Archeofuturism and Its Parallels to Militant Accelerationism

Research and writing on this paper was led by one of CTEC’s Winter Term interns. For safety reasons, we are publishing this piece anonymously. If you are a journalist, researcher, or other professional who would like to speak to the author, contact Alex Newhouse (anewhouse@middlebury.edu).

At 10:44 pm on September 15, 2013, Alexander Slavros released the American Futurist Manifesto on the Iron March neofascist web forum. In this manifesto, aimed at adapting fascist ideas to the American context, Slavros identified a declining modern American society and presented his vision for a utopian American life taking effect after the apocalyptic destruction of American civilization. The text is imbued with Italian Futurist aesthetics of violence, war, technology, and speed. Such use of futurism, although novel and differing from more traditional fascist rhetoric, is highly compatible with the accelerationist philosophy Slavros consistently upholds, not causing too much controversy. Indeed, heavily influenced by James Mason’s Siege in which it is argued that the destruction of the modern world will bring about the rise of fascism, Slavros positions himself as a militant accelerationist. He endorses sparking chaos and violence to precipitate the fall of modern society, thus opening the way to a fascist-led and fascist-built post-apocalyptic world. In the ideological context of accelerationist violence, adopting futurist rhetoric seems plausible.

There is a second, contrasting, and intriguing ideological layer to Slavros’ philosophy. His American Futurist Manifesto is permeated with references to ancestral values and pre-Constitution American metaphysical “tradition,” in opposition to the futuristic, post-modern quality exhibited in the rest of the manifesto. The same combination runs through his and Iron March’s other writings, but the manifesto engages more deeply with the idea and attempts to generate a novel, American-centric strain. Surprisingly, the unexpected alliance between futurism and primitive tradition that seems so unique to Slavros’ writing actually marks the revived influence of an older philosophy: archeofuturism.

What is archeofuturism?

Coined in 1998 by French philosopher Guillaume Faye in his book by the same title, archeofuturism is a philosophy that bridges the temporal and dialectical gap between archaism and a post-modernist, techno-scientific futurism. Archeofuturism is set in a particular temporal and socio-political context that Faye called the interregnum: the convergence of a series of catastrophes threatening the survival of Western civilization in the 2010s. These catastrophes can be grouped into four categories: ethnocultural, ecological, social, and economic (although, he states, most catastrophes have ethnocultural roots).^[1] Ranging from the destruction of the European social fabric to a fatal global economic crisis and ecological disaster, Faye views the convergence of catastrophes as the fatal consequences of the ideological path followed by the post-Enlightenment world. In this apocalyptic climate, archeofuturism presents itself as a philosophy of Western rescue and reconstruction, providing the keys to rebuilding and reorganizing humanity in a “post-catastrophic world” freed from modern ideologies.^[2]

Faye’s assessment of the existential risk facing Western civilization is Eurocentric and contains significant racist, ethno-separatist influence. Indeed, he argues Western civilization is the only civilization threatened by the convergence of catastrophes, as he writes, “Today, for the first time in history, a world civilization–the global extension of Western civilization–is threatened by converging lines of catastrophe.”^[3] In his description of the various crises that will strike the world, a pattern emerges in which the Global North is presented as the victim and the Global South as the aggressor, even though both the North and South suffer chaos and destruction. The social fabric of Europe is portrayed as under threat from mass immigration coming from the South, which Faye refers to as “demographic colonization”;^[4] the confrontation between the North and the South is blamed on the resentment of the South towards its “former colonizer”;^[5] the culprits of the global crisis are found throughout the globe but poor countries (most heavily concentrated in the Global South) receive special blame;^[6] religious fundamentalism is driven by Islam and Indian polytheists;^[7] and the ecological disaster finds its root in the adoption of European energy-intensive technology, lifestyle, and economy by the Global South.^[8]

Faye also establishes an ethnocultural hierarchy in which the European civilization is superior to any other civilization. He insinuates that the Global South is intrinsically incapable of industrializing and democratizing (both phenomenon that Faye defines as exclusively Western), cites pseudo-social scientific evidence by African-American sociologist Stanley Thompson^[9] that some (non-white) ethnicities are more societally productive than others, assigns separate and irreconcilable “mental frameworks” to different ethnicities, and explicitly claims “the superiority—that’s right: the superiority—of European artistic and cultural forms above all others.” ^[10] According to Faye then, the interregnum is a period in which the superior Western civilization, understood in both cultural and ethnic terms, is threatened by a convergence of catastrophes that favors not only its demise but also its erasure and replacement by Southern civilizations.

A combination of archaism and futurism, archeofuturism must be understood as the fusion of both terms. Its first component, archaism, is detached from its modern pejorative sense and understood according to its original meaning. Coming from the Greek word arkhē, meaning “beginning, origin”, Faye understands archaism as a “founding impulse”.^[11] This “founding impulse” encompasses the values, mindset, ideologies, and social structures of the pre-modern, pre-Enlightenment era. Archaism draws its ideals from the dawn of Western civilization. From his numerous references to Plato, the “Ancients”, and Greco-Roman history and language,^[12] it can be concluded that Faye considers archaism to extend from the inception of the Greco-Roman civilization to, but not through, the Enlightenment.

