The far right is interested in ecology for the same reasons that it is interested in other subjects in which it was not previously interested, such as feminism or the rights of LGBT people. In our society, there have been social and legal developments which must be taken into account if we want to exist politically. Making an openly macho or climate-negationist speech, for example, is not acceptable. There has been growing ecological concern for years in our society and people on the far right, who are not idiots, have understood that they have every interest in structuring their discourse around these issues. Otherwise, it would be detrimental to them. In short, there is a form of opportunism there.
For the rest, there are marginal currents of the extreme right – whose genealogy I do in the book – which have a sincere interest in these questions of ecology and which have been trying for some time to articulate them with issues of identity and hostility towards migrants.
This connection between ecology, identity and migration is at the heart of “ecofascism”, a concept that you develop extensively in your book. How does it go even further than conservative political ecology?
Conservative political ecology defends a necessarily conservative vision of safeguarding living conditions on earth (preserving anthropological limits, particularly in sexual relations and couple relationships) but is not necessarily xenophobic or anti-migrant. Let’s take the example of Pope Francis’ speech today: he is well known for his positions in favor of welcoming migrants but is also fiercely opposed to abortion. This is a case of conservative political ecology.
In the concept of ecofascism, there is necessarily a racist and xenophobic dimension. It is a polysemous term which in fact combines two dimensions: authoritarianism and sacrificial holism. The idea is to say that if there were to be authoritarian and sacrificial management of the ecological crisis, it would not affect all populations in the same way but would have a racist and xenophobic dimension which would make racialized and migrant populations the primary targets of this management.
Your book is based in particular on the writings of the author of the attack (March 2019) in Christchurch, New Zealand, who presents himself as “ecofascist” by calling for necessarily killing the surplus population of the globe to preserve the conditions of life on earth…
Yes, through these acts and manifestos, the general public discovered, not without surprise, a hitherto little-known link between the hardest extreme right and the defense of the environment. Not without surprise because, until then, it is an understatement to say that the far right had mainly stood out for its contempt for ecological issues.
Basically, there is no objective overpopulation. There is overpopulation given the lifestyle that certain privileged populations want to maintain. Because today, in the dominant social classes of most countries in the world, there are things that cannot be universalized within the ecological limits of the earth.
To respond to this, there are two options: either the segment of the world population whose lifestyle cannot be universalized agrees to reduce its ecological footprint, or it does not wish to do so but this means that we must be less numerous for this way of life to be sustainable. This is precisely where it becomes possible to single out certain populations for retribution.
The worse the ecological crisis gets, the more the democratic options we have to deal with it will diminish, you say. Does this also risk reinforcing the extremes?
Yes, I fear so. The more the situation deteriorates in terms of climate and ecology, leading in turn to migration, the stronger the temptation will be among large segments of the population to try to preserve their assets (possibility of getting a job, accessing protection social…) to the exclusion of other people who will be perceived as threats to these achievements.
The rise of the far right almost everywhere is clearly at work today. And if it is not directly linked to the ecological crisis, it in any case intervenes in this context, and will have to deal with this reality.
Are the defenders of degrowth and deglobalization indirectly playing into the hands of the far right?
No, nothing in the idea of degrowth predisposes to developments towards the extreme right. But like a certain number of ideas, the notion of degrowth can be subject to appropriation by the extreme right… although this remains rather rare.
Degrowth today refers, at least among those who wish to defend this political vision, to an almost mathematical necessity. This is the idea – and it is also the one that I defend – which is to say that we cannot continue to grow in a world as damaged as ours. To put it another way, degrowth could be articulated around a xenophobic, patriarchal project… but it does not intrinsically carry this type of drift.
Today, no government claims to be eco-fascist. How do you see the future?
The ecofascist movement is indeed embryonic at this stage. The far right in Europe is mostly anti-ecologist in a crude and brutal way. In the coming years, I think that the discourse on ecology will be increasingly articulated and elaborated by certain far-right groups.
For the rest, the question is whether these far-right groups will really do ecology if they come to power… We might think not.
The author
Pierre Madelin is a philosopher and translator specializing in “environmental humanities”. At Écosociété, he is the author of“After capitalism. Political ecology essay” (2017), from “Should we end civilization? Primitivism and collapse” (2021). In 2023, he published, again with Écosociété editions, “The ecofascist temptation. Ecology and the far right”.
The book
“The ecofascist temptation. Ecology and the far right”, Pierre Madelin, Éditions Écosociété, 260 pages, 18 euros.
Excerpts from the book:
“Here, for example, is what Brenton Tarrant writes: “I consider myself an ecofascist […]. Immigration and global warming are two sides of the same problem. The environment is being destroyed by overpopulation, and we Europeans are the only ones who do not contribute to overpopulation […]. We must kill the invaders, kill the overpopulation and thus save the environment”.
“Whatever happens, one thing is now certain: on the ideological level, the “green” transformation of the French extreme right has begun at the very heart of its most powerful political formation from an electoral point of view. But if the links between “green” and “brown” are in France the culmination of a long process of “greening fascism”, it is in some way a reverse process of “fascistization of ecology” that has been happening in the United States for several decades.”
“Undeniably, Nazism was a naturalist and biologizing regime in its ideological foundations, particularly concerned with respecting nature and anchoring all social relations in it. […]. But the nature of the Nazis, much more than that of scientific ecology then in full swing, is that of social Darwinism, and the “law of nature” constantly invoked is that of an implacable war between the races […].
“The most vulnerable migrants, those who seek to reach a new country without first having a visa or a residence card and are therefore forced to face dangerous situations which can cost them their lives, are not therefore not the “accomplices” of Capital, as the odious reasoning of “green” anti-immigrationists would have it. On the contrary, they are the main victims […]”.
