exposure, the weaker power forces relatively stronger powers to intervene and halt the homicidal hegemon in its tracks. The essence of strategic accelerationism is captured by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most infamous practitioner of the framework: “The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its flames will continue to intensify until it incinerates the Crusader armies in Dabiq.” All it takes is a spark and the bitter commitment to make it a raging firestorm. To paraphrase Henry Kissinger’s conception of guerrilla warfare, the American accelerationist loses if it does not maximize containment, and the strategic accelerationist wins if it does not minimize containment.

Intellectual Origins of American Accelerationism

“Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution.” – Mao Zedong, “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society”

“Antagonism is one form, but not the only form, of the struggle of opposites; the formula of antagonism cannot be arbitrarily applied everywhere.” – Mao Zedong, “On Contradiction”

Just as Marx located the rational kernel of the materialist dialectic within Hegel’s idealist dialectic, so the opposite is true within the American accelerationist logic: the irrational murder-suicide doctrine can be located within the rational paranoia of the Wolfowitz Doctrine. As mentioned, the core of the Wolfowitz Doctrine is the prevention of another geopolitical rival through the threat of military force. It must be again made clear that this policy is inherently paranoid: under this logic, any potential rising power is considered an existential threat that must be deterred by any means necessary. This prevention strategy could have only been possible through the extension of American imperialist “protection” to allies. In other words, America needed friends to execute this grand vision for the world. These friends came mainly in the form of NATO and various satellite states such as Israel and Japan, who were content with this arrangement as long as they were on the right side of the gun. Cheap consumer goods didn’t hurt, either.

This arrangement, though dangerous and paranoid, is rational: a hegemon does not want to lose its hegemony, and it will prevent potential rising powers from superseding them. But this Doctrine could not last forever. As powers such as China and Russia grew stronger outside of the NATO/satellite orbit, the American imperialist managerial class grew increasingly paranoid; to cope this declining global standing, the Wolfowitz paranoia turned the imperial gaze inward, conjuring up imaginary fifth columns, such as wokeness, immigrants, nineteen year old college students, or any combination of those three. This boomerang paranoia has also grown rapidly since the beginning of the Trump Presidency, as he has begun treating every ally as an enemy, making NATO/satellites wonder if they’re now on the wrong side of the gun.

American accelerationism has not always been the Empire’s hegemonic foreign policy. In my opinion, it has only gained that status in the last decade or so. But its intellectual roots lie in the antagonistic attitude inherent in Wolfowitz Doctrine, which contains a murderous bloodlast towards an imagined boogeyman could-be rising power. That boogeyman, now real, has driven the Empire mad, mad to the point of it willing to destroy human civilization rather than face humiliation by the Chinese.

(Quick sidebar: ironically, the country doing the most to drag America out of its self-imposed death cult mentality is China. Emerging victorious from the tit-for-tat trade war, China is effectively attempting to force America back into rationality on its trade policy and race war against Chinese college students studying in America. China can only do so because it is comparably strong to the United States; those less fortunate are forced into strategic accelerationism. And to be clear, China will not be spared from American accelerationism, but they may kick it down the road for a few years.)

The Wolfowitz Doctrine relied on a clear conception of friends and (imagined) enemies. For those on America’s good side, dealing with the hegemon was relatively non-antagonistic. But the Doctrine’s inherent paranoia, compounded by the emergence of a true rival power, has made America go crazy and apply an antagonistic mindset to basically all of its allies. By adopting an antagonistic and murderous approach to the entire world, American accelerationism is risking humanity’s survival.

Strategic Accelerationism in Action

“The longer the war of attrition lasts and the more it expands, the closer we get to Jerusalem–and it may last longer than some expect.” – Yahya Sinwar, weeks before his death

On October 6th, 2023, Israel and Saudi Arabia were weeks away—some reports even say it was days away—from striking a normalization agreement that was not conditioned on the creation of a Palestinian state. At the same time, Israel was expanding its West Bank ethnic cleansing operation at a historically rapid pace. And too at the same time, the brutal siege of Gaza continued, making the concentration camp uninhabitable. In the West, Zionism was hegemonic among ruling classes and the populace. On October 6th, there was a real chance of the Palestine Question being quietly liquidated from history, without the world even noticing.