Archaism finds strength in values that it holds to have passed the test of time. Archaist philosophy endorses that which is seen to have enabled the survival and prosperity of Western civilization up to the Enlightenment, when these archaic principles and systems “most suited to the victorious life”^[13] were replaced by egalitarian, humanitarian, liberal, individualistic, and supposedly hedonist ideals that have endangered the West. This value shift and the adoption of a “cult of quantitative development” and progress^[14] eventually precipitated the world into the interregnum, threatening the very survival of its civilizations, more particularly that of the West.

Dating back to the very beginning of European civilization, archaic values are said to be “biological and human”, providing them with pseudo-scientific support and a sense of natural authenticity. Thus, Faye advocates for defined social hierarchies based on biological indicators (separation of gender roles, etc.) and a bio-ethnic^[15], “organic” definition of peoples and community.^[16] Adopting an anthropological standpoint, he prescribes the “transmission of ethnic and folk traditions,” institution of visible, inegalitarian social hierarchies (the “warrior caste” earning particular prestige), “legitimated” division of labor, responsibilities, and rights, as well as strengthening of family structures.^[17]

The second pillar of archeofuturism, futurism, must be differentiated from the violently disruptive Italian futurist movement, in the sense that it holds a much more limited and simpler meaning: “planning for the future.”^[18] To this concern for the future, Faye adds a rejection of the past—which he differentiates from an ancestral and archaic past—for its creation of modernity.^[19] Archeofuturism, then, is an ideology that is not nostalgic of the past and thus does not strive for a return to anterior times. Rather, it provides guidance on how to structure and organize (Western) civilizations in the post-catastrophic world to ensure their future, hence, archeofuturism.

Another key element to Faye’s futurism is the full utilization of technological sciences in the service of humanity. Faye is particularly enchanted with the opportunity for enhanced “second-generation humans” offered by the genetic sciences and rejects the modern world’s refusal to support human biotechnologies on what he considers a pseudo-ethical basis based on the corrupted Enlightenment notion of egalitarianism.^[20] For Faye, the sole purpose of and prerequisite for technoscientific advancements is the amelioration of the quality of post-modern life, in particular in the field of transportation, weaponry, health, genetics, etc. Interestingly, despite his support for advanced technologies and critique of the modern world’s restraint vis-a-vis human application of transgenic techniques, Faye warns against the “progress, growth and the unchecked spread of technological science are producing effects opposite to those desired, engendering a world that is much harsher than the one they wished to transform and improve.”^[21]  Faye, then, does not support unbridled technoscientific progress, but rather the regulated advancement and controlled spread of technology to avoid both environmental and socio-cultural destruction.^[22] Archaic values act as the regulators of technoscientific progress, drawing a line in the sand to delimit the extent and direction in which technological sciences should be developed. Technology must serve the archaic values and systems necessary for the survival of European civilization, enhancing rather than threatening its social, cultural, ecologic, ethnic, and economic health in the post-catastrophic world.

Faye also positions archeofuturism as an ideology of order, aimed at reestablishing the order that modernity has lost and is necessary for the survival and blossoming of European civilization:

Archeofuturism is a concept of order, a concept that upsets modern minds, which are shaped by the fallacious individualist ethics of emancipation and the rejection of discipline.^[23]

The notion of order and ‘orderly societies’ permeates his text, especially in terms of the social configuration he advances and the critiques of modernity he formulates. Faye’s reference to the “order principle”, a supposed law of nature ensuring the reproduction of the species, intergenerational transmission of culture and values, and social cohesion,^[24] informs the values and social structures he promotes, from his hierarchies of castes to the distributions of class-specific roles, rights, and duties. Faye’s analysis of the catastrophes reflects the loss of this order principle. With its aging population, Europe is facing a demographic crisis proving its inability to ensure the reproduction of its “species”. Through the “demographic colonization” of the South, Europe is threatened by cultural loss, signaling a failure to transmit European culture and values from one generation to the next. Finally, Faye’s first-mentioned catastrophe is the destruction of the social fabric of Europe, in other words, the metastasis of the social cohesion originally protected by the order principle.

This notion of order as a natural principle successfully ruling and protecting human civilizations prior to modernity is not unique to archeofuturism. It is almost consistently found in fascist and neofascist writings and ideologies. In fact, Julius Evola, whose writing largely informs Faye’s idea of archaism,^[25] also centered his version of Traditionalism around order and socio-hierarchic constructions of classes, describing the caste-based attribution of social functions and rights as an “order secundum equum et bonum.”^[26]

In simple terms, then, archeofuturism can be understood as an ideology of order holding the survival of Western civilization to be contingent on the formation of post-modern societies combining technoscientific progress and a return to archaic values and systems. It is the ideological collision of principles of archaism, futurism, and order.

