User:Cdjp1/sandbox/apartheid southern africa

National Forests Office (France)

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corps_des_chasseurs_forestiers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chasseur#Chasseurs_Forestiers

http://forum.uniforminsignia.org/download/file.php?id=2225&mode=view

TO CREATE/expand

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%B4le_judiciaire_de_la_Gendarmerie_nationale https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direction_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9rale_de_la_Gendarmerie_nationale https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspection_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9rale_de_la_Gendarmerie_nationale https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmerie_d%C3%A9partementale https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_de_planification_et_de_gestion_de_crise https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmerie_de_l%27Armement https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmerie_de_la_s%C3%A9curit%C3%A9_des_armements_nucl%C3%A9aires https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmerie_des_transports_a%C3%A9riens https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloton_sp%C3%A9cialis%C3%A9_de_protection_de_la_Gendarmerie https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escadron_d%C3%A9partemental_de_s%C3%A9curit%C3%A9_routi%C3%A8re https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Officier_de_police_judiciaire https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_de_recherches_(Gendarmerie_nationale) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigade_de_recherches https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigade_d%C3%A9partementale_de_renseignements_et_d%27investigations_judiciaires https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloton_de_surveillance_et_d%27intervention_de_la_Gendarmerie https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmerie_pr%C3%A9v%C3%B4tale https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commandement_de_la_gendarmerie_outre-mer https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commandement_des_%C3%A9coles_de_la_Gendarmerie_nationale https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarme_adjoint_volontaire https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forces_a%C3%A9riennes_de_la_Gendarmerie_nationale

Bourgeois revolution

sources

• The Bourgeois Revolution
• 4 - The bourgeois revolution of 1848–9 in Central Europe
• Conceptualizing Bourgeois Revolution: The Prewar Japanese Left and the Meiji Restoration
• Theses on the Early Bourgeois Revolution in Germany, 1476-1535
• A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution
• II Economy and Society: A Silent Bourgeois Revolution
• II German Historians and the Problem of Bourgeois Revolution Get access Arrow
• CHINA: THE BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED, THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION REMAINS TO BE MADE
• Bourgeois Revolution, State Formation and the Absence of the International
• [ ]
• [ ]
• [ ]
• [ ]
• [ ]
• [ ]
• [ ]
• [ ]

Intro

Bourgeois revolution is a term used in Marxist theory to refer to a social revolution that aims to destroy a feudal system or its vestiges, establish the rule of the bourgeoisie, and create a bourgeois (capitalist) state. In colonised or subjugated countries, bourgeois revolutions often take the form of a war of national independence. The Dutch, English, American, and French revolutions are considered the archetypal bourgeois revolutions, in that they attempted to clear away the remnants of the medieval feudal system, so as to pave the way for the rise of capitalism. The term is usually used in contrast to "proletarian revolution", and is also sometimes called a "bourgeois-democratic revolution".

Theories of bourgeois revolution

Starting in the late 18th century, the Bildungsbürger ("educated bourgeoise") class defined itself more on the basis of education than material possessions and thus great emphasis was laid upon the education of children.

According to one version of the two-stage theory, bourgeois revolution was asserted to be a necessary step in the move toward socialism, as codified by Georgi Plekhanov. In this view, countries that had preserved their feudal structure, like Russia, would have to establish capitalism via a bourgeois revolution before being able to wage a proletarian revolution. At the time of the Russian Revolution, the Mensheviks asserted this theory, arguing that a revolution led by bourgeoisie was necessary to modernise society, establish basic freedoms, and overcome feudalism, which would establish the conditions necessary for socialism. This view is prominent in Marxist-Leninist analysis.

Political sociologist Barrington Moore Jr. identified bourgeois revolution as one of three routes from pre-industrial society to the modern world, in which a capitalist mode of production is combined with liberal democracy. Moore identified the English, French, and American revolutions as examples of this route.

Neil Davidson believes that neither the establishment of democracy or the end of feudal relations are defining characteristics of bourgeois revolutions, but instead supports Alex Callinicos' definition of bourgeois revolution as being those that establish "an independent center of capital accumulation". Charles Post labels this analysis as consequentialism, where there is no requirement of the prior development of capitalism or bourgeois class agency for bourgeois revolutions, and that they are only defined by the effects of the revolutions to promote the development of capital accumulation.

Other theories describe the evolution of the bourgeoisie as not needing a revolution. The German bourgeoisie during the 1848 revolution did not strive to take command of the political effort and instead sided with the crown. Davidson attributes their behaviour to the late development of capitalist relations and uses this as the model for the evolution of the bourgeoisie.

Left communists often view the revolutions leading to communist states in the twentieth century as "bourgeois revolutions".

The goals of the bourgeois revolution

According to the Marxist view, the tasks of the bourgeois revolution include:

• The creation of the nation state (which can be constituted differently in different peoples).
• The constitution of the state on the basis of popular sovereignty (the rule of law is based on a constitution adopted by the people).
• Bourgeois rule if possible in the form of a democratic republic (which, however, already found its complement in tyranny in antiquity).
• The abolition of serfdom, and the formation of free wage workers instead.
• The separation of producers from the means of production in primitive accumulation.
• The abolition of the guilds and freedom of investment.
• The free development of the productive forces until they are ripe for social revolution.

Bourgeois revolutions in history

Bourgeois revolutions in the middle ages

Although with much less diffusion, some social movements of the European Late Middle Ages have also received the name of bourgeois revolution, in which the bourgeoisie begins to define itself in the nascent cities as a social class. Examples include the Ciompi Revolt in the Republic of Florence, Jacquerie revolts during the Hundred Years' War in France, and Bourgeois revolts of Sahagún in Spain.

Bourgeois revolutions in the early modern period

The first wave of bourgeois revolutions are those that occurred within the early modern period and were typically marked by being driven from below by the petty bourgeoisie against absolutist governments.

A Loyalist customs official tarred and feathered by the Sons of Liberty, during the American Revolutionary War.

• German Peasants' War (1524–1525) (it has been labelled by later historians as an early attempt at a bourgeois revolution)
• Eighty Years' War, also known as the Dutch revolution, (1566–1648)
• English Revolution (1640–1660)
• American Revolution (1765–1783)
• French Revolution (1789–1799)
• Irish Rebellion of 1798

Bourgeois revolutions in the late modern period

1911 battle at Ta-ping gate, Nanking, during the Chinese revolution of 1911. Painting by T. Miyano.

The second wave of bourgeois revolutions are those that occurred within the late modern period and were typically marked by being led from above by the haute bourgeoisie.

• Greek Revolution (1821-1829)
• July Revolution (1830)
• February Revolution (1848)
• German revolutions of 1848–1849
• Revolutions of 1848 in the Italian states
• Hungarian Revolution of 1848
• Risorgimento (1848–1871)
• Unification of Germany (1866–1871)
• American Civil War (1861–1865)
• Japanese Revolution (1868–1869)
• Philippine Revolution (1896–1898)
• 1905 Russian Revolution (1905–1907)
• Persian Constitutional Revolution (1905–1911)
• Young Turk Revolution (1908)
• Chinese revolution of 1911 (1911–1912)
• Mexican Revolution (1910–1917)
• February Revolution (1917) (called a "bourgeois-democratic revolution" in Soviet historiography)
• / Chinese revolution (1925–1953)
• Iranian Revolution (1978–1979) (according to Enver Hoxha)

References

Bibliography

• Blackbourn, David; Eley, Geoff, eds. (12 December 1984). The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198730583.001.0001. ISBN 9780191694943. Archived from the original on 13 April 2023.
• Callinicos, Alex (Summer 1989). "Bourgeois Revolutions and Historical Materialism". International Socialism. 2 (43): 113–171. Archived from the original on 16 August 2021 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
• Calvert, Peter (1990). Revolution and Counter-Revolution. Concepts in the Social Sciences. Open University Press. ISBN 0-335-15397-6.
• Eisenstein, Hester (13 May 2010). Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women's Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World. Routledge. ISBN 9781594516603.
• Hallas, Duncan (January 1988). "The Bourgeois Revolution". Socialist Review. No. 105. Socialist Workers Party. pp. 17–20. Archived from the original on 16 August 2021 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
• Heller, Henry (2006). The Bourgeois Revolution in France 1789–1815. Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-84545-650-4. JSTOR j.ctt9qdczd.
• Hobsbawm, E. J. (Spring 1989). "The Making of a "Bourgeois Revolution"". Social Research. 56 (1). The New School: 5–31. JSTOR 40970532.
• Johnson, Elliott; Walker, David; Gray, Daniel, eds. (2014). "Democracy". Historical Dictionary of Marxism (2nd ed.). Lanham; Boulder; New York; London: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 118. ISBN 978-1-4422-3798-8.
• Klíma, Arnošt (1986). "4 - The bourgeois revolution of 1848–9 in Central Europe". In Porter, Roy; Teich, Mikuláš (eds.). Revolution in History. Cambridge University Press. pp. 74–100. doi:10.1017/CBO9781316256961. ISBN 9781316256961.
• Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich (1956). Marx-Engels-Werke. Karl Dietz Verlag Berlin.
• Modern World History Writing Group (June 1973a). Shanghai Normal University (ed.). 世界近代史 [Book of Modern World History] (in Chinese). Vol. I. Shanghai People's Press.
• Modern World History Writing Group (June 1973b). Shanghai Normal University (ed.). 世界近代史 [Book of Modern World History] (in Chinese). Vol. II. Shanghai People's Press.
• Post, Charles (2019). "How Capitalist Were the 'Bourgeois Revolutions'?". Historical Materialism. 27 (3). Brill: 157–190. doi:10.1163/1569206X-12341528. S2CID 149303334. Archived from the original on 20 February 2023.
• Sewell, William H. (December 1994). A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution: The Abbe Sieyes and What is the Third Estate?. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0822315384.

Proletarian revolution

A proletarian revolution or proletariat revolution is a social revolution in which the working class attempts to overthrow the bourgeoisie and change the previous political system. Proletarian revolutions are generally advocated by socialists, communists and anarchists.

Interpretations

The concept of a revolutionary proletariat was first put forward by the French revolutionary socialist and radical Auguste Blanqui. The Paris Commune, contemporary to Blanqui and Marx, being viewed by some as the first attempt at a proletarian revolution.

Marxists believe proletarian revolutions can and will likely happen in all capitalist countries, related to the concept of world revolution. The objective of a proletarian revolution, according to Marxists, is to transform the bourgeois state into a workers' state. The traditional Marxist belief was that a proletarian revolution could only occur in a country where capitalism had developed.

The Leninist branch of Marxism argues that a proletarian revolution must be led by a vanguard of "professional revolutionaries", men and women who are fully dedicated to the communist cause and who form the nucleus of the communist revolutionary movement. This vanguard is meant to provide leadership and organization to the working class before and during the revolution, which aims to prevent the government from successfully ending it. Vladimir Lenin believed that it was imperative to arm the working class to secure their leverage over the bourgeoisie. Lenin's words were printed in an article in German on the nature of pacifism and said "In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, on wage-labour, the oppressor class is always armed." It was under such conditions that the first successful proletarian revolution, the Russian revolution, occurred.

Other Marxists, such as Luxemburgists, disagree with the Leninist idea of a vanguard and insist that the entire working class—or at least a large part of it—must be deeply involved and equally committed to the socialist or communist cause for a proletarian revolution to be successful. To this end, they seek to build mass working class movements with a very large membership.

Finally, there are socialist anarchists and libertarian socialists. Their view is that the revolution must be a bottom-up social revolution which seeks to transform all aspects of society and the individuals which make up the society (see Asturian Revolution and Revolutionary Catalonia). Alexander Berkman said "there are revolutions and revolutions. Some revolutions change only the governmental form by putting a new set of rulers in place of the old. These are political revolutions, and as such they often meet with little resistance. But a revolution that aims to abolish the entire system of wage slavery must also do away with the power of one class to oppress another. That is, it is not any more a mere change of rulers, of government, not a political revolution, but one that seeks to alter the whole character of society. That would be a social revolution."

See also

• Communist revolution
• Free association of producers, the ultimate goal of communist and anarchist revolutions
• Labour revolt
• October Revolution
• Asturian miners' strike of 1934
• Revolution of 1934
• Proletarian Revolutionary Organisation, Nepal
• Social revolution
• World revolution

English Revolution

William III by Jan Wyck, commemorating the landing at Brixham, Torbay, 5 November 1688

The English Revolution is a term that describes two separate events in English history. Prior to the 20th century, it was generally applied to the 1688 Glorious Revolution, when James II was deposed and a constitutional monarchy established under William III and Mary II.

However, Marxist historians began using it for the period covering the 1639-1651 Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Interregnum that followed the Execution of Charles I in 1649, before the 1660 Stuart Restoration had returned Charles II to the throne. Writing in 1892, Friedrich Engels described this period as "the Great Rebellion" and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 as "comparatively puny", although he claimed that both were part of the same revolutionary movement. Later historians have also used this definition of the English Revolution in their work.

Although Charles II was retroactively declared to have been the legal and rightful monarch since the death of his father in 1649, which resulted in a return to the status quo in many areas, a number of gains made under the Commonwealth remained in law.

Whig theory

Tensions regarding the English monarchy began well before the Glorious Revolution. When Charles I was executed in 1649 by the English Parliament, England entered into a republic, or Commonwealth, that lasted until Charles II was reestablished as king of England in 1660. The intermittent civil wars that lasted between 1649 and 1688 were a "constitutional struggle originating from the unresolved contradictions fostered by the Reformation." Debates amongst the England’s post-Reformation state and the constitutional basis for civil involvement in ecclesiastical and governmental issues continually converged together. During the Glorious Revolution of 1688, King James II was replaced by the monarchs William III and Mary II, and a constitutional monarchy was established that was described by Whig historians as the "English Revolution". That interpretation suggests that the "English Revolution" was the final act in the long process of reform and consolidation by Parliament to achieve a balanced constitutional monarchy in Britain, with laws made that pointed towards freedom.

Marxist theory

Further information: English Civil War

François Guizot

Karl Marx

The Marxist view of the English Revolution, suggests that the events of 1640 to 1660 in Britain were a bourgeois revolution in which the final section of English feudalism (the state) was destroyed by a bourgeois class (and its supporters) and replaced with a state (and society), which reflected the wider establishment of agrarian (and later industrial) capitalism. Such an analysis sees the English Revolution as pivotal in the transition from feudalism to capitalism and from a feudal state to a capitalist state in Britain.

The phrase "English Revolution" was first used by Marx in the short text "England's 17th Century Revolution", a response to a pamphlet on the Glorious Revolution of 1688 by François Guizot. Oliver Cromwell and the English Civil War are also referred to multiple times in the work The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, but the event is not directly referred to by the name. By 1892, Engels was using the term "The Great Rebellion" for the conflict, and, while still recognising it as part of the same revolutionary event, dismissed the Glorious Revolution of 1688 as "comparatively puny".

According to the Marxist historian Christopher Hill:

The Civil War was a class war, in which the despotism of Charles I was defended by the reactionary forces of the established Church and conservative landlords, and on the other side stood the trading and industrial classes in town and countryside ... the yeomen and progressive gentry, and ... wider masses of the population whenever they were able by free discussion to understand what the struggle was really about.

Later developments of the Marxist view moved on from the theory of bourgeois revolution to suggest that the English Revolution anticipated the French Revolution and later revolutions in the field of popular administrative and economic gains. Along with the expansion of parliamentary power, the English Revolution broke down many of the old power relations in both rural and urban English society. The guild democracy movement of the period won its greatest successes among London's transport workers, most notably the Thames Watermen, who democratized their company in 1641–43. With the outbreak of civil war in 1642, rural communities began to seize timber and other resources on the estates of royalists, Catholics, the royal family and the church hierarchy. Some communities improved their conditions of tenure on such estates.

The old status quo began a retrenchment after the end of the main civil war in 1646, and more especially after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, but some gains endured in the long term. The democratic element introduced in the watermen's company in 1642, for example, survived, with vicissitudes, until 1827.