Example One: October 7

On October 7th, 2023, Hamas’ Qassam Brigades turned this equation on its head by launching Operation Al Aqsa Flood and changing history forever. From the most heavily surveilled location on the planet, the Qassam Brigades planned and launched the Operation right under the occupation’s nose. And it must be stated plainly: the Qassam Brigades decisively defeated the Israeli Occupation Forces that day. The Israeli paper tiger had been made clear to the entire world.

Understanding that the Palestine Question was on the verge of elimination, Hamas launched Operation Al Aqsa Flood as a strategic accelerationist intervention both against their annihilation and precipitating it, as they understood the immediate and ferocious Israeli response to follow. Though some commentators remark that “Hamas made Israel do a genocide in Gaza,” this could not be further from the truth. Israel was already enacting genocidal policies away from the eyes of the world (remember: the American accelerationist wants maximum elimination and maximum containment). In response, Hamas’ strategic accelerationist gamble attempted to inflict maximum damage on the enemy and minimize containment.

On the first point, the Qassam Brigades were undoubtedly successful, humiliating Israeli security forces and bruising Zionist morale. On the second second, the degree of success can be debated, as multiple Axis of Resistance members capitulated to US/Israel rather than further minimize containment, which would have necessitated expanding and intensifying the war. But in my opinion, this degree of capitulation is the choice of individual Axis members, not that of the Qassam Brigades. That the Axis was decimated and the besieged Qassam Brigades fight on makes clear that this was a question of will, not of military strength. The Qassam Brigades minimized containment as much as they could, and I would still claim that despite the unbelievable devastation, the choice to launch Operation Al Aqsa Flood was a rational venture into the unknown. The world is forever changed.

Example Two: Make it a World War*

In November 2023, Yemen’s Ansarallah began conducting military operations to support the Palestinian Resistance forces. When the first Yemeni martyrs were recorded, Ansarallah was grateful that, now, it was not only Palestinian blood being shed. The Yemeni strategy is simple: make Israel’s genocide everyone else’s problem, AKA minimize containment. They have mainly done so through attacks on shipping entities heading towards Israel and through direct military operations on strategic Israeli sites such as Ben-Gurion airport. Yemen’s confrontation with the US and Israel, an example of internationalism par excellence, also showcases strategic accelerationism’s strategic benefit.

Compared to when Ansarallah first began operations, Israel has been badly damaged by these operations, as its Eilat Port has gone bankrupt and international airlines increasingly refuse to fly into Tel Aviv. And their confrontation has not just revealed the Israeli paper tiger, but also the Yankee. The Yemeni Armed forces have downed tens of millions of dollars worth of Reaper drones and are responsible for the destruction of multiple American fighter jets. In the process, Ansarallah has changed the rules of maritime warfare, as they successfully challenged American naval superiority. And as for the Yemeni government, their star has risen, as rumors abound that they are about to experience major diplomatic breakthroughs. It is worth briefly contrasting Ansarallah with Hizbullah, whose dogged refusal to escalate had devastating consequences. As early as April 2024, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, the U.S. military’s anti-insurgent think tank, determined that Hizbullah was “sticking as close as possible to the ‘rules of the game’ (i.e., shallow and small attacks within the border zone, and no deeper attacks on cities or strategic infrastructure), [but] the Houthis threw their best shots at Israel from the beginning, seemingly (to the author) accepting no rules at all.”³ Hizbullah’s crushing defeat and Ansarallah’s resounding success are evidence of the value in strategic accelerationism.

Taking on the genocidal Israeli and American forces is a choice of immense bravery and solidarity with the Palestinian people. By choosing to assist the Palestinians in minimizing the containment of the Gaza genocide, the Yemeni government humbled the world with its internationalism. But most importantly, the Yemeni intervention was an assertion of escalation dominance over America and Israel; it was a decision for a World War to happen on their terms. In turn, Yemen’s fulfillment of their Responsibility to Protect has proven that strategic accelerationism is the only viable moral and strategic option for a smaller power facing the mania of American accelerationism.

Example Three: The Student Intifada

In my opinion, the Student Intifada was a strategic accelerationist intervention that many participants (including the author) did not realize was such an approach. Obviously, the Student Intifada was not a single event; it was marked by huge differences campus-by-campus and was never close to achieving a Hamas/Ansarallah-type united front. In fact, many people believe that the Student Intifada has been a complete failure, as most campuses failed to achieve the goals they set for themselves. I would largely agree, but I think the picture is a bit nuanced as the distance grows from the spontaneous uprising.