Archeofuturism beyond Guillaume Faye

Today, archeofuturism does not enjoy much visibility. Since its theorization, the term has not entered mainstream far-right discourse, staying confined to the sphere of Faye’s writings. It has neither been the focus of any serious research. However, as Slavros’ writing suggests, its principles, detached from its name, have experienced a quiet international revival. 

Archeofuturism and the French New Right

A relatively hidden figure of the French far-right, Guillaume Faye is most well-remembered for his contribution to the French Nouvelle Droite (New Right). His independent work, for that reason, tends to be closely associated, in the collective consciousness, with that of the Nouvelle Droite. However, the connection between archeofuturism and the concepts espoused by the French New Right more broadly is complex.

To understand Faye’s intellectual relationship with the New Right, it is necessary to consider Faye’s early years as a political theorist. In 1970, while a doctorate student in political science at Sciences Po, he joined GRECE, an anti-liberal, anti-Americanist, ethnonationalist thinktank founded by Alain de Benoist and other far-right radical thinkers. The thinktank soon flourished into an intellectual movement, the Nouvelle Droite, posing as a radical counterreaction to the traditional right whose intellectual and creative death in France had been signaled by the events of May ’68. Its name, given by the French media in 1978, was inspired by the New Left whose opposition to traditional leftist figures and left parties, were admired by de Benoist.^[27] The movement aimed to provide the intellectual basis—“the journals, bookshops, and academic departments”—for a French cultural revolution steeped in radical far-right ideas.^[28] As part of GRECE and the Nouvelle Droite, Faye participated in the spread and popularization of far-right ideas like the protection of cultural and biological identities against interracial miscegenation, monoethnic European federalism, and anti-Zionism, publishing numerous articles and texts under the group’s publishing house, les Éditions Copernic, and in its journals (Éléments, Nouvelle École).

In 1986, Faye left GRECE and detached himself from the New Right. It is unclear whether Faye left voluntarily or was expelled for his references to Jean Thiriart, a far-right theorist with ties to the Nazi Third Reich.^[29] In Archeofuturism, he writes a critique of the Nouvelle Droite, blaming the loss of influence it enjoyed in the late 70s on strategic mistakes such as its complaisance in the face of their censorship in the mass media, “ideological fossilization”, abandonment of radical thought, inadequate media and communication strategies, and a general lack of ideological assertiveness.^[30] He also criticizes perceived ideological flaws, including their rejection of Christianity and adoption of paganism, emphasis on folklore over cultural prowess, lack of attention to economic and scientific matters, “third worldism” leading to pro-immigration and pro-Islamic stances, and anti-Americanism. ^[31]

Despite Faye’s numerous criticisms and cited strategic and ideological divergences with the French New Right, his 1998 Archeofuturism bears many resemblances and crossovers with de Benoist and Champetier’s 1999 manifesto La Nouvelle Droite de l’An 2000. First, they share a common historical point of reference: de Benoist and Champetier anchor their manifesto in the “interregnum”, describing it as the period in which the world faces the major crisis of the end of modernity, reflecting Faye’s definition of the interregnum as “the collapse of a system [modernity] and the creation of the new metamorphic universe.”^[32] While their analyses of the path to the interregnum differ in their terminology—Faye refers to a convergence of seven catastrophes whereas de Benoist identifies five “converging processes”—they identify the same flaws in modernity and share similar ecological concerns. Faye protests the same individualization decried by de Benoist. He calls out modern humanitarianism, sharing de Benoist’s opposition to human rights as part of a massification process.^[33] He laments the “spiritual void of Europe,” captured in de Benoist’s process of desacralization, and opposes the imposition of “the socio-economic model of the West in these countries [that] proves explosive,” what de Benoist refers to as universalization.^[34] The only critique of modernity on which they do not agree is de Benoist’s idea of rationalization. Although Faye opposes liberalism and the modern “cult of quantitative development,” he embraces rationality as an ideology when balanced with its irrational counterpart. In fact, both rationality and irrationality are at the core of archeofuturism: “techno-scientific and neo-archaic areas will share an inegalitarian and naturalist worldview: one informed by rationality in the case of the former, and by irrationality in the case of the latter.”^[35] Lastly, while both identify these flawed ideologies and issues as modern, Faye traces them back to the Enlightenment while de Benoist sees their origin in Christianity and Christian thought.    

Secondly, they focus on similar supposedly existential threats, namely that of ethnic and cultural destruction. However, while de Benoist places all societies at risk of extinction, blaming “the unprecedented menace of homogenization which looms over the entire world,”^[36] Faye identifies Western civilization as the only victim of the converging lines of catastrophe, even blaming other civilizations for its disappearance, namely via their avenging practice of European colonization and race-mixing.^[37] The slight differences in the Nouvelle Droite and Faye’s conceptualization of modernity and the interregnum do not render impossible the presence of archeofuturist elements in the Nouvelle Droite’s ideology, however, they signal important variations between Guillaume Faye’s and the ND’s general ideology.          

