{"id":12628,"date":"2022-07-29T09:26:49","date_gmt":"2022-07-29T14:26:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=12628"},"modified":"2022-07-29T09:40:40","modified_gmt":"2022-07-29T14:40:40","slug":"readings-on-ecofascism-and-far-right-ecologism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2022\/07\/29\/readings-on-ecofascism-and-far-right-ecologism\/","title":{"rendered":"Readings on ecofascism and far-right ecologism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>While it&#8217;s easy to overuse the term &#8220;ecofascism,&#8221; applying it to things that don&#8217;t necessarily deserve it (the debate might be a little like the one I&#8217;ve been following over <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv-ukrtaz\/?s=russia+fascist+fascism\">whether Putinist Russia qualifies as fascist<\/a>), it&#8217;s important for anyone involved in environmental issues to have a sense of where the term does apply and how it reflects a longer tradition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anti-fascist theorist <a href=\"https:\/\/politicalresearch.org\/bio\/shane-burley\">Shane Burley<\/a> has produced a bibliography, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/shane_burley1\/status\/1537857953650266112?t=5VHfqqCamIWOT2ND9yoBVQ&amp;s=09\">shared on Twitter<\/a>, that presents a solid and up-to-date starting point for getting this background (even if a few of its sources do occasionally overreach). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">There is a lot of confusion about what the term &quot;ecofascism&quot; means and how environmentalism has historically had some connections to white supremacy, nativism, and far-right politics, so here is a reading list of useful resources to understand this complicated subject. *thread*<\/p>&mdash; Shane Burley \u05d1\u05d3 (@shane_burley1) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/shane_burley1\/status\/1537857953650266112?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 17, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>If what you want is something lighter in weight and breezier in substance (i.e., cartoonish and introductory), there&#8217;s the Anti-Creep Climate Initiative&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.asle.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Against-the-Ecofascist-Creep.pdf\">Against the Ecofascist Creep<\/a>. Here&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.asle.org\/features\/stemming-the-creep-of-ecofascism-a-primer\/\">some background<\/a> on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But if you want something more in-depth and analytical, I recommend Sam Moore&#8217;s and Alex Roberts&#8217;s new book <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/books\/edition\/The_Rise_of_Ecofascism\/0vtazgEACAAJ?hl=enhttps:\/\/www.wiley.com\/en-us\/The+Rise+of+Ecofascism:+Climate+Change+and+the+Far+Right-p-9781509545377\">The Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Right<\/a><\/em> (Polity, 2022), which Burley mentions only in passing. The book is relatively short (136 pages plus notes), but captures many dimensions of &#8220;far-right ecologism,&#8221; which, despite the book&#8217;s title, is the authors&#8217; preferred term. As Bal\u0161a Lubarda notes in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/full\/10.1080\/09644016.2022.2087333\">review in <em>Environmental Politics<\/em><\/a><em>,<\/em> this term better captures the range of phenomena we can expect to grow at the right end of the political spectrum as climate change intensifies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The book was completed during the Covid pandemic, and the authors perceptively point out in their introduction that what they call &#8220;climate systems breakdown&#8221; &#8212; a much better term than the oversimplified &#8220;global warming,&#8221; but also less ambiguous than &#8220;climate change&#8221; &#8212;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>might actually look much more like the pandemic did: mass death events, sudden stresses on global supply chains, abrupt and previously unthinkable changes to everyday life, massive discrepancies in vulnerability across class and racial groups, a generally increased anxiety, racially displaced blame, the tightening of surveillance regimes, a sudden return to governments acting exclusively and aggressively in their national and class interest, the mainstreaming of conspiracy culture, talk of the end of globalization, a retreat to protectionism, unprecedented measures that suddenly seem entirely necessary, the sudden collapse of livelihoods for billions of the world\u2019s poor, and a deep economic shock worldwide. (2-3)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The authors perceptively analyze the interplay between three forms of right-wing response to climate systems breakdown: &#8220;fossil capital,&#8221; with its heretofore commitments to climate change denial; authoritarian conservatism, with its &#8220;securitization&#8221; of the environment; and the looming arrival of far-right &#8220;climate collapse cults,&#8221; as presaged by mass murderers like the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/science\/two-mass-murders-a-world-apart-share-a-common-theme-ecofascism\/2019\/08\/18\/0079a676-bec4-11e9-b873-63ace636af08_story.html\">Christchurch mosque attacker<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gq.com\/story\/what-is-eco-fascism\">El Paso mass shooter<\/a>, and the recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2022\/may\/17\/buffalo-shooting-suspect-eco-fascism\">Buffalo shooter<\/a>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a &#8220;severe risk multiplier,&#8221; climate systems breakdown will affect human societies in variegated ways. In their conclusions, the authors discuss the concepts of nature that feed far-right politics as well as their alternatives, and the &#8220;robust&#8221; forms of solidarity &#8212; across human societies, &#8220;at and across borders,&#8221; to the &#8220;more-than-human world,&#8221; and &#8220;across huge time-scales&#8221; &#8212; that a more just politics will need to insist on. Regarding the first, they write,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Any climate politics will mobilize an idea of nature. Throughout this book, we have noted ways in which images of nature have been mobilized by far-right actors: the idea of a pristine, inexhaustible nature that underpinned the expansion of colonial exploitation, the proposition of a mystical relationship between an ethnic group and a landscape, the application of methods of animal breeding to human reproduction, and both the absolutization of the rights of humans and their total denigration. We must resist those ideas of nature that are hierarchical, parochial, tied to a certain race or divided into essentially killable and unkillable parts. (130)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>As alternatives to these, they note a variety of sources for a more adequate politics of nature: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Where might we find a better understanding of nature? The sources are many and varied: indigenous knowledge, the conceptual resources developed under the frameworks of social ecology and ecosocialism and, perhaps most importantly of all, biology and climate science, as well as a critical understanding of their histories. (130)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Regular readers of this blog will know of some others that could be added to this list, including <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2019\/06\/02\/updated-process-relational-theory-primer\/\">process-relational philosophies<\/a>, variations of <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/11\/14\/nagarjuna-ecophilosophy-the-practice-of-liberation\/\">liberationist<\/a> Mahayana <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/tag\/buddhism\/\">Buddhism<\/a>, and other conceptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In contrast to the common predilection to pose climate change and the Anthropocene as matters of &#8220;humanity versus nature,&#8221; the authors write:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>It is not, perhaps, a relationship between \u2018humans\u2019 and nature that we should understand as the cause of our predicament, but the relationship between human <em>activity <\/em>and nature. And it is not human activity <em>as a whole <\/em>that we need to contend with but <em>humans fulfilling capitalism\u2019s imperative to endless expansion of production and extraction through the cheapening of nature<\/em>: extracting oil and rare earth minerals, radically simplifying ecologies to afford extraction, burning the Amazon for cattle farming and so on. (134)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The &#8220;cheapening of nature&#8221; is indeed is at the heart of the <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2021\/08\/11\/through-an-anthroposcenic-glass-darkly\/\">Anthropocene predicament<\/a>, and I think the authors are correct that what is needed in response are &#8220;ecologies of liberation&#8221; that are &#8220;planetary&#8221; in scope, though I would add that must <em>also <\/em>be local and regional in application. The book&#8217;s great virtue is that it shows that a just climate politics must be aware of the<em> unjust<\/em> climate politics it will have to oppose and overcome at every level &#8212; local, regional, national, and global.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s an interview with the two authors on Nick Breeze&#8217;s rather doomish ClimateGenn podcast:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EcQmYSeE4rc?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While it&#8217;s easy to overuse the term &#8220;ecofascism,&#8221; applying it to things that don&#8217;t necessarily deserve it (the debate might be a little like the one I&#8217;ve been following over whether Putinist Russia qualifies as fascist), it&#8217;s important for anyone involved in environmental issues to have a sense of where the term does apply and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[196,691215],"tags":[710361,710303,660486,692756,710364,710302,454967,710304,103309,710359,628551,710362,710360,710363],"class_list":["post-12628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecoculture","category-politics_postpolitics","tag-anti-creep-climate-initiative","tag-bibliographies","tag-climate-justice-2","tag-climate-politics-2","tag-climate-systems-breakdown","tag-eco-fascism","tag-ecofascism","tag-environmental-politics","tag-far-right","tag-far-right-ecologism","tag-radical-environmentalism","tag-sam-moore-and-alex-roberts","tag-shane-burley","tag-the-rise-of-ecofascism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-3hG","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6197,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2012\/09\/18\/cfp-thinking-acting-ecologically\/","url_meta":{"origin":12628,"position":0},"title":"CFP: Thinking &amp; Acting Ecologically","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE) presents the Tenth Annual Meeting on Environmental Philosophy, to be held 12-14th of June 2013 at The University of East Anglia, UK. \u201cThinking and Acting Ecologically\u201d The ISEE invites submissions on any topic in environmental philosophy \/ ecophilosophy broadly conceived. The focus of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Eco-theory&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13101,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2023\/01\/31\/climate-change-as-class-war\/","url_meta":{"origin":12628,"position":1},"title":"Climate change as class war?