Illustration from the 1649 title page of The Declaration and Standard of the Levellers of England by William Everard.

The Marxist view also developed a concept of a “Revolution within the Revolution” (pursued by Hill, Brian Manning and others), which placed a greater deal of emphasis on the radical movements of the period (such as the agitator Levellers, mutineers in the New Model Army and the Diggers), who attempted to go further than Parliament in the aftermath of the Civil War.

There were, we may oversimplify, two revolutions in mid-seventeenth-century England. The one which succeeded established the sacred rights of property (abolition of feudal tenures, no arbitrary taxation), gave political power to the propertied (sovereignty of Parliament and common law, abolition of prerogative courts), and removed all impediments to the triumph of the ideology of the men of property – the protestant ethic. There was, however, another revolution that never happened, though from time to time it threatened. This might have established communal property, a far wider democracy in political and legal institutions, might have disestablished the state church, and rejected the Protestant ethic.

Brian Manning claimed:

The old ruling class came back with new ideas and new outlooks which were attuned to economic growth and expansion and facilitated, in the long run, the development of a fully capitalist economy. It would all have been very different if Charles I had not been obliged to summon that Parliament to meet at Westminster on November 3rd, 1640.

Criticism

The idea, while popular among Marxist historians, has been criticised by many historians of more liberal schools, and of revisionist schools.

The notion that the events of 1640 to 1660 constitute an English Revolution has been criticized by historians such as Austin Woolrych, who pointed out that

painstaking research in the county after county, in local record offices, and family archives, has revealed that the changes in the ownership of the real estate, and hence in the composition of the governing class, were nothing like as great as used to be thought.

Woolrych argues that the notion that the period constitutes an "English Revolution" not only ignores the lack of significant social change contained within the period but also ignores the long-term trends of the early modern period which extend beyond this narrow time frame.

Neither Karl Marx nor Friedrich Engels ever ignored the further development of the bourgeois state beyond that point, however, as is clear from their writings on the Industrial Revolution.

Other uses

The term "English Revolution" is also used by non-Marxists in the Victorian period to refer to 1642 such as the critic and writer Matthew Arnold in The Function of Criticism at the Present Time: "This is what distinguishes it [the French Revolution] from the English Revolution of Charles the First's time".

References

Sources

• Eisenstein, Hester (13 May 2010). Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women's Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World. Routledge. ISBN 9781594516603.
• "House of Commons Journal Volume 8: 8 May 1660". Journal of the House of Commons: Volume 8, 1660–1667. London: His Majesty's Stationery Office: 16–18. 1802a.
• Trevelyan, George M. (1938). The English Revolution, 1688-1689 (1965 ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-7240010488.

• The English Civil War Interpreted by Marx and Engels - Christopher Hill
• WHEN WAS THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION? - ANGUS McINNES
• The London Revolution 1640-1643: Class Struggles in 17th Century England

Ecofascism

sv:Ekofascism

it:Ecofascismo

Death toll: 170 Injury toll: 398

Citations 2, 4, and 9 need to also be referenced in main body.

Ecofascism (sometimes spelled eco-fascism) is a term used to describe individuals and groups which combine environmentalism with fascism.

Philosopher André Gorz characterized eco-fascism as hypothetical forms of totalitarianism based on an ecological orientation of politics. Similar definitions have been used by others in older academic literature in accusations of ecofascism of "environmental fascism". However, since the 2010s, a number of individuals and groups have emerged that either self-identify as "ecofascist" or have been labelled as "ecofascist" by academic or journalistic sources. These individuals and groups synthesise radical far-right politics with environmentalism, and will typically argue that overpopulation is the primary threat to the environment and that the only solution is a complete halt to immigration or, at their most extreme, genocide against non-White groups and ethnicities. Many far-right political parties have added green politics to their platforms. Through the 2010s ecofascism has seen increasing support.

Definition

‘’Need Bookchin’s definition’’

In 2005, environmental historian Michael E. Zimmerman defined "ecofascism" as "a totalitarian government that requires individuals to sacrifice their interests to the well-being of the 'land', understood as the splendid web of life, or the organic whole of nature, including peoples and their states". This was supported by philosopher Patrick Hassan’s work analysing historical accusations of ecofascism in academic literature. Zimmerman argued that while no ecofascist government has existed so far, "important aspects of it can be found in German National Socialism, one of whose central slogans was "Blood and Soil". Other political agendas, instead of environmental protection and prevention of climate change, are nationalist approaches to climate such as national economic environmentalism, securitization of climate change, and ecobordering.

Ecofascists often believe there is a symbiotic relationship between a nation-group and its homeland. They often blame the global south for ecological problems, with their proposed solutions often entailing extreme population control measures based on racial categorisations, and advocating for the accelerated collapse of current society to be replaced by fascist societies. This latter belief is often accompanied with vocal support for terrorist actions.

Vice has defined ecofascism as an ideology "which blames the demise of the environment on overpopulation, immigration, and over-industrialization, problems that followers think could be partly remedied through the mass murder of refugees in Western countries." Environmentalist author Naomi Klein has suggested that ecofascists' primary objectives are to close borders to immigrants and, on the more extreme end, to embrace the idea of climate change as a divinely-ordained signal to begin a mass purge of sections of the human race. Ecofascism is "environmentalism through genocide", opined Klein. Political researcher Alex Amend defined ecofascist belief as "The devaluing of human life—particularly of populations seen as inferior—in order to protect the environment viewed as essential to White identity."

Terrorism researcher Kristy Campion defined ecofascism as "a reactionary and revolutionary ideology that champions the regeneration of an imagined community through a return to a romanticised, ethnopluralist vision of the natural order."

The European Commission describes ecofascism as the "weaponization of climate change by far right populist political parties and white supremacist groups". Tactics of this weaponization include the use of language and equating actors in population and migration discourses to components of the climate crisis. As said in a policy brief for The International Center for Counter-Terrorism, this "linguistic violence" entails that "the invasion of non-native species that threaten the environment becomes synonymous with the invasion of immigrants, the protection of the environment with the protection of borders, trash with people, and environmental cleansing with ethnic cleaning."

Helen Cawood and Xany Jansen Van Vuuren have criticised previous attempts to define ecofascism as focusing too heavily on environmental and ecological conservationism in historical fascist movements, and the subsequent definitions being too broad and encompassing many ontologically different ideologies. In their criticism they summarise the current definition of ecofascism as used in the academic literature as "a movement that uses environmental and ecological conservationist talking points to push an ideology of ethnic or racial separatism". This is supported by Blair Taylor statement that ecofascism refers to "groups and ideologies that offer authoritarian, hierarchical, and racist analyses and solutions to environmental problems". Similarly, extremism researchers Brian Hughes, Dave Jones, and Amarnath Amarasingam argue that ecofascism is less a coherent ideology and more a cultural expression of mystical, anti-humanist romanticism. This is further supported by Maria Darwish in her research into the Nordic Resistance Movement where while there is concern for environmental issues they are "a concern for Neo-Nazis only in so far as it supports and popularizes the backstage mission of the NRM", that is the implementation of a fascist regime, and Jacob Blumenfeld stating "ecofascism names a specific far-right ideology that rationalizes white supremacist violence by invoking imminent ecological collapse and scarce natural resources".

Borrowing from the "watermelon" analogy of eco-socialism, Berggruen Institute scholar Nils Gilman has coined the term "avocado politics" for eco-fascism, being "green on the outside but brown(shirt) at the core".

In his book "Ecofascismo", the political scientist Carlos Taibo characterises the phenomenon as a response to crises brought about by climate change. The ecofascist solution is to "[P]reserve increasingly scarce resources for a select minority. And to marginalize – in the mildest version – and exterminate – in the harshest – what are seen as surplus populations, on a planet that has visibly exceeded its limits." Crucially, Taibo argues that far from being circumscribed to the margins of right-wing extremism, which traditionally has mostly been associated with Climate change denial, ecofascist notions are likely to be pursued by "political forces we usually label as liberal and social-democratic", emerging within major centers of power in the west and among elites in the developing world. From this perspective, the antecedents of ecofascism, extending beyond ecological currents in fascist movements of the past, would be ideologies typical of Western colonialism, returning in modernised forms.

Ideological origins

Madison Grant

Sometimes dubbed the "founding father" of ecofascism, Madison Grant was a pioneer of conservationism in America in the late 19th and early 20th century. Grant is credited as a founder of modern wildlife management. Grant built the Bronx River Parkway, was a co-founder of the American Bison Society, and helped create Glacier National Park, Olympic National Park, Everglades National Park and Denali National Park. As president of the New York Zoological Society, he founded the Bronx Zoo in 1899.

In addition to his conservationist work, Grant was a trenchant racist. In 1906, Grant supported the placement of Ota Benga, a member of the Mbuti people who was kidnapped, removed from his home in the Congo, and put on display in the Bronx Zoo as an exhibit in the Monkey House. In 1916, Grant wrote The Passing of the Great Race, a work of pseudoscientific literature which claimed to give an account of the anthropological history of Europe. The book divides Europeans into three races; Alpines, Mediterraneans and Nordics, and it also claims that the first two races are inferior to the superior Nordic race, which is the only race which is fit to rule the earth. Adolf Hitler would later describe Grant's book as "his bible" and Grant's "Nordic theory" became the bedrock of Nazi racial theories. Additionally, Grant was a eugenicist: He cofounded and was the director of the American Eugenics Society and he also advocated the culling of the unfit from the human population. Grant concocted a 100-year plan to perfect the human race, a plan in which one ethnic group after another would be killed off until racial purity would be obtained. Grant campaigned for the passage of the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and he also campaigned for the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, which drastically reduced the number of immigrants from eastern Europe and Asia who were allowed to enter the United States.

In the modern era, Grant's ideas have been cited by advocates of far-right politics such as Richard Spencer and Anders Breivik.

Nazism

The authors Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier suggest that the synthesis of fascism and environmentalism began with Nazism, stating that 19th and 20th century Germany was an early center of ecofascist thought, finding its antecedents in many prominent natural scientists and environmentalists, including Ernst Moritz Arndt, Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, and Ernst Haeckel. With the works and ideas of such individuals being later established as policies in the Nazi regime. This is supported by other researchers who identify the Völkisch movement as an ideological originator of later ecofascism. In Biehl and Staudenmaier's book Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience, they note the Nazi Party's interest in ecology, and suggest their interest was "linked with traditional agrarian romanticism and hostility to urban civilization". With Zimmerman pointing to the works of conservationist and Nazi Walther Schoenichen as having pertinence to later ecofascism and similarities to developments in deep ecological understanding. During the Nazi rise to power, there was strong support for the Nazis among German environmentalists and conservationists. Richard Walther Darré, a leading Nazi ideologist and Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture who invented the term "Blood and Soil", developed a concept of the nation having a mystic connection with their homeland, and as such, the nation was dutybound to take care of the land. This was supported by other Nazi theorists such as Alfred Rosenberg who wrote of how society's move from agricultural systems to industrialised systems broke their connection to nature and contributed to the death of the Volk. Similar sentiments are found in speeches from Fascist Italy’s Minister of Agriculture Giuseppe Tassinari. Because of this, modern ecofascists cite the Nazi Party as an origin point of ecofascism. Beyond Darré, Rudolf Hess and Fritz Todt are viewed as representatives of environmentalism within the Nazi party. Roger Griffin has also pointed to the glorification of wildlife in Nazi art and ruralism in the novels of the fascist sympathizers Knut Hamsun and Henry Williamson as examples.

After the outlawing of the neo-nazi Socialist Reich Party, one of its members August Haußleiter moved towards organising within the environmental and anti-nuclear movements, going on to become a founding member of the German Green Party. When green activists later uncovered his past activities in the neo-nazi movement, Haußleiter was forced to step down as the party's chairman, although he continued to hold a central role in the party newspaper. As efforts to expel nationalist elements within the party continued, a conservative faction split off and founded the Ecological Democratic Party, which became noted for persistent holocaust denial, rejection of social justice and opposition to immigration.

Savitri Devi

Savitri Devi's avowed Nazism, combined with her advocacy of animal rights and vegetarianism, has made her a figure of interest to ecofascists.

The French-born Greek fascist Savitri Devi (born Maximiani Julia Portas) was a prominent proponent of Esoteric Nazism and deep ecology. A fanatical supporter of Hitler and the Nazi Party from the 1930s onwards, she also supported animal rights activism and was a vegetarian from a young age. In her works, she espoused ecologist views, such as the Impeachment of Man (1959), in which she espoused her views on animal rights and nature. In accordance with her ecologist views, human beings do not stand above the animals; instead, humans are a part of the ecosystem and as a result, they should respect all forms of life, including animals and the whole of nature. Because of her dual devotion to Nazism and deep ecology, she is considered an influential figure in ecofascist circles.

Malthusianism

Malthusian ideas of overpopulation have been adopted by ecofascists, using Malthusian rationale in anti-immigration arguments and seeking to resolve the perceived global issue by enforcing population control measures on the global south and racial minorities in white majority countries. Such Malthusian ideas are often paired with Social Darwinist and eugenicist views.

Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber

Ted Kaczynski AKA "The Unabomber" in a mug shot taken shortly after his arrest in April 1996.

Ted Kaczynski, better known as "The Unabomber", is cited as a figure who was highly influential in the development of ecofascist thought, and features prominently in contemporary ecofascist propaganda. Between 1978 and 1995 Kaczynski instigated a terrorist bombing campaign aimed at inciting a revolution against modern industrial society, in the name of returning humanity to a primitive state he suggested offered humanity more freedom while protecting the environment. In 1995 Kaczynski offered to end his bombing campaign if The Washington Post or The New York Times would publish his 35,000-word Unabomber manifesto. Both newspapers agreed to those terms. The manifesto railed not only against modern industrial society but also against "modern leftists", whom Kaczynski defined as "mainly socialists, collectivists, 'politically correct' types, feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and the like".

Because of Kaczynski's intelligence and because of his ability to write in a high-level academic tone, his manifesto was given serious consideration upon its release and it became highly influential, even amongst those who severely disagreed with his use of violence. Kaczynski's staunchly radical pro-green, anti-left work was quickly absorbed into ecofascist thought.

Kaczynski also criticized right-wing activists who complained about the erosion of traditional social mores because they supported technological and economic progress, a view which he opposed. He stated that technology erodes traditional social mores that conservatives and right wingers want to protect, and he referred to conservatives as fools.

Although Kaczynski and his manifesto have been embraced by ecofascists, he rejected "fascism", including specifically "the 'ecofascists'", describing 'ecofascism' itself as 'an aberrant branch of leftism':

The true anti-tech movement rejects every form of racism or ethnocentrism. This has nothing to do with "tolerance," "diversity," "pluralism," "multiculturalism," "equality," or "social justice." The rejection of racism and ethnocentrism is - purely and simply - a cardinal point of strategy.

In his manifesto, Kaczynski wrote that he considered fascism a "kook ideology" and he also wrote that he considered Nazism "evil". Kaczynski never tried to align himself with the far-right at any point before or after his arrest.

In 2017, Netflix released a dramatisation of Kaczynski's life, titled Manhunt: Unabomber. Once again, the popularity of the show thrust Kaczynski and his manifesto into the public's mind and it also raised the profile of ecofascism.

Garrett Hardin, Pentti Linkola, and "Lifeboat Ethics"

Pentti Linkola's advocacy of "Lifeboat Ethics" is cited by commentators as an example of ecofascism.

Two figures influential in ecofascism are Garrett Hardin and Pentti Linkola, both of whom were proponents of what they refer to as "Lifeboat Ethics". Hardin was a professor of Human Ecology at the University of California often described as a white nationalist. His work was focused on the ethics of overpopulation and population control and suggested different methods like "birth control, abortion, and sterilization". Not only did he have medical suggestions but also stood against immigration and the end of foreign aid.

