effects of climate systems breakdown are already widespread. But like any exponential process without end, it is almost all in the future. It is to this future that the final chapter of the book turns. Here, we address what we call the ‘ecofascist hypothesis’: the widespread anxiety that our political future might be ‘ecofascism’. How are we to make sense of such a prediction?
We start with the future emergence of reactionary movements. In particular, we argue, the long history of climate change denialism on the right is likely to have unexpected, complicated effects on their future nature politics. Large numbers of people committed to mainstream right politics, most substantially in the US, have been lied to by those who denied climate change. When they confront this – and perhaps more importantly discover that in many cases this suppression of the truth imperils everything that their politics works to hold together – they are likely to radicalize, although, like all radicalization, it will be unpredictable. It is unlikely, we think, to generate a flood of new converts to the left. Two reactions here combine to make a particularly potent mix: a revolt against those who have got us into this mess and simultaneously an attempt to hold on to what some people already have, either as individuals or, more worryingly, as racial groups.
If it scales up beyond this movement stage to become a form of government, this future ‘ecofascism’ will have to address the more pronounced tension that has animated all forms of far-right ecologism to date: the tension between capitalism’s endless economic expansion and the affirmation and protection of the ‘natural order’. We outline two possible futures. In each, the far right serves as the (perhaps unruly) tool of a large fraction of capital. First, fossil capital, which allows the far right to continue its current broad commitments to climate change denial (we call it ‘Fossilized Reaction’). Secondly, it adheres to the interests of the security state and authoritarian capitalist interests more generally (we call this possible future ‘Batteries, Bombs and Borders’), which are involved in the geopolitically fraught process of securing the resources for a green energy transition and securing hegemony in a renewed era of superpower competition. Complicating both of these is the possible arrival of far-right groups of ‘climate collapse cults’.
Let us be clear about our target. The vast majority of current environmental movements and organizations are not on the far right. Nor are the concerns of environmental movements in some way ‘fascist’ concerns. It is not fascist to care about nature. Our conclusion turns to the responses we can make to such far-right movements, and about how we can act in ways impervious to far-right cooptation. Environmental movements must be politicized around issues of climate justice. Many, of course, already are. Yet, as environmental movements grow in importance, and the climate crisis becomes ever urgent, such movements will accumulate and jettison models of the world with increasing rapidity. And therein lies the risk. The political valence of environmentalism has changed before in the past. In the past, it was just as much an interest of the far right as of the left. It has the potential to flip again. Whatever the future, declarations that climate disruption will ‘push all utopian visions and ideological disputes into the background’5 or that people will likely retreat into a form of disengaged hedonism are clearly wrong. Climate systems breakdown will only get more intensely politicized from here.
Few books on the environment model transformations in politics as drastic as those outlined here. There are exceptions, notably Climate Leviathan. In it, Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright outline four hypothetical transformations of politics.6 Most similar to our outline of future ‘ecofascism’ is their ‘Climate Behemoth’, in which reactionary political actors oppose the globalization of politics but keep capitalism. Many parts of our accounts are similar, although we split it into two distinct parts. The second of these parts even has some similarities with their ‘Climate Leviathan’, which seeks planetary capitalist government. In our speculations on the future, however, we emphasize the brutal and decidedly national character of the securitization of adaptation to climate systems breakdown, and the fraught aspects of a renewable energy transition. This is perhaps simply a matter of emphasis. We are also less optimistic than they are about the long-term prospects of what they call ‘Climate Behemoth’. They believe that its contradictions will make it fall apart. We believe that it is possible, although not certain, that the far right can gain by its contradictions, and not simply disintegrate because of them.
Another book comparable to ours is the recent White Skin, Black Fuel by Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective.7 It details the imbrication of its two titular parts: the white skins of fossil fuels’ most important historical advocates and developers, and the black fuel itself. It is mostly, although not exclusively, focused on climate denialists, and the racial politics that informs it. It differs from our project in several respects. Firstly, we deal with a rather broader set of far-right actors, and therefore in less detail. Secondly, Malm and the Zetkin Collective focus on climate change and the responses to it. Of course, the emphasis is warranted: global temperature rise exacerbates all the other ecological problems. And, more than that, it poses existential risks to humanity as a whole. But this focus makes it more difficult to see what is specific about nature politics on the far right: its concern with particular places, with particular natural features, with food culture, with gender politics, with overpopulation, with energy security, with ideas of racial and ethnic identity and much more. Although a focus on each of these aspects might be read as a way of avoiding what is really essential in the politics of climate change, we think understanding these more diverse figurations of nature is essential to grasping contemporary far-right ecologism and predicting its future movements. The complex effects of future climate systems breakdown will mean that political actors will be able to contest what the really significant parts of it are. It is in this contestation that the far right’s more diverse nature politics will become relevant.
Others have argued that it is essential to maintain a conception of climate systems breakdown beyond the radiative forcing effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.8 We agree. It is important for engaging the interrelated collection of problems that exist. But it is also politically essential: full decarbonization of the economy, absent adequate responses to the panoply of other ecological challenges, would not defuse the far right’s ability to use their ideas of a ‘crisis in nature’ for political gain or entirely rule out the threat of what has been called ‘ecofascism’.
But should we call it that?
On ‘ecofascism’
‘Ecofascism’, as a term, has a rather complex history. Bernhard Forchtner, editor of The Far Right and the Environment, notes that ‘ecofascism’ is a much-contested term, not widely used in the academic literature. He characterizes it as a ‘fringe phenomenon’ that has little impact on the existing political landscape.9 We largely agree. Why, then, is our book titled as it is? There are two reasons. First, we are writing in anticipation of politics to come as much as reflecting on the politics of today. Second, we accept the anxiety about the future that presently goes under the name of ‘ecofascism’ as valid, even if it is not the most precise or useful term.
Let us look at some of the uses to which the term has been put. First, ‘ecofascism’ has been used as a smear by right-wing opponents of environmentalism. Perhaps most illustrative is James Delingpole’s The Little Green Book of Eco-Fascism, whose subtitle, ‘The Left’s Plan to Frighten Your Kids, Drive Up Energy Costs and Hike Your Taxes!’ says enough about its politics. ‘Fascism’ here is the generic bogeyman of government action.10 It goes without saying that we are not claiming any similarity between left-environmentalism and fascism. Similarly, in line with the overwhelming critical consensus, we identify ‘fascism’ as an ideology of the far right, not of the left. To borrow a line from Frank Uekötter, author of The Green and the Brown: A History of Conservation in Nazi Germany, ‘If you came upon this book hoping to be told that today’s environmentalists are actually Nazis in disguise, then I hope you paid for it before reaching this sentence.’11
A second use of ‘ecofascism’
