Claims around who is, and is not, a fascist can be overblown so our intention is not to point fingers. Instead, in this two-part blog, we define eco-fascism and draw attention to how business-as-usual, including ‘green’ versions, is eco-fascism writ large (Part 1) and describe how some ideas within the climate-environment movement also channel ecofascist sentiments (Part 2).
Why focus on the climate-environment movement?
Firstly, as described in Part 1, major environmental groups and green parties are complicate in promoting ‘green’ versions of business-as-usual and, thus, eco-fascism via ecocide and, dehumanising and exploiting poor people.
Secondly, the instigation of an (eco)fascist regime is a process, one that often receives popular support in the early stages, for example, in relation to tighter border controls. Calling out eco-fascist sentiments that infuse thinking and conversations – be it in the climate-environment movement or everyday life – is a first step in disrupting such a process.
Thirdly, elements in the climate-environment movement are open to co-option by the extreme right. This is already be evident in protest actions against ‘renewables’ which include left-leaning environmentalists and those on the right of politics with little, or no, interest in ecology and climate. As fear and uncertainty rise, charismatic leaders may adopt a ‘green’ platform, promising a better future if short-term strict and strident measures are taken, including the persecution of perceived enemies of ‘green’ progress. If some believe these false promises, they will likely lend weight to a fascist regime believing desperate times justify desperate measures.
Make the world great again!
It is indisputable that we are in irreversible climate-ecological collapse. Climate change, for example, is now not only a reality, but it will also continue to intensify until the Earth’s energy balance is restored. There is no guarantee that this new balance will remotely resemble the climate of the Holocene that enabled agriculture and global industrial civilisation. It could be 10C warmer than today!
Yet, many commentators and experts continue to claim that collapse is not inevitable and that other possibilities exist; that a new world is possible if we ‘think positive’, find the ‘political will’, or ‘act now’!
The selling of false promises of impossible futures is a populist trope of the right. ‘Make the world great again!’, they claim. But ‘great’ for whom? And at the expense of who and what?
Advocates for degrowth and circular economies, for example, claim that it is possible to return to ecological limits while improving democracy, boosting quality of life, and addressing inequity. Not only is this impossible given our state of collapse, but it is also based on a farfetched fantasy of unprecedented international cooperation and popular support for what amounts to radical social and economic upheaval.
Some advocates acknowledge these challenges and, instead, imagine authoritarian pathways to a better future. The idea of a climate-ecological emergency is used to justify such a position, even though the authoritarian overtones of states of (climate) emergency are well documented.
Others celebrate a world without people, imagining that this will ‘make the world great again’ by a return of ecological flourishing and harmony. This ignores the toxic landscapes created by climate-ecological collapse and the irreversible devastation of the Sixth Mass Extinction. This misanthropic escapism downplays of the unfolding horrors of collapse and acts to undermine action for socio-ecological justice, including opposition of fascist creep.
The righteous will inherit the Earth
Other dark green claims about ‘making the world great again’ focus on the perceived merits of social or civilisational collapse. They promise a fantastical ‘return to nature’, ignoring the dire consequences of climate-ecological collapse – the irreplaceable loss of biodiversity, ecosystem complexity, and habitat that could support hunting and gathering.
The fallacious claim of an eco-elite inheriting the earth also de-humanises those who are perceived to have fallen from grace – through mass consumption or wilful ignorance. This, again, is an eco-fascist trope most starkly illustrated by the vilification of already marginalised groups. Trans people, for instance, can be depicted as a deviant product of an impure and corrupt civilisation. Anthropology, on the other hand, tells a very different story: of the valued role and contributions of trans people in all kinds of cultures and societies throughout history.
There are less bigoted claims of an eco-elite waiting in the wings to inherit the earth following social collapse. These often include calls for strengthening democracy. Yet, they also frequently de-humanise vast portions of the population who ‘don’t get it’ – who fail to make appropriate lifestyle choices and fail to act on climate change. A good future, it is claimed, depends on those who get it rising ‘out of the ashes’. As societies collapse, it is imagined that the moral worth and self-sacrifice of this eco-elite will be broadly recognised via success at the ballot box or a popular uprising.
As this dream fails, which it inevitably will in irreversible climate-ecological collapse, it could provide a justification for eco-fascist scapegoating and violent recriminations against those deemed not to ‘get it’.
