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the fraught aspects of a renewable energy transition. This is perhaps simply a matter of emphasis. We are also less optimistic than they are about the long-term prospects of what they call ‘Climate Behemoth’. They believe that its contradictions will make it fall apart. We believe that it is possible, although not certain, that the far right can gain by its contradictions, and not simply disintegrate because of them.

      Others have argued that it is essential to maintain a conception of climate systems breakdown beyond the radiative forcing effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.8 We agree. It is important for engaging the interrelated collection of problems that exist. But it is also politically essential: full decarbonization of the economy, absent adequate responses to the panoply of other ecological challenges, would not defuse the far right’s ability to use their ideas of a ‘crisis in nature’ for political gain or entirely rule out the threat of what has been called ‘ecofascism’.

      But should we call it that?

      Let us look at some of the uses to which the term has been put. First, ‘ecofascism’ has been used as a smear by right-wing opponents of environmentalism. Perhaps most illustrative is James Delingpole’s The Little Green Book of Eco-Fascism, whose subtitle, ‘The Left’s Plan to Frighten Your Kids, Drive Up Energy Costs and Hike Your Taxes!’ says enough about its politics. ‘Fascism’ here is the generic bogeyman of government action.10 It goes without saying that we are not claiming any similarity between left-environmentalism and fascism. Similarly, in line with the overwhelming critical consensus, we identify ‘fascism’ as an ideology of the far right, not of the left. To borrow a line from Frank Uekötter, author of The Green and the Brown: A History of Conservation in Nazi Germany, ‘If you came upon this book hoping to be told that today’s environmentalists are actually Nazis in disguise, then I hope you paid for it before reaching this sentence.’11

      This tendency still exists within environmentalism, or at least appears to. Recently, it was summed up neatly by a single image from the early COVID-19 pandemic: ‘Corona is the cure, humans are the disease.’ This last example, however, is more complex: soon after its propagation, it was found to be the output of a decentralized far-right propaganda group called the Hundred Handers, who were attempting to destabilize and mock environmentalist movements.16 However, the most dangerous of all, Bookchin argued, were the new forms of ‘Malthusianism’ and overpopulation discourse. We discuss this tendency further in chapter 1.

      Other people have also similarly been called ‘ecofascists’, perhaps most prominently some of the rioters at the storming of the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021.17 Here, the term refers to what has been more aptly called ‘conspirituality’, a mixture of ‘wellness’ beliefs, conspiracy theorizing and appeals to the natural world.18 We address this tendency further in chapter 3.

      ‘Ecofascism’ is also what the Christchurch mosque attacker called his ideology. He used it to justify murdering 51 Muslims. A few months later, the same justification was used in the killing of 23, largely Latino or Latina, people in El Paso. This book arrives in the long tail of these shootings and is in part an attempt to systematize and explore some of the complicated anxieties that emerged in the wake of these atrocities.19

      So how do we define ‘ecofascism’? We must first take a step back. What is ‘fascism’? Our definition attempts to synthesize the insights of the literature, hewing closely to the mid-twentieth-century historical phenomenon rather than trying to extract a trans-historical ideal type.

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