ethno-state eco-fascism

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oops see no hyphen bak , this is main

MERRI OK

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Far-right media have repeatedly hosted leader of whites-only community

Return to the Land co-founder Eric Orwoll during his far-right media tour: “In the far right in America, basically every major faction or actor has been supportive of us”

Written by Alex Kaplan

Published 08/19/25 MMA

Far-right media have promoted Eric Orwoll and his Arkansas whites-only residential settlement project, with the leader appearing on far-right media streams nearly two dozen times since the community’s affiliated organization, Return to the Land, was founded in 2023. He has also promoted the community while hosting far-right figures on his own streams.

During far-right media appearances, Orwoll — himself a right-wing YouTuber who posts under the moniker “Aarvoll” — promoted the whites-only community, suggesting it existed in lieu of a “Hitler 2.0,” asking for advice on the community, and bragging about the supposed legal precedent the residential settlement project could create for more of these types of communities, while far-right media figures called the community “amazing,” “hugely encouraging,” “a very worthy goal” that “gives hope,” “the way forward,” and said it “aligns nicely with the anti-woke movement.” Orwoll has further claimed that most of the American far right “has been supportive of us.”

## Orwoll's whites-only community is reportedly “one of the most established white supremacist residential communities in the United States today”
As journalist Teddy Wilson reported:
> In the Ozarks region of northern Arkansas, there’s a new settlement which “sprawls over 160 acres” which was founded by Return to the Land (RTTL), a neo-fascist White Nationalist movement which seeks to build communities exclusively for “individuals and families with traditional views and European ancestry.”

However, on social media, RTTL has repeatedly stated explicitly that the group is “building legal, Whites only communities for our people.” The group’s newsletter explains that it is a “private club that is exclusive in its membership criteria,” and that potential members must complete an application form — followed by a video interview.

Return to the Land — which has a settlement project in Arkansas that The New York Times reported is “strictly for white, heterosexual people” and has “about 40 residents” that the co-founders had to “personally confirm” were white before they were “welcomed in” — reportedly raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, wants to expand into Missouri, and is “currently in the initial planning process” for more community developments in the Ozarks region, Deep South, Appalachia, and the Pacific Northwest.

Since June, the group and its settlement has gotten media coverage from other outlets like The Forward, Sky News, The Hill, WIRED, and TMZ. These outlets have noted that the organization is “one of the most established white supremacist residential communities in the United States today” and reported that legal experts suggested the settlement project would likely violate federal fair housing and anti-discrimination laws.

In response to media coverage, lawmakers and elected officials in both Arkansas and Missouri have condemned the community, with Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin telling outlets that “racial discrimination has no place in Arkansas or anywhere in a free society. These allegations raise all sorts of legal issues, including constitutional concerns,” adding that his office was “reviewing the matter.” However, Griffin’s spokesperson later told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that a preliminary review of the community had not found evidence that the group had broken the law.

## Orwoll has spoken on streams with a variety of far-right figures to promote Return to the Land
A Media Matters review found that since Orwoll launched Return to the Land in late 2023, he has appeared on far-right streams nearly two dozen times to promote the whites-only residential community.
#### Stew Peters

In March 2024, Orwoll went on The Stew Peters Show, whose namesake is a white nationalist and Holocaust denier who has called Adolf Hitler “a hero” for burning books and said of the Nazis in 1930s Germany, “Turns out more people decided to support it than not, and that’s great.” During the interview, Orwoll said that Return to the Land’s legal structure was “a workaround of the letter of the law.” Peters called the settlement project “truly amazing stuff,” asserting that “this is how it was supposed to be from the very beginning.”

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From the March 27, 2024, edition of The Stew Peters Show, streamed on Rumble

#### Lucas Gage

In August 2024, Orwoll appeared on Lucas Gage’s stream. Gage — who used to be named Angelo John Gage — has pushed claims of “white genocide” and has called Judaism “by far the most disgusting religion, ever.”

During the interview, Orwoll called Return to the Land “identitarian,” a movement “that sees its main purpose as defending Europe’s 'identity' and ethnic purity,” and bragged that the settlement project’s members had a “pretty good radar” to prevent Jewish people from joining. He also said that he became “radicalized by” his YouTube channel's comment section, “learning about race realism and other red pills.”

Gage told Orwoll that “your community gives hope” and urged his followers to “help these guys out.” (Gage has since claimed to have helped Orwoll raise funds for the community.)

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From a video uploaded to Lucas Gage's Rumble channel on August 30, 2024

#### Millennial Woes

In December 2024, Orwoll spoke with Colin Robertson, who is known online as “Millennial Woes” and has attended white nationalist conferences throughout the U.S. and Europe. During that Rumble stream, Orwoll said that the “national socialist perspective” was “by far, I think, the most popular in our circles,” and that “we want to make sure that when the first white-intentional communities are targeted legally, the ones that are attacked have their legal case as firm as possible because of the way that precedent works.”

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From the December 24, 2024, edition of Millenniyule X, streamed on Rumble

Orwoll also told Robertson that he “appreciate[d] what you’ve done keeping this going all these years,” and Robertson suggested to Orwoll that the ideas behind the settlement project were “a very worthy goal indeed about setting up an institution to preserve that tradition.”
#### Red Ice TV

Orwoll has repeatedly promoted Return to the Land on Red Ice TV, an online channel operated by Henrik Palmgren and his wife Lana Lokteff that has pushed white supremacist, antisemitic, and other racist content. Orwoll has also said that he is discussing collaborating with the outlet.

During an appearance in August, Orwoll called Palmgren a “legend” who he had “much respect for,” and touted Tim Griffin’s preliminary finding that the residential settlement project did not violate the law, calling it “a very encouraging sign” that “we’re very excited” about and suggesting he doubted that the Trump administration would “override” that. In June, he also criticized the 1964 Civil Rights Act as opposing “the values of Western civilization” and in August wondered aloud to Palmgren if politicians supporting immigration were “trying to get us to, you know, go full 1933” (the year Adolf Hitler came into power).

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From the August 1, 2025, edition of Red Ice TV, streamed on Bitchute

When Jared Taylor — the founder of American Renaissance, which the Southern Poverty Law Center described as “one of the vilest white nationalist publications, often promoting eugenics and blatant anti-black and anti-Latino racists” — appeared on the channel with Orwoll in December 2024, he said that Orwoll's residential community was “hugely encouraging” and “just people who get together on a regular basis to celebrate their whiteness.”

Palmgren told Orwoll in June that “we all want one of these” kinds of settlements “to be successful.”

#### Jason Kessler

In April, Orwoll appeared on a podcast hosted by Jason Kessler, an organizer behind the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. (Kessler has uploaded his podcast to his YouTube channel, which YouTube apparently reinstated last year).

During the appearance, Orwoll said that Return to the Land had “kind of contacts and partnerships with groups outside the U.S.,” and cautioned people who wish to create similar settlements to do so “in a solidly red state in case you ever do get sued” because “you want to be before judges that are going to be sympathetic.” Kessler said that he wished he had “known about this project before I moved at the end of last year,” as he “would have considered going to it.”

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From the April 16, 2025, edition of Future Shock, streamed on YouTube

#### Other far-right and white nationalist podcasts have hosted Orwoll

Orwoll has gone on multiple other far-right shows to promote the whites-only community, including:

- A podcast hosted by Mark Collett, who the BBCcalleda British “Nazi-sympathiser.”

Collett told Orwoll that the settlement project was “fantastic” and “the way forward.” Orwoll claimed on Collett’s show that “in the far right in America, basically every major faction or actor has been supportive of us,” and said that medieval European pogroms, or violent attacks against Jewish people, occurred because “the average serf was red pilled on the JQ.” The “JQ,” or the “Jewish Question,” is an antisemitic framework that posits the Jewish diaspora is a “problem that needed to be solved.” It provided a pretext for the Nazi government to undermine the freedoms of Jewish Germans, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

- Endeavour News, whichcalls itself“New Zealand’s Nationalist News Network.”

During the appearance, Orwoll claimed that America is “controlled by ... a foreign minority” as opposed to “heritage Americans.”

- Logos Academy, hosted by self-proclaimed “Jew hater” Zach Kidd.

Orwoll told Kidd, who has also claimed to be part of the “alt-right,” that Return to the Land aimed to gain local and potentially statewide political power eventually and was necessary since he was “not expecting, you know, Hitler 2.0 to come down from the clouds or something and save us.” Kidd praised the community as “a fantastic initiative.”

- A stream from Jason Köhne, who the SPLC hasdescribedas “a white nationalist podcaster and vlogger known online as ‘No White Guilt.’”

Orwoll told Köhne that he was “impressed” with his content, and Köhne told Orwoll that Return the Land “impressed” him as well and was “the kind of thing that I think we need to be doing.”

- Multiple appearances on far-right figureElijah Schaffer’spodcasts.

Schaffer told Orwoll that the settlement project was “fantastic,” and Schaffer’s collaborator said Schaffer planned to visit it.

- White Rabbit Radio —reportedly“an online community of racists” run by Tim Murdock, whom the SPLC has called an “avowed anti-Semite.”

Orwoll told Murdock that he wanted “our own legal advocacy groups and we can start lobbying and even changing some laws” so that Return to the Land can be in “all 50 states.” Murdock called the settlement project “important.”

- A podcastco-hostedby far-right media figuresRebecca HargravesandDavid Reilly.

During the appearance, Orwoll threatened to “go bigger and found more communities and be something they can’t ignore” if “they decide to stop attacking us.”

- A show hosted by pastor Jesse Lee Peterson, who The Daily Beastdescribedas “one of the right’s most vocal anti-gay figures.”

