Climate Change Education's Eco-Fascism Problem

• In Event: Interdisciplinary and Critical Conceptualizations of Climate Change Education and Research

Abstract

In 2019 two young white men committed mass murder in the name of environmental sustainability. In El Paso, Texas, a gunman opened fire in a Walmart store, killing 23 people and injuring another 23. His manifesto borrowed ideas from the Christchurch, New Zealand massacre where a gunman killed 51 muslims and injured another 40. Both men believed in “replacement theory”, a white power conspiracy theory that posulates the end of white Europeans via immigration and reproduction (Belew, 2018). These killers believed that climate conditions were worsening, causing the increased migration of non-white peoples onto “their” land. Some forms of climate education would label them “climate literate” because they understood the reality of climate change and acted toward environmental sustainability. This is clearly a social problem, and in this paper we argue that climate change education too often assumes that a certain kind of pro-social politics is enough to mobilize climate action. In fact, many politics can have climate concerns and this darker reality is underexamined in educational scholarship. We argue here that what ‘learning’ is, and how it gets used as a tool for ‘good’ in societal projects is something prone to normativity covering over other possible forms and formulations (Swidler, 1986).
While extreme, these two events evidence the violent edge of a broader trend as conservatives begin to engage climate breakdown (Gilman, 2020). This occurs as national governments experience democratic backsliding amidst the ruins of neoliberal globalization (Freedom House, 2021). Neofascist political formations are ascendant, with some expressing explicitly ecofascist platforms (Mudde, 2019). Ecological thinking among fascists has a long history, including as a structuring narrative in Nazi Germany and in American environmentalism (Zimmerman, 1995). It is a mythos that links claims to a natural order with white racial superiority, often via “blood and soil” purity logics that have animated settler colonial educational projects throughout history (Biehl & Staudenmaier, 2011; Sultana, 2021).
Sociologists and anthropologists (e.g., Atran, 2011; Miller-Idris, 2020) have shown that young white men are especially susceptible to radicalization. Alienated from diverse communities, they find community online and learn about climate change and ecofascism (Lavin, 2020). While this paper takes seriously the growing spectre of right wing social movements adopting ecological concerns, the broader education background is not neutral nor without fault. The United States educational system continues to assume a neoliberal capitalist political economy even though such conditions exacerbate racial extremism (Metzl, 2019). Further, climate change education has suffered the problem of existing outside tidy curricular silos. The Next Generation Science Standards, for example, have no clear mechanism for making climate change a centerpiece of state curricula (Hufnagel et al., 2017). Political polarization among and within states makes this a wicked educational problem (Colston & Ivey, 2015). What, then, does it mean when fascistic political movements take up climate change not as a problem to deny, but rather a feature for which they will fight? Our paper grapples with this question to create a more humane world in the face of climate breakdown and rising neofascist movements.

Authors

• Joseph A. Henderson, Paul Smith's College

• David E. Long, Morehead State University

• Bronwyn G. Bishop, Paul Smith's College

• Natalie Andrea Cross, Paul Smith's College