To consider La Nouvelle Droite de l’An 2000 an archeofuturist text, a Fayist understanding of archaism and futurism as well as an emphasis on order must be demonstrated. In terms of archaism, ND and Faye observe the same said anthropological and biological basis in advocating for the re-establishment of organic communities and a clear social order in which each occupies a select role, promoting along these lines the separation of gender roles and an inegalitarian approach to rights and duties.^[38] Although de Benoist and Champetier refer to these values and social structures as “pre-modern” rather than archaic, they share Faye’s archeofuturist principle of applying ancestral values and structures to future, post-modern societies when they advance that “modernity will not be transcended by returning to the past, but by means of certain premodern values in a decisively postmodern dimension.”^[39]

However, the Nouvelle Droite does not seem so eager to embrace the futurist element of archeofuturism. Even though the ND, like Faye, recognizes the benefits of technology, supports regulated technoscientific developments, and opposes the unrestrained spread of technology for ecological reasons rooted in the same idea of a physical limit to growth, it adopts a generally hostile stance on technology and rejects field-specific techno-scientific advancements that are at the heart of archeofuturism. While Faye’s archeofuturist society is shaped by technological progress in the realm of genetic engineering and reproduction, the ND categorically opposes such advancements.^[40]         

Moreover, the notion of order is almost entirely missing from the ND’s manifesto. Even though de Benoist rapidly evokes the benefits of a clearly established social order, he does not recognize the Nouvelle Droite as a movement of order. On the contrary, he concedes the necessity of disorder, writing, “Europeans must sustain the plurality of forms of social life, and think together about order and its opposite, Apollo and Dionysius.”^[41] In Faye’s Archeofuturism, however, explicit references to order permeate the text. He assigns a second meaning to the root-word arkhē as “referring to the central notion of order,” defines his revolutionary ideology as “a concrete voluntaristic thought that creates order”, and establishes the intention of every revolution to be the “return to authentic order.”^[42]

To conclude, although some fayist archaic and futurist elements are found in the Nouvelle Droite’s most recent manifesto, La Nouvelle Droite de l’An 2000 lacks techno-scientific optimism, particularly in the field of human biotechnologies, as well as an emphasis on order, and thus is not truly an archeofuturist text. Areas of ideological overlap between the principle of archeofuturism and the ideology of the Nouvelle Droite should be considered through the shared participation of its founders in GRECE and the early days of the Nouvelle Droite rather than a Nouvelle Droite appropriation and adaptation of archeofuturism.

Another far-right movement in which one could expect to observe archeofuturist ideological elements is the far-right group Génération Identitaire (GI), the youth wing of Les Identitaires—an identitarian far-right political movement directly inspired by Faye’s work.^[43] GI claimed 2800 members in France before its dissolution in March 2021 and enjoyed significant coverage in the French media, particularly for its 2012 occupation of a mosque in Poitier and its banner “justice for the victims of anti-white racism” at a 2020 protest against police violence in homage to Adama Traoré.

The group shares many of Faye’s stances, notably Europe’s cultural disappearance and “colonization” by the South, the necessity of an ethnically homogenous Europe, and the threat posed by Islam and Muslims in general. However, GI appears not to have adopted Faye’s archeofuturist philosophy. While the archaic element is somewhat expressed through the group’s desire to “implement politically the condition for a great return” and to reconnect with French and European history, as well as ancestral rites, cultural practices, and tradition,^[44] other key aspects of Faye’s archaism like the return to organic communities with visible, gendered, and caste-based hierarchies are absent.

Moreover, the futurist pillar is completely missing. The GI manifesto refers neither to technoscientific advancements nor the productive use of technologies in service of archaic values and systems. It also seeks a return to past times, as its call for a “great return” suggests, rather than the conquest of a post-modern world. Finally, Génération Identitaire neither identifies as following an ideology of order—on the contrary, GI describes itself as “insolent and rebellious” — nor speaks of yielding a more ordered Europe, only one ‘liberated’ from immigration and Islamization. Thus, despite some ideological and historical overlap between Faye and Génération Identitaire, GI cannot be considered an archeofuturist group.

Archeofuturism and the accelerationist movement

In more recent years, archeofuturism seems to have extended its reach beyond its intellectual birthplace to international far-right accelerationist groups and individuals like Alexander Slavros. While there are many types of accelerationism, most of which do not overlap with extremism and terrorism, one particular type—militant accelerationism—has sparked terrorist attacks and increasingly unified extremist movements in pursuit of apocalyptic social collapse. Militant accelerationism is a set of tactics and strategies that are designed to put pressure on latent social divisions, exacerbate them, and ultimately cause a runaway chain of social upheaval leading to large-scale destruction of political, social, and cultural systems.

