rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_345d01b7-c7f2-534c-8f29-cf912f8ef14a">23 in the medium—and long-run—as is also visible in one of their Polish interviewee’s words: ‘Greenline Front died of “natural causes”, people didn’t do anything’.
The short-lived case of GLF may be emblematic of eco-fascist and radical right cells, sentenced to atomized and disjointed activism and operating remotely from most radical right organizations. However, the case of GLF raises at least two issues worth considering about the relationship between the radical right and ecologism. First, although many radical right actors have taken a contrarian position when it comes to anthropogenic climate change,24 the current relevance of environmental issues has let some of these actors to show increasing interest in the environment. While this is not necessarily congruent with eco-fascism, elements such as purity of the national land and rootedness of an essentialised collective may also be found in more subtle forms of radical right ideology. Thus, studying “proper” eco-fascism might sharpen our awareness of related, though different, articulations of nature protection across the radical right spectrum.
Second, even though GLF did not permeate into mainstream environmental networks and might not even attract significant support within the radical right, its grassroots activism keeps alive a fascist tradition of ecological thought and practice. Moreover, this ecological moment points to the importance of critically examining environmentalist framing. That is, GLF and eco-fascism at large question our understanding of environmentalism and ecologism as framing done by mainstream and left-wing environmentalists too might unconsciously reproduce potentially troubling notions of eco-organicism and an imagined equilibrium in and with nature, resulting in exclusionary politics.
Dr Bernhard Forchtner is a Senior Fellow at CARR and associate professor of media and communication at the University of Leicester.
Balša Lubarda is a Doctoral Fellow at CARR and doctoral candidate in environmental sciences and policy at the Central European University.
1 Peter Staudenmaier, “Fascist Ecology: The ‘Green Wing’ of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents,” in Ecofascism Revisited: Lessons from the German Experience, eds. J. Biehl and P. Staudenmaier (Porsgrunn: New Compass Press, 2011), 13-42.
2 Bernhard Forchtner, “Eco-fascism: Justifications of Terrorist Violence in the Christchurch Mosque Shooting and the El Paso Shooting,” openDemocracy, August 13, 2019, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/countering-radical-right/eco-fascism-justifications-terrorist-violence-christchurch-mosque-shooting-and-el-paso-shooting/.
3 Balša Lubarda, “Beyond Ecofascism? Far Right Ecologism (FRE) as a Framework for Future Inquiries,” Environmental Values 29, no. 6 (2020): 713-32.
4 Bernhard Forchtner, ed., The Far Right and the Environment. Politics, Discourse and Communication (Oxon: Routledge, 2019).
5 Greenline Front Ukraine, vk, January 11, 2021, 9:10 a.m., https://vk.com/greenline_kyiv?z=photo-74403565_341755028%2Falbum-74403565_0%2Frev. On the life rune as a symbol, see “Life Rune,” Anti-Defamation League, https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/life-rune.
6 “Home,” Greenline Front International Blog, https://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/.
7 “Für Blut Und Boden,” Greenline Front International Blog, http://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/2016/08/fur-blut-und-boden.html.
8 “Manifesto: 10 points,” Greenline Front International Blog, https://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/2016/07/glf-manifesto-10-points_4.html.
9 “Leonardo da Vinci’s Ethical Vegetarianism,” Greenline Front International Blog, http://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/2016/09/leonardo-da-vinci-ethical-vegetarianism.html
10 “Democracy: The Religion of Death—Pentti Linkola,” Greenline Front International Blog, http://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/2016/08/democracy-religion-of-death.html.
11 “William Pierce—‘Who are we?’,” Greenline Front International Blog, https://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/2016/07/william-pierce-who-are-we_44.html.
12 Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Hitler's Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism (New York: New York University Press, 1998).
13 “The Religion of the Strong by Savitri Devi,” Greenline Front International Blog, https://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-religion-of-strong-by-savitri-devi.html.
14 “Walter Darré and the ‘Lebensgesetzliche Anbauweise’,” Greenline Front International Blog, https://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/2016/07/walter-darre-and-ebensgesetzliche.html.
15 “Alwin Seifert: First German Environmentalist,” Greenline Front International Blog, http://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/2016/08/alwin-seifert.html
16 “The Law of Blood,” Greenline Front International Blog, http://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-law-of-blood.html
17 Zbyněk Tarant, “Is Brown the New Green? The Environmental Discourse of the Czech Far Right,” in The Far Right and the Environment. Politics, Discourse and Communication, ed. B. Forchtner (Oxon: Routledge, 2019), 201-15.
18 Greenlinefrontde (Greenline Front Germany), “Erste Müllsammlungsaktion,” June 18, 2019, https://greenlinefrontde.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/erste-mullsammlungsaktionen/.
19 Greenlinefront Deutschland, “Vogelfutterhäuser selber bauen,” vk, October 6, 2016, 1:00 p.m., https://m.vk.com/wall-123638406_49.
20 Greenlinefront Deutschland, “Operation Eichenwald,” vk, January 6, 2017, 11:33 a.m., https://m.vk.com/wall-123638406_65.
21 Greenlinefront Deutschland, https://vk.com/public123638406.
22 Greenlinefront Deutschland (@greenlinefront), https://twitter.com/greenlinefront?s=20; Greenline Front Deutschland, https://greenlinefrontde.wordpress.com/.
23 Roger Griffin,
