The Far-Right Is Trying to Blame the Climate Crisis on Immigration

Environmentalism and far-right politics might not seem like natural bedfellows. 

But an obscure ideology that weaponises fears of looming environmental collapse to stoke hatred against minorities is gaining influence in the toxic swamps of the online far-right – with sometimes devastating effect.

Ecofascism, a fringe ideology that fuses environmentalist concern with ethnonationalist politics, has been linked to major white supremacist terror attacks in recent years. Its central ideas have gained currency among right-wing extremists as the international community fails to tackle the climate crisis. 

Brenton Tarrant, the white supremacist terrorist who murdered 51 people at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2019, repeatedly described himself as an “ecofascist” in the sprawling manifesto he posted online immediately prior to the attacks. The 74-page document said “environmentalism” was at the core of  his ideology. He claimed the massacre struck a blow against immigration, which he described as a form of "environmental warfare.”

READ: Decoding the racist memes the Christchurch terrorist used to communicate

Just eight months later, the same ideology inspired another massacre, when white supremacist Patrick Crusius killed 23 people in El Paso, Texas, in the deadliest attack on Latinos in modern US history. The 21-year-old’s online manifesto – titled “The Inconvenient Truth,” in a nod to the 2006 documentary about climate change – said Tarrant was an inspiration. 

“The environment is getting worse by the year,” he wrote, rallying against a supposed “Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

“Most of y’all are just too stubborn to change your lifestyle. So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.”

READ: Understanding the alt-right’s growing fascination with ecofascism

Crusius’ screed laid out a classic ecofascist rationale for his act of terror, singling out immigrants as a supposed threat to white, Western civilisation in the face of an impending environmental catastrophe, experts say.

“Ecofascism says that other cultures and ethnicities are actually an invasive species and should be kicked out,” said Alexander Reid Ross, a lecturer at Portland State University, and senior fellow at the Centre for the Analysis of the Radical Right.

Facing a nightmarish future that they believe will be blighted by overpopulation, growing waves of climate refugees, and cut-throat competition over a dwindling supply of natural resources, the ecofascist response is a racist one: to scapegoat immigrants, framing them as both cultural and environmental threats to the survival of white populations.

Immigrants are cast as  “foreign invaders,” Cassidy Thomas, a doctoral student at Syracuse University who researches modern ecofascist movements, told VICE World News. He said immigrants were viewed by ecofascists “as an inherent threat not only to their cultural integrity, but to the integrity of the natural environment.”

The idea’s been gaining currency on the radical-right fringe in recent years. A 2017 article in the white supremacist publication American Renaissance framed the issue of “population explosion in the global south combined with climate change” as posing potentially “the single greatest external threat to Western civilization,” more acute than jihadist terror or illegal immigration.

Yet ecofascism is not a new concept. The ideology’s roots trace back to figures like Madison Grant, an American lawyer and zoologist who argued in a 1916 book for the supposed superiority of the “Nordic race.”  It’s also deeply rooted in the longstanding ethnonationalist concept of “blood and soil” – the idea, promulgated by the Nazis, of an organic link between the nation and the land.

But the figure lionised most often by contemporary ecofascists is Ted Kaczynski, the American maths professor-turned-terrorist known as the “Unabomber.” He waged a 17-year bombing campaign between 1978 and 1995, intended to fight against modern industrialised society and the destruction of the environment.

Interest in Kaczynski’s beliefs was rekindled by the 2017 Netflix series Manhunt: Unabomber, and a small but extreme ecofascist community has since emerged online, vocal in its admiration for the man they call “Uncle Ted.” Known as the pine tree community, because they put pine tree emojis in their names on social media, the community is also known for embracing so-called “terror wave” aesthetics, glorifying the imagery of terrorist revolt: guns, balaclavas and tactical gear.

While Kaczynski’s ideology isn’t strictly ecofascist, his violent actions, calls for a return to a primitivist society, and contempt for the political left are believed to have won him fans among this new online subculture of extremists.

Kaczynki’s appeal lies in his sense of “strength.” 

“It’s the terrorism. And obviously, his bigotry is something they love. They're like, ‘He gets this right – everybody else is just weak,’” said Reid Ross. 

But the influence of ecofascist thought isn’t limited to fringe online subcultures. Experts say far-right groups globally have been incorporating more environmentalist positions into their platforms.

“You get all the radical right parties borrowing from ecofascist ideology,” said Reid Ross.

In Italy, a far-right group holds an annual tree-planting drive every 21st of November, Italy’s National Tree Day, in line with the group’s vision of trees as “the pillars of the nation.” La Foresta che Avanza (“the advancing forest”) is the ecological wing of Italy’s neofascist CasaPound movement, which is committed to – in its own words – “overcoming the anthropocentric and materialistic vision of the environment at the service of man.” 

“The firmness of the tree and the roots grafted into the homeland must serve as an example if we do not want to lose national identity, unity and cohesion,” La Foresta che Avanza’s leader, Alberto Mereu, told reporters in 2018.

French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally, has reversed her party’s climate scepticism to pose as an environmental champion. Her vision is to make Europe the ‘’world’s leading ecological civilisation’’ – by strengthening borders and restricting the flow of migrants. 

“It's just going to get more and more significant as we get more climate refugees as conditions worsen and people look for somebody to blame,” said Reid Ross.  

It’s this failure of the establishment to create solutions to the climate crisis that makes ecofascism loom as such a potent ideological threat, say experts. This could exert a greater radicalising pull as climate change intensifies, sucking new generations into the ideology.

“Ecofascism is an insidious ideology that has the potential to tap into some of the most festering anxieties of a younger population,” said Thomas, the researcher on ecofascist movements.

In a world where those in power have resolutely failed to tackle the climate crisis, he fears that ecofascism could appear to offer false solutions to a misguided minority looking to take action.  

“Eco fascism represents a very action-oriented ideology that has the potential to draw people in by offering them a role, and helping them orient themselves in the face of this daunting challenge,” he said.