Linkola was a Finnish ecologist and radical Malthusian accused of being an active ecofascist who actively advocated ending democracy and replacing it with dictatorships that would use totalitarian and even genocidal tactics to end climate change. Both men used versions of the following analogy to illustrate their viewpoint:

“ What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship's axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides. ”

Renaud Camus

Renaud Camus' conspiracy theory, the Great Replacement, has been influential on ecofascism, being referenced explicitly in multiple manifestos and had its ideas relayed in others. In the conspiracy theory, the "native" white populations of western countries are being replaced by non-white populations as a directed political effort.

Association with violence

Ecofascist violence has occurred since the 21st century, with academics and researchers warning that as ecological crises worsen and remain unaddressed, support for ecofascism and violence in the name of ecofascism will increase.

Tree of Life Synagogue shooter https://earthworks.org/blog/eco-fascism-a-tangible-present-danger/

In December 2020, the Swedish Defence Research Agency released a report on ecofascism. The paper argued that ecofascism is intimately tied to the ideology of accelerationism, and ecofascists nearly exclusively choose terror tactics over the political approach. Further, the SDRA argues not all ecofascist mass shooters have been recognized as such: Pekka-Eric Auvinen who shot eight people in Finland in 2007 before killing himself adhered to the ideology according to his manifesto titled "The Natural Selector's Manifesto". He advocated "total war against humanity" due to the threat humanity posed to other species. He wrote that death and killing is not a tragedy, as it constantly happens in nature between all species. Auvinen also wrote that the modern society hinders "natural justice" and that all inferior "subhumans" should be killed and only the elite of humanity be spared. In one of his YouTube videos Auvinen paid tribute to the prominent deep ecologist Pentti Linkola.

2010s

James Jay Lee, the eco-terrorist who took several hostages at the Discovery Communications headquarters on 1 September 2010, was described as an ecofascist by Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Anders Breivik committed the 2011 Norway attacks on 22 July 2011, in which he killed eight people by detonating a van bomb at Regjeringskvartalet in Oslo, and then killed 69 participants of a Workers' Youth League (AUF) summer camp, in a mass shooting on the island of Utøya. While dismissive of climate change, Breivik’s manifesto was concerned with the carrying capacity of the planet, taking inspiration from Kaczynski and Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race. Breivik’s solution to this perceived problem was to cap the global population at 2.5 billion people, with the reduction in the global population being forced upon the global south. Through his actions he sought to inspire other terrorist attacks, and was an inspiration for later ecofascist terrorists.

William H. Stoetzer, a member of the Atomwaffen Division, an organisation responsible for at least eight murders, was active in the Earth Liberation Front as late as 2008 and joined Atomwaffen in 2016.

Brenton Tarrant, the Australian-born perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand described himself as an ecofascist, ethno-nationalist, and racist in his manifesto The Great Replacement, named after a far-right conspiracy theory originating in France. In the manifesto Tarrant specifically mentions Breivik as an ideological and operational influence. Researchers point to Tarrant's terrorist attack as the moment when discussion of ecofascism moved from academic and specialist circles into the mainstream. Jordan Weissmann, writing for Slate, describes the perpetrator's version of ecofascism as "an established, if somewhat obscure, brand of neo-Nazi" and quotes Sarah Manavis of New Statesman as saying, "[Eco-fascists] believe that living in the original regions a race is meant to have originated in and shunning multiculturalism is the only way to save the planet they prioritise above all else". Similarly, Luke Darby clarifies it as: "eco-fascism is not the fringe hippie movement usually associated with ecoterrorism. It's a belief that the only way to deal with climate change is through eugenics and the brutal suppression of migrants."

Patrick Crusius, the perpetrator of the 2019 El Paso shooting wrote a similar manifesto, professing support for Tarrant. Posted to the online message board 8chan, it blames immigration to the United States for environmental destruction, saying that American lifestyles were "destroying the environment", invoking an ecological burden to be borne by future generations, and concluding that the solution was to "decrease the number of people in America using resources". Crusius outlined how he took inspiration from Tarrant and Breivik in his manifesto. Crusius and Tarrant also inspired Philip Manshaus who attacked a mosque in Norway in 2019. The El Paso terrorist attack catapulted into public awareness the "greening of hate" that has long haunted the American environmental movement. https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/4-november-december/feature/eco-fascism-uncovered-el-paso-texas

Eco-fascists have been noted as using the Algiz rune and pine tree emojis to identity each other online on social media platforms

2020s

The Swedish self-identified ecofascist Green Brigade is an eco-terrorist group linked to The Base that is responsible for multiple mass murder plots. The Green Brigade has been responsible for arson attacks against targets deemed to be enemies of nature, like an attack on a mink farm that caused multi-million-dollar damages. Two members were arrested by Swedish police, allegedly planning assassinating judges and bombings.

In June 2021, the Telegram-based Terrorgram collective published an online guide with incitements for attacks on infrastructure and violence against minorities, police, public figures, journalists, and other perceived enemies. In December 2021, they published a second document containing ideological sections on accelerationism, white supremacy, and ecofascism.

During 2021, several neo-Nazi groups and individuals who espoused ecofascist rhetoric were arrested and charged by French authorities for planning terrorist attacks. These include the group Recolonisons la France, and two "accelerationists" in Occitania.

In an interview with a blog Maldición Eco-Extremista a leader of the eco-extremist group Individualists Tending to the Wild (ITS) claimed to have taken some organisational influence from the fascist accelerationist terrorist group Order of Nine Angles, while disavowing the group's fascism. However, Foundation for Defense of Democracies characterized ITS's literature as ecofascist.

Payton S. Gendron, the instigator of the 2022 Buffalo shooting, also wrote a manifesto self-describing as "an ethno-nationalist eco-fascist national socialist" within it and also professing support for far-right shooters from Tarrant and Dylann Roof to Breivik and Robert Bowers. Later in 2022, the Terrorgram collective released another publication, with analysts believing it would likely inspire further "Buffalo shootings".

In Finland on 15 March 2024, the anniversary of Christchurch mosque shooting, a Finnish army Non-commissioned officer was arrested for allegedly planning a mass shooting in a university in Vaasa that day. As her motivation she said the world needed "a mass culling" to put an end to "selfish individualism", "human degeneration", global warming and conspicuous consumption. The Finnish police described her as ecofascist and that she had read books by Nietzsche, Linkola and Kaczynski. Additionally she had praised Pekka-Eric Auvinen in internet conversations and had visited Jokela school where he perpetrated the mass shooting.

On 12 August 2024 at least five people were wounded in a mass stabbing attack in Eskisehir, Turkey. The perpetrator had called for "Total Human Death" and voiced support for Ted Kaczynski and Accelerationism on the Internet.

Criticism

The deep ecologic activist and "left biocentrism" advocate David Orton stated in 2000 that the term is pejorative in nature and it has "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." Orton argued that "it is a strange term/concept to really have any conceptual validity" as there has not "yet been a country that has had an "eco-fascist" government or, to my knowledge, a political organization which has declared itself publicly as organized on an ecofascist basis."

Accusations of ecofascism have often been made but are usually strenuously denied. Left wing critiques view ecofascism as an assault on human rights, as in social ecologist Murray Bookchin's use of the term.

Deep ecology

Main article: Deep ecology

Deep ecology is an environmental philosophy that promotes the inherent worth of all living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. It has long been linked to fascist ideologies, both by critics and fascist proponents. In certain texts, the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss, a leading voice of the "deep ecology" movement, opposes environmentalism and humanism, even proclaiming, in imitation of a famous phrase of the Marquis de Sade, "Écologistes, encore un effort pour devenir anti-humanistes" ("Ecologists, another effort to become anti-humanists!"). Luc Ferry, in his anti-environmentalist book Le Nouvel Ordre écologique published in 1992, particularly incriminated deep ecology as being an anti-humanist ideology bordering on Nazism. Modern ecofascism has been described as a deep ecological philosophy combined with antihumanism and an accelerationist stance.

Bookchin's critique of deep ecology

Murray Bookchin criticizes the political position of deep ecologists such as David Foreman:

There are barely disguised racists, survivalists, macho Daniel Boones, and outright social reactionaries who use the word ecology to express their views, just as there are deeply concerned naturalists, communitarians, social radicals, and feminists who use the word ecology to express theirs... It was out of this former kind of crude eco-brutalism that Hitler, in the name of "population control," with a racial orientation, fashioned theories of blood and soil...

The same eco-brutalism now reappears a half-century later among self-professed deep ecologists who believe that Third World peoples should be permitted to starve to death and that desperate Indian immigrants from Latin America should be excluded by the border cops from the United States lest they burden "our" ecological resources.

Sakai on "natural purity"

Such observations among the left are not exclusive to Bookchin. In his review of Anna Bramwell's biography of Richard Walther Darré, political writer J. Sakai and author of Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat, observes the fascist ideological undertones of natural purity. Prior to the Russian Revolution, the tsarist intelligentsia was divided on the one hand between liberal "utilitarian naturalists", who were "taken with the idea of creating a paradise on earth through scientific mastery of nature" and influenced by nihilism as well as Russian zoologists such as Anatoli Petrovich Bogdanov; and, on the other, "cultural-aesthetic" conservationists such as Ivan Parfenevich Borodin, who were influenced in turn by German Romantic and idealist concepts such as Landschaftspflege and Naturdenkmal.

Narrowness of the label

Political scientist Balša Lubarda has criticised the use of the term "ecofascism" as not sufficiently covering and describing the wider network of ideologies and systems that feed into ecofascist action, suggesting the term "far-right ecologism" (FRE) instead. Lubarda is supported by researcher Bernhard Forchtner who emphasises ecofascism's existence as a fringe ideology that has had little impact on the wider far-right's interaction with environmentalism.

Disavowment

As ecofascism has become more prevalent various environmental groups and organisations have publicly disavowed the ideology and those who subscribe to it.

Far-right green movements

In recent years there has been a greater proliferation in ecofascist groups globally in line with the proliferation of ecofascist rhetoric.

Australia

Australia has seen an increasing prominence of ecofascism among its far-right groups in recent years.

• Ecofascism – are far-right extremists the new environmentalists?
• Beware far-right arguments disguised as environmentalism
• From Brownshirts to Greenshirts: Understanding Ecofascism in a Time of Climate Crisis
• Surviving Climate Change and Ecofascism
• Global Heating and the Australian Far Right
• Feature | Tasmania first: ecofascism and the settler invasion fantasy

Austria

The Greens of Austria (DGÖ) had been founded in 1982 by the former NDP official Alfred Bayer to use the popularity of the green movement at the time for the purposes of the NDP. The party managed to win a number of municipal seats in the mid-1980s but in 1988 the Constitutional Court banned the party on grounds of Neo-Nazism alongside a parallel ban on the NDP.

Finland

The neo-fascist Blue-and-Black Movement includes ecofascist policy goals, stating that they aim to protect the nature and biodiversity of Finland, and to live in harmony with nature, ending ritual slaughter, fur-farming and animal testing.

France

Nouvelle Droite movement

The European Nouvelle Droite movement, developed by Alain de Benoist and other individuals involved with the GRECE think tank, have also combined various left-wing ideas, including green politics, with right-wing ideas such as European ethnonationalism. Various other far-right figures have taken the lead from de Benoist, providing an appeal to nature in their politics, including: Guillaume Faye, Renaud Camus, and Hervé Juvin. From the nineteenth century to Zemmour, ecofascism contaminates the political debate (reporterre.net)

Génération identitaire

In 2020, following articles from self-described ecofascist Piero San Giorgio, a spokesperson for Génération identitaire, Clément Martin, advocated for zones identitaires à défendre, ethnically homogenous zones to be violently defended in order to protect the environment.

National Rally

Marine Le Pen, president of the far-right National Rally (Rassemblement National, or RN) in the French National Assembly, has shown an ecofascist approach towards climate change issue and has incorporated environmental issues into her platform, although her policies regarding the climate often reflect a nationalist and protectionist stance to address it. Le Pen has stated that concern for the climate is inherently nationalist, and that immigrants "do not care about the environment". Jordan Bardella, president of National Rally, embraces similar beliefs and has stated "Borders are the environment’s greatest ally; it is through them we will save the planet."

Solutions for climate change proposed for Le Pen also align with right-wing conservative economics. She has disregarded liberal free trade economics, under her belief that it "kills the planet" and creates "suffering for animals". Rather than supporting mass production of international commerce, she designed a localist project for "economic patriotism" to boost French products.

Climate change was not in the RN's party platform until around 2019, when the issue began to be capitalized electorally by both leftist and center parties alike. In response to this rising awareness regarding environmental issues, Le Pen designed an energy plan focused on fossil fuels, opposing wind and solar energy, and emphasizing expanding nuclear power wherein she delineated a party policy where 70% of France's electricity was to come from nuclear energy by 2050. Additionally, Le Pen supports maintaining oil heating systems and reducing taxes on fossil fuels, which contradicts climate experts' recommendations, and could increase France's dependence on fossil fuels.

Germany

Staudenmaier points to how from the post-war period in Germany an ecofascist section has always been present in the German far-right, though as a minor peripheral section, with others pointing out a long history of right-wing individuals and groups being present in the environmental and green movement in Germany.

Die Heimat

Frank Franz, the current leader of the NPD, in 2017.

Die Heimat (The Homeland), previously known as the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), a German Nationalist far-right party, has long sought to utilise the green movement. This is one of many strategies the party has used to try to gain supporters.

The German far-right has published the magazine Umwelt & Aktiv, that masquerades as a garden and nature publication but intertwines garden tips with extremist political ideology. This is known as a "camouflage publication" in which the NPD has spread its mission and ideologies through a discrete source and made its way into homes they otherwise wouldn’t. Right-wing environmentalists are settling in the northern regions of rural Germany and are forming nationalistic and authoritarian communities which produce honey, fresh produce, baked goods, and other such farm goods for profit. Their ideology is centered around "blood and soil" ruralism in which they humanely raise produce and animals for profit and sustenance. Through their support of this operation, and the backing of many others, it's reported that the NPD is trying to wrestle the green movement, which has been dominated by the left since the 1980s, back from the left through these avenues.

It's difficult to know if when one is buying local produce or farm fresh eggs from a farmer at their stand, they're supporting a right-wing agenda. Various efforts are being made to halt or slow the infiltration of right-wing ecologists into the community of organic farmers such as brochures about their communities and common practices. However, as the organic cultivation organisation, Biopark, demonstrates with their vetting process, it's difficult to keep people out of communities because of their ideologies. Biopark specifies that they vet based on cultivation habits, not opinions or doctrines, especially when they're not explicitly stated.

AfD

Prominent Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) politician, Björn Höcke, has stated his desire to "reclaim" natural conservation from the left. Höcke believes that nature conservation is not correctly executed under climate justice politics, and is quoted stating that the AfD has "to take the issue of nature conservation back from the Greens" However, Höcke recognizes that a socially conservative position that strongly values environmental protection is not the majority position of the AfD. Regardless, Höcke sees the work of far-right ecological magazine, Die Kehre, as laying a theoretical standpoint for the AfD to later draw from.

Collegium Humanum

This section is an excerpt from Collegium Humanum.[edit]

The Collegium Humanum was an ecofascist organisation in Germany from 1963 to 2008. It was established in 1963 as a club, was first active in the German environmental movement, then from the early 1980s became a far-right political organisation and was banned in 2008 by the Federal Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble due to "continued denial of the Holocaust".

Other groups

The term is also used to a limited extent within the Neue Rechte. The neo-Artamans have been identified as ecofascists in their attempts to revive the agrarian and völkisch traditions of the Artaman League in communes that they have built up since the 1990s.

Hungary

László Toroczkai, leader of the Our Homeland Movement party, speaking at Corvin köz.

Following the fall of Communism in Hungary at the end of the 1980s, one of the new political parties that emerged in the country was the Green Party of Hungary. Initially having a moderate centre-right green outlook, after 1993 the party adopted a radical anti-liberal, anti-communist, anti-Semitic and pro-fascist stance, paired with the creation of a paramilitary wing. This ideological swing resulted in many members breaking off from the party to form new green parties, first with Green Alternative in 1993 and secondly with Hungarian Social Green Party in 1995. Each green party remained on the political fringe of Hungarian politics and petered out over time. It was not until the formation of LMP – Hungary's Green Party in the 2010s that green politics in Hungary consolidated around a single green party.