The two main ways to judge the success of the Student Intifada are: (1) The achievement (or not) of demands set by student groups, and (1) The ripple effects of the Student Intifada. These metrics are not mutually exclusive, but I believe that judgments of the former often neglect the latter. On the former, the Student Intifada was a clear failure. Most campuses did not divest, and repression has dramatically decreased the number of campus protests. While I believe the student movement must interrogate its own mistakes (such as: undemocratic organizing, remaining confined to the campus, overestimating the Student’s leverage), that is not the point of this essay. I am trying to interrogate how the Student Intifada actually minimized containment, even if it did not intend to. When assessing the lack of achievements by the student movement, it is important to understand that many (perhaps most) campus protest movements were trying to save the University. What do I mean by that? If we understand the student as a consumer of the product of education, the most protests were, then, mediations over the terms of consumption (“we don’t want our tuition dollars funding genocide” is not the same as “destroy the university”). Universities did not want to renegotiate the terms of consumption, and efforts for divestment were quashed, often violently. When assessing the achievement of student demands, this point is crucial: just like the Empire, universities did not want to be saved. They made the deliberate choice to kowtow to Zionist fanatics at the expense of university democracy. Universities would not be in their present bind had they listened to the “agitators.”

Now to the latter method of assessment: what were the Student Intifada’s ripple effects? In my opinion, a critical analysis of this question reveals the Student Intifada’s exhibition of strategic accelerationism. Since last year’s uprising, the American university system, which is an unquestionable opponent to the international proletariat, has suffered significant blows. Major research institutions are having hundreds of millions of dollars of funding revoked, and the Trump administration is waging a ruthless and irrational war on international students, who are some of the biggest donors to universities. While the right-wing crusade against universities did not begin with the Student Intifada, it has rapidly accelerated as a result of the Palestine protests under the boogeyman of campus antisemitism. This crackdown should not be celebrated—our peers are being abducted, thrown in dungeons, and deported—but it should be seen as an internal crisis of legitimacy precipitated by American accelerationism and exacerbated by the Student Intifada. In other words, the American Empire was going to collapse in on itself regardless of the Student Intifada, but the campus uprisings minimized containment by accelerating the genocidal hegemon’s attacks on itself and maximized ideological exposure to anti-Zionist ideas, destroying any semblance of Zionist ideological hegemony among the youth.

Conclusion

The strategic accelerationist framework begins from the reality that the American Empire is in decline and plans to take everyone down with it. On its way down, it is inflicting unimaginable harm upon the wretched of the earth. Thus, the strategic accelerationist framework is a desperate attempt by smaller powers to prevent civilizational annihilation by the American hegemon.

Is strategic accelerationism, then, the ultimate form of harm reduction? Perhaps, but the circumstances are much more existential. It might be more helpful to think of strategic accelerationism as harm redistribution, given that damage is still being inflicted in unimaginably large quantities but is not maximized upon one target if done successfully.

Is strategic accelerationism a form of solidarity? It can be, but not necessarily. On the part of Ansarallah, their embrace of a world war is the ultimate expression of solidarity with the besieged Palestinian people. But the essence of strategic accelerationism is about igniting a flame that envelops otherwise-uninvolved actors, even against their will. Regarding Al Aqsa Flood, the best example of an actor forced into the flame is Iran’s half-hearted ballistic missile performances against Israel, which would not have occurred without Operation Al Aqsa Flood.⁴ And for those who tried to ignore the flames, even as they rose around them—how did they fare? Ask Bashar al-Assad.

The American accelerationists plan to kill all of us and themselves. These are the objective conditions which we face. No one is coming to save us: it is on us to create the conditions for a successful subjective intervention to halt the global murder-suicide. Strategic accelerationism is the only response that can change this objective reality. In the age of imperial decline-turned-murder-suicide, I believe that strategic accelerationism is this era’s crude representation of the idea that either all of us get to communism, or none of us do. Some, perhaps many, will have to be dragged to a better world—a world at all!—kicking and screaming. It is the job of us pyrotechnics to drag them along by igniting a flame that no one can ignore.

1. Nibras Kazimi, Syria through Jihadist Eyes (Stanford: Hoover Institute Press, 2010).

2. Sections marked with a star (*) were co-written with Rob.

3. Michael Knights, “Assessing the Houthi War Effort Since October 2023,” CTC Sentinel 17, no. 4 (April 2024).

4. This piece was written hours before the Israel-Iran War began. The point still stands that any direct confrontation between Israel and Iran would not have occurred without Operation Al Aqsa Flood.