accelerationist
Definition
Accelerationist refers to a belief system holding that existing social and political orders are corrupt or doomed and that their collapse should be deliberately hastened, often through violence and the provocation of chaos, so that a new order can replace them. In extremism research the term describes a strategic outlook found across otherwise opposed ideologies rather than a single doctrine.
In research published in Advances in Psychology, accelerationist ideas appear as one ingredient within salad bar, or Composite Violent Extremism (CoVE), cases among male youths radicalized online in Singapore. A 19-year-old student absorbed posts from a niche online Islamist group whose accelerationist narrative praised Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham's offensive against the Assad regime and the October 2023 Hamas attacks, and called for generating chaos through violence so that Islam would become the leading global civilisation. A 14-year-old who planned a stabbing attack at his school drew on the accelerationist ideas of the U.S. neo-Nazi network Atomwaffen Division alongside ISIS content, true crime material, and White supremacist self-identification. Analysed through the 3N framework of narratives, networks, and needs, these accelerationist strands function as violence-justifying narratives selected after a youth is already drawn to violence by a need to restore lost significance, which the authors treat as evidence of an underlying nihilistic violent extremism.
Sources: Ramakrishna & Yeo (2026)
Related Terms
- networks (1 shared article)
- salad bar extremism (1 shared article)
- nihilistic violent extremism (1 shared article)
- far left (1 shared article)
- narratives (1 shared article)
- needs (1 shared article)
- composite violent extremism (1 shared article)
- Islamist (1 shared article)
- far right (1 shared article)
- true crime community (1 shared article)
Applications
Accelerationist and Salad Bar Extremism
In the Singapore CoVE cases, accelerationist beliefs were combined with incel grievances, anti-LGBTQ hostility, far-right symbols, and true crime fandom without any commitment to a coherent doctrine. One youth mixed Islamist accelerationism with violent incel ideology, while another paired Atomwaffen Division's accelerationism with support for ISIS killings.
Sources: Ramakrishna & Yeo (2026)
Accelerationist and Islamist Extremism
One Singapore case was exposed to an explicitly Islamist accelerationist narrative that called for generating chaos through violence so that Islam would become the leading global civilisation. The same youth combined these Islamist accelerationist ideas with violent incel ideology.
Sources: Ramakrishna & Yeo (2026)