The far-right Hungarian political party Our Homeland Movement has adopted some elements of environmentalism, and commonly refers to itself as the only true green party; for example, the party has called on Hungarians to show patriotism by supporting the removal of pollution from the Tisza River while simultaneously placing the blame on the pollution on Romania and Ukraine. Similarly, elements of the far-right Sixty-Four Counties Youth Movement proscribe themselves to the "Eco-Nationalist" label, with one member stating "no real nationalist is a climate denialist".

India

Narendra Modi addressing at the inauguration of the India Pavilion, at COP21

Narendra Modi's leadership of India with the Bharatiya Janata Party seeks to install a complete system of Hindutva, with repression of racial and religious minorities and caste discrimination. Since 2018 Modi has been increasingly viewed as an environmental champion and used rhetoric about protecting the environment to greenwash his image and the image of his party.

International

Greenline Front is an international network of ecofascists which originated in Eastern Europe, with chapters in a variety of countries such as Argentina, Belarus, Chile, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Spain and Switzerland.

Serbia

Leviathan Movement promotes ecology and protects animals from cruelty by, among other things, saving them from abusers. Leviathan has been reported as an ideologically neo-fascist and neo-nazi group. They used to share an office with the Serbian Right, a far-right political party, and Leviathan ’s leader, Pavle Bihali, is seen in pictures on his social media accounts posing with neo-Nazis.

Sweden

The Nordic Resistance Movement, a pan-Nordic neo-Nazi movement in the Nordic countries and a political party in Sweden has been continually described as ecofascist, and have declared themselves as the "new green party" of the Nordics. In their English-language literature they continually link immigration to environmental degradation

Switzerland

In Switzerland, the initiators of the Ecopop initiative were accused of eco-fascism by FDFA State Secretary Yves Rossier at a Christian Democratic People's Party of Switzerland event on 11 January 2013. However, after threatening to sue, Rossier apologized for the allegation.

United Kingdom

Protestors against Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time, 2009

There is also a historic tradition between the far-right and environmentalism in the UK. Throughout its history, the far-right British National Party has flirted on and off with environmentalism. During the 1970s the party's first leader John Bean expressed support for the emerging environmentalist movement in the pages of the party's newspaper and suggested the primary cause of pollution as overpopulation, and therefore immigration into Britain must be halted. During the 2000s the BNP sought to position itself as the "only 'true' green party in the United Kingdom, dedicating a significant portion of their manifestos to green issues. During an appearance on BBC One's Question Time in October 2009, then-leader Nick Griffin proclaimed:

Unlike the fake "Greens" who are merely a front for the far left of the Labour regime, the BNP is the only party to recognise that overpopulation – whose primary driver is immigration, as revealed by the government's own figures – is the cause of the destruction of our environment. Furthermore, the BNP's manifesto states that a BNP government will make it a priority to stop building on green land. New housing should wherever possible be built on derelict "brown land".

The Guardian criticised Griffin's claims that himself and the BNP were truly environmentalists at heart, suggesting it was merely a smokescreen for anti-immigrant rhetoric and pointed to previous statements by Griffin in which he suggested that climate change was a hoax. These suspicions seemed to be proven correct when in December 2009 the BNP released a 40-page document denying that global warming is a "man-made" phenomenon. The party reiterated this stance in 2011, as well as making claims that wind farms were causing the deaths of "thousands of Scottish pensioners from hypothermia". John Bean a far-right activist and politician, the first leader of the BNP and latterly a leader within the National Front, wrote regularly in the National Front’s magazine about the problems of pollution and environmental degradation tying them to ideas of overpopulation and immigration.

In 2024 it was reported by Searchlight that the fascist groups Patriotic Alternative and Homeland party has also started to make claims that the countryside was being destroyed by immigration.

In Scotland, former UKIP candidate and activist Alistair McConnachie, who has questioned the Holocaust, founded the Independent Green Voice in 2003, and multiple ex-BNP members and activists have stood as candidates for the party.

United States

Main article: Hardline (subculture)

During the 1990s a highly militant environmentalist subculture called Hardline emerged from the straight edge hardcore punk music scene and established itself in a number of cities across the US. Adherents to the Hardline lifestyle combined the straight edge belief in no alcohol, no drugs, no tobacco with militant veganism and advocacy for animal rights. Hardline touted a biocentric worldview that claimed to value all life, and therefore opposed abortion, contraceptives, and sex for any purpose other than procreation. On this same line, Hardline opposed homosexuality as "unnatural" and "deviant”. Hardline groups were highly militant; In 1999 Salt Lake City grouped Hardliners as a criminal gang and suggested they were behind dozens of assaults in the metro area. That same year CBS News reported that Hardliners were behind the firebombing of fast food outlets and clothing stores selling leather items, and attributed 30 attacks to Hardliners. The Hardline subculture dissolved after the 1990s.

White supremacist John Tanton and the network of organisations he created, dubbed the Tanton network, have been described as ecofascist. Tanton and his organisations spent decades linking immigration to environmental concerns. https://www.sierraclub.org/washington/blog/2020/01/overpopulation-myth-and-its-dangerous-connotations Tigue 2022: "Once relegated to the fringes of society, ecofascism has found its way into mainstream discourse in recent years. Its origins, in many ways, trace back to the Tanton network, a collection of more than a dozen anti-immigration groups founded or funded by John Tanton" https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/4-november-december/feature/eco-fascism-uncovered-el-paso-texas

Political researchers Blair Taylor and Eszter Szenes have identified multiple threads in alt-right discourse and ideology that align with far-right ecologism and ecofascism.

The Green Party of the United States has also long been the target of various far-right figures, such as anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists, who have tried to shift the party drastically to the far-right.

In 1994, so-called "Takings" bills were introduced by the U.S. Congress to financially compensate wetlands owners who were unable to develop their land for profit due to environmental protection policies. These bills were met with resistance by "anthropocentric market liberals", who oppose any sort of market regulation or intervention of the state into private ownership. Hence, these "takings" bills were deemed ecofascist and proponents of the bills were "disparaged" and viewed as "'nature-loving' romantics for having reactionary tendencies that may be consistent with fascism". The Journal for Social Theory and Practice uses this instance to exemplify how growing public frustration with complex federal environmental regulations leads to rapidly polarizing opinions on environmental regulations in the United States: one is either a citizen who supports people, private property, and the U.S. Constitution, or a radical environmentalist who supports nature, communal ownership, and ecofascism.

Mark Brnovich https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/4-november-december/feature/eco-fascism-uncovered-el-paso-texas

Internet

Ecofascists coalescing online, prominent use of memes in closed groups and public facing accounts, memes used and referenced in terrorist manifestos.

"In the darker rooms of the internet, chat sites abound where members embrace precisely eco-fascist ideas, characterized by a combination of the climate crisis, ecological collapse, immigration, racial mixing and nature conservation."

"A reoccurring theme in online communities and of perpetrators of extremist violence have made explicit reference to narratives of ecofascism." "Despite their predilections for a romantic return to natural order, ecofascist groups and individuals have created a notable digital footprint within Australian and international communities to recruit and communicate these ideals."

Manavis 2018

"Eco-fascism is a modern-day ideology, fuelled by the internet, but its roots are deep – and often forgotten."

Richards, Jones & Brinn 2022

Walsh 2022

Various eco-accelerationist channels on Telegram glorify Kaczynski’s terrorism whilst proclaiming him a "martyr." One popular meme consists of a photograph of Kaczynski together with the "Ted Talks" logo and its slogan, "ideas worth spreading." "Uncle Ted Did Nothing Wrong," declares another. His violence is also linked to contemporary calls for the "Boogaloo"—shorthand for the impending race war in extreme right circles. “Ted boogied for 17 years,” declared one Telegram channel. "Ted used his mega brain. Be like Ted." Kaczynski’s aforementioned hostility to Nazism is also rationalised in terms of common struggle. "Certain elements will caw that Uncle Ted dissed national socialists and modern adherents," another channel stated. "I encourage you to trust me because this is 100 percent our fight and a huge reason he is facing backlash is because our collective spheres spread his ideas harder than almost anyone." Others involved in this milieu have corresponded with Kaczynski directly. One user posted a photograph of the letter he had received from the Unabomber, advising its sender to "undertake the systematic cultivation of self-discipline" in response to a question about the qualities young people should aspire to. "Ted wants us to do better, and frankly we should listen to him," responded another user.

"Even on the "full-fat" far-right fringes, the great replacement theory accommodates a variety of conflicting ideas. The accused shooter in Buffalo claims to have been "radicalised" by online message boards such as Reddit, 4chan and 8chan, which he began browsing during the pandemic. These boards have become a gateway for white-nationalist extremism, through the sharing of racist memes, conspiracy theories and extremist literature and manifestos. His manifesto borrows heavily from that of the Christchurch shooter, who killed 51 people in New Zealand in 2019. That manifesto was titled "The Great Replacement". It was full of racist, white nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiments, railing against declining white birthrates, "white genocide" and immigration policies supposedly injurious to people of European descent. " Molloy 2022 Telegram Kaati et al. 2020

Pejorative

Detractors on the political right tend to use the term "ecofascism" as a hyperbolic general pejorative against all environmental activists, including more mainstream groups such as Greenpeace, prominent activists such as Greta Thunberg, and government agencies tasked with protecting environmental resources. Such detractors include Rush Limbaugh and other conservative and wise use movement commentators. The term as a pejorative has been used in multiple countries.

See also

• Adolf Hitler and vegetarianism
• Animal welfare in Nazi Germany
• ATWA
• Conspirituality
• Definitions of fascism
• Ecoauthoritarianism
• Eco-nationalism
• Eco-socialism
• Eco-terrorism
• Environmental movement
• Environmental racism
• Green Imperialism
• Hardline (subculture)
• Neo-Luddism
• Pastel QAnon
• Radical environmentalism
• Red-green-brown alliance

