Dreaming of Superhumans: Reactionary Eschatologies in the 21st Century

Word is spreading: a new class of reactionaries are dreaming “Nietzschean” dreams – dreams of the superhuman. Nietzsche’s thought has a long and sordid relationship with right-wing political movements: most notorious is the Nazis’ adoption of the misanthropic iconoclast as their philosophical mascot, but reactionary groups have been fond of claiming Nietzsche’s legacy ever since his death in 1900.[1] But the last decade has seen a new cohort of reactionaries appear on the  cultural scene, and while certain elements of their Nietzschean dreams are all-too-familiar, their visions of the superhuman are dressed up in decidedly 21st century pageantry. This paper examines two specific strains of this reactionary “superhumanism,” traces their legacies in Nietzsche’s thought, and shows that they owe their popularity  in part to their superhuman scope. I conclude with thoughts about how to respond to these reactionary movements, and consider what competing visions of superhumanity might be able to contest them.     

At the heart of Nietzsche’s thought is his vision of Übermensch – a term best translated as “superhuman” – a higher  form of life that, according to Nietzsche, modern humans should strive to produce. The Nazis of course had their own racialized “Aryan” vision of superhumanity, one they tried to actualize in the ruinous marriage of eugenics and industrialized genocide. This association has, understandably, cast a pall of suspicion on Nietzschean superhumanism. Despite this leeriness, the new class of reactionary Nietzscheans are exploring superhuman fantasies with gusto, and people are tuning in.

The first of these movements is “effective accelerationism,” e/acc for short. E/acc has gained traction in the mainstream tech world, but its roots lie in the “neoreactionary” (“NRx”) thinking of Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin. E/acc is a rejoinder to “effective altruism,” a philosophy that preaches caution and regulation in the tech industry, especially regarding the development of AI. While technologists like Marc Andreesen have dressed accelerationism up in humanistic garb, this shroud disguises the dark, post-organic technoscapes that Nick Land prophesies. This vision is Nietzschean in its radicality but bypasses the historical humility and naturalism that make Nietzsche’s thought a more promising resource.     

The second strain is based in the memetic creations of online provocateur “Bronze Age Pervert,” a pastiche of Nietzsche-like parables, trollish social media posts, and images of muscular young men. “BAP’s” persona has generated a diffuse following of internet trolls, military personnel, edgy academics, politicians, and even a number of aides in the Trump white house,[2] who have been collectively dubbed “BAPists.”[3] BAP’s impious brand of pseudo-philosophy is more bluntly chauvinistic than anything coming out of the e/acc sphere. The accelerationist camp is represented by tech bros and venture capitalists, a crowd that trades in glossy veneers and marketable slogans; BAP and his epigones do away with such pretense. BAP’s self-published Bronze Age Mindset is rife with a brand of racism and misogyny that would have made Nietzsche himself blanch, and he relishes denouncing the “turd world” (third world) and its yeast-like “zombi” inhabitants: larger than life bigotry is very much BAP’s brand.

These two strains of pseudo-Nietzschean thought have two important features in common: first, they have both generated modest but real (and growing) followings – readers and enthusiasts who see them as speaking truth to liberal power, to “cameralist” forms of government, to effeminate wokeness, and so on. But both e/acc and BAPism also enshrine visions of superhumanity at the heart of their worldviews: both revolve around robust dreams of superhuman life, and this, I contend, is part of what makes these worldviews powerful.

It would be all too easy to dismiss the overtly superhuman elements of e/acc and BAPism as either fantastical science fiction, or rhetorical hyperbole meant to amplify what are in truth political messages. But analyzing these movements as purely political, and as speaking to their followers on purely political grounds, misses a crucial dimension of their essence and appeal. The purveyors of these superhuman dreams aren’t only offering solutions to political problems: they are speaking to a deeper form of nihilism, a dissatisfaction with merely human life. This reveals that, to some extent, these new reactionary movements are meeting a felt need for superhumanism, a more general longing for new forms of life and existence. While these reactionary superhuman dreams turn out to be nightmares that enshrine violence and hierarchy, those seeking to harness these visions to their political projects – Andreesen, Michael Anton, and the like – as well as their left-leaning critics, downplay the nightmarish hallucinatory elements, and thereby domesticate the superhuman to something recognizably political and “human.” The virulence and violence of the superhuman virus is well-disguised.  

Is a retreat to liberal political principles an adequate response to these reactionary superhumanisms? It’s possible that Nietzsche was correct in his appraisal of nihilism: that human forms of life are waning, or changing, and that superhuman forms of life will begin, or have already begun, to emerge. Our cultural fascination with superhumanity, whether in the form of cinematic mutants, aliens and UAPs, artificial intelligences and diverse transhumanisms, suggest that these reactionary superhuman nightmares represent one aspect of a trend that transcends political and philosophical liberalism. Perhaps, rather than a reaffirmed commitment to the liberal tradition, it will require competing visions of the superhuman, or even actual superhumans, to do battle with the pseudo-Nietzschean nightmares lurking on the horizon. I conclude with thoughts about what resources Nietzsche and other transhumanist visions may offer to help us dream our own superhuman dreams, and to dispel the nightmares.

[1] See for example Steven E Aschheim, The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany: 1890 - 1990. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994; György Lukacs, The Destruction of Reason. Translated by Peter Palmer. New York: Verso Books, 2021; and Daniel Tutt, How to Read Like a Parasite: Why the Left Got High on Nietzsche. London: Repeater Books, 2024.

[2] Ben Schreckinger, “The alt-right manifesto that has Trumpworld talking.” Politico, August 23, 2019. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/23/alt-right-book-trump-1472413

[3] Michael Anton, “Are the Kids Al(t)right?” The Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2019. https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/are-the-kids-altright/