@guidostevens @screw_dog Yes, all true. I don't mean to imply that cyclical conceptions of history are exclusive to the right, and I hope I haven't come across that way. Far right/reactionary ideologies and narratives are just kind of my rather niche sub-field.

I do generally regard accelerationism and "end times" thinking as red flags, tho, regardless of where they're coming from. There's an idea that's fairly common among liberals and leftists, for example, that the planet would be better off if it just had fewer humans on it. There's a kind of logic to it: fewer people could survive on fewer resources and give the planet a chance to heal, right? But it's an idea that sometimes make things like food riots and deadly "natural" disasters seem either unimportant or even desirable to people who aren't directly affected, which is a really dangerous way of thinking.

The problem is that, when we imagine a coming apocalypse, we pretty much always imagine ourselves among the survivors. So who does that leave among the dead? The most expendable people in that kind of narrative are the people we don't actually know. They're just not part of the story at all. So it becomes easy to just kind of assume that big swaths of the world will be wiped out so that "the planet" can survive. From the perspective of those of us in rich Western countries, that generally means writing off the world's poorest, most already-disadvantaged people (who generally, by no coincidence, also happen to have the smallest per capita carbon footprint and consume the fewest resources).

In short: this kind of eschatology frankly lends itself very easily to a kind of genocidal thinking. I don't really think that most people who casually voice their support for large-scale depopulation really intend it that way. Mostly, I think they just haven't thought it through all that well, and they seem to just think that the surface level logic makes sense. It is, nonetheless, pretty dangerous stuff.

I also don't think that accelerationism is nearly as widespread on the left as it is on the right, nor that left accelerationists pose anywhere near the danger that reactionary accelerationists do. As far as I know, for instance, there hasn't been a left-wing attack on a power station in quite some time (at least in the US), whereas it's become kind of a thing on the right over the past few years (not only in the US). Also, leftists have only recently started to embrace things like prepping and gun culture on any kind of large scale (specifically in the US), and they've mostly only done it in response to the danger posed by a heavily armed and exceedingly paranoid right.

Still, people need to be careful about picking up on these kinds of frameworks and give some thought to the logical conclusions of what they're saying. The kind of (not always unjustified) pessimism and misanthropy that drives certain modes of eschatological thinking can make people more vulnerable to far right ideas than they often seem to realize.

Lastly, personally, I don't think I've ever really encountered leftists who think that society will be perfect once the reactionaries have been defeated and purged. Maybe you could say, for instance, that Stalinists think that -- that they can achieve a utopian "socialism in one country" once they've eliminated the "kulaks". I don't keep up with contemporary Stalinism enough to know if that's even still a thing, tho. Maybe it is. I just haven't seen it. Most left utopianism is/has been, to my knowledge, about establishing independent communities, not about purging enemies.

Fundamentally, fascism is about power -- the acquisition, expansion, and preservation of power for the sake of power, above all else. That kind of applies to authoritarians generally, regardless of how they dress up their ideas. Ideally, leftism should be about dismantling or redistributing power, though obviously a lot of leftists seem to lose sight of that far too often. Ultimately, though, that's the difference.

Sorry for going on so long. If you've made it this far, here's a kitten: