The Rise of Ecofascism – Climate Change and the Far Right, By Sam Moore and Alex Roberts (Polity 2022), 171 Pages.
Sam Moore and Alex Roberts, both researchers, antifascist activists and hosts of a podcast on the far right, are researchers. So says the jacket for their new book, due out this week. They were Brits, too. That’s all I have to say about them. I know a little about them. OfAfter having read about 130 pages of their writing (not their end notes), they now feel that they are sincere and earnest men. Although this book is quite short, it displays conscientiousness throughout, and pop academic leftism does its best for the cause.
To be clear, I don’t recommend this book to most of the people who read it. Its definitions and argumentation are unsatisfyingly specific, and they are both boutique and baroque. It is as easy-going as acadamese can be, but it still uses the language of modern social sciences. A leftist survey of right-wing ecological thought might be interesting if you are a researcher, activist, or host of a podcast. While you may not be interested climate politics, it is likely that you are. I don’t regret the few hours I spent with them. Ecofascism is on the RiseIt is illustrative and not only semi-informative.
It illustrates the fact that serious leftists can find themselves in a tight spot when it involves environmental activism. Climate justice looks a lot more like globalist greenwashing. The history of environmentalism and ecological thinking is longer, if not always sordid, on the right than it is on the left. In its particularism, recognition of differences, the right sees the relationship between the person and the environment. It seeks to preserve a way of life and, naturally, the conservation of place. In its commitment to liberating all people from inequalities, the left seeks to flatten distinctions. Marxists have historically seen the creation of mass industrialized society with all its environmental consequences and as a step in the synthetic march towards a classless future without the crucial intervention by Christs kingship. Every valley shall have its place, and every mountain or hill shall be humbled.
This flattening is very similar to the reduction of humanity. homo economicusThe leftists refer to neoliberalism as a combination of global governance aspirations and a desire to achieve it. Like the left, this capitalist order places a lot of emphasis on a planetary level and on climate, carbon, and temperature (that is to say, the exact direction and causality in both cases), while simultaneously playing a game with unsustainable, degrading industrial practices. Moore and Roberts are honest enough to recognize this similarity and explain why some on the right might find it more suggestive than they do. They write:
Many of the far right believe that international capitalism and the Left are one and the same thing. How is this possible? It is based on the central distinction of far right politics: not between dominant and dispossessed, or even between capital and working class, but between national and international Per se. Neoliberalism, which is viewed from the extreme right as an international phenomenon (it’s correct on at least one point), is opposed the national and is therefore labelled left-wing. This view is reinforced by international companies’ cosmetic support for social liberalism (and some aspects of social justice), as well as the apparent identity (albeit for different reasons) between left-wing and Neoliberal support for migration.
The semantics of leftists like Moore or Roberts are held by the last parenthetical. They don’t support free movement of people as it represents a growing client group, as it does to the liberal establishment. Or because it depresses wages or bargaining power in developed countries, like it does to multinational corporations. Climate justice demands that the global South invade the global North, a form or reparations, the redistribution and distribution of wealth to make up a history that was exclusively predatory, exploitative. They write that we must identify, defend, and amplify ecological relations that restore and respect natural systems while attacking private ownership of the means to produce and attempting re-commone the world. Comrade, after the revolution there will be no private property or ill-gotten gains. It is obvious that everything will end in the same thing: class war, destruction of the middle class economy in which the natural families can thrive, and eventually the demise of the nation.
Moore and Roberts appear sincere, sincere sufficient to realize that the systems of control suggested in efforts to cool the entire globe sound like the makings for a totalitarian past, which they insist is not their idea. The important thing is to not become a reactionary.
Because the problems overlap and express their selves through each other, it may seem like they need a form of Total governanceThe temptation of authoritarian growth. The far right will find their solutions to the complex mix of these problems, some of them even revolutionary, largely within this authoritarian expansion. While we may not be as hostile to its ideas as in the past, we might admit that the far right might offer new solutions to social problems. There is no reason to think that future far-right policies will be rigid or inflexible. However, there are plenty of reasons to believe it will be disastrous.
Yes, the rights to address the ecological disorder problems will not be the lefts. Their scope is not global. Moore and Roberts share the belief of many in climate change. We have been arguing for years that adaptation is a major issue. The climate is not the only system that is responsive to politics. These environmental concerns are viewed in relation to America and the American continent because I am American and on the right. Brits are on the left. A backwater with limited self-determinationMoore and Roberts see environmental issues in a global context. They write that despite any form of parochialism, the climate crisis is still a global problem. It is therefore vital to build solidarity within, at, and across borders. This solidarity is an attempt overcome the divide from which governance derives power. Governance masks prior unity.
This presumed human unity in pale-blue dots has been divorced from any reference to the imago DeiHumanity’s equality as a creature is at the heart of an important anthropological divide that is vital to all political questions. Both the right and the left agree that scarcity is a matter not of natural potency but of conflict. Where the right sees this conflict as a response to locality or natural difference, while the left sees an unnatural imposition. libido dominandi. This can be a sign of fallenness, but it also points to a religious right that views natural government as still possible. If our first parents had not remained in growing grace, they would have been different in an earthly sense. Because of differences in age, sex, and aptitude, authority and direction would still be necessary for the full flourishing that unfallen human community.
In his political philosophy qua book Zero to OneThe book was co-written by Blake Masters, Arizona Senate candidate. It contains four quadrants that Peter Thiel uses to speculate about the future. One axis shows the classic optimist/pessimist dichotomy. The other axis shows definite and indefinite thoughts. Moore and Roberts don’t seem to be able to pick a plane that will suit their thinking. They write:
There are two distinct stories about technology in twenty-first century. There is technooptimism. Moores law and terraforming are just a few examples. Also, free green energy, kelp cultivation, bespoke algae production, and space mining are all part of the techno-optimism. The other account is more serious and focuses on the shrinking resource base for these technologies, as well as the deep inequalities they reinforce.
These are not all definite factors, but they are a part of a book that aims to highlight a cause of definite pessimism from the left. That is, the right will have more convincing definite answers to the complex issues of a climate emergency. However, the conclusion optimism in reply is just as uncertain as that of the technooptimist and green regulator. Both are equally confident. Some Various technological discoveries will make old industrial systems viable or so-called “renewable” systems work without driving up energy costs. Moore and Roberts say that solidarity is not. JustAn obligation. It should also serve as a means of enlivening. A way to get out of our parochialism and open up to the planetary ecology we all share. Although it sounds wonderful, it is not a cause of definite hope.
Moore and Roberts are serious leftists who want global action. This is because they have a similar stance to the neoliberal masters over the universe they detest. The planetary scale makes everything indeterminable, and a commitment towards class conflict against the bourgeois middle is a clear and existent state solution. Like nuclear power, are out of the question. Cheap electricity will perpetuate reactionary social arrangements. The right is about the definite. Definable places, definite people and definite solutions are all part of the right. There is solidarity between the nation and the families; natio means birth.
The right has a real chance to offer a better alternative. This is because the nexus between political problems that fall under the umbrella of climate will come to a head in the next few decades. These problems include mass migration, energy supply, food production, natural disasters, declining birth rates, hormonal disruption, and mass death. Moore and Roberts almost have it right when they write, “We are dependent upon a particular climate system,” a fact that modernity has obscured for most of us. Replace we with Americans and climateic with environmental. They stated that solidarity should not only extend to the societies and humans upon which they depend, but also to the greater than-human nature within which we exist. From sea to shining sea.