At the heart of the militant accelerationist movement is the idea that the only way out of the perceived degeneracy of the modern world is to move through its natural downward progression. To go through this descent as fast as possible, militant accelerationists believe in pushing on existing structural divisions, conflicts, and excesses as much as possible. It is this notion of exacerbating a system to reach its demise that Slavros extrapolates in his manifesto, concluding his appeal to American futurism with the words, “We aim to do that [the destruction of American civilization] by utilizing its own systems, technology and mechanisms against it. We will jump at the wheel of American civilization and push it into overdrive until it crashes and burns, forcing us into a clean slate.”^[45]

This “American civilization” that Slavros wishes to exterminate is not defined in terms of racial confrontation and ethnic war as in more conventional white supremacist, fascist, and neo-Nazi texts, but rather in terms of its liberticide consumerism, hedonism, and more importantly legalism. It is important to note, however, that outside of the American Futurist Manifesto, Slavros makes it clear that he aims to obliterate multi-racial, multi-ethnic civilization. In Next Leap, Slavros recognizes race and ethnicity as sub-categories of the human identity that determine one’s “truth”. From that belief, he organizes a hierarchy of races and ethnicities (in which the Jewish ethnicity is hated, and the black ethnicity is deemed inferior) and speaks of an inevitable race war.

To his clearly accelerationist rationale are incorporated and adapted archeofuturistic elements that directly draw not only from Faye’s general concept but also on his rhetoric. However, since Slavros never explicitly refers to archeofuturism or Faye, it is impossible to confirm whether he was directly influenced by archeofuturism. Yet, his idea of American Futurism has many common qualities with archeofuturism.

Faye’s Archeofuturism and Slavros’ American Futurist Manifesto share a similar “decay timeline” that identifies the 18^th century as a turning point in the degeneration of their respective societies. For Faye, the beginning of Europe’s decay is the Enlightenment and the subsequent 1789 French revolution. Slavros adapts Faye’s European perspective to American civilization and points his finger at the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution.^[46] These events not only encapsulate what each rejects but also provide a time frame for what they each consider to be archaic. Slavros, like Faye, holds that a civilization’s true values and systems are that which were held by its first ancestors. He writes, “our fountain of youth isn’t in adherence to the writings of dead people [the Founding Fathers]; it is in those principles that brought our ancestors here in the first place,” implicitly referencing the pilgrims’ escape from Europe as they were guided by the hope of starting a new life of freedom and possibility on the New Continent.^[47] In other Iron March texts, the notion of ancestral and archaic goes back even further to predate recorded history. It holds that the “eternal truths of the universe” were last witnessed in the pre-historic “Golden Age”, whose only record we have is through its myths in different cultures, and that they have been progressively eroding ever since, with the Constitution marking a turning point in its disintegration.^[48]

Slavros also conceives that a return to archaic systems and values is necessary to ensure the survival of American society in the post-apocalypse world and the true American way of life. He writes, “immortality is in the fountain of youth [American ancestral principles]—drink from it and go back to your beginning,” reflecting the vital quality that Faye attributes to archaism. The archeofuturist idea of implementing archaic principles in the technologically-advanced post-collapse world is also present in Iron March’s Mental Liberation where it is asserted, “We want to restore the ancient worldview, a particular outlook on life that implies people having a certain character, such character can exist in a technologically advanced society - make new tech, keep old ways, that is our direction.”^[49] A Squire’s Trial also includes similar rhetoric, as the novel’s main character asserts, “We simply have to maintain old ways and old attitudes when faced with new technology. I say: make new technology but keep old ways.”^[50]

Moreover, Faye and Slavros share the same understanding and rejection of the past, which they both blame for the state of their respective civilization. They distinguish it from a more distant time that Slavros refers to as pre-civilization and Faye as pre-modernity. What Faye presents as “a past that has failed, as it has engendered the catastrophe of modernity,”^[51] Slavros designates more crudely as a fatal historical period, asserting, “To hell with the past because the past is what is killing us.”^[52] In that sense, Slavros and Faye share a similar understanding of archaism as a concept referring to a period of time distinct from the “past”, that goes back to the first ancestors, whose values, principles, and structures must be brought back in the post-catastrophic, post-apocalyptic world.

As has been established, archaic values for Slavros are that which drove European settlers to America and shaped life before the beginning of the modern American civilization. At the center of these values and distinct from Faye’s is the myth-wrapped notion of freedom, adapted from the pilgrim’s desire for basic religious freedom to a more radical and absolute understanding including freedom from juridical laws and political institutions,^[53] freedom to exercise violence,^[54] freedom to defend oneself according to one’s own laws and justice,^[55] and freedom to travel.

Beyond freedom, however, the social structures and principles that Slavros proposes mirror that of Faye’s. Slavros also praises an unequal, class-based, hierarchized social order based on a pseudo-scientific argument exposing the natural inequality of men. Indeed, Slavros affirms that “nature declared matter not equal” and that, through the implementation of archaic values and systems, gangs, groups, and tribes will form “where every person is put into the exact place where he belongs: the leader, the right hand man, the warriors, the lookouts and etc.,” a more warlike version of Faye’s organic communities.^[56] Moreover, what Faye expresses through his promotion of the separation of gender roles, Slavros magnifies through his obsession with virility evidenced in his description of the true American as “red-blooded”, his praise of aggression and violence, as well as his contempt for women.