References

Bibliography

• Achenbach, Joel (18 August 2019). "Two mass killings a world apart share a common theme: 'ecofascism': Environmental groups denounce racists who cloak themselves in green". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 4 May 2022.
• Alexander, Charles C. (1962). "Prophet of American Racism: Madison Grant and the Nordic Myth". Phylon. 23 (1). Clark Atlanta University: 73–90. doi:10.2307/274146. JSTOR 274146.
• d'Allens, Gaspard (23 July 2020). "Tir groupé contre l'écologie : la victoire des Verts provoque la rage des conservateurs" [Grouped attack on ecology: the Greens' victory provokes the rage of conservatives]. Reporterre (in French). Archived from the original on 10 March 2024.
• d'Allens, Gaspard (1 February 2022). "Enquête sur l'écofascisme: comment l'extrême droite veut récupérer l'écologie" [Investigating ecofascism: how the far right wants to recover ecology]. Reporterre (in French). Archived from the original on 16 April 2022.
• d'Allens, Gaspard (2 February 2022). "Du XIXe siècle à Zemmour, l'écofascisme contamine le débat politique" [From the 19th century to Zemmour, ecofascism contaminates the political debate]. Reporterre (in French). Archived from the original on 13 February 2022.
• Allison, Marcia (June 2020). "'So long, and thanks for all the fish!': Urban dolphins as ecofascist fake news during COVID-19". Journal of Environmental Media. 1 (1): 4.1–4.8. doi:10.1386/jem_00025_1. ISSN 2632-2471.
• Anantharaman, Manisha (August 2022). A Slippery Slope to Ecofascism: Contribution to GTI Forum The Population Debate Revisited (PDF). The Population Debate Revisited. Great Transition Initiative. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 August 2022.
• Armiero, Marco; von Hardenberg, Wilko Graf (August 2013). "Green Rhetoric in Blackshirts: Italian Fascism and the Environment". Environment and History. 19 (3). White Horse Press: 283–311. doi:10.3197/096734013X13690716950064. Archived from the original on 28 March 2023. Retrieved 27 October 2023.
• Arvin, Jariel (3 June 2021). "The far right is weaponizing climate change to argue against immigration". Vox. Archived from the original on 5 July 2023.
• Askanius, Tina (1 February 2021a). "On Frogs, Monkeys, and Execution Memes: Exploring the Humor-Hate Nexus at the Intersection of Neo-Nazi and Alt-Right Movements in Sweden". Television & New Media. 22 (2): 147–165. doi:10.1177/1527476420982234. ISSN 1527-4764.
• Bennett, Tom (10 April 2019). "Understanding the Alt-Right's Growing Fascination with 'Eco-Fascism'". Vice. Archived from the original on 28 November 2020. Retrieved 19 January 2020.
• Biehl, Janet; Staudenmaier, Peter (1996). Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience. AK Press. ISBN 978-1873176733.
• Blumenfeld, Jacob (31 January 2022). "Climate barbarism: Adapting to a wrong world". Constellations. 30 (2): 162–178. doi:10.1111/1467-8675.12596.
• Bookchin, Murray (Summer 1987). "Social Ecology Versus Deep Ecology: A Challenge for the Ecology Movement". Green Perspectives: Newsletter of the Green Program Project. No. 4–5. Archived from the original on 24 May 2022.
• Brown, Garrett W.; McLean, Iain; McMillan, Alistair (2018). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations. Oxford University Press. pp. 381–. ISBN 978-0-19-254584-8.
• Campion, Kristy (2021). "Defining Ecofascism: Historical Foundations and Contemporary Interpretations in the Extreme Right". Terrorism and Political Violence. 35 (4). Routledge: 926–944. doi:10.1080/09546553.2021.1987895. S2CID 240485323.
• Campion, Kristy; Phillips, Justin (2023). "The exclusivist claims of Pacific ecofascists: Visual environmental communication by far right groups in Australia and New Zealand". In Fortchner, Bernhard (ed.). Visualising Far Right Environments: Communication and the politics of nature. Global Studies of the Far Right. Manchester University Press. pp. 98–139. doi:10.7765/9781526165398.00009. ISBN 978-1-52-616539-8.
• Cawood, Helen; Vuuren, Xany Jansen Van (31 December 2022). "Reconceptualising ecofascism in the Global South: an ecosemiotic approach to problematising marginalised nostalgic narratives". Acta Academica. 54 (3): 81–107. doi:10.18820/24150479/aa54i3/5. ISSN 0587-2405. S2CID 255367711.
• Chalecki, Elizabeth L. (26 July 2023). "Environmental Terrorism Twenty Years On". Global Environmental Politics. 23. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 1–9. doi:10.1162/glep_a_00728. ISSN 1526-3800. S2CID 260726497.
• Connolly, Kate (28 April 2012). "German far-right extremists tap into green movement for support". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 8 March 2016. Retrieved 2 December 2021.
• Corcione, Adryan (30 April 2020). "Eco-fascism: What It Is, Why It's Wrong, and How to Fight It". Teen Vogue. Archived from the original on 21 June 2020. Retrieved 22 December 2021.
• Dannemann, Hauke (2023). "Experiments of authoritarian sustainability: Völkisch settlers and far-right prefiguration of a climate behemoth". Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy. 19 (1): 1–16. Bibcode:2023SSPP...1975468D. doi:10.1080/15487733.2023.2175468. S2CID 257014695.
• Darby, Luke (7 August 2019a). "What Is Eco-Fascism, the Ideology Behind Attacks in El Paso and Christchurch?". GQ Magazine. Archived from the original on 6 August 2020. Retrieved 28 August 2020.
• Darian-Smith, Eve (2022). Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-1503631465.
• Darwish, Maria (November 2018). Green neo-Nazism: Examining the intersection of masculinity, far-right extremism and environmentalism in the Nordic Resistance Movement (PDF) (MPhil). University of Oslo. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 October 2023.
• Ditfurth, Jutta (1992). Feuer in die Herzen. Plädoyer für eine ökologische linke Opposition [Fire in the heart. Plea for an ecological left opposition] (in German). Hamburg. ISBN 978-3612261571.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Drèze, Jean (14 February 2020). "The Revolt of the Upper Castes". Caste: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion. 1 (1). Brandeis University: 229–236. doi:10.26812/caste.v1i1.44. ISSN 2639-4928.
• Dyett, Jordan; Thomas, Cassidy (2019). "Overpopulation Discourse: Patriarchy, Racism, and the Specter of Ecofascism". Perspectives on Global Development and Technology. 18 (1–2): 205–224. doi:10.1163/15691497-12341514. S2CID 159217740.
• Earthworks (25 July 2022a). "Earthworks Disavows Eco-fascism". Earthworks. Archived from the original on 23 June 2023. Retrieved 12 October 2023.
• Earthworks (28 October 2022b). "Eco-fascism: a tangible & present danger". Earthworks. Archived from the original on 23 June 2023. Retrieved 12 October 2023.
• Farrell-Molloy, Joshua; Macklin, Graham (15 June 2022). "Ted Kaczynski, Anti-Technology Radicalism and Eco-Fascism". icct.nl. International Centre for Counter-Terrorism. Archived from the original on 16 June 2022. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
• Fernández, Iván Escobar; Hart, Heidi (6 June 2023). "What's under green? Eco-populism and eco-fascism in the climate crisis". Journal of Populism Studies. 17 (3): 1–17. doi:10.55271/JPS000117. S2CID 258933201. Archived from the original on 6 October 2023.
• Fine, Julia C.; Love-Nichols, Jessica (9 September 2021). "We Are (Not) the Virus: Competing Online Discourses of Human-Environment Interaction in the Era of COVID-19". Environmental Communication. 17 (3): 293–312. doi:10.1080/17524032.2021.1982744. S2CID 244615307.
• Forchtner, Bernhard (21 August 2019). "Eco-Fascism Encountered: The Natural Environment in Justifications of Terrorist Violence in the Christchurch Mosque Shooting and the El Paso Shooting". Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right. Archived from the original on 23 August 2019.
• Forchtner, Bernhard; Lubarda, Balša (25 June 2020). "Eco-fascism 'proper': the curious case of Greenline Front". Center for Analysis of the Radical Right. Archived from the original on 30 June 2020. Retrieved 18 April 2022.
• Forchtner, Bernhard; Lubarda, Balša (2023). "Scepticisms and beyond? A comprehensive portrait of climate change communication by the far right in the European Parliament". Environmental Politics. 32 (1): 43–68. Bibcode:2023EnvPo..32...43F. doi:10.1080/09644016.2022.2048556. S2CID 247718730.
• Frazier, Ian (19 August 2019). "When W. E. B. Du Bois Made a Laughingstock of a White Supremacist". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Archived from the original on 7 November 2019. Retrieved 29 October 2019.
• van Gerven Oei, Vincent W. J. (2012). "Anders Breivik: On Copying the Obscure". In Allen, Jamie; Boshears, Paul; Garnicnig, Bernhard; van Gerven Oei, Vincent W. J.; Groves, A. Staley; Jenkins, Nico (eds.). Continent. Year 1: A Selection of Issues 1.1–1.4. Punctum Books. pp. 81–97. JSTOR jj.2353991.9.
• Gillan, Michael (March 2002). "Refugees or Infiltrators? The Bharatiya Janata Party and "Illegal" Migration from Bangladesh". Asian Studies Review. 26 (1): 73–95. doi:10.1080/10357820208713331. S2CID 146522066.
• Griffin, Roger (2008). "Fascism". In Taylor, Bron (ed.). Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. Continuum International Publishing Group. pp. 639–644.
• Guenther, Genevieve (10 March 2023). "The Epic of Survival: The Climate Crisis and Heroic Form". TDR. 67 (1). Cambridge University Press: 16–20. doi:10.1017/S1054204322000764. S2CID 257430519.
• Guidi, Ruxandra (27 December 2022). "Eco-Fascism, Uncovered". Sierra Club. Archived from the original on 3 May 2023. Retrieved 12 October 2023.
• Hafez, Farid (26 August 2019). "The Manifesto of the El Paso Terrorist". Bridge. Georgetown University. Archived from the original on 26 September 2023. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
• Hancock, Elaina (7 September 2022). "A Darker Shade of Green: Understanding Ecofascism". UConn Today. Archived from the original on 9 June 2023. Retrieved 28 September 2023.
• Hanrahan, Jake (1 August 2018). "Inside the Unabomber's odd and furious online revival". Wired UK. Archived from the original on 1 April 2019. Retrieved 11 May 2021.
• Harkov, Lahav; Joffre, Tzvi (5 October 2020). "Sweden may ban 'racist organizations' after neo-Nazi Yom Kippur campaign". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on 15 October 2023. Retrieved 15 May 2021.
• Harris, Jerry (2022). "The Dangers of Ecofascism". Perspectives on Global Development and Technology. 21 (5–6): 451–465. doi:10.1163/15691497-12341642. S2CID 257679090.
• Hassan, Patrick (2021). "Inherit the Wasteland: Ecofascism & Environmental Collapse" (PDF). Ethics & the Environment. 26 (2). Indiana University Press: 51–71. doi:10.2979/ethicsenviro.26.2.03. S2CID 244164733. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 October 2023.
• Hickman, Leo (22 October 2009a). "Nick Griffin's views on climate change and population can only be disdained on Question Time". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021. Retrieved 21 December 2021.
• Hoff, Aliya R. (20 June 2021). "Madison Grant (1865–1937)". The Embryo Project Encyclopedia. Arizona State University. Archived from the original on 2 June 2023. Retrieved 19 June 2023.
• Hughes, Brian; Jones, Dave; Amarasingam, Amarnath (2022). "Ecofascism: An Examination of the Far-Right/Ecology Nexus in the Online Space". Terrorism and Political Violence. 34 (5): 997–1023. doi:10.1080/09546553.2022.2069932. S2CID 249694409.
• Huq, Efadul; Mochida, Henry (30 March 2018). "The Rise of Environmental Fascism and the Securitization of Climate Change". Projections. MIT Press - Journals. doi:10.21428/6cb11bd5. S2CID 149901653.
• Hussein, Shakira (2022). "Surviving Climate Change and Ecofascism". Arts Access Victoria. Archived from the original on 8 November 2023. Retrieved 8 November 2023.
• Jaffrelot, Christophe (1999). The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics: 1925 to the 1990s: Strategies of Identity-building, Implantation and Mobilisation (with Special Reference to Central India). Penguin. pp. 25–30. ISBN 978-0-14-024602-5.
• Jones, Daniel (21 April 2020). "Greenshirts – The (Mis)use of Environmentalism by the Extreme Right". historyworkshop.org.uk. Archived from the original on 30 April 2020. Retrieved 21 December 2021.
• Kaati, Lisa; Cohen, Katie; Sarnecki, Hannah; Fernquist, Johan; Pelzer, Björn (21 December 2020). "Ekofascism. En studie av propaganda i digitala miljöer" [Ecofascism. A study of propaganda in digital environments] (in Swedish). Swedish Defence Research Agency. Archived from the original on 31 January 2021. Retrieved 26 December 2020.
• Kamel, Zachary; Lamoureux, Mack; Makuch, Ben (20 January 2020). "'Eco-fascist' Arm of Neo-Nazi Terror Group, The Base, Linked to Swedish Arson". Vice. Archived from the original on 10 November 2020. Retrieved 22 December 2021.
• Knights, Sam (16 November 2020). "The Climate Movement Must Be Ready To Challenge Rising Right-Wing Environmentalism". Jacobin. Archived from the original on 4 May 2023. Retrieved 3 October 2023.
• Koziol, Michael (15 March 2019). "Christchurch shooter's manifesto reveals". Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 28 October 2021.
• Krishna, Chaitanya; Noorani, A. G. (2003). Fascism in India: Faces, Fangs, and Facts. Manak Publications. p. 4. ISBN 978-81-7827-067-8. the archival evidence presented by Marzia Casolari conclusively shows how much the proponents of Hindutva admired European fascism; liberally borrowed from it and this influence continues even today.
• Leidig, Eviane (17 July 2020). "Hindutva as a variant of right-wing extremism". Patterns of Prejudice. 54 (3): 215–237. doi:10.1080/0031322X.2020.1759861. hdl:10852/84144. ISSN 0031-322X.
• Lennard, Natasha (5 August 2019). "The El Paso Shooter Embraced Eco-Fascism. We Can't Let the Far Right Co-Opt the Environmental Struggle". The Intercept. Archived from the original on 29 November 2019.
• Lynch, Breana (2022). Feminist Critiques of Ecofascist, Nativist Appropriations of Indigeneity since 2016 (M.A.).
• Macklin, Graham (1 June 2022). "The Extreme Right, Climate Change and Terrorism". Terrorism and Political Violence. 34 (5): 979–996. doi:10.1080/09546553.2022.2069928. hdl:10852/100988.
• Macklin, Graham; Bjørgo, Tore (2021). "Breivik's Long Shadow? The Impact of the July 22, 2011 Attacks on the Modus Operandi of Extreme-right Lone Actor Terrorists" (PDF). Perspectives on Terrorism. 15 (3): 14–36. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 September 2021.
• Malik, Yogendra K.; Singh, V.B. (April 1992). "Bharatiya Janata Party: An Alternative to the Congress (I)?". Asian Survey. 32 (4): 318–336. doi:10.2307/2645149. JSTOR 2645149.
• Manavis, Sarah (21 September 2018). "Eco-fascism: The ideology marrying environmentalism and white supremacy thriving online". New Statesman. Archived from the original on 5 November 2021. Retrieved 19 January 2020.
• Molloy, Joshua (2 November 2022). "Understanding Eco-Fascism: A Thematic Analysis of the Eco-Fascist Subculture on Telegram". Global Network on Extremism & Technology. Archived from the original on 10 June 2023. Retrieved 26 November 2022.
• Moore, Sam; Roberts, Alex (2022a). The Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Right. Polity Press. ISBN 978-1-5095-4537-7.
• Naustdalslid, Jon (2023). "The Anti-democratic Legacy and the Dream of Eco-Dictatorship". The Climate Threat. Crisis for Democracy?. SpringerLink. pp. 49–64. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-34471-8_3. ISBN 978-3-031-34471-8.
• Noack, Rick (6 August 2019). "Christchurch endures as extremist touchstone, as investigators probe suspected El Paso manifesto". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 15 August 2019.
• Oksa, Juha (August 2005). Antihumanismista antroposentrismiin. Ympäristöfilosofia ja ihmisen maailmassa oleminen [From antihumanism to anthropocentrism. Environmental philosophy and human being in the world] (PDF) (Master's) (in Finnish). Tampere University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 March 2019. Retrieved 19 February 2023.
• O'Neill, Tara (1 November 2022). A Right-Wing Extremism: Alienation and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Australia (MRes). Macquarie University. Archived from the original on 6 October 2023. Retrieved 5 October 2023.
• Orton, David (February 2000). "Ecofascism: What is It? A Left Biocentric Analysis". home.ca.inter.net. Archived from the original on 5 December 2002. Retrieved 29 June 2014.
• Patin, Katia (19 January 2021). "The rise of eco-fascism". Archived from the original on 19 January 2021. Retrieved 22 December 2021.
• Pearse, John (30 January 2015). "Breivik and Kaczynski". Investigating Terrorism: Current Political, Legal and Psychological Issues. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 457–465. ISBN 978-1119994169.
• Phelan, Matthew (22 October 2018). "The Menace of Eco-Fascism". New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on 21 February 2020. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
• Protopapadakis, Evangelos D. (2014). "Environmental Ethics and Linkola's Ecofascism: An Ethics Beyond Humanism" (PDF). Frontiers of Philosophy in China. 9 (4): 586–601. doi:10.3868/s030-003-014-0048-3. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 August 2021.
• Protopapadakis, Evangelos D. (2016). "Earth as a Life-raft and Ethics as the Raft's Axe". In Deretić, Irina; Sorgner, Stefan Lorenz (eds.). From Humanism to Meta-, Post- and Transhumanism?. Vol. 8. Peter Lang Edition. pp. 227–242. ----- [1]
• Purdy, Jedediah (2015). "Environmentalism's Racist History". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 22 November 2015. Retrieved 15 August 2022.
• "Finnish court bans neo-Nazi group". Reuters. 30 November 2017. Archived from the original on 30 November 2017. Retrieved 15 May 2021.
• Richards, Imogen; Jones, Callum; Brinn, Gearóid (2022). "Eco-Fascism Online: Conceptualizing Far-Right Actors' Response to Climate Change on Stormfront". Studies in Conflict & Terrorism: 1–27. doi:10.1080/1057610X.2022.2156036. S2CID 254904323.
• Rose, Steve (8 June 2022). "A deadly ideology: how the 'great replacement theory' went mainstream". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 31 July 2022.
• Ross, Alexander Reid; Bevensee, Emmi (July 2020). Confronting the Rise of Eco-Fascism Means Grappling with Complex Systems (PDF) (Report). CARR Research Insight. Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 February 2023.
• Rueda, Daniel (2020). "Neoecofascism: The Example of the United States". Journal for the Study of Radicalism. 14 (2): 95–125. doi:10.14321/jstudradi.14.2.0095. S2CID 226725994 – via Project MUSE.
• Saltmarsh, Chris (16 April 2022). "How Real Is the Threat of Eco-Fascism?". Tribune Magazine. Archived from the original on 10 March 2023. Retrieved 26 November 2023.
• Seshia, Shaila (November 1998). "Divide and Rule in Indian Party Politics: The Rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party". Asian Survey. 38 (11): 1036–1050. doi:10.2307/2645684. JSTOR 2645684.
• Shapiro, Ari; Ozug, Matt; Morell, Casey (1 April 2022). "The far-right and environmentalism overlap is bigger than you think — and growing". NPR. Archived from the original on 13 April 2023. Retrieved 26 November 2023.
• Shifflett, Lantz (2021). Ecofascist "Snakeoil" and the Imperative of Racializing Environmental Justice for the 21st Century: A Burkean Rhetorical Criticism of Contemporary Criticism of Contemporary Ecofascist Manifestos (Masters). Madison University.
• Smith, Jacob Kenton (May 2021). The (Re)Emergence of Eco-Fascism: White-Nationalism, Sacrifice, and Proto-Fascism in the Circulation of Ecological Far-Right Digital Rhetoric (MA). Baylor University. Archived from the original (pdf) on 1 October 2023.
• Smyth, Richard (3 April 2019). "Nature writing's fascist roots". New Statesman. Archived from the original on 3 July 2022. Retrieved 6 October 2023.
• Sparrow, Jeff (29 November 2019). "Eco-fascists and the ugly fight for 'our way of life' as the environment disintegrates". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 1 December 2019. Retrieved 22 December 2021.
• Starr, Michael (15 May 2022). "'I wish all Jews to hell' -Buffalo shooter was fascist white supremacist". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on 3 July 2022.
• Staudenmaier, Peter (13 November 2003). "Green historian to Brandis: My Work's Been Abused". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 22 September 2019. Retrieved 9 October 2010.
• Staudenmaier, Peter (2004). "Fascism". In Krech III, Shepard; McNeill, John; Merchant, Carolyn (eds.). Encyclopedia of World Environmental History. Routledge. pp. 517–521. ISBN 0-415-93733-7. Archived from the original on 2 November 2023.
• Szenes, Eszter (Summer 2021). "Neo-Nazi Environmentalism: The Linguistic Construction of Ecofascism in a Nordic Resistance Movement Manifesto". Journal for Deradicalization. 27: 146–192. ISSN 2363-9849.
• Szenes, Eszter (16 November 2023). Building resiliency to ecofascist radicalisation: Preventing an emerging threat (PDF) (Report). International Centre for Counter-Terrorism. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 November 2023. Retrieved 22 November 2023.
• Taguieff, Pierre-André (2015). La revanche du nationalisme: Néopopulistes et xénophobes à l'assaut de l'Europe [The revenge of nationalism: Neopopulists and xenophobes attack Europe] (in French). Presses Universitaires de France. ISBN 978-2-13-072950-1.
• Taylor, Blair (2020). "Alt-right ecology: Ecofascism and far-right environmentalism in the United States". In Forchtner, Bernhard (ed.). The Far Right and the Environment: Politics, Discourse and Communication. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-10404-3.
• Taylor, Bron; Zimmerman, Michael E. (2008). "Deep Ecology". In Taylor, Bron R. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. Vol. 1. London, UK: Continuum. pp. 456–460. ISBN 978-1-44-112278-0. Archived from the original on 17 March 2023 – via Google Books.
• Thomas, Cassidy; Gosink, Elhom (2021). "At the Intersection of Eco-Crises, Eco-Anxiety, and Political Turbulence: A Primer on Twenty-First Century Ecofascism". Perspectives on Global Development and Technology. 20 (1–2). Brill: 30–54. doi:10.1163/15691497-12341581. S2CID 233663634.
• Tigue, Kristoffer (27 May 2022). "How Mass Shootings, Ecofascism and Climate Change Got Tied Together". Inside Climate News. Archived from the original on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 26 November 2022.
• Tilley, Lisa; Ajl, Max (2022). "Eco-socialism will be anti-eugenic or it will be nothing: Towards equal exchange and the end of population". Politics. 43 (2). Political Studies Association: 201–218. doi:10.1177/0263395722107532 (inactive 12 September 2024). Archived from the original on 6 May 2022.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of September 2024 (link)
• Tucker, Jeffrey A. (17 March 2019). "The Founding Father of Eco-Fascism". American Institute for Economic Research. Archived from the original on 20 October 2020. Retrieved 22 December 2021.
• Tynan, Aidan (2023). "Sum deorc wyrd gathers: Dark Ecology, Brexit Ecocriticism, and the Far Right". In Parham, John (ed.). The Literature and Politics of the Environment. Essays and Studies. Vol. 76. D. S. Brewer. pp. 89–108. ISBN 978-1-805-43074-2. ISSN 0071-1357.
• Walsh, Alistair (19 May 2022). "Eco-fascism: The greenwashing of the far right". Deutsche Welle. Archived from the original on 22 September 2023. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
• Weissmann, Jordan (15 March 2019). "What the Christchurch Killer's Manifesto Tells Us". Slate. Archived from the original on 31 July 2019. Retrieved 16 September 2019.
• Weymouth, Adam (21 April 2021). "Ecofascism: The dark side of environmentalism". Archived from the original on 29 July 2021. Retrieved 22 December 2021. Madison Grant, the prominent US conservationist, who was instrumental in the creation of the first national parks, wrote a book called The Passing of the Great Race which Hitler described as his "bible."
• Wilson, Jason (19 March 2019). "Eco-fascism is undergoing a revival in the fetid culture of the extreme right". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2 June 2019. Retrieved 19 January 2020.
• Wilkinson, Ruth (6 April 2020). "Humanity isn't a disease – but ecofascism is". Global Justice Now. Archived from the original on 26 May 2022. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
• Yakushko, Oksana; De Francisco, Alysia (2022). "The (Re) Emergence of Eco-Fascism: A History of White-Nationalism And Xenophobic Scapegoating". In Akande, Adebowale (ed.). Handbook of Racism, Xenophobia, and Populism: All Forms of Discrimination in the United States and Around the Globe. Springer. pp. 457–480. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-13559-0. ISBN 978-3-031-13559-0. S2CID 254485853.
• Zimmerman, Michael E. (4 June 2004). "Ecofascism: An Enduring Temptation". In Zimmerman, Michael E.; Callicott, J. Baird; Clark, John; Warren, Karen J.; Klaver, Irene J. (eds.). Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology (4 ed.). Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0131126954.
• Zimmerman, Michael E. (2008). "Ecofascism". In Taylor, Bron R. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. Vol. 1. London, UK: Continuum. pp. 531–532. ISBN 978-1-44-112278-0. Archived from the original on 20 April 2021 – via Google Books.