During the appearance, Peterson told Orwoll that the settlement project was “amazing” and lauded its inhabitants’ “courage.”

- The conspiracy theory networkInfowars.

During the appearance, host Harrison Smith asked Orwoll if Return to the Land was part of a “push to stop, you know, white people from being destroyed in our own countries.”

## Orwoll promoted Return to the Land with white nationalists on his own streams
In addition to all of his appearances on far-right outlets, Orwoll has hosted multiple white nationalists on his own streams and discussed Return to the Land with them.
#### Nick Fuentes

In July, Orwoll hosted white nationalist and Holocaust denier podcaster Nick Fuentes. Orwoll — who has said he attended Fuentes’ America First Political Action Conference (or AFPAC) and claimed that he and Fuentes “share some similar intuitions as far as what society should look like” — said he’d pitched “thoughts” to Fuentes and asked him for advice on what “sorts of projects that we could” do to “mobilize our people.” Orwoll also said setting “legal precedent that it’s OK to do this sort of thing” would “embolden more people to follow suit and” create “a lot of possibilities.”

Fuentes told Orwoll that he was “brilliant” and “a big fan of” what Orwoll is doing, “not just with ... content, but also with the intentional community.” Fuentes also said that he hoped Orwoll would win a legal precedent as a “breakthrough for everybody,” and claimed that he would visit Return to the Land “soon.”

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From a video uploaded to Eric Orwoll's YouTube channel on July 22, 2025

#### Keith Woods

Just days after hosting Fuentes in July, Orwoll hosted Irish streamer Keith Woods, who reportedly described himself as a “raging antisemite” in a now-deleted 2019 social media post and has connections to well-known white nationalist and antisemitic groups and figures. Orwoll asked Woods, who called the whites-only community “a good initiative” during an October 2024 stream, for “very direct advice” on “good next steps for someone in my position.” Woods told him to create content promoting the whites-only community, which Orwoll said he would consider adding to the settlement project’s upcoming podcast. Woods also told Orwoll that Return to the Land “aligns nicely with the anti-woke movement and just the general direction of where things are going.”

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From a video uploaded to Eric Orwoll's YouTube channel on July 24, 2025

#### Thomas Rousseau

In April, Orwoll hosted Thomas Rousseau, the founder of the white nationalist group Patriot Front. Orwoll previously said that he applied to join Patriot Front, and told Rousseau they were “really good guys” who his followers should also join. (According to WIRED, a researcher observed figures connected to Rousseau taking part in events on Return to the Land.) Orwoll also told Rousseau that “a lot of what [he] said” about Patriot Front’s strategy “overlaps with what Return to the Land is trying to do.”

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From a video uploaded to Rumble on April 15, 2025

Additionally, in July, Orwoll and Rousseau appeared together on far-right MMA fighter and podcaster Jake Shields’ Fight Back with Jake Shields. During that appearance, Orwoll said that he wanted to “work with” Rousseau because Patriot Front’s “personnel and expertise” could “be used to benefit Return to the Land.”

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mma 11 24

On MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone explains the role extremists in conservative media are playing in the Trump transition

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 11/19/24

Video

From the November 19, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House

NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): At a time when global tensions are high, the war in Ukraine is intensifying, Donald Trump's decision to tap Tulsi Gabbard as his incoming Director of National Intelligence is raising alarms, as you heard there. New reporting uncovers how she has become a favorite among the state media, of one of America's adversaries, Russia.

That's according to The New York Times, which reports, "In Russia, the reaction to her potential appointed has been gleeful, even if Putin's government remains weary of American policies, even under a second Trump administration. 'The CIA and the FBI are trembling,' a Russian newspaper wrote on Friday in a glowing profile of Ms. Gabbard, noting positively, that Ukrainians consider 'an agent of the Russian state.' A state television channel called her a Russian 'comrade' in Mr. Trump's emerging cabinet." The Times goes on to report, "among members from both parties, her tacit support of Russia's war games in Ukraine, and her repetition of Kremlin disinformation have raised doubts about whether she should be given oversight of the intelligence agencies, including the responsibility of preparing the highly classified daily intelligence briefings for the returning president."

Which, we have just learned Trump is now receiving as the President-Elect after having chosen not to receive them while he was a candidate. Trump receiving intelligence briefings is remarkable, for the fact that just last year he was criminally charged for mishandling national defense information and classified information. His already established as disregard for the safety of our nation's secrets makes his cabinet choices, especially those with access to top intelligence, all the more serious.

...

WALLACE: Angelo, there's something so impossible to articulate about the MOU that officially commences the landing team's arrival of the national security agencies and green lights this process that we're all talking about.

But the reason it's hard to bring that to life is because it's never really been an issue, even in 2000, where there was a recount, even in 2020 when Trump refused to concede the election, there was a transition. There were teams named, there were government officials to be selected, so that the FBI could back them and you would take an oath and you would swear that your allegiance was to the United States. That is the process that has a been aborted in the Trump transition. And with your expertise in what the plan was all along, just share your thoughts and reflections on where we are.

ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah, the thing that is worth keeping in mind -- we're all pointing out your accurate assessment. And part of it is that they've spent the last four years -- and it started before them, but the last four years -- really entrenching this idea that all of the United States government is the actually enemy, is enemy number one.

So, every time you point out, accurately, that they want to dismantle it, undermine it, that it's going to make us less safe, they say "Yes, yes that is exactly right because that is the enemy number one." And where that starts from, what that originates, who that benefits, those are all real questions, and as has already been discussed, we don't even know necessarily to what extent, in this case, Gabbard's relationship is with foreign entities and whether it is just sympathies or something deeper than that because it is not being investigated. The normal channels and processes of a transition are not even being followed this time, which is a reflection of the fact that it is so deeply internalized that all of these institutions are the enemy and they need to go away or be dismantled or be destroyed.

To just put a wrapper on it, I think there's something unsettling that's hard to articulate, here. And so, the best way that I can sort of illustrate it is to start with, yea there is something unsettling here. And some ways to understand that is, where the news about Tulsi Gabbard's appointment was broken in the first place.

It was broken by Alex Jones on InfoWars. It wasn't broken by a far right-wing outlet or something like that, it was broken there. That's where that news came out first and that's significant. It wasn't by accident, it was by design, that the news of her being put there came first because that is a reflection of where the power is being organized now. It is being organized on what used to be considered the fringes.

And Gabbard is an example of somebody that came in as a Democrat, at least ostensibly, and she validated as a Democrat all of the right-wing narrative that they were telling about these government institutions and in a way, "See, even a Democrat believes all the things that we're saying about the deep state, about the nefarious forces."

And so, not only was she a part of that validation process, but she's also an illustration of what that transition is and how you live and survive and thrive in the right-wing fever swamps. And so, when you pull it all together, she not only helped validate and cultivate that narrative and is clearly a responsive to that audience and landscape, but now she's going to be in a position where when Trump was previously getting from right- wing media -- and we saw that play out in his first term -- is now going to be echoed in whatever the internal intelligence that he receives because the underlying institutions are in fact going to be actively and intentionally dismantled, or at least disrupted. And that's the reality that we're heading into here.

WALLACE: I mean Angelo, let me illustrate that this is Tulsi Gabbard describing the court approved search of Mar-a-Lago to retrieve classified national defense information on Fox News.

...

The only people known to have been targeted by all those agencies were Trump's political adversaries. I mean, the complete inverse is what comes out of her mouth, which is, again, whether her sympathies lie with Russia or whether it's something deeper I think is a known unknown, but the tactics are straight out of a Russian disinformation playbook.

CARUSONE: They are, and the thing that I always jump to is not only was she a fixture on Fox News for a while, but she guest hosted -- she used to be a guest host for Tucker Carlson, who as you know, did increasingly more sympathetic Russian content. He did that whole big thing in the supermarket laughing and talking about how great the country is and how what we're being fed is a lie.

And I think that to me is the tie-in here, is that we already know what she's going to do in this role because she's been doing it in the right-wing media for the past few years, which is taking these attacks on American institutions and American credibility -- and I agree with what Frank was saying, we shouldn't always defend reflexively institutions and bureaucracies that need to be adapted, modified, improved, optimized, that should always be something we aspire to.

But that's not what -- that what it sort of sounds like they are talking about to their audiences, but they're talking about something deeper. They've identified an enemy, which is the government and they're acting accordingly. And that is why they're not participating in this process, this transition, because they don't even want to undermine their own argument and their own narrative to the audience that they've been feeding this to. So every action and every day that goes by, they further reinforce the very story that they've been telling as they get one step closer to those official positions.

Video

From the November 19, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House

NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): Some alarming news to tell you about, of Russia's unprovoked illegal invasion of Ukraine that proves the stakes have perhaps never been higher when it comes to supporting our Democratic ally over Vladimir Putin's Russia. Putin just formally lowered his own threshold for using nuclear weapons, now saying Russia can conduct a nuclear strike is attacked by not only a nuclear power, such as the United States, but also a nation that is backed by a nuclear power, such as Ukraine.

It was a long planned move that Putin first announced back in September after warning that he would do so for years. The Kremlin says the use of nuclear weapons still would be a "last resort measure" but its timing makes it appear to be a clear signal to the West from Vladimir Putin. U.S. Officials telling NBC News that Ukraine fired into Russia overnight, using U.S.-made missiles, the time after Joe Biden gave the Ukraine military the go-ahead over the weekend.

From the New York Times, "the doctrine's publication on Tuesday appeared to be the latest suggestion from the Kremlin that Russia could use nuclear weapons to respond to attacks by Ukraine carried out with American support and that the response could be directed against American facilities as well as Ukraine itself.

...

