Climate Refugees and Eco-fascism
Diana O’Dwyer
In 2009, the government of the Maldives held a cabinet meeting underwater to highlight the danger of the country being completely submerged by rising seawater. Ministers in scuba gear got a lot of headlines but little or nothing has been done since to prevent the Maldives and other small island nations like Fiji and Palau from disappearing off the face of the earth.
““There could be anywhere from 200 million to 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050.””
Globally, 10 percent of the world’s population live in places less than 10 metres above sea level.[1] Millions more are threatened by other forms of climate disaster; from droughts to hurricanes to floods, to the slow-motion collapse of ecosystems vital for subsistence farming and more frequent climate-induced pandemics. There could be anywhere from 200 million to 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050.[2] Unlike with refugees fleeing wars or earthquakes, climate change is no temporary crisis with the potential for a relatively quick resolution, allowing people to return home and rebuild. No, climate refugees are more likely to be permanently displaced with literally no homes left to go to.
The threat of eco-fascism
Just as the scale of the climate refugee crisis is mounting, far-right and fascist movements are growing, ready to exclude and persecute and also to deny the very existence of what caused people to flee in the first place. Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective elaborate in their perceptive book - White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism (London 2021) - how far-right parties on the rise across Europe are climate denialists and many have direct links to the fossil fuel industry and fossil capital. The Irish far-right is no exception. The leader of the National Party, Justin Barrett, is typical in claiming that “Man-made climate change, it’s very difficult to be sure of the figures, it’s very difficult to be sure of the providence of the evidence that is being presented to us, there’s an awful lot of people making an awful lot of profit out of green industry, green energy”.[3] Likewise, Derek Blighe of Ireland First, worked for the SA Energy Group, which supplies pipelines to the oil industry, and began his political interventions by liking online articles criticising curbs on oil production.[4]
What’s developing here is twenty-first-century ecofascism. The term ‘ecofascism’ was originally used to refer to green Malthusians. Obsessed with global population control - by authoritarian means if necessary - they saw humanity as a whole, rather than just its capitalist tumour, as a plague on the planet. More recently, the term has been used to refer to anti-environmental fascism or fascist responses to the effects of environmental problems.
Naomi Klein writes in her discussion of the Christchurch massacre that “unless something significant changes in how our societies rise to the ecological crisis, we are going to see…white power ecofascism emerge with much greater frequency, as a ferocious rationalization for refusing to live up to our collective climate responsibilities.” [5] Already we have seen world leaders personify it, from Bolsonaro bulldozing the Amazon rainforest and indigenous protesters in Brazil to the equally racist, sexist, and climate denialist Trump, building his wall to keep black and brown people out.
Despite the differences between these two forms of ecofascism - one accepts the reality of climate change while the other continues to deny it - the outcomes for those suffering as a result of climate change and biodiversity loss are similar. Klein elaborated on this in an interview, saying that,
“...the only thing scarier than a far-right, racist movement that denies the reality of climate change is a far-right, racist movement that doesn’t deny the reality of climate change, that actually says this is happening, there are going to be many millions of people on the move, and we are going to use this abhorrent ideology that ranks the relative value of human life, that puts white Christians at the top of the hierarchy, that animalizes and otherizes everyone else, as the justification for allowing those people to die.”[6]
As climate change becomes more of a reality even in the cooler, industrialised North, the denialist and ‘authoritarian-response’ variants of eco-fascism are set to combine. Beyond this, there has always been a misanthropic vein in the wider environmental movement, for example among some kinds of anti-civilisation deep ecologists, which is ripe for merging with the far-right. Arguably, this process is already underway with the absorption via the anti-vax disinformation funnel of elements from alternative environmentally-minded and wellness subcultures into the far-right during the Covid pandemic.
