Notes On Culture War Accelerationism (CWA)

This is a short piece to try and outline a new position for the Muslim Diaspora - perhaps even a new commitment for digital Muslim communities worldwide in trying to leverage the current Culture War controversies to the broader agenda of trying to reach towards Islamicate Sovereignty.

There has been no shortage of commentary and metacommentary about the Culture Wars - it has become a central part of "The Discourse" in the Anglosphere - a favourite national pastime of intellectuals, podcasters and legacy media. The perpetual war around issues of gender, faith, identity, tribe and all of that comes with it downstream has long been seen by the more astute and wise members of the American Imperial commentariat as a serious problem. A problem from the perspective that it distracts Americans from the very serious business of running their Empire abroad and making it ready in the face of new potential challengers and adversaries. It is why the metacommentary around the Culture Wars attracts a particular type of American commentator that waxes lyrical about trying to forego tribal and sectarian divisions to grasp the larger picture which is to secure Pax Americana for another century. Fukuyama's recent commentary is the most sensible offered by one of the old guard who is acutely aware of the consequences of the Culture Wars engulfing the entirety of the American experiment.

Historically, the Culture Wars were thought to be a symptom of American Exceptionalism - wars that were fought within the physical borders of the country by people who had a real stake in their local communities or by those with their own political and ideological ambitions for determining the moral foundations of the country. With technology though and America's vast imperial influence in the world particularly amongst English speaking peoples, starting from the late 2010s the Culture Wars were exported globally. Now, anyone with a social media account, podcast or any type of digital platform really could give their two cents about what is a woman and what is a man. It also started to infect and metastasize intra-religious discussions amongst global faiths like Islam. For a while, Muslims in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 decided to put stock and confidence in the American Left. Lately, there was some fringe online sections that wanted to address this blind one-sided partisanship asking for more due consideration with the Right - in an effort to establish a "Coalition of the Virtue" with like minded religious citizens. Both attempts although initiated with the best of intentions have largely failed - rather than apportion blame it is to better to learn lessons from this.

With Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and now Gaza it is become clear that wherever American Empire is found the reckless shedding of innocent Muslim blood is not too far behind. Therefore, the whole notion of how Muslims part of a global transnational religious community should interact with Culture War discourse should become more pertinent. My suggestion is that to try and carve out a niche amidst the warring tribes all of whom have a broad consensus agreement on the necessity to continue American Empire abroad in its current form was at the time perhaps pragmatic, perhaps even worthy of pursuit. However, twenty years later and now particularly in the light of Gaza it has become all too clear that good-faith naivety in terms of trying to create fora for "constructive engagement" and "reasonable discourse" is child's play.

Instead, let us pause and think for a moment the debilitating and arresting effects of a perpetual Culture War in the heart of American Empire - the erosion of public trust, heightened religious and ethnic tensions, economic inequality, distraction from infrastructural decay, breakdown of civic culture/order, political paralysis, bureaucratic bloat and corruption. Culture War discourse metastasizes and creates a fitna of sorts that eats away at the vitality and energy of a political entity. In its present gladiatorial, adversarial form the Culture Wars are not a productive conversation that yields new ideas, strategies or solutions - it entrenches existing prejudices, mistrust and in many ways sows the seeds for imperial overstretch by the Deep State whilst the peasants continue to argue about what a woman really is. The Culture Wars allowed for the emergence of Trump and broadly speaking Trumpism and QAnon.

For a long time, our esteemed ulema cautioned sensibly about becoming too invested in these discussions, to avoid these discussion because of fear of becoming engulfed in fitna, some even advocated that Muslims should try and be "peacemakers" - advocates for a rational return to a shared Abrahamic heritage that could paper over bruising wounds amidst the cacophony of the insane. I argue no. The price of inaction and apathy towards the Culture Wars is too great and fatalism will achieve very little. Instead, we must focus and prepare for conscious Culture War Accelerationism (CWA). CWA operations should now be a priority for the Online Islamicate - particularly as the American Empire prepares to enter an election year that promises to be one of the most polarising in its history. Every attempt should be made to try and exacerbate the negative consequences of the emotional, political and social damage the Culture Wars inflict - these opportunities rarely present themselves in the pages of history.

