When the Far Right Believes in Climate Change

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In September 2017, American Renaissance, a white nationalist magazine, presented a question to their readership: “What does it mean for whites if climate change is real?” In the ensuing several hundred words, the publication deviated from decades of right wing doctrine in order to propose an ethno-nationalist perspective on global warming. They correctly analysed that changing weather patterns have and would continue to impact poor people of colour in the Global South disproportionately, which would by extension lead to higher rates of migration to the Global North.

Indeed, the magazine wrote that “the population explosion in the global south combined with climate change and liberal attitudes towards migration are the single greatest threat to Western civilisation,” adding that “[this is] more serious than Islamic terrorism or Hispanic illegal migration.” Defending this position, American Renaissance’s editor-in-chief and prominent white nationalist Jared Taylor stated, “I make no apology for… urging white nations to muster the will to guard their borders and maintain white majorities.”

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There are also indications that far right political parties are beginning to take the climate crisis seriously and are going ‘green’. France’s far right National Rally led by Marine Le Pen has promised to make Europe the world’s “first ecological civilisation” and has harkened back to Nazi language railing against “nomadic” (see: rootless cosmopolitan) people who “do not care about the environment” as “they have no homeland.” Further, National Rally party spokesperson and recently elected member of the European Parliament, Jordan Bardella, proclaimed “borders are the environment’s greatest ally; it is through them that we will save the planet.” Bardella has also espoused the ‘great replacement’ theory.

In a further sign that far right political parties are shifting on the issue of climate change, the youth wing of Alternative for Germany (AfD) have urged their party leaders to renounce the “difficult to understand statement that mankind does not influence the climate” as it is an issue which motivates “more people than we thought”. Whilst the AFD’s vote share grew marginally in this year’s European elections where they received 10.8 per cent of the vote, its increase paled in comparison to the Green Party’s surge to second place where they garnered more than 20 per cent of the vote in a country where climate change was many voters’ top concern.

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The far right’s changing stance on climate change presents a clear challenge for progressives and leftists. Of course it is principally and politically imperative to explicitly reject the most heinous eco-fascist “blood and soil” sentiments, however, it is just as crucial to not let their arguments seep into genuine environmentalist movements, which have already formed in some sections of the so-called left, with arguments around population control and the supposed threat of mass migration often used.

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Denialism seems to be slowly on the way out, and it’s pertinent to ask whether the alt or far right will be able to influence the narrative. However, a cursory glance at Trump’s America should already give us the answer. Right wing populists such as Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon who teeter at the ethno-nationalist fringes of society have already been successful at importing their ideas into the White House. Moreover, as right wing populism and anti-immigration sentiment continues to grow in Europe, it isn’t difficult to imagine far right positions on climate change infiltrating climate policy. Where climate change and immigration were once viewed as discrete issues in the political sphere, taken up by the left and right respectively, it seems increasingly likely that more sections of the right will begin using climate change as an effective political tool to advocate for even more punitive immigration measures.

Currently, the liberal left is unprepared to deal with such a challenge, and the strategic choice for progressives to focus on climate denial has functionally depoliticised climate change and turned it into an intellectual contest of ideas, rather than a political fight over competing visions of our collective future.

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