““An average of 20 million people a year are already being forcibly displaced by weather-related events””
An average of 20 million people a year are already being forcibly displaced by weather-related events, the majority of them from countries in Africa and the Middle East afflicted by extreme droughts.[7] With large numbers of climate refugees a reality, the far-right is being handed a perfect fusion of its central obsession - stopping immigration - with something it so performatively does not believe in and does not care about. If the war in Ukraine poses a problem for the far-right in terms of opposing immigration because of the huge amount of public sympathy for Ukrainian refugees, it has no such qualms about opposing migration flowing from what it terms the “climate hoax”, particularly as it is likely to be predominantly black and brown people who are worst affected. Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective explain how Mark Steyn has attempted to fashion “a grand theory of climate and Islam as two fronts of ‘re-primitivisation’, with global warming seen as a “fabrication cooked up to rob the West of its wealth” and “demand that everyone be reduced to a third world standard of living”. Likewise, Marine Le Pen in France has stated that “Migrants are like wind turbines, everyone agrees to have them but no one wants them in their backyard”.[8]
How all this plays out in Ireland in the coming years is hard to predict. The recent, albeit currently ebbing, wave of anti-refugee protests demonstrates the potential for the far-right to grow, especially if migrant numbers continue to increase. The scale of the climate refugee crisis may play an important role in this. Ireland seems likely to be a popular destination because it is predicted to be one of the countries least badly affected by climate change in the short to medium term - unless or until the Gulf Stream collapses. Recent references by the Minister for Integration to the need for a new legal framework for climate refugees - which are currently completely unrecognised under international or EU law - prompted squeals of outrage from the right, including more mainstream elements like the former Fine Gael Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan. This illustrates how Irish establishment parties are grappling towards the same cynical triangulation with the far-right as their counterparts across Europe have implemented.[9]
We have been fortunate so far in having perhaps the weakest far-right in Europe. No elected far-right party and no elected far-right positions. However, a gaggle of right-wing rural independents like Mattie McGrath and Senator Sharon Keogan increasingly regurgitate far-right talking points, namechecking the World Economic Forum, gender ideology, cashless society, foetal pain prevention, and endlessly demanding ‘debates’ on immigration. The next local and general elections will be instructive as to how much of a foothold in Irish society the far-right has gained off the back of the recent anti-refugee protests and earlier anti-mask/anti-lockdown agitating during the Covid pandemic. As the ongoing organised pushback against the far-right and anti-refugee protests demonstrates, much will depend on how the socialist left responds.
““we must continue to prioritise building united fronts against racism and the far-right””
United fronts against Eco-Fascism and Ecosocialist Solutions
Organisationally, to stem the torrent of ecofascism coming towards us, we must continue to prioritise building united fronts against racism and the far-right like Le Chéile, while also stepping up our activism and coalition building on the cost of living and housing crisis. That means working on the ground with activist organisations like the Community Action Tenants Union (CATU) and injecting a clear revolutionary ecosocialist perspective into united fronts like the Cost of Living Coalition and Raise the Roof; for example, calling for democratic public ownership of the energy system, a state construction company to directly build public housing, and a ban on vulture funds and corporate landlords.
The favourite argument of the far-right is the quintessential capitalist one of artificial scarcity - that there is not enough money, or housing, or healthcare to go around - so #IrelandisFull. One part of the answer to that is the same as ever: seize the means of production and wealth from billionaires and multinational corporations and redistribute it. In a country where the richest 1% own 27% of the wealth and a world where 81 billionaires own more wealth than the poorest half of the world’s population, there is no need for scarcity.[10] An increasingly necessary second part, however, which is particularly relevant to addressing the climate refugee question, is that the scale of unnecessary production for profit and the resulting strain on people and the planet must also be reduced. The racist far-right caricature of this is to pretend the climate movement is saying we should all ‘go back’ to the living standards of underdeveloped regions of Africa. What it actually means is a more relaxed pace of life with an abundance of both private necessities and comforts and of quality public goods, like housing, healthcare, and transport, but where fewer unnecessary commodities are produced.