The blame game
The climate-environment movement is heavily invested in the blame game. Whose fault is it exactly? There are valid reasons to point the finger at the top 1%, the affluent west, and big corporations including the fossil fuel industry. Some use their power to deceive, deny, and delay actions that others argue may have prevented collapse. To add insult to injury, a few continue to live the high life while many others suffer and die.
Yet, this kind of scapegoating is also flawed. As we describe in Part 1, there are no alternate pathways that would guarantee a better world – all roads lead to collapse. Addressing gross acts of injustice in collapse is paramount but setting up a straw-enemy contributes to false narratives – narratives that support, rather than usurp (eco)fascist trends.
Eco-fascism is not a distant threat. Neither is it only evident on the right of politics. It is alive and kicking in business-as-usual and in some of the ideas and rhetoric of the climate-environment movement. There is no waiting around for jackboots, armbands, and little black notebooks. Act now to avert the worst – act now for a #JustCollapse!
Just Collapse 
The Total We
While I haven’t yet clicked all the links in your wonderful essay, and so I’ve no idea if I’m linked and perhaps exemplifying one of the horrible strands of eco-fascism, I’d like to thank you for this write-up, and:
I’d like to introduce the Total – not totalitarian – We.
Because contrary to what your text claims, there is actually an alternative path We could, and will, take. It is the path of Collapse.
In a number of mostly futile attempts, I’ve launched the contrarian analysis that, put simply, Industrial Civilisation is the problem and Climate Collapse its solution.
What We need to do is to Just Collapse.
Through my immediate family I’ve picked up some corporate-speak related to problems, and the one I have in mind is that one about defining ‘Who Owns The Problem’. In normie conversations about ecology, it is Civilisation or the smaller, anthropocentric we who own the problem. The problem being defined as the probable end of lavish lifestyles & Industrial Civilisation. ‘We’ need to solve the ‘Climate problem’ so said lifestyles & regimes may continue, indefinitely.
But a clarifying epiphany last week showed me how all of us alive today are the direct descendants of the very first life on Earth 4 billion years ago, in the sense that we didn’t emerge 300,000 years ago but rather go all the way back to Day One. Long story short, the Total We of which I speak, is all Life on Earth, and it’s related to all Life on Earth that has been before.
Now, WE have a problem, We own a problem, and that problem is Industrial Civilisation, but We also hold the solution, and this will be a Group Project for All Life on Earth: We need to make it Just Collapse.
I’ve sketched before why it is a solution and will make things great again, but a short recap:
Now, for the ones afraid or even terrified of strong or eco-fascistic humans doing big stuff, I’ve made the case over and over again that our solution does NOT require any special human action. I’ve met nodding heads when I’ve laid out how none of us (in-group) could even come close to the accelerationism of normies going about their normie lives. Witting or otherwise.
No one cares if they accelerate the Collapse to save Life on Earth or out of sheer ignorance & bliss, the key fact is they accelerate the Collapse.
We’d have to work really really hard and be brilliant in every way to amass such a vast army of die-hard accelerationists, so let’s just lean back and enjoy the moment for a while. Take the W.
Therefore I suggest we do spiritual work instead. Do you love writing? Write! Have a thing for thinking? Think! Like running? Run! Want to express yourself through art, music, dance? Go do that!
All of this is not to say that it won’t be horrible, heart-breaking, torture to see all human stuff fade. All books burn. Every city & settlement tearing itself apart. It will. And it is.
But we didn’t choose this. And we can only do so much.
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Thanks for commenting. We agree it is a heart-breaking thought and that once one knows, one can focus one’s energy as best one can. Unfortunately, climate change and a collapse of global industrial civilisation is no solution to this predicament. The damage done is too large, for example, an estimated 10C of warming is in the pipeline just from exisiting atmospheric CO2. This is why we focus on achieving as much socio-ecological justice as possible NOW, rather than imagining some kind of abstract future.
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Well, James Hansen (who initiated the 10C figure) believes Industrial Civilisation can still prevail for hundreds of years, if he can gather support for his industrialisation of our atmosphere (solar mirrors etc). I don’t believe this, and I also do not believe it would be a good thing (see below).
If we let all living beings today (and their memories of dead relatives) be the big-letter WE, so as to separate it from ‘we humans’, then obviously the situation looks different: WE also have a problem, but it isn’t the small-letter we problem of keeping Industrial Civilisation going indefinitely. Instead, OUR problem IS Industrial Civilisation and its destruction of everything WE hold dear.