Their interpretation of the archaic value system diverges on one point: the role of the individual. While Faye adopts a communitarianist understanding of archaic life and thoroughly criticizes the “fallacious individualist ethics” of modernity,^[57] Slavros embraces individualism, describing the exercise of true freedom in almost egoist terms: “It is clear as day that what an American wants is to be free to travel from place to place, no laws but his own, true freedom. […] the law was defined not on some paper but by your own ability to defend what you carved out for yourself,” and later, “we stand for the true American way of life, where your freedom and happiness are determined by you alone.”^[58] In Slavros’ post-modern world, laws, justice, and freedom are found on an individual level and fall under the responsibility of the individual rather than the community.

Added to their similar understanding of archaism, Slavros and Faye share a futurist philosophy. However, their understanding of futurism differs quite significantly. While Faye centers his idea of futurism around securing Western civilization’s future and using scientific technology to that end, Slavros adopts a futurist mindset that more closely resembles Italian futurism, particularly in terms of its militarism, cult of violence and virility, as well as direct references to Marinetti’s 1909 Founding and Manifesto of Futurism.^[59] It is in service of war, destruction, and aggression that Slavros seizes technology, calling guns “great tools” for the violent affirmation and protection of archaic freedom as well as the dismantling of American civilization. Technology, for Faye, also serves archaism, however, it is used as a positive tool instead of a negative one. It builds the post-catastrophic world instead of destroying the modern one and engineers super-humans instead of killing simple ones. In other words, Faye’s futurism shares Slavros’ futurism’s desire for speed, energy, and technology but gets rid of its cult of violence, militarism, and physical war.

In emphasizing the physicality of the war that Slavros glorifies, I wish to recognize a similar fascination with and embracement of war in Faye’s Archeofuturism. In fact, Faye speaks of using “combative values” to destroy the ruling ideological order, he appeals to radical thoughts in the ideological war against modern European civilization which he qualifies as “total” and is determined to “fight without quarters”.^[60] The distinction between Slavros’ and Faye’s understanding of war, then, does not lay in whether war is to be fought but rather on what field: while Slavros favors a physical, more traditional approach to war, Faye adopts an ideological and political one.

The principle of order is also present in Slavros’ manifesto, appearing more implicitly than in Faye’s Archeofuturism through Slavros’ anticipation of his audience’s concern about anarchy in a system ruled by absolute freedom. Slavros rejects such concerns, on the grounds that with absolute freedom and the implementation of the law of nature organic communities will arise with natural hierarchies in which each plays their part and behaves accordingly. The adoption of archaic values, then, does not aim at bringing chaos but rather order and seemingly social harmony. The principle of order is more thoroughly developed in Slavros’ other writings where it occupies an interesting relationship to chaos. In his 2015 A Squire’s Trial, Slavros embraces chaos: Don, the embodiment of the ideal fascist, spreads chaos and lives outside of modern laws beating up immigrants, raiding yachts, stealing, and destroying migrant boats;^[61] in Next Leap, he describes the Nazi passion he promotes as the “use of Chaos and Energy (as opposed to Cosmos and Form) in order to achieve Cosmos and Form.”^[62] The seeking of chaos, however, is bounded to the modern world. It is the weapon used to hasten the demise of modern civilization and the rise of the post-modern fascist world in which order rules.^[63] In fact, Slavros’ post-collapse world is organized around a caste-based social order in which each occupies its appropriate place based on its superiority or inferiority, creating a “harmony that needs no artificial enforcement.”^[64] Thus, even though Slavros embraces chaos as a positive force in triggering the collapse of the modern world—chaos which Faye also recognizes as such through his convergence of catastrophes—he shares Faye’s vision of an orderly post-modern world. By presenting his fascist ideology as the foundation to the harmoniously ordered organic society he appeals to, Slavros mirrors Faye in defining his ideology as one of order.

Ultimately, Slavros’ American Futurist Manifesto contains numerous parallels to Faye’s archeofuturism, even if a direct connection cannot yet be established. The intersection between archaism and futurism so central to Faye’s idea is revealed throughout the text. Indeed, Slavros shares Faye’s bio-anthropological, anti-egalitarian, hierarchized, and virile understanding of archaism as the values of a civilization’s pre-modern ancestors and considers a post-modern world in which technology plays an important part. Nevertheless, Slavros’ seeming transposition of archeofuturism to his ideological universe differs from Faye’s on several points, bearing witness to a process of conceptual adaptation. For example, rooting his manifesto in an American socio-historical context, Slavros adapts Faye’s archaic values to match that of America’s first ancestors by placing freedom at the top of his value system. However, Slavros’ appropriation of archeofuturism goes beyond simple adaptation, as he makes major modifications to Faye’s idea, namely in his individualization of archaism and his straying away from Faye’s futurism to shift toward Marinetti’s, a more violent, militaristic, and blatantly misogynistic one. Even so, Slavros’ ideology can still be understood in archeofuturist terms as it brings together all three defining traits of archeofuturism: the archaic, the futurist, as well as the order.

