TOTW: Eco-fascism?


Eco-fascism. It's something I hear lots about but understand little of. I've read these recent essays, these recent mainstream news articles, and a head-spinning number of tweets. One tweet that caught my eye was an anarchist asking for a 'substantive working definition' of the word. There were no substantive working definitions in the replies. I've asked questions left, right and centre and I'm none the wiser. And so I'm reaching out to you, anews commenters, to help me make sense of it all.

What's the difference between this and the same old fascism that we've been against since forever? Is it something to do with population? With immigration? With technology? With Ted K? Idris Elba? Murray Bookchin and/or David Foreman?

Is it something to do with fish in Venetian canals? Deer in Tokyo? Clear skies in California? Neo-folk and industrial music? Noise and black metal? Micheal Moore's latest film?

Is it European? Mexican? Is it about violence? Amorality? Is it about terror and eco-terror? Is it the same thing as 'eco-terrorism'?

Is the term deliberately vague and pluralistic, or is it self-explanatory and blindingly obvious? Does it mean something different to us anarchists and anti-fascists than it does to authoritarians?

And, finally, whatever eco-fascism may or may not be, what, if anything, is to be done about it?

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I don't feel I'm oversimplifying. As I understand it, fascism is the raising of government to the utmost of delegated authority; while ecology would be the bullshit story by which an eco-fascist government would impose itself.

There are so many scenarios for fascism. They're all shit.

I think that Elizabeth Nietzsche's proto-fascist Nueva Germania stands as pretty sharp example of eco-fascism.

David Foreman can be easily deemed an eco-fascist for how he embraced Far Right groups and their views of ethno-nationalist formations, population control especially for the immigration aspect.

Gonna need a source on that one. afaik he was just anti-immigration, which doesn't make one a fascist by any stretch of the imagination.

Coz you got a compromised, limited maybe even self-interested "imagination" where seeking to restrict people from freedom of movement based on birthright national privilege has supposedly nothing to do with fascism, because reasons.

Anti-immigration (even against refugees) ain't the only tthing that makes Foreman a fascist. He was also for a racist view of ecology and also a misogynist filthbag.

fascism, even though not everyone who wants to impose restrictions and hard ships on immigrants is necessarily a "fascist". Nationality and patroitism are the hallmarks of right-wing politics, but politicos to the left use patriotism and nationality to suite their agendas, which is what i thought was disgusting about bernie sanders is his praise of "our country". Fuck that. Don't make responsible for this bureaucracy!


no one said that. you imagined it. i said that being anti-immigration ALONE doesn't make you a fascist. if it did, then half of the fucking world would be fascist.

> racist view of ecology

gonna need a source of that one. and no, murray bookchin's shittalking doesn't count.

> misogynist filthbag

source? it's easy to throw these words around.

even if all three things are true, it's not still not fascism. where's the militarism? the expansionism? the glorious leader?

being against overpopulation does not make one a fascist...

But and so on:
- Nature conservation movement is a spin off of the antropocentric view which emerges from colonialism. Most of those conservationists were white supremacists that hatte the the most anti-civ peoples, meaning the ones who protect more nature and are deeply connected with it. So, not really greens, just fascists whith a romantic view on nature. And a view that emerges from civilized peoples, who are the main cause of nature destruction.

TedK is a ecofascist, being a misanthropist is fascist and ideologically founded. Anyone who desires to control others or alter their free choice is a fascist. John Z is a borderline ecofascist, but not quite, more like the eco-night-matron at a catholic hospital.

"Zerzan affirms his affinity for the “Unabomber,” Ted Kaczynski, who was celebrated in a 2013 Orion magazine essay by Paul Kingsnorth and has also become an iconic figure in some of the most violent white supremacist circles. Although he has criticized white nationalist tendencies among some of his readers, Zerzan has published several books through an outfit called Feral House that markets heavily to skinheads and conspiracists, and carries at least a few overtly Nazi titles."
Yeeees, it would seeem sooo.

Penguin published proto-fascist masterpiece Storm of Steel and then tens of thousands of authors continued to publish their work with them - Antifa gonna be busy!

Or how about every publisher of american history textbooks that downplayed or glossed over genocide on american soil.

"Being a misanthropist is fascist and ideologically founded"

No it is not. Words don't mean whatever you want them to.