Further reading

• Anson, April; Banerjee, Anindita (1 February 2023). "Green Walls: Everyday Ecofascism and the Politics of Proximity". boundary 2. 50 (1): 137–164. doi:10.1215/01903659-10192145.
• Krzeminski, Jessica (10 October 2019). "Whose Utopia? American Ecofascism Since the 1880s". Edge Effects. Archived from the original on 3 December 2023.
• Mitchell, Natasha (29 July 2022). "Ecofascism – are far-right extremists the new environmentalists?". ABC. Archived from the original on 8 November 2023. Retrieved 16 October 2023.
• Richards, Imogen; Jones, Callum; Brinn, Gearóid (2022). "Eco-Fascism Online: Conceptualizing Far-Right Actors' Response to Climate Change on Stormfront". Studies in conflict and terrorism: 1–27. doi:10.1080/1057610X.2022.2156036.
• Wall, Derek. "Darker shades of Green". Red Pepper. Archived from the original on 30 November 2012.
• White, Micah (16 September 2010). "An alternative to the new wave of ecofascism". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 31 October 2016.

newsources

The Rise of the Far-Right: From Climate Denial to Eco-Fascism - YouTube

Violent Environments Series - Edge Effects

• Think Sunak’s anti-refugee stance is bad? Just wait till the climate crisis truly ravages poorer countries
• “Ghastly Whiteness” Ecofascism and Indigenous Ecofeminism on Cogewea's Frontier - LINK
• "Master Metaphor": Environmental Apocalypse and the Settler States of Emergency
• The Dangers of Ecofascism
• The Ideological Susceptibility of ‘Nature’: How Common-sense Notions of ‘Nature’ are Open to Far-Right Capture in Informal Environmental Education
• Ringing the Existential Alarm: Exploring BirthStrike for Climate
• ECO-FASCISM ENCOUNTERED/T RESURGENCE: THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT IN JUSTIFICATIONS OF TERRORIST VIOLENCE IN THE CHRISTCHURCH MOSQUE SHOOTING AND THE EL PASO SHOOTING
• There is a lot of confusion about what the term "ecofascism" means and how environmentalism has historically had some connections to white supremacy, nativism, and far-right politics, so here is a reading list of useful resources to understand this complicated subject. *thread*
• Readings on ecofascism and far-right ecologism
• ECOFASCISM BOOK KEYWORDS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
• Neoecofascism: The Example of the United States
• Green Walls: Everyday Ecofascism and the Politics of Proximity
• From ‘socialism or barbarism to ‘ecosocialism or barbarism’: climate barbarism, ecofascism, and ecological civilization
• Between Breivik and PEGIDA: the absence of ideologues and leaders on the contemporary European far right: Patterns of Prejudice: Vol 51, No 2
• Investigating Terrorism: Current Political, Legal and Psychological Issues - John Pearse
• The Mystery of the Lone Wolf Killer: Anders Behring Breivik and the Threat ... - Unni Turrettini
• Terrorist Target Selection The Case of Anders Behring Breivik on JSTOR
• Glory-to-Breivik-The-Russian-Far-Right-and-the-2011-Norway-Attacks.pdf (researchgate.net)
• The Collective Nature of Lone Wolf Terrorism: Anders Behring Breivik and the Anti-Islamic Social Movement: Terrorism and Political Violence: Vol 26, No 5 (tandfonline.com)
• Microsoft Word - Billing Stalne (integral-review.org)
• What Drove Anders Breivik? - Barry Richards, 2014 (sagepub.com)
• Monster or Hero? Far-right Responses to Anders Behring Breivik and the July 22, 2011 Terrorist Attacks on JSTOR
• Barbarian: Explorations of a Western Concept in Theory, Literature, and the Arts
• Our Future: Ecosocialism or Ecofascism
• Nation, nature, purity: extreme-right biodiversity in Germany
• The environment: One more reason to keep immigrants out?
• To Fight Fascism, We Need An Ecosocialist Green New Deal
• A Slippery Slope to Ecofascism
• Memeing a conspiracy theory: On the biopolitical compression of the great replacement conspiracy theories
• The rise of real eco-fascism
• Fascism - Peter Staudenmaier
• Green Rhetoric in Blackshirts: Italian Fascism and the Environment
• Natural Exceptions to Green Sovereignty? American Environmentalism and the “Immigration Problem"
• Ecological Values and Western Political Traditions: From Anarchism to Fascism
• Myth and EnvironmentalismArts of Resilience for a Damaged Planet
• Climate change as superordinate curriculum?
• Eco-socialism will be anti-eugenic or it will be nothing: Towards equal exchange and the end of population - [2]
• Anger in response to climate breakdown
• At the intersection of climate justice and reproductive justice
• Environmentalism and ecologism
• Inherit the Wasteland: Ecofascism & Environmental Collapse
• ‘Our Community Could Start Our Own Traditions’: The Commingling of Religion, Politics and the Folkloresque in a Far-Right Groupuscule - Andrew Fergus Wilson, Folklore and Nation in Britain and Ireland Edited by Matthew Cheeseman and Carina Hart
• Blood, Blots and Belonging: English Heathens and Their (Ab)uses of Folklore - Kate Smith, Folklore and Nation in Britain and Ireland Edited by Matthew Cheeseman and Carina Hart
• Experiments of authoritarian sustainability: Völkisch settlers and far-right prefiguration of a climate behemoth
• Resisting Racist Fantasies in Online Discourse: Eco-Fascism & the Dangers of Capitalist Alienation, Sipe
• Becoming authoritarian for the greater good? Authoritarian attitudes in context of the societal crises of COVID-19 and climate change
• “Hope dies – Action begins”: Examining the postnatural futurities and green nationalism of Extinction Rebellion
• []
• []
• []
• []
• []
• []
• []

Deep ecology

Deep ecology is an environmental philosophy that promotes the inherent worth of all living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs, and the restructuring of modern human societies in accordance with such ideas.

Deep ecology argues that the natural world is a complex of relationships in which the existence of organisms is dependent on the existence of others within ecosystems. It argues that non-vital human interference with or destruction of the natural world poses a threat therefore not only to humans but to all organisms constituting the natural order.

Deep ecology's core principle is the belief that the living environment as a whole should be respected and regarded as having certain basic moral and legal rights to live and flourish, independent of its instrumental benefits for human use. Deep ecology is often framed in terms of the idea of a much broader sociality; it recognizes diverse communities of life on Earth that are composed not only through biotic factors but also, where applicable, through ethical relations, that is, the valuing of other beings as more than just resources. It is described as "deep" because it is regarded as looking more deeply into the reality of humanity's relationship with the natural world, arriving at philosophically more profound conclusions than those of mainstream environmentalism. The movement does not subscribe to anthropocentric environmentalism (which is concerned with conservation of the environment only for exploitation by and for human purposes), since deep ecology is grounded in a different set of philosophical assumptions. Deep ecology takes a holistic view of the world humans live in and seeks to apply to life the understanding that the separate parts of the ecosystem (including humans) function as a whole. The philosophy addresses core principles of different environmental and green movements and advocates a system of environmental ethics advocating wilderness preservation, non-coercive policies encouraging human population decline, and simple living.

Origins

In his original 1973 deep ecology paper, Arne Næss stated that he was inspired by ecologists who were studying the ecosystems throughout the world. Naess also made clear that he felt the real motivation to 'free nature' was spiritual and intuitive. 'Your motivation comes from your total view or your philosophical, religious opinions,' he said, 'so that you feel, when you are working in favour of free nature, you are working for something within your self, that ... demands changes. So you are motivated from what I call ‘deeper premises’.

In a 2014 essay, environmentalist George Sessions identified three people active in the 1960s whom he considered foundational to the movement: author and conservationist Rachel Carson, environmentalist David Brower, and biologist Paul R. Ehrlich. Sessions considers the publication of Carson's 1962 seminal book Silent Spring as the beginning of the contemporary deep ecology movement. Næss also considered Carson the originator of the movement, stating "Eureka, I have found it" upon encountering her writings.

Other events in the 1960s which have been proposed as foundational to the movement are the formation of Greenpeace, and the images of the Earth floating in space taken by the Apollo astronauts.

Principles

Deep ecology proposes an embracing of ecological ideas and environmental ethics (that is, proposals about how humans should relate to nature). It is also a social movement based on a holistic vision of the world. Deep ecologists hold that the survival of any part is dependent upon the well-being of the whole, and criticise the narrative of human supremacy, which they say has not been a feature of most cultures throughout human evolution. Deep ecology presents an eco-centric (earth-centred) view, rather than the anthropocentric (human-centred) view, developed in its most recent form by philosophers of the Enlightenment, such as Newton, Bacon, and Descartes. Proponents of deep ecology oppose the narrative that man is separate from nature, is in charge of nature, or is the steward of nature, or that nature exists as a resource to be freely exploited. They cite the fact that indigenous peoples under-exploited their environment and retained a sustainable society for thousands of years, as evidence that human societies are not necessarily destructive by nature. They believe that the current materialist paradigm must be replaced - as Naess pointed out, this involves more than merely getting rid of capitalism and the concept of economic growth, or 'progress', that is critically endangering the biosphere. 'We need changes in society such that reason and emotion support each other,' he said. '... not only a change in a technological and economic system, but a change that touches all the fundamental aspects of industrial societies. This is what I mean by a change of 'system'. Deep ecologists believe that the damage to natural systems sustained since the industrial revolution now threatens social collapse and possible extinction of humans, and are striving to bring about the kind of ideological, economic and technological changes Naess mentioned. Deep ecology claims that ecosystems can absorb damage only within certain parameters, and contends that civilization endangers the biodiversity of the earth. Deep ecologists have suggested that the human population must be substantially reduced, but advocate a gradual decrease in population rather than any apocalyptic solution In a 1982 interview, Arne Naess commented that a global population of 100 million (0.1 billion) would be desirable. However, others have argued that a population of 1 - 2 billion would be compatible with the deep ecological worldview. Deep ecology eschews traditional left wing-right wing politics, but is viewed as radical ('Deep Green') in its opposition to capitalism, and its advocacy of an ecological paradigm. Unlike conservation, deep ecology does not advocate the controlled preservation of the landbase, but rather 'non-interference' with natural diversity except for vital needs. In citing 'humans' as being responsible for excessive environmental destruction, deep ecologists actually refer to 'humans within civilization, especially industrial civilization', accepting the fact that the vast majority of humans who have ever lived did not live in environmentally destructive societies – the excessive damage to the biosphere has been sustained mostly over the past hundred years.

In 1985, Bill Devall and George Sessions summed up their understanding of the concept of deep ecology with the following eight points:

• The well-being of human and nonhuman life on earth is of intrinsic value irrespective of its value to humans.
• The diversity of life-forms is part of this value.
• Humans have no right to reduce this diversity except to satisfy vital human needs
• The flourishing of human and nonhuman life is compatible with a substantial decrease in human population.
• Humans have interfered with nature to a critical level already, and interference is worsening.
• Policies must be changed, affecting current economic, technological and ideological structures.
• This ideological change should focus on an appreciation of the quality of life rather than adhering to an increasingly high standard of living.
• All those who agree with the above tenets have an obligation to implement them.

Development

YPJ members in a greenhouse farm, for ecological cooperative farming in Rojava (AANES)

The phrase "Deep Ecology" first appeared in a 1973 article by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss. Næss referred to "biospherical egalitarianism-in principle", which he explained was "an intuitively clear and obvious value axiom. Its restriction to humans is … anthropocentrism with detrimental effects upon the life quality of humans themselves... The attempt to ignore our dependence and to establish a master-slave role has contributed to the alienation of man from himself." Næss added that from a deep ecology point of view "the right of all forms [of life] to live is a universal right which cannot be quantified. No single species of living being has more of this particular right to live and unfold than any other species". As Bron Taylor and Michael Zimmerman have recounted,

a key event in the development of deep ecology was the "Rights of Non-Human Nature" conference held at a college in Claremont, California in 1974 [which] drew many of those who would become the intellectual architects of deep ecology. These included George Sessions who, like Naess, drew on Spinoza's pantheism, later co-authoring Deep Ecology - [Living as if Nature Mattered] with Bill Devall; Gary Snyder, whose remarkable, Pulitzer prize-winning Turtle Island proclaimed the value of place-based spiritualities, indigenous cultures, and animistic perceptions, ideas that would become central within deep ecology subcultures; and Paul Shepard, who in The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game, and subsequent works such as Nature and Madness and Coming Home to the Pleistocene, argued that foraging societies were ecologically superior to and emotionally healthier than agricultur[al societies]. Shepard and Snyder especially provided a cosmogony that explained humanity's fall from a pristine, nature paradise. Also extremely influential was Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, which viewed the desert as a sacred place uniquely able to evoke in people a proper, non-anthropocentric understanding of the value of nature. By the early 1970s the above figures put in place the intellectual foundations of deep ecology.

