“Fossil fascism”: How some on the right use climate change as an excuse to demonize migrants

Climate change denial is often seen as a mainstay of the political right, as leaders like President-elect Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson ignore or contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence that humans are cooking our only planet. It wasn’t always this way, of course — Republicans were once moderate stewards of the environment, with presidents like Richard Nixon passing progressive environmental laws. Now our global ecosystem crisis is often dismissed by conservatives as a “hoax” while doing nothing to stop drilling for oil or subsidizing fossil fuel companies.

But not everyone on the right denies climate change is a real and growing threat. Indeed, many people not only agree with the scientific consensus, they have used climate change as an excuse to push white supremacist ideologies and lash out against immigration. This phenomenon is far from new.

Experts tell Salon that environmentalist politics and the politics of the far right have long intertwined, from eugenics and other pseudoscience of the early 20th century to white nationalism and fascism today.

The word “ecofascism” is used to describe these movements, although all of the scholars agree that it should be employed carefully. Few people explicitly call themselves “ecofascist,” yet an umbrella term is useful when describing the ideologies of those who accept the basic facts of environmental science — namely, that human activity is capable of drastically altering the planet for the worse, at least in terms of our ability to inhabit it — and use those facts as the premise for radical right-wing political conclusions.

“Different strands of neo-Malthusian and social Darwinian thinking have sought to incorporate environmental concerns, often by emphasizing logics of scarcity and competition,” William A. Callison, a lecturer in social studies at Harvard University and a member of the Zetkin Collective, a group of scholars and activists working on the political ecology of the far right, told Salon. Neo-Malthusian refers to the concepts of economist Thomas Malthus, who argued against human overpopulation in the 18th century; social Darwinism is a misapplication of biologist Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory to validate conservative social hierarchies.

“These logics oppose nations or peoples to a racialized threat — enemies from without or within — that are said to consume or despoil the resources that belong to the natives,” Callison added. Sometimes these arguments are presented through dog whistles, such as the 1968 essay by ecologist Garret Harden called "The Tragedy of the Commons," which is taught in economics classes to explain the dangers of overconsumption of resources because it lacked explicit racism.

“There are ways that the climate crisis can intensify these logics, even while drawing from climate denialist discourses,” Callison said.

Even beloved historical figures succumbed to extreme right-wing conclusions. President Theodore Roosevelt was one of America’s most consequential progressive leaders, in no small part because of his vigorous support for conservation, including jumpstarting the national park system. Yet he also supported eugenics, or the pseudoscience of controlling human reproduction to ensure that genetic traits deemed desirable are passed on.

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In some ways, Roosevelt was a product of his time. The early 20th century more broadly was the heyday of ecofascism, with fascists in Europe embracing the ideas of Malthus and Darwin to argue that supposedly “inferior” races (Jews, Africans, Romani, Slavs and many others) deserved to be oppressed, even exterminated. According to Alexander Menrisky, an assistant professor of English at the University of Connecticut who has written about the intersection of environmentalism and fascism, the marriage of American conservationist movements with eugenics led to the passage of at least three racially motivated immigration-restriction bills.

“The association between eugenics and early U.S. environmentalism isn't as strange as it might seem at a glance,” Merinsky said, referring to the popularity of the 1916 eugenics tome “The Passing of the Great Race” by anthropologist Madison Grant. It proved to be “one of the fountainheads of what is today called ‘replacement theory,’ or the notion that non-white peoples (and liberal governments) are actively conspiring to replace white populations.”

From here, one can draw a direct connection between the environmentalism-cum-xenophobia of these early 20th century eugenicists and modern ecofascism. Some extremists on the right have gone on shooting sprees targeting certain minority people and will link their concerns about immigration to a belief that they are protecting the environment. This was the case for the white nationalist killers of Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand; Latinos in El Paso, Texas; Jews in Pittsburgh; and socialists in Norway. After a 2022 massacre in Buffalo, New York targeting a predominantly Black supermarket, killing 10 people and wounding three others, authorities found a manifesto ranting that “white birth rates must change” and that the "natural environment" has become "industrialized, pulverized and commoditized." Cribbing from the Christchurch manifesto, the shooter says “there is no conservatism without nature, there is no nationalism without environmentalism … The protection and preservation of these lands is of the same importance as the protection and preservation of our own ideals and beliefs."

