Eco-Fascism: What is it and why you should care
Eco-fascism sounds at first like a school of thought that entails putting environmental needs above all else, even human needs. The ideology is in fact much more extreme, and today its practitioners use it to justify their intense xenophobia and belief in genetic supremacy.
We can trace eco-fascism, at least the American brand of it, back as early as the late 1800s with its founder Madison Grant. Grant established the belief that conservationism was much more than a matter of protecting the environment, but that a country’s conservation efforts was a measure of its character. History remembers Grant better as the author of The Passing of the Great Race, or The Racial Basis of European History in which he wrote:
“We Americans must realize that the altruistic ideals which have controlled our social development during the past century and the maudlin sentimentalism that has made America “an asylum for the oppressed,” are sweeping the nation toward a racial abyss. If the Melting Pot is allowed to boil without control and we continue to follow our national motto and deliberately blind ourselves to “all distinctions of race, creed or color,” the type of native American of Colonial descent will become as extinct as the Athenian of the age of Pericles, and the Viking of the days of Rollo.” (p. 263)
Essentially, he was one of the first influential white men of America to cry ‘White Genocide!’ But his book also was one of the first to use eugenics to justify White supremacy, citing that in the end, everything is about race:
“Without race there can be nothing except the slave wearing his master’s clothes, stealing his master’s proud name, adopting his master’s tongue and living in the crumbling ruins of his master’s palace. The immigrant ditch diggers and the railroad navies were to our fathers what their slaves were to the Roman and the same transfer of political power from master to servant is taking place today.” (p. 100)
His book was highly revered in Nazi Germany, with Adolf Hitler even writing him a letter of admiration, calling it ‘my Bible’. The work influenced America’s Immigration Act of 1924, which established extremely strict immigration quotas and also barred all immigrants from the whole of Asia. Even Teddy Roosevelt, as highly revered a conservationist he may be, praised Grant’s work and called it, “a capital book; in purpose, in vision, in grasp of the facts our people most need to realize.”
Madison Grant is important to this story because his work has influenced some of the most abhorrent attacks in recent history. For example, Patrick Crusius, the domestic terrorist who murdered 22 people in El Paso, Texas, was influenced in his manifesto by eco-fascism. Not only was he attempting to purify Texas from “a Hispanic invasion,” but he angrily wrote about the destruction of our planet by pollution and deforestation. “If we can get rid of enough people,” he narrated, “then our way of life can be more sustainable.” This mentality comes from a rising, but damaging, worldview that overpopulation is to blame for our climate woes, and in order to solve the climate crisis we must sacrifice human life — rather than changing our consumption habits or corporate agendas.
Crusius was inspired by the Christchurch shooter, who was a self-proclaimed eco-fascist. He murdered 51 people in two different mosques in New Zealand. He claimed that there cannot be nationalism without environmentalism, and that immigration was “environmental warfare.”
Eco-fascists believe that mainstream environmentalism has failed us, and it is hard to argue against that. Mainstream environmentalism refuses to put an end to consumerist culture, one that is forced upon us in the West by unregulated corporations. Instead, it encourages us to avoid plastic straws by purchasing reusable ones, and sheds light on the most inessential points of environmentalism in the name of trendiness. Many eco-fascists believe that democracies are ill-suited to combat the climate crisis, but that is a belief shared to different degrees in the environmentalism community.
Because of mainstream environmentalism’s failure to procure an adequate solution to the climate crisis, and with the crisis ever-so looming over humanity like a ticking time-bomb, there has been made much room for more extremist schools of thought such as eco-fascism and deep ecology to gain popularity. At first glance, the belief that the needs of humanity are to come secondary to the needs of the planet seems reasonable given the position humanity is in today. Yet, these beliefs originate from racist ideology, eugenics, and extreme nationalism.
In a warming world where it seems that every day politics become more polarized, idiocy seems to become increasingly common, and nationalism is a global rising trend, there is a lot of room for extremism and radicalization in any group. It’s worth noting that since our government is not doing enough to fight the crisis, or at least prepare for it, and with the U.S. Republican party being one of the last organizations in the world left that denies the realities of the climate crisis, extremists feel that they need to take matters in their own hands. But we must be as vigilant as possible. The answer to the climate crisis is not a bunch of sporadic terrorist attacks in the name of eco-fascism and population control.
It must be recognized that Western environmentalism as we’ve come to know it has its roots in White supremacy, and with that recognition we must carefully move forward into the new future with intersectionality being at the top of our priority list. For too long the White Man has taken up the burden of caring for our planet, at least in the West, and they have gotten us to this point. We are soon going to enter a new era, beyond anything that humanity has ever experienced before, and if marginalized peoples are still on the sidelines when that time comes then we will surely be left behind.
To be clear, humanity is not the disease. Before the industrial revolution, we managed to live in harmony with the land and we can do so again. We just need to change everything about how we live, how we consume, what we wear, where we go, and how we think about things. By all means, undoing centuries worth of capitalistic brainwashing will not be easy. How many of us actually know how to grow our own food or weave our own clothes? These skills can not only be taught, but transformed to fit the needs of our warming world. For examples:
Regenerative agriculture is a new and rising agricultural practice that sequesters CO2 into the soil, making for extremely nutrient-dense soil and also taking Carbon out of our air.
Sustainable fashion is on the rise, and even though the prices are arguably high, it’s worth recognizing that genuine sustainable brands not only watch out for the Carbon footprint of their own company but of their entire supply chain.
Exxon, the corporation that first found out about climate change in the ‘70s and invested heavily in climate-denier propaganda, has been steadily tanking since 2014. $184 billion has been lost from Exxon’s corporate value, and there’s little chance that they’ll be able to make up for that, much of the loss having to do with the rise of sustainable investing.
Humanity has always been innovative, and always persevered. But now is not the time for dedication to nationalism. Now more than ever must we recognize that we all share one planet, and whatever is detrimental to our neighbor is detrimental to ourselves. The climate crisis is already driving global mass migrations and causing lethal wars. Now, more than ever, must we firmly reject xenophobic rhetoric and eco-fascist themes. We have the chance to rebuild our planet from the ground up, rebuild our culture and re-imagine everything that our planet has the potential to be. The best way to do that is to allow for everyone to have a seat at the table, and to keep our minds open to all possibilities.
But we can’t do that without a fight.
