Accelerationism is a range of ideologies that call for the drastic intensification of capitalist growth, technological change, and other processes of social change to destabilize existing systems and create radical social transformations. It is an ideological spectrum divided into mutually contradictory left-wing and right-wing variants, both of which support dramatic changes to capitalism and its structures, as well as the conditions for a technological singularity, a point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible. It aims to analyze and subsequently promote the social, economic, and cultural forces that constitute the process of acceleration.

Accelerationism was preceded by ideas from philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. From these ideas, some University of Warwick staff formed a philosophy collective known as the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), led by Nick Land. Land and the CCRU drew further upon ideas in posthumanism and 1990s cyber-culture, such as cyberpunk and jungle music, to become the driving force behind accelerationism. After the dissolution of the CCRU, the movement was termed accelerationism by Benjamin Noys in a critical work. Different interpretations emerged: whereas Land's right-wing thought promotes capitalism as the driver of progress, technology, and knowledge, left-wing thinkers such as Mark Fisher, Nick Srnicek, and Alex Williams utilized similar ideas to promote the use of capitalist technology and infrastructure to achieve socialism.

The term has also been used in ways unrelated to capitalism and technology. One such use is by right-wing extremists such as neo-fascists, neo-Nazis, white nationalists and white supremacists to increasingly refer to an acceleration of racial conflict through assassinations, murders and terrorist attacks as a means to violently achieve a white ethnostate.