American Eco-Fascism and Environmental Studies

• In Event: Environmental Education and the Eco-Fascism Problem

Abstract

Objectives

This presentation will expand genealogies of ecofascism to include the history of so-called American environmental thinking. I explore the relationship between this supposedly emergent ecofascism and the transnational circulation of narrative traditions associated with genocide and white supremacy, discuss this tradition's persistence in environmental studies, and offer Against the Ecofascist Creep, a free comic and teaching resource for combating the circulation of these ideas in our everyday lives and classrooms.

Perspectives or Theoretical Framework

This presentation brings the environmental humanities into conversation with political theory, asserting that settler colonial studies, Indigenous studies, American studies, and literary studies are all vital to the political theory of climate fascism.

Methods

I consider ecofascism through the lens of literary studies. I attend to temporal-tropes of the ecofascist imagination. I pay special attention to the ever-present threat of ethnic replacement in a once empty but now besieged wasteland, the loss of landscapes in which to play out the heroic protection of a precarious nation and nature, evergreen settler fantasies of “going Native” that attend the supposed necessity of wholesale slaughter, and the too-lateness of injustice.

Data Sources

The texts penned by mass murderers in El Paso, Texas and Buffalo, New York.

Results

The texts testify to a longer, more complicated literary tradition that the scholarship on ecofascism has yet to incorporate.

Significance

Against the Ecofascist Creep is a web zine and digital tool that debunks six of the most widespread “everyday ecofascist myths.” The zine begins by creatively reimagining the ending of the Marvel film Avengers: Endgame in a comic strip style confrontation with the ecofascist character of Thanos. Then, the zine offers short essays that consolidate and clarify decades of academic research on why these everyday ecofascisms are invalid. As an easy-to-share community teaching resource, the zine comes complete with additional questions, action-steps, and resources. For example, one essay takes on the common myth that “overpopulation is an environmental crisis.” The zine synthesizes the extensive research that has disproved the premises and predictions of “overpopulation,” tracing its roots to nineteenth-century imperialist fictions and the ecofascist fictions that emerged and depend upon eugenic race “science.” The project draws inspiration for its name from Alexander Reid Ross’s foundational 2017 book Against the Fascist Creep, which considers how fascist ideas “creep” into power not only via the far right, but also through mainstream and leftist channels (Ross 2017).

Though ecofascism is a slippery idea, ecofascist myths always fuel white supremacy, ultra-nationalism, patriarchy, ableism, authoritarianism, and mass murder. While some people proudly self-identify as ecofascists, others unintentionally repeat busted ecofacist myths that support ecofascism. As a result, ecofascist myths creeps into environmental science, studies, classrooms, rhetoric, and movement spaces.

Author

• April Anson, University of Connecticut
  Presenting Author