WALLACE: Angelo, the person who authored the most scathing report and indictment of Donald Trump's affinity for, ties to, and questions about Trump and Russia is his incoming Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. When he took over from Richard Burg for the Senate Intelligence Committee. Do you think they know that, do you think they don't care, do you think the chaos is the point in this mishmash of Gabbard and Rubio's Trumpian-mixed messaging? What do you think?

ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah, I think they don't care, and I think ultimately, Rubio is sort of one small piece of it but it's certainly not reflective of the larger administration or their posture. And I think ultimately what has been signaled, both during the campaign and as well as by who he is putting into these places from Pete Hegseth on down, that the affinity for Russia is not just sort of the geopolitical worldview or that they have been fed right from the ground up because they are consumers of the right-wing media, what Russia has been doing with our information landscape for quite a while, and sort of seeing the ground.

But that we should also not lose sight of the fact that there's an affinity there that is born out of there that Russia is an ethno-nationalist state and that is one of the biggest appeals that Tucker sort of pushed into it, which is this idea that like with Mike, that Mike makes right. And that was one of the things that Tucker was advocating for when he was on Fox, when he was holding it up as an exemplary, saying, "Yes, we have to know who our enemies are, Russia's never hurt us, but more importantly look how well their society is because they embraced ethnic nationalism."

And if you put that in the context of other attacks on DEI or all these other issues, it does sort of boil down to this core idea that there is something there in Russia that is if not aspirational for them, at least something that we should take and incorporate into our society. And so Marco Rubio is not going to have a lot of influence or power in the broader administration and I feel like everybody knows that.....

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https://heated.world/p/tucker-carlsons-toxic-environmental?ref=drilledpodcast.com

no lnx many vids

Tucker Carlson's toxic environmental legacy

Carlson's show helped popularize a greenwashed form of white nationalism that falsely blames environmental problems on immigrants.

EMILY ATKIN

APR 27, 2023

A screenshot of one of many of Tucker Carlson’s “environmental” segments. Source: Fox News

Over the six years he hosted his eponymous prime-time show on Fox News, Tucker Carlson periodically insisted he was an environmentalist.

Before getting unceremoniously canned this week, Carlson regularly told his 3 million nightly viewers about his concern for the “natural environment” and the “natural landscape,” and praised “the good-hearted people who really love the mountains.” “I care about the planet,” he said in 2018, even going so far as to tell viewers that he used to donate to the Sierra Club. “I think John Muir is really cool,” he once said.

And yet, when Carlson talked about the “environment” on his show, the discussion almost never centered on how to actually improve the overall quality of U.S. water or air. It certainly never centered on climate change, which Carlson decried as a liberal distraction from “actual” environmental issues. “Climate is not part of the environment, in my opinion,” he once said.

Instead, Carlson’s segments on the environment usually centered on the same thesis most of his non-environmental segments promoted: That Democrats are trying to control you, and replace you with immigrants. And by “you,” he means his audience—which is 92 percent white.

The biggest difference between Carlson’s non-environmental segments and environmental segments was that, instead of blaming immigrants for crime and taxpayer plundering, he blamed them for littering and dirtying the country.

Watch the segment where Tucker Carlson’s guest blames trash in AOC’s district on immigrants here.

Here are some examples I found of Carlson using his Fox News show to blame environmental problems on immigration:

“How is it good for the environment of this country to import millions of poor people from the Third World?” June 29, 2018

“The truth is unregulated mass immigration has badly hurt this country's natural landscape.” December 17, 2018

“If you are pushing to increase the size of our population—and they are—what's your plan for keeping our natural environment pristine?” April 4, 2019

“Unregulated waves of people coming in destroy the land and contribute to massive amounts of pollution.” April 25, 2021

“I'm not against immigrants or anything, but too many people is bad for the environment.” July 17, 2021

“Environmental organizations [are] promoting crowding and illegal immigration, which hurts the environment.” July 30, 2021

Here are some examples I found of Carlson saying immigrants make the country polluted, dirty, and crowded:

“As I got older, I realized, you don't want to live in crowded places. Everyone's unhappy, it's horrible, and it's dirty.” November 16, 2018

“Spend a week in a crowded, dirty country, and you'll find that you don't want to live in a place like that, I think.” December 6, 2018

“Crowded countries are polluted. Every single one of them. Tell us why we should want that here?” April 4, 2019

“That's the main problem with crowded countries. They're hard to live in. They're loud and dirty and chaotic.” January 4, 2022.

“This is becoming a crowded country and crowded countries are ugly, unhappy countries.” March 17, 2021

“Crowded countries are dirty, all of them. It's obvious if you travel.” July 17, 2021

One problem with this rhetoric is that it’s flat-out wrong. “There is little actual science to bolster immigration control for ecological purposes,” Susie Cagle wrote in a 2019 piece in The Guardian. “While there is evidence that population and economic growth in total increases global emissions, recent studies show no correlation between U.S. immigrant communities and pollution.”

On the contrary, a qualitative study of immigrant populations in the U.S. found that immigrants actually use less energy, drive less, and generate less waste than native-born Americans. “The vast majority of behavioral studies demonstrate that immigrants live more environmentally sustainable lifestyles than native-born Americans, so much so that immigrant density is associated with lower carbon emissions,” reports the liberal Center for American Progress. The libertarian Cato Institute also agrees with this point. (See CAP’s full report on debunking population-based anti-immigrant “environmentalism” here).

But the bigger, far more concerning problem is that these falsehoods frequently promoted by Carlson are key tenets of eco-fascism, the racist environmental ideology that multiple mass shooters have claimed since 2019. We wrote about the rise of eco-fascist rhetoric among U.S. conservatives last week.

In that newsletter, we described two tenets of eco-fascism that are gaining popularity among Republicans: One is that that the ruling class is trying to control and “replace” white people using immigration, which was what motivated the self-proclaimed eco-fascist who killed 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket last year. Another is that immigration is a form of “environmental warfare” that harms the natural landscape, which was what motivated the self-proclaimed eco-fascist who killed 23 people in an El Paso, Texas Walmart in 2019.

Carlson clearly used his Fox News show to promote that second point, as we’ve already demonstrated. But Carlson promoted the first point even more frequently. According to a New York Times analysis of 1,150 Tucker Carlson Tonight episodes, more than 400 segments championed the idea that elites are trying to force demographic replacement through immigration.

Before Carlson’s show, greenwashed white nationalist rhetoric like this was still considered widely taboo—and for good reason. In the past, early American environmentalists used similar rhetoric to justify racist policies and advocate for eugenics.

“[The eugenicist Madison Grant], along with the influential naturalist John Muir and other early Anglo-Saxon conservationists, was critical in preserving the country’s wildlands for white enjoyment,” Cagle wrote. “Muir, who founded the Sierra Club environmental group in 1892, was disturbed by the “uncleanliness” of the Native Americans, whom he wanted removed from Yosemite.” (It’s no wonder, then, why Carlson cited his love for John Muir—and said he hates what the Sierra Club has become.)

Now, racist and xenophobic environmentalism is on the rise in the U.S. again, inspiring Fox News viewers and mass murderers alike. That’s not all thanks to Tucker Carlson, but his role will forever be a part of his legacy—one much more toxic than any piece of litter.

Environmental policy can be very complicated. You know what is not complicated? Littering. Anyone who is for littering is against the environment. Period. No littering. You are not allowed to litter here. That's my view, anyway.

Tucker Carlson speaking on Tucker Carlson Tonight, April 25, 2021.

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4 23 email

no lnx many vid?

Welcome back to HEATED! Emily here. Arielle and I are in Boise, Idaho today and tomorrow for the Society for Environmental Journalists annual conference, where we’ll be learning about things like how to better use the Freedom of Information Act; how to ethically cover tribal issues; and how to better understand next-gen “clean energy” technologies, among many other things.

This morning, I’m actually attending a panel about the subject of today’s newsletter: Eco-fascism. Unfortunately, it’s a subject that—as you’ll learn today—is only getting more relevant. But I’m eager to gain more perspective to inform my future reporting.

Arielle and I are only able to attend events like these because of our paid subscriber community, which funds 100 percent of everything we do. When you become part of it, you get the piece of mind of knowing you’re not only making our journalism possible, but actually helping us become better, more well-rounded reporters.

If you want to follow along and hear more about what we’re learning in Boise, give Arielle and I a follow over at Substack Notes.

Why U.S. conservatives are flirting with eco-fascism

As we approach Earth Day, it’s worth remembering that not everyone shares the same view of what "environmentalism" means.

EMILY ATKIN

APR 21

Thanos, noted eco-fascist. Source: Marvel Studios

For the last couple weeks, I’ve been trying to get back into a regular practice of monitoring conservative news sites for climate content. So far, I’ve mostly just come across your garden-variety climate denial and fossil fuel talking points.

I recently came across one article, however, that was both alarming and unlike anything I’d ever read. And though I don’t normally like to amplify batshit stuff like this, a prominent researcher on the topic convinced me it was worthy of discussion.

It was an op-ed considering the potential upsides of eco-fascism.

A screenshot of a PJ Media article headlined “‘Eco-Fascism’: Ideological Scourge or Salvation?”

Eco-fascism, for the uninitiated, is best known as the ideology embraced by the mass shooter who killed 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket last year. The shooter, as E&E News reported at the time, was motivated by “the racist conspiracy theory that the ruling class is using immigration to politically and culturally ‘replace’ white people.”

The Buffalo shooter called on others “to view immigration as ‘environmental warfare,’” and to “reclaim environmentalism in the name of white nationalism.” His calls echoed those of the mass shooter who killed 23 people in an El Paso, Texas Walmart in 2019, who was also a self-proclaimed eco-fascist.

