Red-Pilling Speculation

IN THEIR INTRODUCTION to the new edited essay collection Reactionary Worldbuilding: From Speculative Imagination to Political Practice, Sherryl Vint and Anindita Banerjee ask, “What is possible and politically necessary in a context in which consensus reality no longer holds, in which everyone is living in a mode of speculative fiction that they/we mistake for reality?” Their question echoes concerns that have been growing increasingly urgent for the past decade about the social media–driven growth of conspiracy theories, the burgeoning of what has been called the outrage industry’s “narrowcasting” of adulterated news and inflamed opinion, and the proliferation of propagandistic attempts to rewrite history. What makes the invasion of consensus reality by these varieties of speculative imagination so disturbing is their dire political consequences.