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Confronting Ecofascism: Environmental Politics and the Radical Right [1]

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Date: 2023-04

June 7 – June 28, 2023

Wednesday from 3-5 pm PT / 6-8pm ET

Instructors: Peter Staudenmaier, Hilary Moore, Blair Taylor, Michael Premo, and Richard Hames

This course will also be made available as a self-directed flex course and may be taken for college credit. Inquire for details.

Course Description

Although today ecology is largely understood as a movement of the political left, the history of environmental thought and action demonstrates it to be much more complex and politically ambivalent. The ecofascist manifestos left by the Christchurch and El Paso shooters have given a new visibility to right wing ecology in general and ecofascism in particular, but they build on a much longer history of reactionary politics in ecological guise. There is an urgent need to understand and combat these deadly ideologies, and to consider how they complicate our movements to build a free and ecological society.

The course will look at the history of right-wing ecology up until the present, spanning green tendencies within Nazism in Germany, far-right parties that blame immigrants for climate change, to ecofascists who use population ecology to advocate white ethnostates. We’ll also look at how ecological ideas have been utilized by less explicitly right-wing environmental actors to reinforce anti-egalitarian views, from the racist and colonial foundations of conservation ecology to key voices in radical environmental movements like Earth First! decrying non-white immigration. We will examine what ecological topics and themes are harnessed to racist, sexist, and eugenicist ends, and dig into the theoretical and philosophical assumptions about nature lurking behind them. Lastly, we will discuss how activists today can avoid falling into these traps, respond to the growth of right-wing ecological discourse, and offer a more compelling liberatory vision of ecology.

The course aims to give participants tools for assessing the political moment and the conditions we live in, understand the historical development of ecofascism and the context of its current expressions, and to leave feeling more prepared to recognize and challenge ecofascist tendencies.

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[1] Url: https://social-ecology.org/wp/courses/confronting-ecofascism-environmental-politics-and-the-radical-right/

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