In the aforementioned April 9 op-ed for PJ Media, conservative journalist Ben Bartee condemned these murders. But he also questioned whether the ideology that motivated them “might inject some new, much-needed perspective on the merits of ecological conservation into the zeitgeist.”

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Bartee said conservatives need to embrace environmentalism—but not the climate-focused, social justice-motivated environmentalism of the Left. Liberal environmentalism, he argued, contains no “sincere environmental concern” and is merely a “pretext to shut down industrialized Western economies.”

Eco-fascists, on the other hand, “take their mandate to conserve the natural world from the ravages of humanity’s industrial machinations in a more militant and sincere, if misguided, direction,” Bartee wrote. And while eco-fascism does have some problems, he said, it’s a “smear” to label it racist or white supremacist.

“Some racist mass shooters might nominally be eco-fascists, but not all eco-fascists need necessarily be racist mass shooters,” he said. (Congratulations to anyone who had “Eco-fascists getting the #NotAllMen treatment” on their 2023 bingo card.)

Bartee ended his piece by lamenting that eco-fascism has become “tainted by association” with mass murderers and white supremacists. For that reason, he concluded, the ideology will “forever likely remain on the margins of politics, unembraced by any mainstream movement.”

But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

The rise of eco-fascist rhetoric at home

Tucker Carlson says his racism shows he really, truly cares about the environment.

Peter Staudenmaier, a professor of history at Marquette University, has written two books on the history of eco-fascism. He believes Bartee’s op-ed is more than just a fringe news site’s flirtation with eco-fascism, but emblematic of a broader struggle happening within conservative U.S. environmental politics.

“It read to me like a person who's sort of struggling within himself to define his environmental message,” he said. “He does not want to be directly associated with [eco-fascists], because they're terrorists and bombers. But he is drawn to some of those ideas, to some of those forms of environmental thinking.”

This struggle, Staudenmaier argues, is born from U.S. conservatives realizing they need to do more than simply deny and/or ignore climate change. To solve this problem, some U.S. conservatives are going the way of market-based solutions. But others are going the way of nationalist ones.

They’re not all just small op-ed writers like Bartee, either. Here are some examples from the last few months of prominent conservative individuals and organizations spouting fascist-inspired environmental thinking:

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson said the government and media don't care about the environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio because the residents are "overwhelmingly white and politically conservative.” He added: “In both cases, had it affected the rich or the favored poor, it would be the lead of every news channel in the world.” (February 2023).

Popular right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk said President Biden does not care about the environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, because it happened primarily to white people. "It's because the war on white people continues,” he said. “Why would you care for the white working class voters in eastern Ohio?" (February 2023).

The House Judiciary Committee tweeted a clip from a hearing, claiming "Illegal immigration damages our ENVIRONMENT every single day." (February 2023).

The Federation for American Immigrant Reform (FAIR) published a blog claiming Biden’s family planning and immigration policies would harm the environment because they would lead to population growth in ecologically sensitive areas. (February 2023).

The conservative Center for Immigration Studies published an article claiming immigration harms the U.S. environment. "One of the problems with bringing in new people is that while their negative impact on the environment is minimal in their home countries, after they arrive they start acting like Americans, driving cars, using fossil fuels, and thus damaging the environment just like Americans do." (December 2022).

The rise of rhetoric like this is why Staudenmaier thinks Republicans may only be a few years behind other countries’ conservative parties that have more openly embraced eco-fascist ideals.

“I can't say for sure, but that's where I think things are trending right now,” he said. “And that's a big deal.”

The rise of eco-fascist rhetoric abroad

A primary example is Germany’s anti-immigrant far-right party, Alternative for Germany. For many years, its environmental politics were similar to the American right-wing: based mostly on climate denial and support for coal.

But after the 2019 elections saw the country’s Green Party surge, the youth wing of AfD recommended moving away from climate denial, noting that climate issues move “more people than we thought.” Instead, they recommended using concerns about the climate and environment to further promote their anti-immigrant rhetoric. This includes instilling more fear about non-white outsiders; linking the preservation of the environment to the preservation of “culture;” and building border walls around their country to keep their environment clean.

Since then, the AfD youth wing’s position “has slowly won out within the party as a whole,” Staudenmaier said. “I think for the next set of elections, it may become the official stance.”

Germany isn’t the only country greenwashing its racist and xenophobic rhetoric in a bid to sway voters. Writing for Dissent, Kate Aronoff noted it happening in France’s far-right National Rally, under Marine Le Pen’s leadership. “Le Pen herself has argued that concern for the climate is inherently nationalist. Those who are ‘nomadic,’ she said, ‘do not care about the environment; they have no homeland.’”

While this global rise in eco-fascist rhetoric is deeply concerning, it’s not inevitable. But the only way to prevent it is to understand its potential power.

“For those of us who are committed environmentalists, we can't get complacent. We can’t simply assume that environmental ideals automatically go hand in hand with a commitment to social justice or equality,” Staudenmaier said. “If we want to see those things go together, then we need to work to make them go together, because it's never going to happen naturally.”

Arielle Samuelson contributed reporting.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/todaysclimate/how-mass-shootings-ecofascism-and-climate-change-got-tied-together/

kris t

two recent mass shootings in communities of color are renewing fears among environmental groups and climate activists that a growing number of young men are adopting racist right-wing ideologies to explain the worsening climate crisis and justify extreme violence.

On Tuesday, a gunman walked into an elementary school in the predominantly Latino city of Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and 2 adults in the worst school-related mass shooting since the one at Sandy Hook Elementary. Less than two weeks prior, a shooter targeted Black shoppers at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 and injuring three more.

While the motivations behind the Uvalde shooter, who was killed by police at the scene, remain unclear, the Buffalo shooter posted a manifesto online that was rife with racist underpinnings. That includes the mention of “ecofascism,” a theory that blames immigrants—particularly immigrants of color—for causing overpopulation and environmental degradation in Western nations.

“For too long we have allowed the left to co-opt the environmentalist movement to serve their own needs,” 18-year-old Payton Gendron, the alleged shooter in Buffalo, wrote in his 180-page document. “The left has controlled all discussion regarding environmental preservation whilst simultaneously presiding over the continued destruction of the natural environment itself through mass immigration and uncontrolled urbanization.”

Climate activists, many who have been tracking the proliferation of ecofascism among far-right groups, say the Buffalo shooting is just the latest in what appears to be a growing movement in the United States and Europe. In fact, Gendron pulled much of the language in his manifesto from the screeds of past shooters.

In 2019, a gunman walked into two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 51 Muslim worshippers. Later that year, another man entered a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and shot 46 people, killing 23—most of them Latino. Both shooters, who were also young white males like Gendron, cited ecofascism to justify their actions.

Once relegated to the fringes of society, ecofascism has found its way into mainstream discourse in recent years. Its origins, in many ways, trace back to the Tanton network, a collection of more than a dozen anti-immigration groups founded or funded by John Tanton, a wealthy ophthalmologist from Michigan. Tanton, who was once a leader of the Sierra Club, believed that the root cause of environmental destruction is overpopulation by the “wrong” sorts of people.

Tanton died in 2019, but his legacy has lived on through others. In 2019, Tucker Carlson, the conservative pundit for Fox News, alluded to the concept of ecofascism on air with a member of the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank that has long perpetuated misinformation on climate change. “Isn’t crowding your country the fastest way to despoil it, to pollute it, to make it a place you wouldn’t want to live?” Carlson mused in the interview.

In 2021, Arizona’s Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovichfiled a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, alleging that the Biden administration’s immigration policies were harming his state’s environment by allowing immigrants to “drive cars, purchase goods, and use public parks and other facilities,” resulting in “the release of pollutants, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”

And a growing number of scholars say eco-fascist ideas are now swirling around right-wing circles as a way to address climate change while also advocating for anti-immigration policy. The groups are “always twisting” climate research “to support some rhetoric that we certainly were not aiming to support,” Jenny Rowland-Shea, deputy director for Public Lands at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, told the Christian Science Monitor. Her own research was used for “criticizing immigrants and people of color and saying they were responsible” for environmental damage, she said.

While right-wing groups blame immigrants for their environmental problems, research has long shown that it’s really the world’s affluent who are contributing most to the climate crisis.

A 2020 report by Oxfam found that from 1990 to 2015—a period when humans doubled the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—the wealthiest 1 percent of the world’s population accounted for more than twice as much carbon emissions as the poorest half of the Earth’s population.

Still, the continued emergence of ecofascism is particularly worrisome given that worsening storms, droughts and other consequences of climate change are already displacing more people from their homes and sending refugees into neighboring countries. At the U.S.-Mexico border, climate change is contributing to a record-high backlog of immigration cases, ICN’s Aydali Campa reported last week.

“It is getting to the point where, around the world, we see the climate change impacts overriding a lot of people’s ability to adapt,” said Rebecca Carter, the acting director of climate resilience practice at the World Resources Institute, a global research non-profit based in Washington. “Whether it’s because they don’t have access to what they need, or because things are so severe that there really are not solutions to the challenges they’re facing.”

Today’s Indicator

2080

That’s the year scientists had initially anticipated seeing the kind of intense winter storms they’re now witnessing in the Southern Hemisphere, a new study found. The finding marked another bleak milestone for researchers, who say the reality of climate change is far worse than expected.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/eco-fascism-rise-and-its-anti-immigrant-beliefs-have-bullhorn-fox-news

the far right is increasingly embracing an extremist ideology known as “eco-fascism,” which seeks to co-opt legitimate environmental concerns and repurpose them to support white nationalism. The alleged shooters who carried out racist, xenophobic attacks in Buffalo, New York; El Paso, Texas; and Christchurch, New Zealand, all either identified as eco-fascists or espoused eco-fascist views, but these beliefs are also being spread by mainstream conservative media figures. Fox News and other right-wing outlets regularly put forward eco-fascistic arguments that either implicitly or explicitly adopt the racist “great replacement” theory, which holds that a cabal of elites is seeking to displace white people through increased immigration.