Sources

Old-growth forest in Biogradska Gora National Park, Montenegro

Deep ecology is an eco-philosophy derived from intuitive ethical principles. It does not claim to be a science, although it is based generally on the new physics, which, in the early 20th century, undermined the reductionist approach and the notion of objectivity, demonstrating that humans are an integral part of nature; this is a common concept always held by primal peoples. Devall and Sessions, however, note that the work of many ecologists has encouraged the adoption of an "ecological consciousness", quoting environmentalist Aldo Leopold's view that such a consciousness "changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land community to plain member and citizen of it." Though some detractors assert that deep ecology is based on the discredited idea of the "balance of nature", deep ecologists have made no such claim. They do not dispute the theory that human cultures can have a benevolent effect on the landbase, only the idea of the control of nature, or human supremacy, which is the central pillar of the industrial paradigm. The tenets of deep ecology state that humans have no right to interfere with natural diversity except for vital needs: the distinction between "vital" and "other needs" cannot be drawn precisely. Deep ecologists reject any mechanical or computer model of nature, and see the earth as a living organism, which should be treated and understood accordingly.

Arne Næss uses Baruch Spinoza as a source, particularly his notion that everything that exists is part of a single reality. Others have copied Næss in this, including Eccy de Jonge and Brenden MacDonald.

Aspects

Environmental education

In 2010, Richard Kahn promoted the movement of ecopedagogy, proposing using radical environmental activism as an educational principle to teach students to support "earth democracy" which promotes the rights of animals, plants, fungi, algae and bacteria. The biologist Dr. Stephan Harding has developed the concept of "holistic science", based on principles of ecology and deep ecology. In contrast with materialist, reductionist science, holistic science studies natural systems as a living whole. He writes:

We encourage … students to use [their] sense of belonging to an intelligent universe (revealed by deep experience), for deeply questioning their fundamental beliefs, and for translating these beliefs into personal decisions, lifestyles and actions. The emphasis on action is important. This is what makes deep ecology a movement as much as a philosophy.

Spirituality

Deep ecologist and physicist Frijof Capra has said that '[Deep] ecology and spirituality are fundamentally connected because deep ecological awareness is, ultimately, spiritual awareness.'

Arne Naess commented that he was inspired by the work of Spinoza and Gandhi, both of whom based their values on grounds of religious feeling and experience. Though he regarded deep ecology as a spiritual philosophy, he explained that he was not a 'believer' in the sense of following any particular articles of religious dogma. ' ... it is quite correct to say that I have sometimes been called religious or spiritual, 'he said, 'because I believe that living creatures have an intrinsic worth of their own, and also that there are fundamental intuitions about what is unjust.'.

Næss criticised the Judeo-Christian tradition, stating the Bible's "arrogance of stewardship consists in the idea of superiority which underlies the thought that we exist to watch over nature like a highly respected middleman between the Creator and Creation". Næss further criticizes the reformation's view of creation as property to be put into maximum productive use.

However, Naess added that while he felt the word 'God' was 'too loaded with preconceived ideas', he accepted Spinoza's idea of God as 'immanent' - 'a single creative force'... 'constantly creating the world by being the creative force in Nature'. He did not, he said, 'exclude the possibility that Christian theological principles are true in a certain sense ...'.

Joanna Macy in "the Work that Reconnects" integrates Buddhist philosophy with a deep ecological viewpoint.

Criticisms

In certain texts, the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss, leader of the "Deep ecology" movement, opposes environmentalism and humanism, even proclaiming, in imitation of a famous formula of the Marquis de Sade, "Écologistes, encore un effort pour devenir anti-humanistes" ("Ecologists, another effort to become anti-humanists!"). The sentence is provocative and has been used a lot against Næss and his movement, however Næss is part here of a Heideggerian philosophical filiation which does not advocate any hatred of humans but rather a criticism of short-term anthropocentrism, calling to an enlargement of the moral community and not to the denigration of humans. He defended himself against it in the same text and elsewhere, affirming that he was in opposition to any form of "unlimited cult of life" : "As ecosophists, we must avoid making people believe that we say "yes!" to everything that comes from nature”.

Luc Ferry, in his anti-ecologist book Le Nouvel Ordre écologique published in 1992, particularly incriminated deep ecology as being an anti-humanist ideology bordering on Nazism. However, this reading appears superficial to the philosopher of ecology Fabrice Flipo, who, in 2014, poses the following question: "Is the deep ecology of Næss this threatening fundamentalism about which Ferry warned us, here are nearly 20 years?" It shows that Luc Ferry expressed himself on deep ecology by a priori and prejudice, without knowing the content. His conclusion is that the risks of ecological fundamentalism pointed out by Ferry may exist but that they are not carried by Næss, nor by the deep ecology.

Eurocentric bias

Guha and Martinez-Allier critique the four defining characteristics of deep ecology. First, because deep ecologists believe that environmental movements must shift from an anthropocentric to an ecocentric approach, they fail to recognize the two most fundamental ecological crises facing the world: overconsumption in the global north and increasing militarization. Second, deep ecology's emphasis on wilderness provides impetus for the imperialist yearning of the West. Third, deep ecology appropriates Eastern traditions, characterizes Eastern spiritual beliefs as monolithic, and denies agency to Eastern peoples. And fourth, because deep ecology equates environmental protection with wilderness preservation its radical elements are confined within the American wilderness preservationist movement.

While deep ecologists accept that overconsumption and militarization are major issues, they point out that the impulse to save wilderness is intuitive and has no connection with imperialism. This claim by Guha and Martinez-Allier, in particular, closely resembles statements made, for instance, by Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro declaring Brazil's right to cut down the Amazon Rainforest. 'The Amazon belongs to Brazil and European countries can mind their own business because they have already destroyed their own environment.' The inference is clearly that, since European countries have already destroyed their environment, Brazil also has the right to do so: deep ecological values should not apply to them, as they have not yet had their 'turn' at maximum economic growth.

With regard to 'appropriating spiritual beliefs' Arne Naess pointed out that the essence of deep ecology is the belief that 'all living creatures have their own intrinsic value, a value irrespective of the use they might have for mankind.' Naess stated that supporters of the deep ecology movement came from various different religious and spiritual traditions, and were united in this one belief, albeit basing it on various different values.

Knowledge of nonhuman interests

Animal rights activists state that for an entity to require intrinsic rights, it must have interests. Deep ecologists are criticised for insisting they can somehow understand the thoughts and interests of non-humans such as plants or protists, which they claim thus proves that non-human lifeforms have intelligence. For example, a single-celled bacteria might move towards a certain chemical stimulation, although such movement might be rationally explained, a deep ecologist might say that this was all invalid because according to his better understanding of the situation that the intention formulated by this particular bacteria was informed by its deep desire to succeed in life. One criticism of this belief is that the interests that a deep ecologist attributes to non-human organisms such as survival, reproduction, growth, and prosperity are really human interests. Deep ecologists refute this criticism by pointing out first that 'survival' 'reproduction' 'growth' and 'prosperity'(flourishing) are accepted attributes of all living organisms: 'to succeed in life', depending on how one defines 'success' could certainly be construed as the aim of all life. In addition, the plethora of recent work on mimesis. Thomas Nagel suggests, "[B]lind people are able to detect objects near them by a form of a sonar, using vocal clicks or taps of a cane. Perhaps if one knew what that was like, one could by extension imagine roughly what it was like to possess the much more refined sonar of a bat." Others such as David Abram have pointed out that consciousness is not specific to humans, but a property of the totality of the universe of which humans are a manifestation.

Deepness

When Arne Næss coined the term deep ecology, he compared it favourably with shallow ecology which he criticized for its utilitarian and anthropocentric attitude to nature and for its materialist and consumer-oriented outlook, describing its "central objective" as "the health and affluence of people in the developed countries." William D. Grey believes that developing a non-anthropocentric set of values is "a hopeless quest". He seeks an improved "shallow" view. Deep ecologists point out, however, that "shallow ecology" (resource management conservation) is counter-productive, since it serves mainly to support capitalism, the means through which industrial civilization destroys the biosphere. The eco-centric view thus only becomes 'hopeless' within the structures and ideology of civilization. Outside it, however, a non-anthropocentric world view has characterised most 'primal' cultures since time immemorial, and, in fact, obtained in many indigenous groups until the industrial revolution and after. Some cultures still hold this view today. As such, the eco-centric narrative is in not alien to humans, and may be seen as the normative ethos in human evolution. Grey's view represents the reformist discourse that deep ecology has rejected from the beginning.

Misanthropy

Social ecologist Murray Bookchin interpreted deep ecology as being misanthropic, due in part to the characterization of humanity by David Foreman, of the environmental advocacy group Earth First!, as a "pathological infestation on the Earth". Bookchin mentions that some, like Foreman, defend misanthropic measures such as organising the rapid genocide of most of humanity. In response, deep ecologists have argued that Foreman's statement clashes with the core narrative of deep ecology, the first tenet of which stresses the intrinsic value of both nonhuman and human life. Arne Naess suggested a slow decrease in human population over an extended period, not genocide.

Bookchin's second major criticism is that deep ecology fails to link environmental crises with authoritarianism and hierarchy. He suggests that deep ecologists fail to recognise the potential for humans to solve environmental issues. In response, deep ecologists have argued that industrial civilization, with its class hierarchy, is the sole source of the ecological crisis. The eco-centric worldview precludes any acceptance of social class or authority based on social status. Deep ecologists believe that since ecological problems are created by industrial civilization the only solution is the deconstruction of the culture itself.

Sciencism

Daniel Botkin concludes that although deep ecology challenges the assumptions of western philosophy, and should be taken seriously, it derives from a misunderstanding of scientific information and conclusions based on this misunderstanding, which are in turn used as justification for its ideology. It begins with an ideology and is political and social in focus. Botkin has also criticized Næss's assertion that all species are morally equal and his disparaging description of pioneering species. Deep ecologists counter this criticism by asserting that a concern with political and social values is primary, since the destruction of natural diversity stems directly from the social structure of civilization, and cannot be halted by reforms within the system. They also cite the work of environmentalists and activists such as Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, John Livingston, and others as being influential, and are occasionally critical of the way the science of ecology has been misused.

Utopianism

Eco-critic Jonathan Bate has called deep ecologists 'utopians', pointing out that 'utopia' actually means 'nowhere' and quoting Rousseau's claim that "the state of nature no longer exists and perhaps never did and probably never will." Bate asks how a planet crowded with cities

could possibly be returned to the state of nature? And ...who would want to return it there? ... Life in the state of nature, Thomas Hobbes reminded readers of Leviathan in 1650, is solitary, poor, ignorant, brutish and short. It may be necessary to critique the values of the Enlightenment, but to reject enlightenment altogether would be to reject justice, political liberty and altruism.

Bates' criticism rests partly on the idea that industrial civilization and the technics it depends on are themselves 'natural' because they are made by humans. Deep ecologists have indicated that the concept of technics being 'natural' and therefore 'morally neutral' is a delusion of industrial civilization: there can be nothing 'neutral' about nuclear weapons, for instance, whose sole purpose is large scale destruction. Historian Lewis Mumford, divides technology into 'democratic' and 'authoritarian' technics ('technics' includes both technical and cultural aspects of technology). While 'democratic' technics, available to small communities, may be neutral, 'authoritarian' technics, available only to large-scale, hierarchical, authoritarian, societies, are not. Such technics are not only unsustainable, but 'are driving planetary murder'. They need urgently to be abandoned, as supported by point #6 of the deep ecology platform.

With reference to the degree to which landscapes are natural, Peter Wohlleben draws a temporal line (roughly equivalent to the development of Mumford's 'authoritarian' technics) at the agricultural revolution, about 8000 BC, when "selective farming practices began to change species." This is also the time when the landscape began to be intentionally transformed into an ecosystem completely devoted to meeting human needs.

Concerning Hobbes's pronouncement on 'the state of nature', deep ecologists and others have commented that it is false and was made simply to legitimize the idea of a putative 'social contract' by which some humans are subordinate to others. There is no evidence that members of primal societies, employing 'democratic technics', lived shorter lives than those in civilization (at least before the 20th century); their lives were the opposite of solitary, since they lived in close-knit communities, and while 'poverty' is a social relation non-existent in sharing cultures, 'ignorant' and 'brutish' both equate to the term 'savage' used by colonials of primal peoples, referring to the absence of authoritarian technics in their cultures. Justice, political liberty and altruism are characteristic of egalitarian primal societies rather than civilization, which is defined by class hierarchies and is therefore by definition unjust, immoral, and lacking in altruism.

Links with other philosophies

Arne Naess stated that the main philosophical influence on his life and work was Spinoza. 'When I was seventeen I read Spinoza's 'Ethics' he said, '... I was inspired by [his] view of human nature or essence: our nature or essence is such that we are pleased at other's pleasure and feel sad about other's sadness. Kindness and love activate our nature; best of all, they activate all aspects of ourselves.'

Peter Singer critiques anthropocentrism and advocates for animals to be given rights. However, Singer has disagreed with deep ecology's belief in the intrinsic value of nature separate from questions of suffering. Zimmerman groups deep ecology with feminism and civil rights movements. Nelson contrasts it with ecofeminism. The links with animal rights are perhaps the strongest, as "proponents of such ideas argue that 'all life has intrinsic value'".

David Foreman, the co-founder of the radical direct-action movement Earth First!, has said he is an advocate for deep ecology. At one point Arne Næss also engaged in direct action when he chained himself to rocks in front of Mardalsfossen, a waterfall in a Norwegian fjord, in a successful protest against the building of a dam.

Some have linked the movement to green anarchism as evidenced in a compilation of essays titled Deep Ecology & Anarchism.

The object-oriented ontologist Timothy Morton has explored similar ideas in the books Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics (2009) and Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (2016).

Notable advocates of deep ecology

• David Abram
• Michael Asher
• Thomas Berry
• Wendell Berry
• Leonardo Boff
• Fritjof Capra
• Michael Dowd
• Charles Eisenstein
• Vivienne Elanta
• David Foreman
• Warwick Fox
• Chellis Glendinning
• Edward Goldsmith
• John Michael Greer
• Félix Guattari
• Paul Hawken
• Martin Heidegger
• Julia Butterfly Hill
• Derrick Jensen
• Lierre Keith
• Paul Kingsnorth
• Bernie Krause
• Satish Kumar
• Dolores LaChapelle
• Gilbert LaFreniere
• Pentti Linkola
• Joanna Macy
• Jerry Mander
• Freya Mathews
• W. S. Merwin
• Sergio Rossetti Morosini
• Peter Newman
• Helena Norberg-Hodge
• David Orton
• Val Plumwood
• Theodore Roszak
• Elena Sharoykina
• Paul Shepard
• Gary Snyder
• Timothy Sprigge
• Richard Sylvan
• Douglas Tompkins
• Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Oberon Zell-Ravenheart
• John Zerzan

See also

• Biocentrism (ethics)
• Biophilia hypothesis
• Biotic ethics
• Coupled human-environment system
• Earth liberation
• Ecocentrism
• Ecofascism
• Ecological civilization
• Ecosocialism
• Ecosophy
• Gaianism
• Intrinsic value (animal ethics)
• Negative population growth
• OpenAirPhilosophy
• Voluntary human extinction movement
• Hierarchy theory
• Scale (analytical tool)

References

Bibliography

• Devall, Bill; Sessions, George (1985). Deep Ecology. Gibbs M. Smith. ISBN 978-0-87905-247-8.
• Jensen, Derrick (2006). Endgame. Vol. 2: Resistance. Seven Stories Press. ISBN 978-1583227305.
• Næss, Arne (1989). Ecology, community and lifestyle: outline of an ecosophy. Translated by Rothenberg, D. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511525599. ISBN 0521344069. LCCN 88005068.
• Næss, Arne (2008). Life's Philosophy: Reason & Feeling in a Deeper World. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0820332529.