In conclusion, after a decade of relative stagnation and obscurity, archeofuturism makes a comeback within the far-right community. This revival is best described not in terms of direct, unaltered appropriation, but rather in terms of contextualized adaptation and ideological mutation. It is through both these processes that Slavros brings archeofuturism back to life, adapting its principles to his audience and geographic point of reference and making sub-ideological changes to fit his greater credo. Faye’s use of broad, flexible concepts like futurism and archaism allows for such easy adaptation and mutation. Indeed, futurism takes a number of readily available forms (Fayist, Italian, Russian, etc.) and Faye’s anti-universalist stance allows for different interpretations of what archaism entails depending on the civilization the appropriator focuses on.

Archeofuturism, then, proves a malleable concept that can be expected to resurface in the discourses of other far-right groups, particularly those like Slavros’ whose accelerationist background proves highly compatible with the archeofuturist philosophy. This notion of ideological compatibility could explain why the archeofuturist revival seems not to have found a fertile soil in its intellectual birthplace. If archeofuturism does develop more easily among accelerationist groups, then France is not very prone to archeofuturist tendencies as it has only very recently started to identify accelerationist groups and individuals on its territory.^[65] Further research on ideological compatibility and adoption trends could help map out far-right groups’ predisposition to adopting archeofuturist or other ideological principles. Being able to geographically identify potential inclinations and proneness to certain ideologies, strategies, and principles could, in turn, help governments anticipate and better prepare against far-right violence and terrorism. 

CTEC-ATARI Addendum

In addition to parallels with the content endorsed throughout Slavros’ literature, archeofuturism is also frequently discussed within neofascist and accelerationist circles. Although not as popular as Julius Evola or James Mason, Faye has nonetheless been made part of a suite of intermediate reading materials. Many communities monitored by CTEC and by the Accelerationism Research Consortium promote Faye’s works as vital to understanding the full scope of neofascist thought. In addition, the term “archeofuturism” has also become part of the identity of some more niche neofascist accelerationists, who will occasionally include references in their social media presences.

^[1] Faye identifies six catastrophes: the metastasis of the European social fabric, an economic and demographic crisis, the chaos of the South, a global economic crisis, a surge in fundamentalist religious fanaticism, a confrontation between North and South on theological and ethnic grounds, and the unchecked pollution of the planet.

Guillaume Faye, Archeofuturism: European Visions of the Post-Catastrophic Age (United Kingdom: Arktos Media Ltd, 2010), 59-65.

^[2] Faye, Archeofuturism, 14.

^[3] Faye, Archeofuturism, 13.

^[4] Faye, Archeofuturism, 59.

^[5] Ibid, 63.

^[6] Ibid, 62.

^[7] Ibid, 63.

^[8] Ibid, 65.

^[9] Faye specifically mentions the ethnicity of the sociologist he quotes, attempting to close before it even arises a potential debate on the racist underpinnings of these conclusions—the assumption being that if the researcher is black then his results cannot be racist.

^[10] Faye, Archeofuturism, 176, 137, 35.

^[11] Faye, Archeofuturism, 68.

^[12] Ibid, 75, 79.

^[13] Ibid, 15.

^[14] Ibid, 59.

^[15] Finding the word race deeply offensive vis-a-vis its double meaning as a zoological term to describe animal species (or its uncomfortably bluntness), the word ethnicity has replaced the word “race” in French language. Although a literal translation from French to English translates “éthnie” into “ethnic group”, a contextual, culturally sensitive one would offer “race” as its English equivalent. Thus, the Anglophone reader must not be fooled by the softer angles offered by the words ‘ethnic’, ‘ethnicity’, or ‘ethnic group’ in the English translation of Faye’s book and must consider replacing them, for greater accuracy, by ‘racial’ and ‘race’.

^[16] Faye, Archeofuturism, 70, 80.

^[17] Faye, Archeofuturism, 70.

^[18] Ibid, 72.

^[19] Ibid, 74.

^[20] Ibid, 48.

^[21] Faye, Archeofuturism, 164.

^[22] Ibid, 164.

^[23] Ibid, 75.

^[24] Ibid, 105.

^[25] Faye wrote that, to face the future, it was necessary to “reconcile Evola and Marinetti, and do away with the notion of ‘modernity’ produced by Enlightenment ideology”.

Faye, Archeofuturism, 45.

^[26] John B. Morgan IV, ‘Introduction’ in Julius Evola, Metaphysics of War: Battle, Victory, and Death in the World of Tradition (United Kingdom: Arktos Media Ltd, 2011), 22.

^[27] Matthew Rose, A world after Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right (United States of America: Yale University Press, 2021), 88.

^[28] Matthew Rose, A world after Liberalism, 89.