Eco-fascism holds that immigrants are to blame for a scarcity of resources and, therefore, must be prevented from entering the United States, Europe, or other countries coded as “the West.” “If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable,” the El Paso shooter allegedly wrote. That statement echoed the nativist and proto-eco-fascist Garrett Hardin’s argument that rich countries are like a “lifeboat” with limited social, economic, and natural resources – including food and housing stock – that needed to turn away immigrants, or else the “boat swamps, everyone drowns.”

In addition to this supposed competition for resources, eco-fascists hold racist beliefs about immigrants’ hygiene, respect for nature, and perceived higher birthrates. Historically, eco-fascism has held that the “purity” of a land’s natural resources should be reflected in racist ideas of a nation’s racial “purity,” most explicitly in the Nazi “emphasis on ‘blood and soil’” and “the need for a living space purified of alien and undesirable elements.” Just as the great replacement theory says that white people are being politically marginalized and subjugated, eco-fascists say they are being denied their rightful resources.[vid

November 11, 2019, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight]

The ideas that immigrants are a “drain” on resources or present an environmental risk to the United States are not limited to explicit eco-fascists though. Both of those narratives are common on Fox News, including from the network’s top star Tucker Carlson. On April 25, after Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) blamed migrants for causing “environmental degradation” at the southern border, Carlson thanked him for mentioning the “effect on the physical landscape, on the land.” The host added, “Where is the Sierra Club, you know, as our country is being trampled?”

Carlson has discussed this theme repeatedly over the years. The Potomac River “has gotten dirtier and dirtier and dirtier and dirtier,” he said in a 2019 interview in The Atlantic. “I go down there and that litter is left almost exclusively by immigrants.” (The Potomac Conservancy condemned Carlson’s remarks, calling them “racist plain and simple.”)

“I actually hate litter which is one of the reasons I'm so against illegal immigration. It produces a huge amount of litter,” he said in August 2018.

That December, Carlson said that immigrants make “our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided.” He faced a significant backlash following those remarks, including from 26 companies which pulled advertisements from his show. But he doubled down on the comments just days later in a monologue that explicitly called increased immigration levels – not just the act of migrating – a threat to U.S. natural resources.

“Thanks to illegal immigration, huge swaths of the region are covered with garbage and waste that degrade the soil and kill wildlife,” he said. “Illegal immigration comes at a huge cost to our environment.”

“The left used to care about the environment – the land, the water, the animals,” he continued. “They understood that America is beautiful because it is open and uncrowded. Not so long ago, environmentalists opposed mass immigration. They knew what the costs were.”

Far-right website The Federalist wrote up that segment under the headline: “Tucker Carlson Is Absolutely Right: Illegal Immigration Is Destroying The Environment.”

One year earlier, far-right pundit Ann Coulter wrote an opinion piece for the Daily Caller titled “Choose Between A Green America And A Brown America,” criticizing the Sierra Club for adopting progressive immigration policies. In the piece, she made a racist reference to a “Mexican cultural trait of littering” and promoted “taking white Western European immigrants” over “Mass Third World immigration.”

The eco-fascistic right often couches its anti-immigrant conservationism in Malthusian anxieties about overpopulation. “A sensible environmentalism” would have to ask “is it good for us or the environment that the population grows artificially through the mass introduction of foreigners?” Christopher Roach wrote in a piece for American Greatness, a hotbed of far-right Trumpist nationalism. Roach also referenced “an immigration regime that transports billions from the fertile—though impoverished—Third World,” highlighting again the overlap between great replacement panic and eco-fascist narratives.

The far right’s demonization of immigrants as “dirty” or bad stewards of the environment goes hand-in-hand with the lie that they steal wealth from the United States, or otherwise don’t contribute their fair share.

“Our national wealth is up for grabs by whomever gets here first, and they are coming,” Carlson on May 21, 2019. “The United States is being plundered.”

That segment was based on a report from an immigration restrictionist group that has deep ties to the far-right ecology movement, called the Federation for American Immigration Reform. The group seeks to drastically reduce the level of authorized immigration and stop all unauthorized border crossing, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has designated FAIR as an extremist group.

In a recent blog post, FAIR government relations manager Preston Huennekens argued that “any increase in our population is going to our tax natural resources” and that migration had negative environmental impacts “through the physical act of migrating itself,” including “border trash, smuggling trails destroying fauna, etc.”

The idea of scarcity is crucial to the racist appeal of eco-fascism, and Fox News regularly suggests that municipal and federal resources can’t accommodate increased migration.

“At a time when there were more than half a million Americans homeless living on the streets – a crushing number that our leaders ignore but that rises every single year – at that moment, Joe Biden is giving hotel rooms to illegal aliens,” Carlson declared. “It's hard to believe that's real. Oh, but it is real.”

Anchor Harris Faulkner played that clip on her March 23, 2021, show, to which Fox News’ Will Cain responded: “Welcoming in migrants from Central America, that's all fine and good but not if it’s coming at the expense of a limited amount of resources that we're depriving of Americans.” As Media Matters noted at the time, immigrants contribute more to governmental resources than they use[vid]

March 23, 2021, edition of Fox News' The Faulkner Focus ]

In fact, Cain’s entire premise is wrong. The world has enough wealth and productive capacity to feed every human being. The United States could house every person living here, and the choice not to is due to a lack of political will, not limited environmental resources.

Nevertheless, over a 12-week period in 2021, Fox News repeated some version of Cain’s lie, fearmongering about immigrants taking resources from American citizens in at least 46 segments, according to a Media Matters study. The same research found that Fox News hosts demonized migrant children in 32 segments, accusing them of being a burden on the educational system, such as when Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade said on March 1, 2021, that migrant children who “don't speak English” were “taking time and energy away from your kids.”

Environmentalists have worked for decades to successfully expel any strains of eco-fascism from their movement. Now, right-wing media have openly adopted eco-fascistic rhetoric to conflate an ideology grounded in white supremacy with genuine environmental concerns, all in their crusade against immigration.

To paraphrase the Potomac Conservancy: These attacks are racist, plain and simple.

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an 3 22

he far right has a long history of attacking environmentalists as “tree huggers,” railing against green energy and denying that climate change exists — even though countless scientists have offered concrete proof that it does. Former President Donald Trump, a strident defender of fossil fuels, even made the ludicrous claim that coal is much cleaner than green energy and that wind turbines cause cancer.

Being conservative doesn’t automatically mean being totally opposed to environmentalism. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) started under President Richard Nixon. But among far-right Republicans of the MAGA variety, hating environmentalists is a badge of honor. Nonetheless, there are times when the far right and environmentalism intersect, and National Public Radio (NPR) journalists Ari Shapiro, Matt Ozug and Casey Morell discuss that unlikely combination in an early April report.

“Conservative leaders, from Rush Limbaugh to former President Donald Trump, have certainly denied climate change in the past,” the NPR reporters explain. “But today, a different argument is becoming more common on the conservative political fringe…. On the podcast ‘The People's Square,’ a musician who goes by Stormking described his vision for a far-right reclamation of environmentalism.”

Stormking argued, “Right-wing environmentalism in this country is mostly — especially in more modern times — an untried attack vector. And it has legs, in my opinion.”

Shapiro, Ozug and Morell cite Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich as an example of a Republican who made a right-wing environmental argument. Railing against illegal immigration, Brnovich argued, “We know that there's information out there that says that every time someone crosses the border, they're leaving between six and eight pounds of trash in the desert. That trash is a threat to wildlife. It's a threat to natural habitats.”

The NPR reporters go on to note that in 1998 and 2004, “anti-immigrant factions tried to stage a hostile takeover of the Sierra Club's national board” but “failed.”

According to Hampshire College’s Betsy Hartmann, fearing the destruction that climate change is causing fits in with the “doomsday” element of the far right.

“If you have this apocalyptic doomsday view of climate change,” Hartmann told NPR, “the far right can use that doomsday view to its own strategic advantage.”

Shapiro, Ozug and Morell describe the intersection of far-right views and environmentalism as “ecofascism” and consider it a “problem” that will continue to grow.

“The problem is visible now, and there is time to address it,” they write. “But the longer people wait, the harder it's going to be.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/marines/

Three Marine Corps veterans and their porn-star neo-Nazi guru, arrested last month on charges that they engaged in an interstate gun-running scheme, comprised a band of violent fascists who had recently moved to Idaho with the intent of making it a base of operations for their plans to engage in acts of domestic terrorism, federal prosecutors revealed this week.

According to the grand-jury indictment filed this week by prosecutors in North Carolina, the men's schemes went well beyond those with which they have been charged—namely, buying semiautomatic rifles, altering them into automatics, then shipping them from Idaho to North Carolina. The foursome not only engaged in paramilitary training in the Idaho desert, they surveilled two separate Black Lives Matters marches in Boise this summer and discussed killing participants. They also plotted to assassinate BLM founder Alicia Garza.

Three of the four men—Justin Hermanson, 21, who used the code name "Sandman"; Liam Collins, 21, aka "Disciple"; and Jordan Duncan, 25, aka "Soldier"—had met while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. The fourth—Paul Kryscuk, 35, whose nom de plume was "Deacon"—was a porn star (under the stage name "Pauly Harker") who had lived most of his life on Long Island, New York. He met the other men online in the now-defunct neo-Nazi message board Iron March, and was the group's general leader, though all they identified as members of the terrorist organization Atomwaffen Division.

