I think the word "accelerationist" has the potential to become the next "tankie", or even a worse, more mainstream version of it. In the way a small number of liberals are currently using it, it is equally useless for understanding the world / equally useful for misunderstanding the world. It can be used to equate any leftist with a person who wants to start WW3. It can be used to draw a connection between the far right and the far left, without even having to use another concept like "authoritarianism" to mediate the comparison.
We are also quickly approaching the part of the American electoral cycle where liberals will start trying to suppress any non-abstract criticism of the Democrats. "Bernie bro" will start to seem outdated, so they are in need of a new rhetorical tool.
"Tankie" could also serve as this tool, but it has the downsides of its meaning being harder to intuit from the word itself, and its explanation including an actual historical event. "Accelerationist" is also directly rhetorically related to the current campaign of hate towards LGBT people, but does not necessarily reference it so it can still be used by cis people to insult trans leftists.
“Tankie” is just too online a term to break into the mainstream. “Accelerationist” is broad enough and has enough implication in the word sans context that it can be applied to smear a wide variety of positions libs don’t like.
Idk accelerationist is pretty online too.
Yeah but it’s also grokkable by people who’ve never heard it before
Is it? I think tankie is much simpler and easier to understand, the idea of someone who knee jerk defends anyone with a red flag vs someone who's trying to play some weird fifth dimensional chess where they make things worse in order to radicalize people into supporting their cause, somehow. The latter is way more weird and confusing imo.