"TedK is a ecofascist, being a misanthropist is fascist and ideologically founded"

TedK is an anti-tech fascist or maybe a primitive-fascist/Eco-fascist , and no hating humans is not fascist and not always ideologically founded. You never went through a phase of being snarky and irritable with every single human you come across?? To me essentialism is fascism, the flippant use of must:

Or telling people to stay in their houses their the internet has a resemblance to fascism. In one way or another there is so much fascism i don't even know whether i can legitimately tell the difference anymore. Someone put me in a mental institution.

Mmkay then TedK is a non-essentialist misanthropic ecofascist.

and you could also be an essentialist philanthropist social-fascist!?

Fascists are the worst, they've insulted themselves from any of the criticism they may deserve so deeply...check out Warren buffet and gates...

"free choice " is a liberal meme dude...

"free choice" to enter any territory is the dream of any TOURIST...
It was also the dream of all colonizers when entering into Amazonia, for stealing land, resources and slaughter indigenous people...

don't just link decisions and freedom to colonialists and westerners, that's just as easy and shitty to do as saying all americans are narcissists.


Do you live in the neighborhood you grew up in, happy to be there? ever go other places to seek out new connections or experiences? ever fallen for a biome you weren't raised in? affluent tourism is a problem but freedom of movement is a strong vien within anarchism. I never went anywhere i wasn't invited but I've definitely travelled a lot


"I never went anywhere i wasn't invited but I've definitely travelled a lot"

so everywhere you traveled, you were explicitly invited to?

'Anyone who desires to control others or alter their free choice is a fascist'

So every government ever formed is a fascist government?

I think so...

No, its not meaningless, it is all government, it is neo-colonialist tourism, it is the disciplinarian parents, it is misanthropists with wry fascist grins.

it's every teacher, every lecturer, everyone who's every tried to change anyone's mind ever?

Yes, that is what a fascist is in the purest sense of the word/idea. I'm a purist nihilist, so I should know. Only children can declare that they are not fascists, all adults are fascists unless they follow the pure nihilist path and are willing to pursue the metamorphosis back to the "child consciousness"

Knowledge and innocence can co-exist. It is only the toxic education of a binary good/evil universe which perverts the foundation. The anarch world view can be instructed so that naivety ceases to even be considered a lack of awareness, but rather an unspoilt perception.

"...all adults are fascists unless they follow the pure nihilist path... I'm a purist nihilist, so I should know. "


fyi, that quote is dogma, defined.


“being a misanthrope is being a fascist”

This is what Alexander Reid Ross and portland techie named Emmi said in their recent essay. Its also fascist to use gen z style 4chan memes. That part reminded me of being 8 and my dad talking to me about pokemon. Really shallow understanding of it.

They also say deep ecology is fascist and the only people in earth first who espouse it are the conservatives who left after the 90s. Luckily we have social ecology now.

Yeah when I said that misanthropists are fascists, it would have been more accurate to say they are "inverted fascists", the inversion being, like binary energy exchange in the scientific Newtonian context, but in the post-modern social context, a left/right mirror image of inverted yet identical mindsets.

- you're just human suckers, said the wolf.
- you are just a fascist deep ecologist, said the humans.

Just waiting for the stupid anarchists to say Eco-Extremism is Eco-Fascism

without getting into the variations and deviations of what could be considered fascism, I'll start with 3 common elements stated on wiki (via Stanley G. Payne) :

1. the "fascist negations": anti-liberalism, anti-communism, and anti-conservatism.
2. "fascist goals": the creation of a nationalist dictatorship to regulate economic structure and to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture, and the expansion of the nation into an empire.
3. "fascist style": a political aesthetic of romantic symbolism, mass mobilization, a positive view of violence, and promotion of masculinity, youth, and charismatic authoritarian leadership.

I'll go with Pentti Linkola's solution as they are the only thinker I'm aware of that has been referred to as actually eco-fascist:

1. they certainly are those, however they seem pretty conservative, and are ecologically conservationist.
2. they certainly want a totalitarian police state to violently regulate (well, abolish really) economic structure, and reform social relations. however, they envision a pre-modern anti-technological existence that contracts rather than expands.
3. not sure their style. I assume going back to traditional aesthetics. violence is talked about as an absolute necessity rather than a positive outcome. they don't like overweight people.

so maybe eco-fascist? certainly eco-totalitarian.


He''s one of the few thinkers who could genuinely be referred to as eco-fascist. He's certainly not the only one to ever be referred to as one though. Murray Bookchin used to routinely refer to people as eco-fascists. His working definition was basically 'someone I don't like.'