““Revolutionary socialists can bring these arguments together by arguing for an ecosocialist Green New Deal on a global scale.””
Revolutionary socialists can bring these arguments together by arguing for an ecosocialist Green New Deal on a global scale.[11] Driven by democratic public ownership of the means of production and wealth, this would involve a rapid and just transition to a zero-emission green economy, creating universal access to quality public services, shorter working hours with no loss of pay and millions of new green jobs.
With respect to climate refugees, this could help to prevent climate change from becoming so catastrophic that hundreds of millions of people have to migrate. Unfortunately, much of the damage may already be ‘baked in’, so the global solidarity dimension of any global Green New Deal must include reparations to low-income countries for the damage caused by climate change to enable them to better adapt and allow people to stay in their homes, or failing that, to resettle elsewhere in their own country if they prefer. The vast majority of people currently displaced by climate change are displaced internally rather than internationally and most would probably prefer to resettle as close to home as possible.
Finally, in the absence of either a rapid shift to zero-emissions or reparations, the left should unashamedly call for an international policy of open borders for all those who wish to migrate for a better life. We should not attempt to pander or triangulate in the face of ecofascism by seeking to place ‘reasonable limits’ on immigration. Under capitalism, these inevitably become deadly walls and fortresses as the ongoing massacre of migrants by EU governments in the Mediterranean demonstrates.
Article originally published in Issue 10 of Rupture Magazine. Subscribe or purchase previous issues here.
Notes
Curtis, Kimberly, “‘Climate Refugees,’ Explained.” UN Dispatch, April 24, 2017. https://www.undispatch.com/climate-refugees-explained/.
Ida, Tetsuji, “Climate Refugees – the World’s Forgotten Victims.” World Economic Forum, June 18, 2021. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/climate-refugees-the-world-s-forgotten-victims/.
Justin Barrett - Carbon Taxes, Environmentalism and Nuclear Power, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foxAtUTxwKo.
Roche, Barry, “The Making of a Far-Right Agitator: From Irish Emigrant to Anti-Refugee Extremist.” The Irish Times, November 3, 2023. https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2023/03/11/profiling-an-unlikely-far-right-irish-activist-who-is-seeking-to-stir-anger-toward-immigrants/
Klein, Naomi, On Fire - The Burning Case for a Green New Deal, 2019. http://groupelavigne.free.fr/klein2019.pdf.
Klein, Naomi, Ecofascism: Naomi Klein Warns the Far Right’s Embrace of White Supremacy Is Tied to Climate Crisis, September 17, 2019. https://www.democracynow.org/2019/9/17/naomi_klein_eco_fascism.
Ozdemir, Ibrahim, “The Climate Refugee Crisis Is Landing on Europe’s Shores - and We Are Far from Ready.” POLITICO (blog), February 20, 2023. https://www.politico.eu/article/climate-refugee-crisis-europe-policy/.
Quoted in Malm, Andreas, and The Zetkin Collective, White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism. Verso Books, 2021.
McGee, Harry, “How the Political Mood Music on Asylum Issue Is Changing.” The Irish Times, October 2, 2023. https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2023/02/10/how-immigration-became-a-divisive-issue-in-irish-politics/
Christensen, Martin-Brehm, Christian Hallum, Alex Maitland, Quentin Parrinello, Chiara Putaturo, Dana Abed, Carlos Brown, Anthony Kamande, Max Lawson, and Susana Ruiz. “Survival of the Richest: How We Must Tax the Super-Rich Now to Fight Inequality.” Oxfam, January 16, 2023. https://doi.org/10.21201/2023.621477.
O’Dwyer, Diana. “We Want to Live, Not Just Exist - The Case for a Socialist Green New Deal.” RISE, August 19, 2020. https://www.letusrise.ie/rupture-articles/the-case-for-a-socialist-green-new-deal.