A Spectre is Haunting America — The Spectre of Eco-fascism:

Eco-fascism. You may have heard this word before. You’ve almost definitely heard of fascism before. Typical definitions of fascism include mentions of authoritarianism, racism, totalitarianism, etc. But there’s an important element of fascism that is often missed in these definitions. Fascism always includes an element of an impurity, an other, a degeneracy, or a contagion. Something that is considered wrong with the world, that can usually spread, that must be “cleansed” and purified by those who “recognize” its threat. With the Nazis, it was the Jews. They considered them to be this racial Other, an impurity that infected the world, and the Nazis were going to be the ones to purify it. They also targeted LGBT people, calling them “degenerates”, once again, an impurity that must be cleansed. The Aryans, of course, were the symbol of purity, of perfection, of a certain naturality that has not been tainted.

Along with this, fascism includes a general distaste of “the crowd”. Of common people, of the masses, of the populace and the “rabble”. This is seen in its rejection of democracy, and support of dictators. The idea was that average people were not smart enough to make important decisions. These decisions must be made by the elite, those who showed themselves to be “above the rest.” The masses were simply too careless, too dirty, too wasteful, too — wait a minute, does this sound familiar?

In eco-fascism, this impurity is humanity. Humanity is seen as a contagion, infecting and spreading, tainting the natural world. Humanity as a whole must be cleansed in order for the natural order of the world to prosper, by those who recognize its threat. The natural order of things in this myth is Earth, pre-humans. Once humans came along, they began to destroy this order, creating factories, polluting the air, and destroying the wildlife. Like Jews being the Other to Aryans, humans are the Other to Nature.

This is exactly what is being espoused with phrases like “we are the virus”, and “humans are the problem.” It mirrors the logic of eco-fascism, claiming that we as a species are this contagion, this impurity. And of course, what else to do with a problem but fix it? And if humans are the problem, the only way to “fix it” is to get rid of them. To cleanse them. Another element often found in fascism is essentialism. To essentialize is to reduce something down to one defining factor, which is unique and always contained within a certain thing. For the Nazis, it was impossible to imagine a “Good Jew.” That’s because their issue with Jewish people had nothing to do with any actual behaviors. Simply by right of being a Jew, you were somehow “tainted” and impure, no matter what you did. This is the same in eco-fascism. Eco-fascists believe that human behavior isn’t the problem, our current systems aren’t the problem, we are the problem. No matter what we do, we will always be a virus. Yet, here’s the odd part. Many people are espousing eco-fascism without even knowing it. It’s being made in memes, and in tweets, by probably well meaning people. So, why do so many of us think this way?

As argued previously, this has to do with the 50+ years of messaging to make us feel that “we” cause pollution. The business executives in Keep America Beautiful likely only wanted to divert anger away from themselves, and reframe pollution as “everyone’s fault”, instead of theirs. However, their actions have had dire unintended consequences. We were made to feel that pollution was the result of individual faults. So we individually tried to change our habits, and nothing changed. And if all we are able to imagine is that the problem is with “us” as a species, if “People Start Pollution”, but we can’t seem to stop it, then the problem must be essential to humans. This is the root of the eco-fascism we see today.

There is a fascinatingly obvious fact that eco-fascism seems to miss. Remember that in eco-fascism, the natural order of things is Earth, pre-humans. The Earth was once “natural and pure”, but once humans came along, the Earth started to become infected. However, this line of logic accidently implies that humans came from… somewhere else. Obviously, eco-fascists do not literally believe this (or at least most of them). But in the othering of humanity from all other products of nature, there is an implication that humans are somehow alien to it. This way of thinking simply isn’t accurate. Humans came from Earth. The Earth made humans. We are not an invader, we are not an Other that exists in opposition to Nature. We are of the Earth, and we are from nature. Therefore, any problem that we cause is not due to the fact that we are humans. It comes from us acting in opposition to nature, and attempting to dominate it. So I ask, what kinds of actions oppose nature, and most importantly, who is doing the acting?

Our modern day eco-fascism comes from the way the very problem is imagined. We must reimagine the problem not with this general illusive “us” that has been programmed into our minds, but with concrete examples of who is doing the acting, and the systems that encourage those actions. “Humans” are not the problem. Do not essentialize this problem, and fall into the tendrils of fascist thought. The problem is our systems of action that stand in opposition to nature, that dump horrific amounts of pollution into our atmosphere, and produce an accelerating amount of plastic that no matter what consumers do, must go somewhere. We are humans, and humans are from and of the Earth, so to blame Humans as a general catagory is to blame the victim of a murder. We are currently being killed by a system that is imposed onto us, and gaslit into believing we’re the ones at fault.