Back in 2017, when Iron March was still active, the men had discussed among themselves how to create "a modern day SS," as one of them put it, referencing the Nazi paramilitary organization Schutzstaffel, the indictment says. Kryscuk outlined the group's long-range plan then:

"First order of business is knocking down The System, mounting it and smashing it's face until it has been beaten past the point of death … eventually we will have to bring the rifles out and go to work."

"Second order of business ... is the seizing of territory and the Balkanization of North America. Buying property in remote areas that are already predominantly white and right leaning, networking with locals, training, farming, and stockpiling."

"Start buying property now in the types of regions mentioned above and get to work on building your own group. …As time goes on in this conflict, we will expand our territories and slowly take back the land that is rightfully ours. ... As we build our forces and our numbers, we will move into the urban areas and clear them out. This will be a ground war very reminiscent of Iraq as we will essentially be facing an insurgent force made up of criminals and gang members."

Kryscuk bought a home in the Boise area in February 2020 and moved there, and Duncan and Collins gradually followed suit. Hermanson—who was stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and remains an active member of the Marine Corps—joined them in July for a training exercise in the Idaho desert. The participants in compiled a video of the live footage from that training, showing Kryscuk and another person firing a variety of rifles. At the end, the four men—all outfitted in Atomwaffen masks—are seen giving the Nazi salute beneath a Sonnenrad, an occult Nazi symbol. The final frame reads: "Come home white man."

Prosecutors say the purpose of the gun-running scheme was "to regularly and repetitively manufacture and transport firearms and firearm parts, to include suppressors, in a manner that the government would not know the recipients had them, for criminal purposes"—namely "in furtherance of a civil disorder."

The "civil disorder" included attacking the Black Lives Matter movement, including its leadership. Garza reported in a tweet last week that the FBI had informed her that her name had appeared on a list of targets found in one of the men's homes in Boise.

"This is why this President is so dangerous," she added. "He is stoking fires he has no intention of controlling. I'm ok y'all, but this shit is not ok."

The neo-Nazi gang had twice conducted surveillance on BLM events in Boise: First, on July 21, at a rally on the campus of Boise State University, Kryscuk was observed within visual range of the event, first sitting in a parked vehicle and driving around the gathering slowly.

Then, on August 18, Kryscuk was observed lurking in the vicinity of a BLM rally/protest at a park in downtown Boise.

Kryscuk and Duncan just last month discussed in a text chat how things would go down after their group—which they called "the BSN" (a prosecutors office spokesman declined to explain the meaning of the acronym)—attacked BLM marchers as they envisioned:

"How the BSNs finna be pulling up to chipotle after hitting legs," Duncan asked.

"Death squad," Kryscuk answered, adding: "Assassins creed hoodies and suppressed 22 pistols."

"People freaking tf out," Duncan replied.

"About what," Kryscuk asked.

"'The end of democracy'," Duncan wrote.

"One can hope," Kryscuk answered.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

A HISTORY RETURNED

Historian Peter Staudenmaier’s essay “Fascist Ecology,” published in 1995, describes how 19th Century German political romantics first forged a “peculiar synthesis of naturalism and nationalism.”[[17]](http://www.politicalresearch.org/2020/07/09/blood-and-vanishing-topsoil-american-ecofascism-past-present-and-coming-climate-crisis#_ftn17) Staudenmaier highlights the 19th Century German nationalist Ernst Moritz Arndt, who argued that the essence of the German people could be found in the landscape and specifically the forest.[[18]](http://www.politicalresearch.org/2020/07/09/blood-and-vanishing-topsoil-american-ecofascism-past-present-and-coming-climate-crisis#_ftn18) Arndt was a fanatical antisemite, and, as Staudenmaier writes, “His eloquent and prescient appeals for ecological sensitivity were couched always in terms of the well-being of the German soil and the German people.” The soil and volk were inextricable, and overexploitation of the land, Arndt argued, led directly to a weakened German race.[[19]](http://www.politicalresearch.org/2020/07/09/blood-and-vanishing-topsoil-american-ecofascism-past-present-and-coming-climate-crisis#_ftn19)

In 1866, German zoologist Ernst Haeckel coined the term “ecology,” before going on to found the German Monist League, which “combined scientifically based ecological holism with völkischsocial views,” including Haeckel’s personal belief in “nordic racial superiority,” Social Darwinism, and racial eugenics. His followers developed his thinking further, “embedding concern for the natural world in a tightly woven web of regressive social themes,” as Staudenmaier writes, so that “From its very beginnings…ecology was bound up in an intensely reactionary political framework.”[[20]](http://www.politicalresearch.org/2020/07/09/blood-and-vanishing-topsoil-american-ecofascism-past-present-and-coming-climate-crisis#_ftn20)

The rise of German nationalism was thus deeply connected to mythical conceptions of race and nature both of which were viewed as under threat by industrial advances. By the early 20th Century, figures like the psychologist Ludwig Klages, whom Stuadenmaier notes “anticipated just about all of the themes of the contemporary ecology movement,”[[21]](http://www.politicalresearch.org/2020/07/09/blood-and-vanishing-topsoil-american-ecofascism-past-present-and-coming-climate-crisis#_ftn21) were calling for a return to simpler modes of living more natural to the German volk. This reaction brought with it the concomitant worship of German rural and peasant life and rabid antisemitism—with Jews scapegoated as the bearers of a hated and false ideology of progress—that would feed directly into Nazi Germany’s philosophy ofBlut und Boden(blood and soil)....

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by Matthew Valasik, Louisiana State Universityand Shannon Reid, University of North Carolina – Charlotte

As protests about police violence among black people continue and become more widespread across the U.S., certain individuals and groups have begun to stand out – including anarchists, agitators and members of a variety of far-right groups.

With the country’s long history of racist killings, it may be confusing to think that racists and white supremacists are among those objecting to the killing of people of color.

But people affiliated with far-right groups aren’t trying to be part of the overall protest movement. Having researched these groups, we think it’s likely that they are attempting to hijack the event for their own purposes.

As researchers of street gangs and far-right groups, we see that in this case, they want to stoke a civil war between the races – one they think they can win. By antagonizing police, destroying property, or intimidating the public by adopting military gear – including weapons – these groups are attempting to instigate violence between the police, protesters and the public. Rousting law enforcement to violently retaliate against black people en masse is the first step.

Instigating civil war

The far-right is not unified by a strict ideology. It is a broad movement with various factions vying for greater amounts of attention and influence.

In spite of this tension, our research shows that many share the conspiracy belief that Western governments are corrupt and controlled by the New World Order, a cabal of wealthy Jewish elites. To them, wealthy Jewish investor and democracy advocate George Soros is the puppet master of the world economy.

William Luther Pierce’s 1978 novel “The Turner Diaries,” which has come to be known as “the bible of the racist right,” lays out a plan to instigate a race war and bring about the federal government’s collapse. The book has inspired violence from the far-right, most notably the 1995 bombing at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

“Accelerationism” – the idea that inducing chaos, provoking law enforcement, and promoting political tension will hasten the collapse of Western government – has taken root among far-right groups. One such group, the “Boogaloo Bois,” identified by their penchant for wearing Hawaiian shirts, has been observed at protests in Minnesota, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Oregon.As with any far-right movement, “Boogaloo Bois” groups are rather unstructured and have varied beliefs, lacking any hierarchical organization.

In Las Vegas, three “Boogaloo Bois” were arrested with firearms and a plan to incite violence during George Floyd protests. Social media posts and online chat groups have also shown them attempting to infiltrate other protests across the country.

Joining the crowds provides these groups an opportunity to discredit protesters by inciting looting, rioting, violence and vandalism – which they hope will spark like-minded white Americans to resist the civil disobedience of protesters. Already, there are roving bands of armed white counterprotesters at protests across America.

Other far-right extremists are talking on social media about the protests requiring a lot of police attention and see an opportunity to engage in targeted terror attacks. Their overall intention is the same: fanning flames to burn down the federal government, making room for them to establish a whites-only country.

Matthew Valasik, Associate Professor of Sociology, Louisiana State Universityand Shannon Reid, Associate Professor, University of North Carolina – Charlotte

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/white-supremacy-groups-are-hoping-to-leverage-george-floyds-death-into-their-longed-for-race-war/

no lnx pix vid twt

white supremacy groups are hoping to leverage George Floyd’s death into their longed-for ‘race war’

Image via Screrengrab.

Written by Mark Sumner / Daily Kos May 31, 2020

The protests that have spread across the nation in the wake of the murder of George Floyd have attracted a diverse group of supporters that go beyond local Black communities and national organizations. At events in Washington, New York, Minneapolis, and elsewhere, community activists have been joined by allies, by groups supporting Latinos, Indian groups, and even groups of Mennonite farmers speaking out in support and showing up for protests.

But, with dozens of buildings burned and Donald Trump preparing to bring in the military, there’s a growing sense that the violence in many cases isn’t originating from within the local Black community. In multiple instances, there have been incidents that seemed to spring up on the periphery of peaceful protests, leading to violent confrontations and property destruction. And increasingly, there are reports that these events are not originating organically from the protests or from confrontations between protesters and the police. There is a very real feeling that white supremacists are using this moment to create incidents designed to justify still more violence and suppression.

peanut butter cup

@deshawnieboy

Raw footage of who started the looting in Oakland at Walgreens. Had just seen them three blocks down hitting some other businesses. All prepared with hammers. Don’t let them say different.

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With dozens of protests across the nation, not every event is the same. For example, it’s not hard to see what sparked this incident Atlanta, where a police officer slams a bicycle into a Black woman for having the audacity to wave a finger at him while saying “Don’t touch me.” It’s clear that the violence in this particular moment originated direct from the police.