How does this look like in principle? It means to understand that war must be waged against the Imperial heartland by undermining the institutions that promote social and political trust. It means propaganda operations - what this could look like is Muslims all over the world mobilizing without the need for a central authority to spread as much falsehoods, lies and disinformation in the arena of the American election as possible to make the possibility of political consensus absolute impossible thereby creating greater internal conflict and instability.

For example, we should use AI to generate Deep Fakes of leading politicians - the language deployed in the construction of these Deep Fakes should be deliberately inflammatory, divisive and go out of its way to hurt deeply held sentiments and sensibilities in an effort to promote mass civil unrest to the point it disrupts the constitutional mechanisms domestically within American Empire. Swarming Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and every other media platform with an every growing number of accounts promoting conspiracy theories that have an element of plausibility in them to the point that it convinces the audience that the entire American electoral system must be broken down and the Deep State needs to be targeted. Too often Muslims have been absolutely obsessed with a politics of personality, focusing on individual names - which has led to moronic campaigns such as Khatam For Bernie or attending White House iftars when a Democrat is in power. No more - the primary target of CWA operations should be ALL American political parties, ALL organs of the Deep State from legacy media, NGOs, intelligence agencies and the military. There is abundant material to play with - recent audits about how the Pentagon has misplaced billions worth of hardware is just one very small example.

It means Muslims should create online accounts that play all sides. Muslim accounts that promote far-left and far-right agendas simultaneously in an effort to acutely broaden the gladiatorial arena of adversarial political conflict to the point it engulfs the mainstream and overspills into the streets undermining the peaceful transfer of power during an election year. The evidence from the latest genocidal campaign against the Gazans with the use of American military hardware makes one thing abundantly clear, that Muslims now are in a stronger position globally to influence media/cultural discourse than say in 2002. Digital media and technology has allowed us an opportunity, perhaps a generational one to punch above our structural decay, hard power deficit and utter lack of formal state-capacity to influence events in perhaps one of the most important American elections yet to be contested. We have seen popular online accounts such as CensoredMen be spectacularly effective in their advocacy for the Palestinian cause. There is a chance here particularly for the Muslim journalist/activist class to use the influence it has accumulated in the last twenty years to deliberately put out pieces and content that will help CWA operations. Content that is more extreme, more outlandish, more controversal, designed to promote social and political unrest by focusing on issues that are particularly sensitive to the American people. We already know that American Big Tech in their short-sightedness recognize that Algorithmic manipulation of their platforms geared towards conflict generates more profits but this can also be co-opted to acheive concrete political goals. In the run up to the election accounts and content should be created to promote the most extreme aspects of the Right and Left - playing all sides simultaneously in an effort to create an incredibly hostile terrain where even the possibility of political discussions becomes impossible. Pieces published by different Muslim actors promoting euthanasia, critical race theory, abortion, open borders immigration, racial profiling, pro-police legislation, legalising drugs and so on. Every single contentious polemical issue should be given the utmost importance in an effort to completely drown out serious and sober discussions about reorientating American priorities in the 21st century.

What would the ultimate political goals of CWA operations be? Decimating trust in the American electoral process, spreading rumours and constant aspersions on the integrity of the American electoral process, the voting mechanism, the already growing trust deficit in the legacy institutions of the Deep State such as the CIA, FBI and a whole host of federal alphabet agencies. A complete assault on the social contract within the Imperial heartland. Trumpism tapped into this for its own cynical means - Muslims too should be relentless in spreading as much content as possible trying to undermine American trust in the guarantors and arbiters of its constitutional and electoral system - this can be neatly packaged under populist themes which are proving to be wildly successful across the Anglosphere. The goal of CWA is to reach a stage where people become far more invested in their individual polemical commitments rather than the institutional and constitutional stability of the country as a whole - which is straight from the American playbook when it wishes to destabilize a country it considers a threat.

In one respect, Muslims should study and learn how American institutions, NGOs, universities, legacy media and soft culture power projection through media undermined and created significant discord and fitna in Muslim lands pitting ordinary believers against astroturfed elites. It is now time to learn from these episodes of history and apply the same tactics against Americans.

Ibn Maghrebi

And God knows best