Naomi Klein on eco-fascists

I’ve been thinking the same thing. Naomi Klein poses an interesting question:

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, so, I write about the Christchurch killer in part because that horrific attack, which stole the lives of more than 50 people in New Zealand at two mosques, happened on March 15th. And that day is significant for many reasons. One of them is that that was the day of the first global youth climate strike. That is the day that 1.6 million young people around the world walked out of class and took this stand for international solidarity with children all around the world, a really — a movement that is in no way nationalist — right? — that is calling for justice at the center of our response to the climate crisis.

In Christchurch, the student strike — the rally after the student strike was disrupted, and the students were told to disperse, because there was a live shooting just a few blocks away at the mosque. And that was the killing that I referred to earlier. And one of the things that was really different about that attack — and he did take inspiration from all of these different mass murderers — was that this killer identified as an ecofascist. He said that in his manifesto — wrote that in his manifesto, talked about how immigrants were destroying Europe, destroying the Christian world and so on.

And, you know, I think there’s been a lot of focus in recent years about how do we change the minds of the climate deniers, right? I think the only thing scarier than a far-right, racist movement that denies the reality of climate change is a far-right, racist movement that doesn’t deny the reality of climate change, that actually says this is happening, there are going to be many millions of people on the move, and we are going to use this abhorrent ideology that ranks the relative value of human life, that puts white Christians at the top of the hierarchy, that animalizes and otherizes everyone else, as the justification for allowing those people to die.

And so, you know, that is the significance of what happened in New Zealand, because I think it was the first time one of these attackers self-identified as ecofascist. It’s not the first time that climate change has been evoked by one of these killers. It was evoked by the Norway — Norwegian killer, Anders Breivik, who talked about how climate debt was one of the things he was upset about. He saw it as a conspiracy to redistribute the wealth of Europe and North America to the Global South, because they understand that if climate change is real, it does require a redistribution of resources.

And this is fundamentally at the heart of where we’re at right now. We’re at a crossroads, where it’s not about who denies it anymore. I mean, I think that within a few years climate change denial as a force is going to have disappeared. The question is: In the face of this crisis, are we going to — we, in the wealthy world — hoard what is left, lock out everybody else, see this resurgence in these abhorrent ideologies, that never went away, and are would just going to take care of our own, as they say? Or are we going to recognize that our fates are interconnected? Are we going to completely reimagine borders? And are we going to share what’s left? And this is at the heart of the tremendous responsibility of our moment.

The Far Right’s Embrace of White Supremacy Is Tied to Climate Crisis