On the 20th February, 1909 the poet, art theorist, and creator of the proto-Fascist "Futurism" art movement, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, published "The Futurist Manifesto", decrying, nine years after the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment, that machinery, industry, technology, war and the machinations of speed, are suppercended human achievements, over any form of social democracy, egalitarianism, equality and class war, and as quoted points from his 1909 manifesto, he states in his extremist views : "We will glorify war, the world’s only hygiene, militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman...We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind, will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice."
Campaigning for Italy to enter World War One, to which he served, only to be injured, and later in the years that followed when post WW1 Europe embraced artistic bohemianism, social democracy, egalitarianism, equality, all the very concepts that Marinetti despised, had returned with gusto throughout Italy. Further ingraining that his Futurist movement, despite it born out of the Avant-garde art world of the early 1900s, was the antithesis of what he deemed as "sickly, melancholic infection" spreading throughout Europe, cue Elon Musk's "woke mindvirus" in a 100 year old parallel in its alarmining sentiment, denigrating social democracy and equality movements, as a weakness of 'Western Civilization', to which, Marinetti wanted and now Musk wants, is to optimise a society under a techno-Fascist/Futurist banner, and to do this would be to eradicate this illusionary "virus'" or as Marinetti decreed, "infection", which is essentially an effort to destroy democracy.
In 1918, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti founded the "Futurist Party", which, by the 1920s, had morphed into Benito Mussolini's Fascism Party. And in 1919 Marinetti co-penned the "Fascist Manifesto" with fellow Fascist Alceste De Ambris,. And in 1924 Marinetti wrote "Futurismo e Fascismo" (Futurism and Fascism), a burpint on how Fascism relates to technology and visa versa, under a technocratic, and autocratic system, or as we know to today as Techno-Fascism, primarily lead by a rejigged 2000s Silicon Valley tech oligarchs, under the wishy washy, yet underestimated, term "NRx" or "Neo-Reactionary" philosophical and now a quasi - political Far Right movement.
From 'quirky' 1990s edgelord, 'amphetamine' fueled professor to Techno-Fascist, forming the branded NRx (Neo-Reactionary) Far Right autocratic movement. Enter: Nick Land.
There is a somewhat correlation of so called "edgelord" Gen Xers, and their tailend 'boomers', who were caught between the 'burnt out' New Left of the late 1980s, mixing in their cynical 1990s backlash as a veiled attack of the remnants of the previous three decades of a counterculture ethos, and then ended up swinging to the Far Right, with their 'mask' slipping into the 2000s; enter the obscure Professor Nick Land. And Land's history very much plays out as that feyned Left 'activist', to the later Fascist rebrand, teaching philosophy at Warwick University (UK) in the 1990s, also reflecting that rise from quirky unknown philosophical scavenger, who was largely dismissed as any relevance in the 1990s, apart from being an older groupie to 20 year old Gen Xers students, Land liked his raves, and techno culture, while taking copious amounts speed/meth while trying to attach his anti-establishment, anti-democracy, pro-digital technology backlash to his boomer frustrations, with large doses of nihilistic, Gen X 90s cynicism, to become a front and centre fixture of the current Far Right world, as the 'Think Tank' proponent for the Techno-Fascist acceleration movement known as "Neo-Reactionary" or "NRx".
By 1998, in true to form proto-Fascism psychological instability, with their common patterned mannerisms, he has a *mental snap, apparently from bingeing on too much amphetamines, while being absorbed by his nihilistic backlashing of his 'boomer' roots, which inevitably would have done the trick (cue, mental snap part 1), resigns from his University teaching position, maintains the edgelord, nonsensical (but with Techno-Fascist overtures) "Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU)" . And in early 2000s, goes into another mental snap (part 2), and a real bad one, after binging on amphetamines (again) ends up in various psychiatric wards, becomes even more obscure, then moves to China in an aimless stupor, while buried into the back of his psychotic mind re: prior essays and 'theories' of autocratic machinery and his "Neo-China arrives from the Future" craziness, representing the pinnacle, particularly Shanghai as a hyper 'accelerationist', Techno-Fascism utopia, Land, by luck and timing, begins working for an English speaking travel guide, based in Shanghai.
Backlash complete, Land's Tecno-Fascism comes alive, complies the adhoc, half baked, "Dark Enlightenment" essay in 2012. Awaiting Trump 1.0 to activate, and the Far Right tech giants.
Nick Land's decent into Far Right fandom has comical overtures written all over it, more than not, and was probably more benign than a blueprint for extreme reactionary Techno-Fascism, and yet the hallmarks were there, when in 2007 the early manifestation of the so called Alternative Right were making waves via their blogosphere domination to which the Left at the time completely underestimated the Alt Right as a digital threat, to which it utilized the internet with gusto. And the simple reason was this, that they, the Far Right, were locked out of the digital mainstream press, and Centre Left journalism, which was completely focused on liberalism, equality, rights etc, while the hyper development of Far Right bulletin boards and 'off the radar' chat relays, were always going to be in the realm of the Far Right, going back as far as 1995 (the White Supremacist "Storm Front" website), in its incarnation of the very early internet.
And when the backlash against Centralism began to intensify prior to Trump 1.0, the extremity of the doctrine, and the creation for the Trumpist battering ram was executed, showed how Far Right Trump's 'groomers' were, including the Silicon Valley Billionaire Nazi Peter Thiel, that 'Neoliberalism' was considered Left Wing. Yet, all out to decimate social democracy, egalitarianism, and civil rights movements, sexual choices, feminism, and what the counterculture years (1960s-1980s) achieved, so that it never rears itself again, is the epitome of our current proto-Fascist aspirations, essentially lead by the decrepit, and what could be deemed mentally unstable, men. And Land, holds this up with a psychosis laced Techno-Fascist 2012 essay "Dark Enlightenment", trying to sell that made up term, via the Far Right mutating and scavenging their own doctrines, of accelerating of accelerationism of the social democratic collapse, and have it replaced by a AI (with its energy grid/resources/carbon footprint from hell data centres), technological, authoritarianism, utopian pipedream.
And Fascists love futuristic pipedreams, summed up by Albert Speer's (Hitler's architect) father, Albert Speer Snr, 85 years ago in 1939, when his son showed him his mini scale over-the-top model of Hitler's aspiring, and at the time, futuristic "Germania" city, to which Albert Speer Snr famously said, in reference to the Nazi/Fascist madness of grandeur, "You have all gone completely mad."
Techno-Fascism, like all Fascistic aspirations, is madness personified.
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(A.Glass 2026)
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