White nationalists around the world are appropriating the language of environmentalism. The white nationalist who allegedly massacred 22 people in El Paso in early August posted a four-page screed on the chatroom 8chan. In it, the shooter blames his attack on the “Hispanic invasion of Texas” and the impending “cultural and ethnic replacement” of whites in America.

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After World War II, in the name of protecting forests and rivers, nativist organizations opposed to arrivals from non-European countries stoked fears of overpopulation and rampant immigration. A meme popular online among the far right and ecofascists is “save trees, not refugees.” Often ecofascist memes take the form of emojis like the popular Norse rune known as Algiz, or the “life” rune. This rune, favored by Heinrich Himmler and the SS, is one of many alternative symbols to swastikas that circulate online to dog-whistle neo-Nazism allegiances. Deep ecology Many ecofascists today gravitate toward “deep ecology,” the philosophy developed by the Norwegian Arne Naess in the early 1970s. Naess wanted to distinguish “deep ecology,” which he characterized as reverence for all living things, from what he viewed as faddish “shallow ecology.” Jettisoning Naess’s belief in the value of biological diversity, far-right thinkers have perverted deep ecology, imagining that the world is intrinsically unequal and that racial and gender hierarchies are part of nature’s design. Deep ecology celebrates a quasi-spiritual connection to the land. As I show in my book, in its white nationalist version only men—white or European men—can truly commune with nature in a meaningful, transcendent way. This cosmic quest fuels their desire to preserve, by force if necessary, pure lands for white people. White nationalists today look to the Finnish ecofascist Pentti Linkola, who advocates for stringent immigration restriction, “the reversion to pre-industrial life ways, and authoritarian measures to keep human life within strict limits.”

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Reflecting on Linkola’s ideas, the white nationalist webzine Counter-Currents calls on white men to take ecofascist action, saying that it is their duty to “safeguard the sanctity of the Earth.” Why partisan labels don’t apply This background helps to explain why the Christchurch shooter called himself an “ecofascist” and discussed environmental issues in his rambling screed. The El Paso shooter offered more specific examples. In addition to mentioning The Lorax, he criticized Americans for failing to recycle and for wanton waste of single-use plastics. The conventional wisdom in the public is that environmentalism is the province of liberals, if not of the left, with its commitments to environmental justice and carbon neutrality. Yet the ubiquity of environmental concerns among white nationalists shows that distinctions between liberal and conservative are not necessarily germane when assessing the ideologies of the far-right today. If current trends continue, the future will be one of intensified global warming and extreme weather patterns. There will be an increase in climate refugees, often seeking respite in the global north. In this context, I think that white nationalists will be primed to merge the prospect of climate calamities with their rhetoric about “white extinction.”

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Census projections indicate that around 2050 the U.S. will become a majority nonwhite country. For white nationalists, this demographic clock ticks more loudly each day. Both the Christchurch and the El Paso shooters invoke the “Great Replacement” theory, or the distorted idea that whites are being demographically outnumbered, to the point of extinction, by immigrants and racial others. Given the patterns I see emerging, I believe that the public needs to recognize ecofascism as a dangerous cloud gathering on the horizon. Alexandra Minna Stern is a professor of American culture, history, and women’s studies at the University of Michigan. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.