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This article is part of In Session: The Teen Vogue Lesson Plan. Find the full lesson plan here.
Republicans in the United States have a long, treacherous history of climate science denial. That’s changing among younger generations of conservatives, who are more likely to see the climate crisis as a threat to our collective future. But some on the far right are adopting xenophobic, racist ideas about what’s causing climate change — ideas that are rooted in eco-fascism.
Fascism can be defined in many different ways, but typically, the oppressive ideology has characteristics rooted in white identity and violence against marginalized people, such as Black and Brown people, immigrants, and those in the LGBTQ+ community. Vice describes eco-fascism as an ideology “which blames the demise of the environment on overpopulation, immigration, and over-industrialization, problems that followers think could be partly remedied through the mass murder of refugees in Western countries.”
Teen Vogue talked to two experts — anti-racism educator and climate activist Hilary Moore and iconic progressive author Naomi Klein — to help you identify eco-fascist myths and how to call them out.
“Very often, if you have somebody on the far right become an environmentalist, [their ideology] slots itself into a hypernationalist, white supremacist worldview, so it fuels the calls to harden borders at the softer end, [and] at the harder end, it can express itself through the idea that climate change is a divine purging,” Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything, told Teen Vogue. “[Eco-fascism] argues [climate change] is God’s will, that there are too many people anyway, so there’s going to be a great purge and perhaps that’s all for the best. It’s environmentalism through genocide.”
While it’s true human consumption harms the environment, eco-fascists place the blame exclusively on the marginalized. Because consumerism produces massive amounts of garbage, eco-fascists incorrectly blame poor people (of color) for using plastic bags and other cheap, disposable products — often without pointing to the damage done by major polluting corporations, like those in the fossil fuel industry. The young man accused of killing 22 people in El Paso, Texas, last summer included eco-fascist ideas in his manifesto, revealing that his targeting of a Walmart frequented by Mexican immigrants wasn’t a coincidence. The young man accused of carrying out a horrific mass shooting at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, last spring allegedly shared similar beliefs.
“If you look at where there continues to be the highest levels of population growth, it’s the poorest parts of the world with the lowest carbon footprints,” Klein added. “But when [that conversation] immediately moves the discussion to overpopulation, we’re changing the subject from unsustainable overconsumption by the rich to the procreation habits of the poor, and that’s a very political decision.”
Eco-fascism is not exclusive to the right. Eco-fascist myths have appeared in the narratives around the COVID-19 pandemic. Klein explained that the messaging behind viral videos of wild animals reentering environments — such as doctored videos of dolphins swimming in Venetian canals — can lead to a dangerous narrative insinuating “humans are the virus,” setting a tone of genocidal language.
“This is time to be really vigilant about any idea that this pandemic is weeding out people who needed to be weeded out anyway,” added Klein. “These are fascist logistics.”
It’s worth noting that Black and Latinx Americans, immigrants, and low-income communities in general have been hit the hardest by this pandemic.
In her forthcoming book, Burning Earth, Changing Europe: How the Racist Right Exploits the Climate Crisis and What We Can Do About It, Moore illustrates how the ways we talk about climate change can inadvertently support racist, right-wing arguments.
“If we aren’t skillful in how we talk about the environment and what our demands are, we can be either ineffective or support racism and racist ideologies,” she told Teen Vogue. “If we get really muddy and murky with how we talk about [the climate], then it makes it really difficult to have engaged, informed, and principled discussions.”
Moore’s book explains how environmental protection measures can be weaponized against Indigenous people, using conservation as a tool to displace (and ultimately erase) tribes from their native land. This specific anti-Indigenous violence — alongside colonizers’ pillaging of Native land and resources — fueled the genocide of Indigenous people that allowed for the creation of the modern United States. We also see this dynamic today in pipeline resistance movements, such as among the Wet’suwet’en tribe in British Columbia and the Sioux tribe in Standing Rock, North Dakota.
“If there are calls for clean water, or even protecting an animal in a habitat, often there might be a clue with how racist groups describe what the harm is to that environment,” Moore emphasized. “Who is causing the harm? How are they talked about? Is it an oppressed group? Is it a racialized group or ethinic group that is being characterized as the harm or the cause?”
Additionally, Moore encouraged teens to identify eco-fascist arguments by asking what solutions are being proposed to combat climate change.
“Does it include excluding people or pushing people out, or more military, or more policing, or more surveillance?” she asked. “Does it involve closing borders and denying people the ability to flee to safety or stay in their homes?”
Asked for advice on how teens can fight eco-fascism, Moore named the value of political education, particularly the importance of “calling things what they are” to those who they’re in community with or have a relationship with. (It’s important to note that she discouraged teens from arguing with literal fascists, but instead stressed the value of community in building political consciousness.)
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“Have a real, honest conversation,” she said. “Stay in connection while you figure some politics out. Let’s keep our people close. We know in this political moment, we need each other, so let’s practice needing each other.”
Once we can identify eco-fascism, we can not only start to understand what’s really causing climate change, but also move toward practical, effective solutions that include all of our communities. To expand off the proposed Green New Deal, for example, Indigenous activists and organizers have proposed the Red Deal, which takes a more radical approach to climate justice, calling to divest from fossil fuel consumption, center Indigenous people, abolish incarceration, and label public lands as stolen lands.
“If humans are the virus, then pandemic is the cure,” Klein said. “I think capitalism is the virus. We humans are still here.”
Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: Ecocide Explains How Humans Are Actively Destroying the Environment
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