Brittany Miller

@Brittm_tv

WATCH: I was recording when the first clash between police & protestors broke out in Atlanta. @cbs46 #cbs46 #news #GeorgeFloydprotest

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But in some of the most publicized incidents across the nation, there seem to be a singular nature to some of those involved, as in this recording in which what appears to be a young white man in camo pants and military boots paints graffiti on a federal building.

Fin Gomez

@finnygo

The protest then headed to in front of the White House. A protester was taken by the USSS in front of Pennsylvania Ave into an adjacent federal building. Unclear what he did.A couple men then splintered off from the group and spray painted “F*ck Trump” on the building. @cbsnews

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Or this group which is, reportedly, shown attempting to smash store windows in Minneapolis, with the group initiating this action appearing to be led by a number of white people.

Joy Reid

@JoyAnnReid

May 30, 2020

Replying to @lewoofl

Yes we are. Absolutely.

Barbara Stiles

@Dovewoman1

This from @Mikel_Jollett

It shows the instigators clearly. They are white. Organized with walkie talkies. pic.twitter.com/zPhBoSg3fE

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And those on the ground reported similar events at other protests in many locations.

Asia

@AsiaJannelll

I was at Downtown Oakland protests a little while ago. Let me say something; the people breaking glass, breaking into windows & starting fires were WHITE men wearing all black. They had hammers and walkie talkies. They were organized. BLM protestors did not start the violence!

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Repeatedly, from eye witnesses and from officials, have come claims that violence in the protests is originating not with those who live in the community, but with others who have appeared to take advantage of this moment.

Joy Reid

@JoyAnnReid

Remarkable info coming out of this presser: Gov. Tim Walls, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and now MN attorney general Keith Ellison ALL alleging outside forces, domestic and possibly foreign, have post-Tuesday infiltrated the state, and are

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And, as Vice reports, far right extremists are trying to use this situation in hopes of bringing about their much-desired “race war.”That effort involves both showing up at protests with guns, initiating violence, and taking to computers to urge everyone involved toward more tragic confrontations. Even the Hawaiian shirt-wearing “Boogaloo Bois” have appeared at some of the protests. The possibility of using these protests as a precipitating incident, and calls for white supremacist militias to confront protesters, are dominating discussion boards and social media for these groups.

This is also generating some genuinely bizarre events.

Fox Wound

@foxwoundband

Atlanta has deployed a child militia at Lenox Mall fitted with riot shields and batons. What the actual fuck is going on?

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The extent to which those trying to instigate more widespread violence are behind the incidents of property damage and physical clashes remains unclear. What is absolutely clear it that white supremacists are hoping to leverage yet another example of violence against an individual Black man as an excuse to carry out a campaign of expanded violence against the entire Black community.

Following closely on the heels of the police murder of Breonna Taylor and the recorded lynching of Ahmaud Arbery—as well as decades in which police violence has been repeatedly excused—there’s no doubt of the weight of grief in the Black community, or the justified anger. But there are definitely those who are seeking to turn this moment from one in which those suffering injustice are finally heard, to one in which that injustice is “justified” and made worse.

And with Donald Trump calling Nazis in Charlottesville “very fine people” and protesters in Minneapolis “thugs,” there seems little doubt about which side he is ready to join.

Joy Reid

@JoyAnnReid

May 30, 2020

Replying to @JoyAnnReid

And the governor says he has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, and fully mobilized the MN National Guard for the first time in 164 years. This is a continuing story and presumably we will begin hearing it echoed in other cities.

Joy Reid

@JoyAnnReid

Mayor Carter said EVERY person arrested last night during the protests was from out of state. The governor said it is at least 80 percent, and that they will begin releasing the names. Dept of Safety Commissioner John Harrington says they are contract-tracing arrestees:

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https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/pkyb9b/far-right-extremists-are-hoping-to-turn-the-george-floyd-protests-into-a-new-civil-war

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Far-Right Extremists Are Hoping to Turn the George Floyd Protests Into a New Civil War

Armed extremists are showing up to protests and urging a "boogaloo" — code for civil war — online.

By Tess Owen

May 29 2020, 2:57pm

Far-right extremists are showing up, with guns, to the protests against police brutality that have exploded across the country.

Others are egging on the violence from behind their computers, urging followers to carry out acts of violence against black protesters with the goal of sparking a “race war.”

Their presence makes an uneasy addition to the escalating unrest, which was triggered by the death of George Floyd, a black man who was choked to death by a white Minneapolis police officer earlier this week.

But there’s a range of motivations that’s driving far-right interest toward the protests, which are being led by community members and Black Lives Matter, and bolstered by antifascists.

For example, the so-called Boogaloo Bois — a group of armed anti-government extremists made visible by their Hawaiian shirts — have reportedly shown up to some of the protests.

READ: The cop who kneeled on George Floyd's neck was just charged with murder]

The “boogaloo” is code for impending civil war or violent confrontation with law enforcement, and that’s what they’re hoping to get out of the protests. Their main reason for being there is their antipathy toward law enforcement, and so they’re trying to position themselves as allies of Black Lives Matter protesters. They’ve made police brutality one of their central issues, which was explored at length in a Bellingcat article this week.

Their approach to police brutality links the victims of the deadly standoff with federal agents at Ruby Ridge in 1992, to the victims of modern police brutality, including Floyd. But unlike the vast majority of protesters, they refuse to acknowledge the fact that police brutality is an issue that disproportionately impacts people of color.

There have been scattered reports of Boogaloo Bois’ presence at the protests, which were compiled by a Bellingcat investigative journalist in a thread. He includes an audio clip (stripped of video per activists’ requests) ofprotesters saying they’d wrestled a handgun from a “white nationalist” agitator — whom he describes as a Boogaloo Boi who became overly rowdy.

READ: New video shows three cops kneeling on George Floyd as he lay dying]

Another photo, shared across private Boogaloo Facebook pages, showed one of their own unfurling their trademark flag during the Minneapolis protests.

And one protester posted a picture of himself wearing a gas mask to Instagram, under the hashtag #Boogaloo.

While some Boogaloo Bois say they’re just libertarians, others will, on occasion, veer into racism — and make no secret of their desire for violence. In addition to their physical presence at the protests, the #boogaloo hashtag on social media has been flooded with memes in the last couple days egging on violence, and talking about how they hope this is the beginning of a civil war.

While more established militia types sometimes share those perspectives, they often view themselves as intermediaries between law enforcement and civilians. For example, two armed white men were interviewed by the Minnesota Reformer, a local independent news organization, outside a tobacco store in Minneapolis this week. They said they were protecting businesses from looters, but were also there to defend civilians should they need to.

“Cops are less likely totread on people’s rightswhen there’s other armed people around them,” one of the men told the interviewer.

Local activists identified another group in Minneapolis as members of the III% militia, one of the largest militia networks in the U.S.

But perhaps the most troubling of all are the hardcore “accelerationists” who are encouraging their neo-Nazi followers to go to the protests and carry out acts of violence against black people — all with the goal of “exacerbating the ethnic tensions” and sparking a “race war.”

Accelerationists promote violence to speed up the collapse of society. An eco-fascist Telegram channel wrote to its nearly 2,500 subscribers on Thursday that “a riot would be the perfect place to commit a murder.” Accelerationists often seek to exploit moments of political or civil unrest, and the widespread protests that have unfolded across the country fit the bill. Similarly, 4chan is full of racists cheering the violence and saying that they hope it’s the beginning of a “race war.”

Cover: Protesters are trapped between police and other protesters who gathered in a call for justice for George Floyd following his death, outside the 3rd Police Precinct on May 27, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by KEREM YUCEL/AFP via Getty Images)

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/naomi-klein-climate-green-new-deal_n_5e0f66e4e4b0b2520d20b7a5

...We’re in a moment where we are literally flammable,” Klein, whose latest book “On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal” was published in September, said on a recent afternoon. “But we are also politically flammable.”

In 2019, some factions of the global far-right that gained power in the past decade started to abandon their traditional climate denialism and adopt new rhetoric that looks increasingly eco-fascist, an ideology that defends its violent authoritarianism as necessary to protect the environment.

In France, the leader of the far right, Marine Le Pen, refurbished Nazi-era blood-and-soil rhetoric in a pledge to make Europe the “world’s first ecological civilization,” drawing a distinction between the “ecologist” social groups who are “rooted in their home” and the “nomadic” people who “have no homeland” and “do not care about the environment.” In Germany, the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party’s Berlin youth wingurged its leaders to abandon climate denialism. The manifestos posted online by the alleged gunmen in massacres from Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Texas, explicitly cited climate change as a motivation for murdering immigrants and minorities.

“This is what it means to have people so close to the edge,” Klein said. “There is a rage out there that is going to go somewhere, and we have demagogues who are expert at directing that rage at the most vulnerable among us while protecting the most powerful and most culpable.”

The solution, she said, is to enact the kind of Green New Deal that progressives in the United States and elsewhere started fleshing out over the past year. The proposal ― more of a framework than a policy ― calls for the most generous expansion of the social safety net in decades. It promises good-paying, federally backed jobs for workers displaced by the transition away from fossil fuels, and those struggling to get by with stagnant wages and insecure gig-economy and retail jobs.

Klein, a journalist and author whose work over the past decade thrust pointed critiques of capitalism into the mainstream debate over climate change, has campaigned in recent months for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as he runs for the 2020 Democratic nomination on a platform that includes a sweeping, $16.3 trillion Green New Deal.

HuffPost sat down with Klein to discuss her latest book and what comes next in the climate fight.

In Spain, there are competing versions of a Green New Deal. In New York, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo called his clean energy proposal a “green new deal.” The European Commission is pushing a “green deal.” Are you worried about Green New Deal branding being coopted by advocates of austerity and centrism? How do you fight back against that?

