Ecofascism

Emblem of the "Libertarian National Socialist Green Party"

Ecofascism, can be used in two different ways:

1. The term is used as a pejorative by political conservatives, centrists, and leftists to discredit deep ecology, mainstream environmentalism, radical environmentalism and other ecological positions.
2. As a self label used somewhat less commonly by various white nationalist and third positionist groups who incorporate environmentalist positions into their ideology.

Ecofascism as an attack term

"..."ecofascism" has come to be used mainly as an attack term, with social ecology roots, against the deep ecology movement and its supporters plus, more generally, the environmental movement. Thus, "ecofascist" and "ecofascism", are used not to enlighten but to smear."

David Orton - Ecofascism: What is It? A Left Biocentric Analysis

Accusations of ecofascism can come from either the left, as in social ecologist Murray Bookchin's use of the term, or the right, as in Rush Limbaugh and other conservative and Wise Use Movement commentators. In the latter case, it is sometimes a hyperbolic use of the term that is applied to all environmental activists, including more mainstream groups such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club.

Accusations of ecofascism are not uncommon, but are usually strenuously denied. For some, cries from mainstream ecologists for regulation of human reproduction and reduction of the world population are suggestive of anti-humanist Nazi policies. However, proponents of population control policies have reacted strongly against these comparisons, regarding them as merely attempts to slander certain sections of the environmental movement (see the article on deep ecology for more details).

In the United Kingdom, the Third Way political party has been accused by left-wing watchdog groups of ecofascism, although Third Way says it has renounced all fascist ideology and describes itself as in the "radical centre". There has been a history of environmentalist views being held by the far-right in the UK, notably by Henry Williamson, Rolf Gardiner, Jorian Jenks and the "Blackshirt Farmer" Bob Saunders. Some have also accused the "radical antiquarian" John Michell of holding ecofascist views. In his 1995 book The Village That Died For England, concerned with the Dorset village of Tyneham which was requisitioned by the British Army, Patrick Wright details much of the history of British ecofascism during the Second World War.

Pentti Linkola can be most accurately described as a kind of totalitarian deep ecologist, and although he does not specifically endorse fascism per se, he has expressed admiration for the German National Socialist regime for its efficiency in killing large numbers of human beings in a short period of time, describing the massacres of the Holocaust and Stalin's Great Purge as "massive thinning operations." He advocates a strong, centralised ecological dictatorship, with harsh population control measures and brutal punishment of those he considers to be environmental abusers. Needless to say, Linkola has attracted considerable controversy both in his home country and worldwide.

The influential European Nouvelle Droite movement, developed by Alain de Benoist and other individuals involved with the GRECE think-tank, have also attracted accusations of ecofascism from the Left, due to their blend of anti-globalism, environmentalism, and European ethno-nationalism. However, De Benoist himself dismisses fascism as "brown Jacobinism", and condemns racial prejudice and populist-nationalists like Jean-Marie le Pen.

The actual number of organisations that could properly be described as ecofascist is extremely small. A related group is the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party, whose emblem is the Nazi swastika on a green background, symbolising the party's synthesis of ecology with National Socialism. The latter gained controversy due its connection with high-school killer Jeff Weise, though some have suggested that it may be a web-based parody, as it is not an actual active political party.

The term "ecofascist" has also been used by Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center to describe James Jay Lee, the ecoterrorist who took several hostages at the headquarters of Discovery Communications on September 1, 2010. Potok also connects ecofascism with nativists who appeal to environmentalists by arguing that immigration causes environmental degradation.

Environmentalism in Nazi Germany

Part of a series on
Fascism
Core tenets Nationalism Totalitarianism Single party state Dictatorship Authoritarian democracy Social Darwinism Militarism Mixed economy New Man Class collaboration Third Position
Topics Definitions Economics Fascism and ideology Fascism worldwide Symbolism
Ideas Autarky Class collaboration Corporatism Proletarian nation Syncretic politics Totalitarianism
People Corneliu Zelea Codreanu Adolf Hitler Wang Jingwei Ikki Kita Benito Mussolini Hassan Ngeze José Antonio Primo de Rivera Plínio Salgado
Literature The Doctrine of Fascism Fascist manifesto Hutu Ten Commandments Mein Kampf My Autobiography The Myth of the Twentieth Century Zaveshchanie russkogo fashista
Organizations Axis powers 1934 Montreux Fascist conference
History Fascio March on Rome Beer Hall Putsch Aventine Secession Congress of Verona Spanish Civil War
Lists Fascists by country
Related topics Anti-fascism Clerical fascism Fascist (epithet) Glossary of Fascist Italy Iron law of oligarchy Neo-Fascism Racism Social fascism Palingenetic ultranationalism
Fascism portal Politics portal

Possibly explaining why Mein Kampf has no chapter on ecology, British academic Roger Griffin has noted that "the place which a transformed relationship to nature occupies within the fascist scheme ... as well as the role played in it by pagan, "immanentist" or cultic concepts of nature can vary enormously..."

After the early 1930s, Hitler generally followed a vegetarian diet, although he ate meat on occasion. A fear of cancer (from which his mother died) is the most widely cited reason, though it is also asserted that Hitler, an antivivisectionist, had a profound concern for animals.

In 1935, the Nazi regime enacted the "Reich Nature Protection Act". While not a purely Nazi piece of legislation, as parts of its influences pre-dated the Nazi rise to power, it nevertheless reflected Nazi ideology. The concept of the Dauerwald (best translated as the "perpetual forest") which included concepts such as forest management and protection was promoted and efforts were also made to curb air pollution.

Author Frank Uekötter has described as a "gross error" claims that Nazi Germany was the first country in Europe to create wilderness reserves. The first European nature reserves were in Finland at the start of the 1800s. and there were in fact nature reserves in 1838 in the Czech part of Austria-Hungary. During their rise to power, the Nazis were supported by German environmentalists and conservationists, but environmental issues were gradually pushed aside in the build-up to the Second World War.

By contrast, non-German forms of fascism for the most part lacked any noteworthy ecological strand. One exception was the peasant-based Iron Guard of Romania, who saw capitalism, which they associated with Jewry, as being destructive to both the Romanian countryside and their Orthodox Christian culture. Elsewhere in Europe, ecological concerns were found individually rather than collectively, e.g. Julius Evola, an Italian writer and supporter of the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, who wrote books glorifying a primitive state of nature and denouncing modernity. Griffin has argued that "fascism repeatedly generates images which evoke a specious kinship with a "panenhenistic" communion with nature" (pg.642) as a means of mobilising members of the fascists' ethnic group to the cause of ultranationalism. He cites the glorification of wilderness in Nazi art and the ruralist novels of fascist supporters Knut Hamsun and Henry Williamson as examples of this. Some have associated French Esoteric Hitlerist and Hindu convert Savitri Devi with ecofascism, due to her support for animal rights and vegetarianism, which she linked to a condemnation of Jewish dietary practices.

External links

• Ecofascism: Lessons from the German experience, by Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier
• Ecofascism: What is It?, by David Orton