I stated that WE actually have an alternate path: That path is Collapse of Industrial Civilisation. This solution per definition solves OUR problem, which is the very existence of said Industrial Civilisation.
(There’s no reason for US to want Industrial Civilisation to prevail indefinitely, when to US it is the very thing that destroys everything WE hold dear.)
Now, to further clarify, we may switch the term Industrial Civilisation with Colonisation. US not being Colonisers but rather at the receiving end of Colonisation and Coloniser rule, obviously WE want an end to this form of Eco-Fascism ASAP. When Colonisation is gone, WE celebrate!
Will everything be 100% perfect the day after Colonisation ends? Obviously not. But at least Coloniser Rule is gone, and WE can begin to heal OUR wounds.
Coloniser rule ended in India in 1947, and later in South Africa in 1994, 30 years ago. While never problem-free, the collapse of the old regime was not ‘abstract’ but a very real vision in the minds of its countless victims.
Of course, the British Empire Regime Propaganda would always say it was the pinnacle of Civilisation and that Civilisation was the best of every possible world, just as Regime Propaganda these days instructs us we must risk Everything, including our very Earth Atmosphere, in an attempt to keep Industrial Civilisation running forever.
PS: A friend of mine now for many decades is super-involved in the struggle for UBI — Universal Basic Income. Being transdoomer, I have of course already talked to him about this, specifically about the sense or meaning of carrying on with this fight, and (hypothetically) succeding and getting the UBI in 2030, only to have this very civilised income ripped away when his country and Industrial Civilisation collapses later that week…
His answer was a good one: I am an activist, I do not know what I would do if I did not have this struggle for Justice.
While I 100% accept his answer for himself, my friend and I disagree about the wisdom of spending your final energy and days of civilised normality chasing the carrot that you know will be rotten when you finally get it on a plate. In my opinion, in his specific situation, it makes no sense whatsoever.
Now, when it comes to struggling for a Just Collapse, in general, it makes more sense in my optics, and especially if we incorporate the notion of TRANSCOLLAPSE. Meaning your horizon doesn’t stop at Industrial Regime Collapse, rather it proceeds into the post-civilised near future.
The abrupt disappearance of any notion of state & local authority necessitates neighbourhood cooperation in general, and figuring out how to live, heal and support each other specifically. Ideally in a fair & equal way for me, personally, but the reader’s mileage may differ.
I do agree with Just Collapse that this struggle for socio-ecological Justice starts now, in this Collapse, and continues through this Collapse into the other side, the Post-Collapse, where most of us will after all spend the majority of our remaining days.
Unlike the centralised UBI situation described above, Just Collapse’s struggle is for decentralised entities and support networks, exactly the stuff we all need in the Post-Civilised day to day life where nothing works, phone is permanently dead and there’s no clean water nor any food trucks coming. Ever again.
Finally, and in the same spirit of transdoomerism and post-civilised planning, there is an interesting fusion in the latest Deep Green Resistance interview with Just Stop Oil’s Roger Hallam. Because Max Wilbert, the DGR interviewer, engages in landscape activism (against a Green Transition lithium mine) with the Post-Collapse era in mind, to preserve its mountains, rivers and indigenous burial grounds for a future without Industrial Civilisation. Hallam sensationally wants to preserve Industrial Civilisation, but he’s an expert in activism and activist mobilisation.
To cut a long story short, both I and the Extinctionati embrace this type of very area-focused eco-activism. Because it’s technically a winnable struggle, and because its goal is not to allow Industrial Civilisation to linger (and continue the hurt & eco-fascist oppressive violence).
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts Stephen. We agree, there is no such things as a singular just collapse – where everything is fair and equitable. This is not what #JustCollapse is about – we are far more pragmatic than that. Just Collapse is about achieving as much partial and relative socio-ecological justice as possible to ease, not stop, the descent. This likely includes the types of social and environmental activist pursuits you are involved with.
Collapse will be horrific – it already is for many. Those in power will not cede power – they will try desperately to hang onto it. This is why, as part of a Just Collapse, we advocate for #InsurgentPlanning. Poorer communities are already doing this all around the world. It is a practical and localised form of justice that is well suited to collapse.
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