Nature in Crisis: ‘The Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Right’ by Alex Roberts and Sam Moore

Close Readings

The episode explores the book 'The Rise of Ecofascism' by Sam Moore and Alex Roberts, which examines the intersection of far-right politics

Key takeaways

• Moore and Roberts define fascism as a movement seeking to reharmonize the nation-state by expelling an 'other' through paramilitary means.
• Ecofascism specifically utilizes environmental narratives to provide a 'natural basis' for nationalist exclusion.

Main topics

• Ecofascism
• Far-right environmentalism

Notable quotes

A political form that seeks to reharmonize the nation state through expelling a radically separate other by paramilitary means.

Conclusion

The episode provides a critical analysis of how environmentalist rheto

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Welcome to the 10th episode in this series of close readings for the LRB, Nature in Crisis, hosted by me, Mian Crist, writer-in-residence in biological sciences at Columbia University. Speaker 2 (0:11) And me, Peter Godfrey-Smith, professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Sydney. Speaker 3 (0:18) So when we were first plotting out what books to discuss on this show, we decided that over the course of the series, we'd loosely trace an arc from biology to society. And we started to make that turn towards society with Roy Scranton's Impasse and with the book we discussed in our last episode, Emily Robito's Lessons for Survival. This week, we're firmly in that territory with The Rise of Ecofascism, Climate Change and the Right by Sam Moore and Alex Roberts. So Moore and Roberts are researchers and anti-fascist activists. They are the hosts of 12 Rules for What, a podcast about the far right from the perspective of the left. And they're also the authors of post-internet far-right, Fascism in the Age of the Internet. So I think it's important to say that they're part of an activist community and their publishing record reveals a deep engagement with this community. And because they are writing explicitly from a leftist political position, they're somewhat different from some of the other authors we've discussed previously. One of the organizing principles of this series, in addition to tracing an arc from biology to society, has been to consider books by authors writing about nature at a time of ecological destabilization from a wide variety of disciplines and perspectives. And I think this book certainly fits that bill. So in this discussion, I think we're probably going to get pretty deep into some history around the origins of fascism. But I think it's worth saying that. This book is extremely salient at the present moment when we are looking at elections, you know, let's say 2027 onward, in which far-right parties that have specifically and explicitly embraced a certain kind of far-right environmentalism as part of their platforms are really gaining in power and influence across Europe. And I think we'll talk specifically about people like Giorgio Maloney in Italy. Marine Le Pen in France and the way that their political parties have really embraced environmentalism in a way that might be surprising to a lot of folks. Peter, I wonder if you could take us through sort of the shape of the book, how it's structured. Speaker 2 (2:27) Sure. It has a pretty natural shape. There's five chapters. The first chapter is a history of ecological thinking and thinking about nature within the far right, looking especially at the 20th century, at the Nazis, the Italian fascists, at, I think quite interestingly in this discussion, the English or the British fascist movement. Then there's a chapter... about contemporary right-wing and especially far-right thinking about nature, especially the more established groups such as the organized French, Italian and German far-right parties. The third chapter is more about fringe groups, the sort of internet right, the remnants of I didn't know this was now a remnant thing, but the remnants of the alt-right, as they see that movement. Then there's a chapter about the role of violence and terror.