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 31, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Thinking further about the global climate precariat (and the ontology of climate trauma, etc.), I've been reading a set of books that try to articulate a \"class politics\" for the present eco-political conjuncture. In particular, Matthew Huber's Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet (Verso, 2022)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Climate change&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2023\/01\/image-3-400x276-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8394,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/09\/18\/eco-humanities-glossolalia\/","url_meta":{"origin":12628,"position":2},"title":"Eco-humanities glossolalia","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 18, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I've just come across the earliest outline I wrote for the course I'm currently teaching (in its third incarnation), \"Environmental Literature, Arts, and Media.\" The course has also turned into a book project I'm working on, which will be a thematic primer to the environmental arts and humanities.\u00a0Both course and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Academe&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1177,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/01\/12\/climate-rage\/","url_meta":{"origin":12628,"position":3},"title":"climate rage","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Just a quick follow-up to the previous post... After the East Anglia flare-up, Paul Krugman was right to ask what fuels the rage behind climate denialism. Anyone who has perused any popular web site on environmental and climate issues will be struck both by the numbers and the utter vehemence\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Climate change&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"climategate.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2010\/01\/climategate.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13751,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2024\/10\/09\/the-eh-consensus\/","url_meta":{"origin":12628,"position":4},"title":"The EH consensus (?)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 9, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"The field I\u2019ve worked in for the last few decades, which has come to be known as the Environmental Humanities (capitalized or not), is one that requires keeping up with ongoing scholarship not only in the humanities, but also in the social sciences and the biological and earth sciences. From\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Anthropocene&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2024\/10\/20240928_104538.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2024\/10\/20240928_104538.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2024\/10\/20240928_104538.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2024\/10\/20240928_104538.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2024\/10\/20240928_104538.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":12847,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2022\/08\/16\/toward-a-non-fascist-ecocultural-activism\/","url_meta":{"origin":12628,"position":5},"title":"Toward a non-fascist ecocultural activism","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 16, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"This post continues the ethical and political thinking I have shared in some of my eco-theoretical manifestos and asketological writings (including parts of Shadowing the Anthropocene). Its interest in \u2018non-fascist life\u2019 takes its lead from critical analysts of fascism including Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and F\u00e9lix\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Manifestos &amp; auguries&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Manifestos &amp; auguries","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/manifestos-and-auguries\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/08\/20220418_192926-scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/08\/20220418_192926-scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/08\/20220418_192926-scaled.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/08\/20220418_192926-scaled.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/08\/20220418_192926-scaled.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/08\/20220418_192926-scaled.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12628"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12839,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12628\/revisions\/12839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}