The El Paso shooter, Patrick Crusius, expressed similar views in his own screed. Dubbing it “An Inconvenient Truth” in a seeming nod to Vice President Al Gore’s classic 2006 documentary about climate change, Crusius said that “water sheds around the country, especially in agricultural areas, are being depleted.” He argued new immigrants would only consume more, worsening Americans’ standard of living and environmental conditions “Urban sprawl creates inefficient cities which unnecessarily destroys millions of acres of land,” he continued. “If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.”

The Great Replacement Theory has been endorsed by Elon Musk, Trump and other conservatives from former Fox News pundits to members of Congress. These ideologies are helped by generous funding from industries which benefit from their spread. The fossil fuel industry, for example, has a history of promoting climate change denial while proposing solutions to climate change that do not involve phasing out fossil fuels. Daniele Conversi, a political historian and social theorist at the University of the Basque Country who has studied ecofascism, underscored how these wealthy special interests and their ideologies pose a major threat by obscuring uncomfortable scientific truths and channeling popular attention elsewhere.

“For instance, Trumpism has substantially contributed to spreading a dangerous lack of trust not only in science and political institutions but in human achievements in general,” Conversi said, “And all of this, while identifying easy targets who are not responsible for the coming catastrophe.”

In fact, instead of referring to the modern movement as “ecofascism,” Conversi prefers the term “fossil fascism.”

“As the far-right has a lot to gain from the loss and suffering of others, Trump-style forms of ‘fossil fascism’ are rapidly emerging as a mixture of ultranationalism, deception, disinformation, repeated lies, othering and eventually warmongering — all of which has characterized fascism throughout history,” Conversi said. That term describes the true inner dynamics of the fascist movement that wears the clothing of environmentalism among the far right.

“Eco-fascism is a neoliberal and far-right meme that has experienced a revival in the blogosphere and other forms of writing, but not so much in real politics,” Conversi said. “It is not historically or empirically grounded, as the environmental components of fascism were quite limited.”

For his part, Callison views the modern fascists as reincarnations of their Nazi counterparts from nearly a century prior.

“The threats of this ideology can be seen in how Nazism made ecofascism an official part of its program,” Callison said. “In fact, it was the first regime to pass a Klimaschutz (climate protection) law, which is now a dominant and rather neutral frame in German environmental discourse. Ecofascism centered on the Blut and Boden — blood and soil — as constitutive of Germanness.” He added that “many far-right parties use this nationalist equation of culture and nature to gain popularity. Marine Le Pen is a prime example in France, Tucker Carlson in the United States. The claim is that migrants or foreign species that do not value the environment, and thus pollute and consume it at the expense of natives.”

Importantly, these modern ideologies — ecofascist or fossil fascist — have never been effective at actually addressing the environmental issues their adherents claim to value. Take El Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele, who has been accused of flirting with fascism. Bukele promised to strengthen environmental regulations when taking office in 2019, but has instead gutted the nation’s environmental agencies to the point of virtual non-existence.  Elon Musk, who has been tapped by Trump as one of his top economic advisers, has also suggested similar policies for the United States.. By contrast another Musk ally, Argentina’s president Javier Milei, has always been openly anti-environmentalist, which is convenient for Musk as his company Tesla relies on Argentina’s mines for lithium.

“The ideology has not yet been important in addressing climate change,” Callison said. “But it has been an important way for some European far-right parties to gain ground, and an alternative form of ‘greenwashing’ — gesturing at environmental concerns while distracting from the real sources and solutions to the climate crisis.”

Ecofascism may sound appealing, at least on a superficial level, for people who are sincerely interested in protecting the planet. Yet the existential crises facing our species — climate change, plastic pollution, the eradication of species — can only be solved through realistic solutions, like reducing emissions and protecting old growth forests. “Green” movements that purport to fight address these issues but ignore the science to attack marginalized, often poor communities are just as much a threat to humanity as rising temperatures.