^[29] It is unclear whether Faye voluntarily left GRECE due to an ideological conflict and poor relations with de Benoist or was involuntarily removed from the group.

Nicolas Lebourg, “Ce n’est pas une interview, c’est une déclaration de guerre de Jean Mari Le Pen,” Slate, April 8, 2015, https://www.slate.fr/story/100111/fn-jean-marie-le-pen.

^[30] Faye, Archeofuturism, 27.

^[31] Ibid, 35-38.

^[32] Alain de Benoist and Charles Champetier, “The French New Right in the Year 2000,” Telos, Spring, 1999, Semantic Scholar, 2; Faye, Archeofuturism, 19.

^[33] Faye, Archeofuturism, 14.

^[34] Ibid, 61.

^[35] Faye, Archeofuturism, 169.

^[36] De Benoist and Champetier, “The French New Right”, 12-13.

^[37] Faye, Archeofuturism, 12, 137, 147.

^[38] Faye, Archeofuturism, 81-82; De Benoist and Champetier, “The French New Right”, 19, 12, 14-15, 9.

^[39] De Benoist and Champetier, “The French New Right”, 3.

^[40] De Benoist and Champetier, “The French New Right”, 10; Faye, Archeofuturism, 85.

^[41] De Benoist and Champetier, “The French New Right”, 9-10.

^[42] Faye, Archeofuturism, 68, 45, 75.

^[43] The movement even chose as its symbol a boar, in reference to the cover of Faye’s book Why We Fight: Manifesto of the European Resistance.

^[44] “Génération Identitaire: Le Mouvement,” Génération Identitaire, accessed January, 2022, https://generationidentitaire.org/le-mouvement/.

^[45] Alexander Slavros, “American Futurism Manifesto,” IronMarch.org, September, 2013, Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20181128001749/http://siegeculture.biz/american-futurism-workshop/.

^[46] Slavros’ “decay timeline” varies depending on his writings. In the American Futurist Manifesto, the Constitution marks a turning point, but this turning point is inscribed in a four-step involution process, which he spells out in the Involution chapter of Next Leap. The 18^th century, which he initially describes in terms of the French Revolution and then adapts to the ratification of Constitution for his American audience, is the 3^rd mark in the involution process. That is, the world’s transition from the Silver to the Bronze age before its mutation to the Dark Age triggered by the Russian revolution, ringing the collapse of our civilization and the possibility for a new fascist one. Alexander Slavros, “Involution,” in Next Leap: An IronMarch Anthology, ed. IronMarch (IronMarch Publication, 2015), 187.

^[47] Slavros, “American Futurism Manifesto”.

^[48] Alexander Slavros, “Involution,” in Next Leap: An IronMarch Anthology, ed. IronMarch (IronMarch Publication, 2015), 186.

^[49] IronMarch, RFM-01 Mental Liberation (IronMarch Publication, 2015), 50.

^[50] Alexander Slavros and Charles Chapel, A Squire’s Trial (IronMarch Publication, 2015), 42.

^[51] Faye, Archeofuturism, 70, 74.

^[52] Slavros, “American Futurism Manifesto”.

^[53] “It is in those principles that brought our ancestors here in the first place, it is in the life of the frontier, the political no man’s land”, Slavros, “American Futurism Manifesto”.

^[54] “Naturally guns become a great tool in the affirmation of one’s freedom and the establishment of one’s law because his reach is extended as far as the bullet will take it, splattering the brains of whoever dared to you and yours,” Slavros, “American Futurism Manifesto”.

^[55] “Real freedom allows us to sort each other out, whoever comes out victorious by imposing his will […] no state, no lawyer, no third parties, you and me, here and now,” Slavros, “American Futurism Manifesto”.

^[56] Slavros, “American Futurism Manifesto”; Faye, Archeofuturism, 70.

^[57] Ibid, 75.

^[58] Slavros, “American Futurism Manifesto”.

^[59] Slavros quotes points 1, 2, 7, 9, 10 of Marinetti’s Founding and Manifesto of Futurism.

^[60] Faye, Archeofuturism, 112, 53, 19.

^[61] Slavros and Chapel, A Squire’s Trial, 52, 8.

^[62] Alexander Slavros, “Fascist Style, Nazi Passion,” in Next Leap: An IronMarch Anthology, ed. IronMarch (IronMarch Publication, 2015), 114.

^[63] Whereas Faye considers the end of modernity to be triggered by the convergence of catastrophes naturally caused by that very modernity, Slavros conceives that the end of modernity can be accelerated via the chaos-creating actions of “true red-blooded Americans”, bearing witness to his primarily accelerationist approach to bringing about a new, post-modern order.

^[64] Slavros and Chapel, A Squire’s Trial, 32.

^[65] Pierre Plottu and Maxime Macé “Terrorisme d’ultra droite : la menace qui avance à pas de loups,” Libération, June 29, 2021, https://www.liberation.fr/politique/ultradroite-la-menace-qui-avance-a-….