In The ecofascist temptationPierre Madelin observes a disturbing political movement, which combines the environment and extreme nationalism.
Is the environment soluble in the radical right? Can both feed and inspire each other to the point of walking hand in hand?
At first glance, unlikely. Recent examples tend to confirm this. Donald Trump is a known climate skeptic. His Brazilian counterpart, Jair Bolsonaro, destroyed square kilometers of Amazon rainforest. In Europe, far-right leaders have long downplayed the environmental threat.
And yet. In The ecofascist temptationthe French philosopher Pierre Madelin demonstrates that these two apparently opposed visions have become compatible, to the point of turning into a veritable ideological movement, with a growing number of followers.
For these right-wing radicals, the equation is simple: the environmental fight goes through the protection of the territory, which is only possible through an assertive anti-immigration policy.
Basically, the more foreigners will settle here, the greater the environmental disaster will be. Because they will come to consume our resources, asphyxiate our living space and increase our ecological footprint.
This vision is not only theoretical. Lone wolves have already taken action. Madelin begins his essay by evoking the killings of Christchurch (2019), El Paso (2019), and Buffalo (2022) with 83 deaths in total. In their manifestos, the three assassins explain their insane act by evoking the “conservation of nature” and “green nationalism”.
These are isolated cases, but the web is weaving. Pierre Madelin explains how the green of the environment gradually puts itself at the service of the fascist brown. Hence the term “ecofascism” which is beginning to make its way into popular and media language.
The work, resolutely intellectual, argues, deconstructs, demonstrates. The author draws from the roots of this political thought. Strives to clarify the concept, while its definition seems multiple. Justifies the use of the word fascism, which some would associate more readily with Hitler and Mussolini. Explains how ecofascism has flowed from various sources, American and European, to form a very real current, which seems to widen according to the climate threat. New Right and National Front, green colonialism and neo-Malthusianism, racism and ethno-differentialism follow one another…
The last part of the book, disturbing, leads us into the field of political fiction. Ecofascism remains a relatively marginal movement. But it may only be a matter of time before this discriminatory concept is taken over by political regimes, which will brandish the perfectly acceptable arguments of bioregionalism and environmental conservation to reinforce their borders, even if it means letting immigrants die on the doorstep, an ideology of “sacrificial exclusion” that the author does not hesitate to denounce.
At this point, the activist takes over the academic. Madelin exposes the threat, warns of the danger. To see now if – or how – the movement will grow and which political parties will exploit it to reinforce their theories of identity withdrawal. But we probably haven’t finished hearing about ecofascism…
Extract
“It seems reasonable to me to think that the more the ecological crisis worsens, the more the democratic and emancipatory options available to us to deal with it will dwindle, and the more, on the contrary, extreme solutions, still unthinkable today, will risk becoming ‘impose. »
Who is Pierre Madelin?
Pierre Madelin is a philosopher and translator specializing in “environmental humanities”. He has already published After Capitalism – Political Ecology Essay (2017) and Should we put an end to civilization? Primitivism and collapse (2021).
The ecofascist temptation
Pierre Madelin
Eco-society
258 pages