Any phrase can be coopted and watered down. The main reason why I wanted to write the book is to help define what a transformational Green New Deal has to mean, to put more details out there. Any vague proposal is vulnerable to what you’re describing. The reason why I’m using the phrase now is because it is being used in a climate-justice context and the parameters that have been put around it by the resolution sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) — and further supported by the Sanders campaign and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s (D) campaigns — have made it more detailed.

But I still think there are parts of the discussion that we need to talk about — like the danger of a Green New Deal inadvertently failing to lower emissions in line with what scientists are telling us we need to do, and what sort of mechanisms need to be in place to prevent a carbon bubble that could be generated by rolling out a bunch of new infrastructure and creating a whole bunch of jobs.

How has the emergence of the Green New Deal changed the way we talk about neoliberalism? The movement seems to take the governing ideology of the past five decades as a given, yet we still havecertain punditsquestioning whether “neoliberalism” even exists.

It’s so interesting, this. I’ve been trying to understand what the insistence on refusing to understand neoliberalism is all about. In most parts of the world there was a discussion about the phenomenon of neoliberalism and there was a name for it, while in the United States, people were always asking what neoliberalism was. It was always about what hegemony means and that it was an ideology that didn’t want to recognize itself as an ideology. Rather, it sees itself as seriousness and commonsense. The very fact of being named as an ideology, as a contested ideology that had opponents at every stage, was antithetical to the project. How it’s possible to still deny that there is a thing called neoliberalism ― understanding that the term gets thrown around, and every term gets used and abused ― but the insistence that it doesn’t exist is about a desire to not debate it on its merits, to not reckon with the history of how it was imposed through tremendous violence in many parts of the world.

A true Green New Deal platform makes visible that the failure to act in the face of the climate crisis is not the result of something innate in humans. It’s the reality that the things that we need to do to lower emissions while avoiding a massive backlash ― while bringing the population along with you, which is what you have to do in a democracy ― require breaking every single rule in the neoliberal playbook.

Can you briefly define it?

Neoliberalism is a clear set of policy frameworks which used to be called the “Washington consensus.” It’s privatization of the public sphere. It’s deregulation of the corporate sphere. It’s low taxes for corporations and all of this offset with austerity and public cutbacks of the social sphere. That in turn creates more of an argument for privatization, because you starve the public sphere. And all of it is locked in with technocratic-seeming arrangements like free trade deals.

And a progressive Green New Deal would be a reversal of these trends?

That is what the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has told us we need to do. We need unprecedented transformation in every aspect of society: Energy, transportation, agriculture, built environment. That requires huge investments in the public sphere. It requires regulating corporations. It requires getting some money from somewhere, and usually involves raising taxes on the wealthy. And if you want to do it democratically, you need to do it in a way that is fair. That means creating a lot of well-paying jobs and improving services, so you’re not just adding burdens onto people’s daily lives.

Besides the obvious, what are some obstacles to this project?

It so happens that we have a lot of trade agreements that our governments have signed that make a lot of the things we need to do illegal under international law. So, a lot of those trade agreements are going to have to go.

The reason why we haven’t done these things is we’ve been trying to do them in the constraints and confines of the neoliberal imaginary. That’s the only reason we’re actually now finally talking about solutions: We’re in the midst of a democratic socialist revival, which is breathing oxygen into the political imagination and made us think that maybe we can do things again. The Green New Deal has made visible the constraints, the actual barriers to what it would take to deal with this crisis.

Why can’t a market-based solution deliver on those goals?

The Green New Deal is certainly making visible the tremendous costs of the neoliberal project. There have been so many attacks on public goods, on public services like transportation, on trade unions, on worker rights of every kind, on living standards. Climate policies that adhere to a neoliberal framework ― like introducing a marginal carbon tax or a buying a fleet of electric buses (but you want to do it in a “fiscally responsible” way, so then you increase bus fares) ... We are seeing these huge, popular resistances.

It’s the reality that the things that we need to do to lower emissions while avoiding a massive backlash ... requires breaking every single rule in the neoliberal playbook.Naomi Klein

We saw it in France when President Emmanuel Macron introduced a tax on gasoline. We saw it in Chile with President Sebastián Piñera, ahead of the U.N. climate summit, when they bought a whole bunch of electric buses in order to make their public transit appear green. But, of course, because Chile has been the laboratory for neoliberalism since 1973, they have rules in place that say all of your expenditures have to be offset, so they increased transit fares. That was the spark that set off the Chilean uprising.

A thing I’ve been thinking about a lot, which you write about in the book, is the looming threat of eco-fascism. It’s been hard not to think about that over the past few months, as you’ve had these different shooters in El Paso and Christchurch citing environmental concerns in their manifestos and you have somebody like Marine Le Pen talking about borders as a climate policy and “nomadic” people having no appreciation for the need to make France an ecological society. How quickly do you think this kind of right-wing, climate fascism is going to spread? What besides adopting equitable policies can you do to fight back against that?

These types of policies that make life more secure for people, that could tamp down the political flammability of the moment we’re in, are absolutely necessary. I don’t think they’re sufficient. I don’t think there’s any way that we move forward without a frontal confrontation with white supremacy. Which isn’t to say “Oh, just fund schools and hospitals and create lots of jobs and it’ll take care of itself.” We need both: We have to address the underlying supremacist logics in our societies and we also need to do what is necessary to be less flammable.

I want to be clear: I don’t think there are any shortcuts where we don’t actually have to battle supremacist logics. And it’s different in different parts of the world. In the United States, it’s white supremacy, it’s Christian supremacy, it’s male supremacy. With Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India right now, it’s Hindu supremacy; under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it’s Jewish supremacy. It’s all very, very similar. As I argue in the book, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that supremacists have come to power at the very moment when the climate crisis becomes pretty much impossible to deny.

Do you think that’s a blindspot for the climate movement at large? It seems like there has been this consensus for a long time that, if only we could exorcise denialism from the polity, then people would embrace social democratic policies to deal with emissions. Is there any evidence for that?

It’s a massive blindspot. The assumption that the biggest problem we’ve had is just convincing the right to believe in the scientific reality of climate change was a failure to understand that the right denied climate change not because they didn’t understand the science, but because they objected to the political implications of the science. They understood it better than many liberals understood it.

This is the argument I made after spending some time at the Heartland Institute conference and interviewing [co-founder] Joseph Bast, who was very honest about his motivation. He understood that if the science was true, then the whole reason for the Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank that exists to advance the neoliberal project, would crumble. He said to me that if it was true, then any kind of regulation would be possible, because in the name of safeguarding the habitability of the planet, you’d need to regulate.

It was never about the science or needing someone to patiently explain the science to you. It was always about the political implications of the science.

That said, I think there are lots of people who are not hardcore climate deniers but who are just exposed to a certain kind of right-wing media and haven’t heard the counter arguments, and could absolutely be persuaded. But if you’re talking about the hardcore denier, it’s an epic waste of time, because you’re dealing with somebody who has an intensely hierarchical worldview, which is what all the studies show. That’s just a nice way of saying somebody is racist: It means you’re OK with massive levels of inequality, you think the people who are doing well in the world are doing well because they’re somehow better and the people who are poor and suffering are experiencing this through some cultural or biological failure of their own making.

[pix

White nationalists march on the grounds of the University of Virginia ahead of the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. Many of the white supremacists in attendance chanted “blood and soil.”

So what happens when those people stop denying climate change?

If you convince those people climate change really is real, or if it just becomes so obvious that they can no longer deny it, they don’t suddenly want to sign onto the Paris Agreement. What actually happens is they apply that intensely hierarchical supremacist worldview to the reality that what climate change means is that the space for people to live well on this planet is contracting. More and more of us are going to have to live on less and less land, even if we do everything right. It’s already happening. So if you have that worldview, then you will apply it to people who are migrating to your country and to those who want to migrate to your country. We will harden the narratives that say those people deserve what they get because they’re inferior and we deserve what we have because we’re superior. In other words, the racism will get worse.

One last question. Former Secretary of State John Kerry justannounceda new project, this star-studded effort called World War Zero, saying we’ve got to have war footing on climate change but we’re not married to any specific policy. John Kasich, the Republican former governor of Ohio, was quoted in The New York Times saying he was on board because it’s policy agnostic and if there were a “no frackers” provision, he wouldn’t join. Is there a danger to these elite, “let’s just do something about climate change” efforts?

There would be a huge danger if there wasn’t a powerful movement today pushing for a Green New Deal at the same time. The idea that what we need to just scare people in this moment, or just get people to understand that we’re in an emergency and once we’re on emergency footing, this will somehow solve itself, that’s a very dangerous theory of change.

I began writing about climate change while I was writing about something I called the “shock doctrine,” which says that for the past four decades, states of emergency have been systematically harnessed by the most powerful and wealthy forces in our society to impose policies that are so harmful and unpopular that they are unable to impose them under normal circumstances.

I get my back up when people just say all we need to do is get people to understand we’re in a crisis. There are many ways of responding to a climate emergency, and a lot of them are very harmful. You could decide to dim the sun with solar radiation management. You could decide that you need a massive expansion of nuclear power and ignore the impact on the people whose lands are being poisoned. You could decide to fortress your borders. There are any number of emergency responses to climate change that could make our world much more unjust than it currently is.

That said, I’m not too bothered by the idea that there’s going to be a lot of people out there just screaming “fire!” For the first time since I’ve been involved in the climate movement, there’s now a critical mass of people out there who have a plan for putting out the fire that is robust, justice-based, science-based and has a movement behind it. That’s the movement for a Green New Deal. There are enough of us out there who can harness that energy and direct it in the right way. But we certainly have our work cut out for us.

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