Additional sources

• Bender, F. L. (2003). The Culture of Extinction: Toward a Philosophy of Deep Ecology. Amherst, New York: Humanity Books.
• Katz, E.; Light, A. (2000). Beneath the Surface: Critical Essays in the Philosophy of Deep Ecology. et al. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
• LaChapelle, D. (1992). Sacred Land, Sacred Sex: Rapture of the Deep. Durango: Kivakí Press.
• Passmore, J. (1974). Man's Responsibility for Nature. London: Duckworth.
• Clark, John P. (2014). "What Is Living In Deep Ecology?". Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy. 30 (2): 157–183.
• Hawkins, Ronnie (2014). "Why Deep Ecology Had To Die". Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy. 30 (2): 206–273.
• Drengson, Alan. "The Deep Ecology Movement." The Green Majority, CIUT 89.5 FM, University of Toronto, 6 June 2008.

Further reading

• Gecevska, Valentina; Donev, Vancho; Polenakovik, Radmil (2016). "A Review Of Environmental Tools Towards Sustainable Development". Annals of the Faculty of Engineering Hunedoara - International Journal of Engineering. 14 (1): 147–152.
• Glasser, Harold, ed. (2005). The Selected Works of Arne Næss. Vol. 1–10. Springer. ISBN 1-4020-3727-9.. (review)
• Holy-Luczaj, Magdalena (2015). "Heidegger's Support For Deep Ecology Reexamined Once Again". Ethics & the Environment. 20 (1): 45–66. doi:10.2979/ethicsenviro.20.1.45. S2CID 141921083.
• Keulartz, Jozef 1998. Struggle for nature : a critique of radical ecology, London [etc.] : Routledge.
• Linkola, Pentti 2011. Can Life Prevail? UK: Arktos Media, 2nd Revised ed. ISBN 1907166637
• Marc R., Fellenz. "9. Ecophilosophy: Deep Ecology And Ecofeminism." The Moral Menagerie : Philosophy and Animal Rights. 158. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
• Orton, David (9 January 2000). "Deep Ecology and Animal Rights: A Discussion Paper". The Green Web.
• Sylvan, Richard (1985a). "A Critique of Deep Ecology, Part I". Radical Philosophy. 40: 2–12.
• Sylvan, Richard (1985b). "A Critique of Deep Ecology, Part II". Radical Philosophy. 41: 1–22.
• Tobias, Michael, ed. (1988) [1984]. Deep Ecology. Avant Books. ISBN 0-932238-13-0.

Primitive accumulation of capital

In Marxian economics and preceding theories, the problem of primitive accumulation (also called previous accumulation, original accumulation) of capital concerns the origin of capital, and therefore of how class distinctions between possessors and non-possessors came to be.

Adam Smith's account of primitive-original accumulation depicted a peaceful process, in which some workers laboured more diligently than others and gradually built up wealth, eventually leaving the less diligent workers to accept living wages for their labour. Karl Marx rejected such accounts as 'insipid childishness' for their omission of the role of violence, war, enslavement, and conquest in the historical accumulation of land and wealth. Marxist scholar David Harvey explains Marx's primitive accumulation as a process which principally "entailed taking land, say, enclosing it, and expelling a resident population to create a landless proletariat, and then releasing the land into the privatized mainstream of capital accumulation".

Naming and translations

The concept was initially referred to in various different ways, and the expression of an "accumulation" at the origin of capitalism began to appear with Adam Smith. Smith, writing The Wealth of Nations in his native English, spoke of a "previous" accumulation; Karl Marx, writing Das Kapital in German, reprised Smith's expression, by translating it to German as ursprünglich ("original, initial"); Marx's translators, in turn, rendered it into English as primitive. James Steuart, with his 1767 work, is considered by some scholars as the greatest classical theorist of primitive accumulation.

Myths of political economy

In disinterring the origins of capital, Marx felt the need to dispel what he felt were religious myths and fairy-tales about the origins of capitalism. Marx wrote:

This primitive accumulation plays in political economy about the same part as original sin in theology. Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin fell on the human race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of the past. In times long gone-by there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living. (...) Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly although they have long ceased to work. Such childishness is every day preached to us in the defence of property.

— Capital, Volume I, chapter 26

What must be explained is how the capitalist relations of production are historically established; in other words, how it comes about that means of production become privately owned and traded, and how capitalists can find workers on the labour market ready and willing to work for them, because they have no other means of livelihood (also referred to as the "reserve army of labour".)

Link with colonialism

At the same time as local obstacles to investment in manufactures are being overcome, and a unified national market is developing with a nationalist ideology, Marx sees a strong impulse to business development coming from world trade:

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the commercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a theatre. It begins with the revolt of the Netherlands from Spain, assumes giant dimensions in England's Anti-Jacobin War, and is still going on in the opium wars against China, &c.
The different moments of primitive accumulation distribute themselves now, more or less in chronological order, particularly over Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and England. In England at the end of the 17th century, they arrive at a systematical combination, embracing the colonies, the national debt, the modern mode of taxation, and the protectionist system. These methods depend in part on brute force, e.g., the colonial system. But, they all employ the power of the state, the concentrated and organized force of society, to hasten, hot-house fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode, and to shorten the transition. Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power.

— Capital, Volume I, chapter 31, emphasis added.

Privatization

According to Marx, the purpose of primitive accumulation is to privatize the means of production, so that the exploiting owner class can profit from the surplus labour of those who, lacking other means, must work for them.

Marx says that primitive accumulation means the expropriation of the direct producers and, more specifically, "the dissolution of private property based on the labour of its owner... Self-earned private property, that is based, so to speak, on the fusing together of the isolated, independent labouring-individual with the conditions of his labour, is supplanted by capitalistic private property, which rests on the exploitation of the nominally free labour of others, i.e., wage labour (emphasis added).

Social relations of capitalism

In the last chapter of Capital, Volume I, Marx described the social conditions he thought necessary for capitalism with a comment about Edward Gibbon Wakefield's theory of colonization:

Wakefield discovered that in the Colonies, property in money, means of subsistence, machines, and other means of production, does not as yet stamp a man as a capitalist if there be wanting the correlative – the wage-worker, the other man who is compelled to sell himself of his own free-will. He discovered that capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons, established by the instrumentality of things. Mr. Peel, he moans, took with him from England to Swan River, West Australia, means of subsistence and of production to the amount of £50,000. Mr. Peel had the foresight to bring with him, besides, 3,000 persons of the working-class, men, women, and children. Once arrived at his destination, 'Mr. Peel was left without a servant to make his bed or fetch him water from the river.' Unhappy Mr. Peel, who provided for everything except the export of English modes of production to Swan River!

This is indicative of Marx's more general fascination with settler colonialism, and his interest in how "free" lands—or, more accurately, lands seized from indigenous people—could disrupt capitalist social relations.

Ongoing primitive accumulation

"Orthodox" Marxists see primitive accumulation as a process beginning in the late Middle Ages and finishing with the rise of capitalist industry, situated entirely within the transition from the feudal mode of production to the capitalist mode of production. However, this can be seen as a misrepresentation of both Marx's ideas and historical reality, since feudal-type economies persist in various parts of the world, even in the 21st century.

Marx's description of primitive accumulation may also be seen as a special case of the general principle of capitalist market expansion. In part, trade grows incrementally, but often the establishment of capitalist relations of production involves force and violence. Transforming property relations means that assets previously owned by some people are no longer owned by them, but by other people, and making people part with their assets in this way involves coercion. This is an ongoing process of expropriation, proletarianization and urbanization.

In his preface to Das Kapital Vol. 1, Marx compares the situations of England and Germany and points out that less developed countries also face a process of primitive accumulation. Marx comments that "if, however, the German reader shrugs his shoulders at the condition of the English industrial and agricultural labourers, or in optimist fashion comforts himself with the thought that in Germany things are not nearly so bad, I must plainly tell him, "De te fabula narratur! (the tale is told of you!)".

Marx was referring here to the expansion of the capitalist mode of production (not the expansion of world trade), through expropriation processes. He continues, "Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development of the social antagonism that results from the natural laws of capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves, of these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results. The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future."

David Harvey's theory of accumulation by dispossession

David Harvey expands the concept of "primitive accumulation" to create a new concept, "accumulation by dispossession", in his 2003 book, The New Imperialism. Like Mandel, Harvey claims that the word "primitive" leads to a misunderstanding of the history of capitalism: that the original, "primitive" phase of capitalism is somehow a transitory phase that need not be repeated once commenced. Instead, Harvey maintains that primitive accumulation ("accumulation by dispossession") is a continuing process within the process of capital accumulation on a world scale. Because the central Marxian notion of crisis via "over-accumulation" is assumed to be a constant factor in the process of capital accumulation, the process of "accumulation by dispossession" acts as a possible safety valve that may temporarily ease the crisis. This is achieved by simply lowering the prices of consumer commodities (thus pushing up the propensity for general consumption), which in turn is made possible by the considerable reduction in the price of production inputs. Should the magnitude of the reduction in the price of inputs outweigh the reduction in the price of consumer goods, it can be said that the rate of profit will, for the time being, increase. Thus:

Access to cheaper inputs is, therefore, just as important as access to widening markets in keeping profitable opportunities open. The implication is that non-capitalist territories should be forced open not only to trade (which could be helpful) but also to permit capital to invest in profitable ventures using cheaper labour power, raw materials, low-cost land, and the like. The general thrust of any capitalist logic of power is not that territories should be held back from capitalist development, but that they should be continuously opened up.

— David Harvey, The New Imperialism, p. 139.

Harvey's theoretical extension encompasses more recent economic dimensions such as intellectual property rights, privatization, and predation and exploitation of nature and folklore.

Privatization of public services puts enormous profit in capitalists' hands. If it belonged to the public sector, this profit would not exist. In this sense, profit is created by the dispossession of peoples or nations. Destructive industrial use of the environment is similar because the environment "naturally" belongs to everyone, or to no one; factually, it "belongs" to whoever lives there.

Multinational pharmaceutical companies collect information about how herbs or other natural medicines are used among natives in less-developed countries, do some research and development to find the materials that make those natural medicines effective, and patent the findings. By doing so, multinational pharmaceutical companies can now sell the medicine to the natives, who are the original source of the knowledge that made the production of medicine possible. That is, dispossession of folklore (knowledge, wisdom, and practice) through intellectual property rights.

David Harvey also argues that accumulation by dispossession is a temporary or partial solution to over-accumulation. Because accumulation by dispossession makes raw materials cheaper, the profit rate can at least temporarily go up.

Harvey's interpretation has been criticized by Tom Brass, who disputes the view that what is described as present-day primitive accumulation, or accumulation by dispossession, entails proletarianization. Because the latter is equated by Harvey with the separation of the direct producer (mostly smallholders) from the means of production (land), Harvey assumes this results in the formation of a free workforce. By contrast, Brass points out that in many instances, the process of depeasantization leads to workers who are unfree because they are unable personally to commodify or recommodify their labour, by selling it to the highest bidder.

Schumpeter's critique of Marx's theory

The economist Joseph Schumpeter disagreed with the Marxian explanation of the origin of capital, because Schumpeter did not believe in exploitation. In liberal economic theory, the market returns to all people the exact value they have provided it; capitalists are just people who are very adept at saving and whose contributions are especially magnificent, and they do not take anything away from other people or the environment. Liberals believe that capitalism has no internal flaws or contradictions; only external threats. To liberals, the idea of the necessity of violent primitive accumulation to capital is particularly incendiary. Schumpeter wrote rather testily:

[The problem of Original Accumulation] presented itself first to those authors, chiefly to Marx and the Marxists, who held an exploitation theory of interest and had, therefore, to face the question of how exploiters secured control of an initial stock of 'capital' (however defined) with which to exploit – a question which that theory per se is incapable of answering, and which may obviously be answered in a manner highly uncongenial to the idea of exploitation.

— Joseph Schumpeter, Business Cycles, Vol. 1, New York; McGraw-Hill, 1939, p. 229.

Schumpeter argued that imperialism was not a necessary jump-start for capitalism, nor is it needed to bolster capitalism, because imperialism pre-dated capitalism. Schumpeter believed that, whatever the empirical evidence, capitalist world trade could in principle expand peacefully. Where imperialism occurs, Schumpeter asserted, it has nothing to do with the intrinsic nature of capitalism itself, or of capitalist market expansion. The distinction between Schumpeter and Marx here is subtle. Marx claimed that capitalism requires violence and imperialism—first, to kick-start capitalism with a pile of booty and to dispossess a population to induce them to enter into capitalist relations as workers, and then to surmount the otherwise-fatal contradictions generated within capitalist relations over time. Schumpeter's view was that imperialism is an atavistic impulse pursued by a state, independent of the interests of the economic ruling class.

Imperialism is the object-less disposition of a state to expansion by force without assigned limits... Modern Imperialism is one of the heirlooms of the absolute monarchical state. The "inner logic" of capitalism would have never evolved it. Its sources come from the policy of the princes and the customs of a pre-capitalist milieu. But even export monopoly is not imperialism and it would never have developed to imperialism in the hands of the pacific bourgeoisie. This happened only because the war machine, its social atmosphere, and the martial will were inherited and because a martially oriented class (i.e., the nobility) maintained itself in a ruling position with which of all the varied interests of the bourgeoisie the martial ones could ally themselves. This alliance keeps alive fighting instincts and ideas of domination. It led to social relations which perhaps ultimately are to be explained by relations of production but not by the productive relations of capitalism alone.

— Joseph A. Schumpeter, The Sociology of Imperialism (1918).

See also

• Accumulation by dispossession
• Enclosure
• Capital accumulation
• Common land
• History of capitalism
• The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
• Relations of production
• Socialist accumulation

References

Bibliography

• Perelman, Michael (2000). The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-2491-1 – via Google Books.

Further reading

• Brass, Tom (2011). Labour Regime Change in the Twenty-First Century: Unfreedom, Capitalism and Primitive Accumulation. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-20247-4.
• Denham-Steuart, James (1767). An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy.
• Glassman, James (2006). "Primitive accumulation, accumulation by dispossession, accumulation by 'extra-economic' means". Progress in Human Geography. 30 (5): 608–625. doi:10.1177/0309132506070172.
• Masimo de Angelis paper Marx on Primitive Accumulation: a Reinterpretation.
• Paul Zarembka paper [3]
• Bill Warren, Imperialism, pioneer of capitalism.
• Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism.
• Ernest Mandel, Primitive accumulation and the industrialisation of the third world.
• R. J. Holton, The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism
• Andre Gunder Frank, World accumulation, 1492–1789. New York 1978
• Guardian article, "The New Liberal Imperialism"Robert Cooper: the new liberal imperialism
• Raymond Aron, "What Empires cost and what profits they bring" (1962), reprinted in Raymond Aron, The Dawn of Universal History. New York: Basic Books, 2002, pp. 407–418.
• Ankie Hoogvelt, Globalisation and the Postcolonial World: The New Political Economy of Development.
• Ankie Hoogvelt interview: Interview with Ankie Hoogvelt
• Jeffrey Sachs, The end of poverty; how we can make it happen in our lifetime (with a foreword by Bono). Penguin Books, 2005.
• Midnight Notes "The New Enclosures"
• Rivera Vicencio, E. (2018). "Conformation of the primitive accumulation and capitalist spirit. Theory of corporate governmentality". International Journal of Critical Accounting. 10 (5): 394–425. doi:10.1504/IJCA.2018.096783.