the dark side: let's talk about ecofascism

avocado politics sounds way better than what it actually is...

If you’ve ever worried about climate change— which I imagine most people have at this point—, you might’ve heard the same odd sentiment.

“If we had less humans on Earth, we could stop the climate crisis”. “Humans are a cancer on the planet, we should all just die”. “Climate change is because of overpopulation”.

All of these invariably lead down the same dark path— ecofascism. But what is ecofascism? And how can we work against it?

Ecofascism has been defined as a joint effort between environmentalism and facism— groups that utilize it oftentimes champion environmentalism, but with far-right politics as well. This is predominantly by talking about overpopulation in relation to climate change and trying to orient “solutions” around that cause (solutions in quotes, there, because genocide isn’t a solution to the problems at hand).

In particular, many ecofascists either want to deny help to refugees in Western countries, or outright murder them entirely. They believe that the Global South is responsible for climate change, instead of the work of billionaires and colonialism and corporations. These people utilize the worrying state of the world due to climate change, and instead of really trying to fix it, they attempt to manipulate it for their own racist agenda.

The ecofascism founder has been often described as Madison Grant— the man was renown for his conservationism, after all, and his racism as well. Grant founded the American Bison Society; he created multiple national parks; he made the Bronx Zoo. But he also wanted to put a Mbuti person, Ota Benga, in the zoo. He wrote books that became Nazi ideology; he created the American Eugenics Society. He was a key factor in why Eastern Europeans and Asian people had limited entry in the United States with the Immigration Act of 1924.

Others say that Thomas Robert Malthus founded it, with a paper called “The Principle of Population”. He said there that population growth would hurt people and cause famine in the future, which inspired Darwin’s natural selection theory (and presumably Social Darwinism with it).

Since then, other proponants of ecofascism with equal reprehensibility have cropped up. Many Nazis, for one, have all agreed with this type of ideology. In fact, the term “blood and soil” originated from them, and the idea of avocado politics is inspired by them too— the latter being the idea of green policy on the outside of ecofascism, and then “brown shirts”, or Nazis, at its core. The German Green Party was founded by a neo-nazi, and the Ecological Democratic Party in Germany is rife with holocaust denial and anti-immigration stances. The Unabomber is often looked at from an ecofascist viewpoint, and the perpatrators of the El Paso and Christchurch shootings wrote and discussed these beliefs as well.

Now, it goes without saying that ecofascism is incorrect and dangerous. The Global South oftentimes has extremely low carbon footprints, and Western countries often lead the way in emissions. The Global South are also oftentimes the ones who bear the brunt of disasters incurred from climate change. The idea that these communities, which are hit the hardest and which barely did anything to cause it at all, deserve death and genocide, is appalling.

So how do we try to mitigate its damage? How do we try to stop ecofascism in its tracks?

Well, a good way to do this is to stay informed, and stay vigilent. When people discuss climate change, try to keep out for dogwhistles like the ones above. Try to recognize who they are targeting, and what impact others’ ideas would have on different communities. For example, many ecofascist ideas may have to do with trying to push different racialized groups as the cause. Others may discuss more policing, or closing borders. You should also keep an eye out for their other political positions— if a person who has been a historic bigot, for example, is discussing climate change, you might want to walk away.

It’s also good to invest in solutions that marginalized people support— I, for one, try to keep an eye out for Indigenous movements like the Red Deal and the Landback Movement. Keep in mind who is really causing the damage, and instead support those who are being affected in the first place.

Finally, what I have found to be helpful is to focus on hope. Climate doomism can oftentimes spread into these ecofascistic ideas. After all, many who follow these pathways oftentimes think human beings are a plague, that they deserve to die. These ideas easily go into the ecofascist pipeline, and help push others in too. Not to mention that even when they don’t, the apocolypse they envision will hurt many people less priviledged than them first. Hope and perservation throughout the crisis will do much more good and will help much more people than simply waiting to die.

In summation, the next time Prince William suggests Africans are causing wildlife there to be in danger because of swelling population size, take a step back. He is a colonist prince, after all. And his family is only growing, too.

Thanks for reading! Here are my sources for this week.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-is-ecofascism-explainer

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/30/experts-critique-prince-williams-ideas-on-africa-population