Rundale

Philip Lawton

The period of ‘Trump 2.0’ – which itself is ever-shifting and volatile – has further emboldened nascent right-wing accelerationists. At the fore of this movement are key individuals, whose worldview furthers what Quinn Slobodian noted as the desire to break the world into small enclaves removed from State control. Historically, urban imaginaries inform us of the norms and desires of different historical periods and power structures. The emergence of accelerationist urbanism perhaps pushes this to new heights. Most recently, this has come to the fore through the idea of Praxis Nation, an unbuilt utopian city – or perhaps ‘non-city’ – that was initially to be located in an un-named location in the Mediterranean Sea. In what follows, I outline the shifting representation of Praxis Nation from “A tribute to Mediterranean cities of old” to a non-sequential mash-up of historic symbolism that seamlessly shifts from Oliver Stone’s ‘Alexander’ to Nazi-era fascist imagery. On the basis of this representation, I argue that Praxis Nation offers troubling insights into the authoritarian vision of a tech-led urban future.

The idea of Praxis Nation was first mooted in the early 2020’s by self-described “founder-general” Dryden Brown. As time has gone on, various locations have been proposed, ranging from Greenland to Argentina. Initial renderings of Praxis were of a relatively straightforward low-tax enclave in a New Urbanist style. Readers were told that the new Praxis resident – or ‘Praxian’ – would experience various different parts of the city, including a waterfront district, a mixed-use ‘primary urban fabric’, a ‘research district’ – described as taking its influence from the “professional guilds of old” – and the ‘secondary urban fabric’. Here, Praxis residents would live life in the comfort akin to Notting Hill: “This area is for walking and moments of pause, adorned with trees, quiet lawns, and soft materials underfoot: white gravel and compacted sands.” Further to the edge of the city, readers were told residents could remove themselves to elegant villas, where it was claimed that “Serene galleries and cozy eateries dot the nooks and bends, infusing a small touch of bustle”. As if to emphasize the utopian illusion further, from this point, it was imagined that the city would dissolve “…into a pastoral world of forests, farmland, and vineyards.”

Somewhat predictably, beyond the urbanist imagery was a desired utopia of reduced government interference that typifies much of the Tech-led urbanism of today. Yet, if the initial outline of Praxis sounds like a relatively sanguine ‘New Urbanist’ styled enclave, over the last three years or so, this image has shifted considerably. As the rhetoric of anti-Union futurism has become stronger, the New Urbanist vision has been side-lined. Instead, Praxis is increasingly dominated by an idealization of AI-driven historicism, culminating in a mix of neo-gothic imagery meets emperor in chief, with the ultimate destination of going ‘beyond earth’. Emerging via an amalgamation of surplus tech capital and a sense of an all-conquering mindset, the shifting visualization of Praxis city over the last two or three years embodies the extreme of tech-imagineering and its descent into an imaginary of Fascist oblivion.

More recently, viewers of the Praxis website are treated with a range of new offerings, from early meanderings on the virtues of the ‘frontier’, to more recent ‘declaration of ascent’. This is perhaps best emphasized through the short film entitled ‘Every Angel is Terrifying’, which outlines the form of escapism that Praxis seeks to push. Through invoking everything from Nietzsche to contemporary images of flooding and dystopian visions of PPE-adorned patients, the State is held accountable for all the problems of the world. Eventually, the narrator gets to their point: the viewer is told that society has become ‘squishy, pale and devoid of vitality’. Ultimately, viewers are invited to be ‘noble’, and to escape from society: “There is order and noble hierarchy. And we are capable of discerning it.” It is these people who we are told ‘build new worlds’.

In January 2025, perhaps feeling emboldened by the Trump-Musk axis, Praxis posted a celebratory tweet stating “Western Civilization is regaining its vitality. Can you feel it?”. The accompanying rapid-fire montage – in gif form – is a homage to Nazi iconography. This starts with Arno Breker’s ‘Avenger’, originally created to adorn Albert Speer’s ill-fated Germania. This soon shifts to fellow Nazi-propagandist, Leni Reifenstahl’s, Olympia: Blink and you might miss everything, from dancing naked Aryan women and men to idealized German athletes. As if we might not get the message, visuals of Olympia are interspersed with, among other references, Mussolini’s Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, sculptures of idealized Western men, and Nazi soldiers in Paris and Kyiv. As if for good measure, the viewer is occasionally treated to other iterations of Western archetypes, such as a few Soviet men in shorts from the 1950s, or Dolf Lungdren as Rocky IV’s Drago. Yet, with predominant reference to the Nazi iconography, and in under 20 seconds, Praxis show us who they are and what their non-city really stands for: a Fascist meme.

Seemingly inspired by the potential of the future but drawing on the power of the past, the Praxians think it is now fair game to draw references from a regime that murdered millions. Perhaps they think they are being ‘playful’, yet, I see it as puerile and grotesque. But, crucially it also performs a key task and one that, from my perspective, belies a deep-rooted self-obsession and an opportunity to gain further attention via whatever channel is being used. It is a simple but naïve tactic: critique is deflected via a secret and inward-looking language of which no one else is a part. This is next level urban revanchism, where the rest of the world is viewed as the problem and only insiders can escape to new purer pastures.

The utopian imaginary of Praxis is built upon the notion of a city without urbanization. It is a city that can simply appear without the need for the supportive infrastructure of manufacturing, light industry, and storage. But none of this really matters. Praxis is not so much a city as an isolated thought process laid bare, and an illustration of the barren landscape that is Tech-led urban Imagineering in the early 21^st century. If Mike Davis rendered an image of 1990s Los Angeles as a form of urbanism that was ‘beyond Blade Runner’, then the future rendered by Praxis seems to take this to new dystopian levels.

There is a constant refrain of a notion that this non-city will soon materialize in some unknown place, and a constant promise that the ‘Networked State’ will become a reality. As it stands, Praxis and their so-called Praxians express what they see as a notion of destiny being on their side. The repeated mantra via social media outreach and glossy magazine launches is one of ‘It is Happening’. In reality, it seems more likely to be a solid Fyre-meets-urbanism four-part series. At the same time, Praxis marks a warning to us all: the current claims on Greenland as a new ‘frontier’ are matched by equally disturbing views of our urban future among Tech-urbanists, whether it be the struggling Prospera or, somewhat closer to home, a reimagined Mullaghmore. The key concern here is not really the specific location, but its broader influence for our urban future.