I definitely blame bookchin for the anarchist milieus obsession with calling things eco fascists that aren’t. A whole lot of not thinking critically because of bookface.

Thank you for sharing this text. Everyone that is serious about this topic should read it. Apart from that most comments are just trolling rubbish.

get off your high horse with all your "shoulds" and self-help talk. The comments on here are particularly rubbish but i've seen a lot of articles published by medium and other sources that i also wouldn't recommend reading.

OP has no idea whether most comments on the internet are rubbish because they have not read all of them. I'm overall fine with comments until they start becoming spam or verbal abuse. Even when people post racist shit i at least know what they think at that point, sometimes it even gives me a nice little chuckle.

getting off horses
unsure if they can consent
prolly not vegan

the JL link was already shared in the article above

eco-facists mostly just appear to be boogeymen, they're someone's critical word and characterization for real life positions.

I think the position that immigration is bad because poorer people consumer more resources in the richer country they wind up in is pretty close to a real "eco-facism", but then again that's just an "environmentalist" position taken to its logical conclusion. If i were into cutting carbon emissions, i would want people driving fewer SUVs, hence that would be a logical anti-immigrant conclusion.

Eco-extremism also comes pretty close but that's more of a scummy and more of a "low-level" criminal way of looking at it. Any position that advocates the destruction of a single type of animal is very similar to facism IMHO.

Really i think a lot of people talk about Eco-facists because they are weary of someone using "the environment" as a justification for killing people. As was said before by someone else on here, real Eco-facism would be a statist authoritarianism based on conservation ethics. It probably won't happen but it very well could: the excess and humanist oriented behaviors of modern day society seem to prevent it, hippies already opened pandora's box and i don't really want anyone to close it...unless were talking about humanism which to me has some very irritating pitfalls.

"Any position that advocates the destruction of a single type of animal is very similar to facism IMHO."

as opposed to many types of animal? or individuals within a given "type" of animal? not sure what makes a particular kind of "destruction" fascistic or not.

Eco-fascism is just trending as badjacketing twitter leftists that don't want to get aboard the FALC train.
Techno-democracy is not a term that's trending, because it's "neutral" which means that they're deemed good, normal and acceptable as the status quo by the hegemonic culture. Industry, farming, agriculture, extractivism all destroying the planet. Even green capitalism is a more likely horrific scenario than eco-fascism. What have eco-fascists done that capitalism hasn't done stronger, better, faster, longer? Vote Kanye-Musk 2020

A fascist is someone who travels long distances for pleasure or personal desire.
Therefore, an eco-fascist is someone who travels a long distance to an ecological area with animals and plant to satisfy a personal mission/vendetta against humans like TedK or JK.

Supreme kourt justice Neil Gorsuch started a club at his prep school called "fascism forever" and then ruled in favor of LGBTQ rights so all bets are off peepz

Inb4 trolled for trolling

you really want to do away with fascism? Just kill all the bogeymen, problem solved, then you can't have the creation so-called feminist "witches" and shit like that.

Is a hurricane eco-fascist? All I hear is talking and no action! What the fuck maybe read a book or eat food instead. Moralist humanist civilized monists! This is not a game. Fuck!

Because I wanna knock the wind out of everyone being really sloppy with their fascism definitions.

Standback! or suffer my arms, because I'm swingin' at a Dangerousss pace!

Seriously though, the last bookfair I was at a tabler was catching shit over having Dark Ecology by Timothy Morton on the table. The person upset by it said they didn't know the book but the fact it had "Dark" in the title was a red flag and potentially fascist or eco-fascist. Jesus fucking christ.

In the Manichean context "dark" does have negative repugnant values which aaaare best avoided!

you are just a dumb panderer to eco-extremist ideology, oh hurricanes are eco extremists! That's what they'd have you believe! I AM NATURE, I AM WILD, I COMPROMISE WITH NOTHING, ANYTHING THAT ISN'T LIKE A HURRICANE IS A LIBERAL PUSSY!

hurricanes do not have human brains, therefore don't fucking bring them into this shit, they don't deserve to be treated like this.

You can bring on anarch nihilists though 'cos they have hurricane brains!

when eco-fascists ban cars, how you gonna commute: by horse, or hurricane?

fascism is authoritarian state capitalism, at its most basic.

to me, anyone trying to control me could be seen as acting fascisticly; though i would consider that a very loose use of the term. with that persepctive, someone would be acting eco-fascisticly if they try to control me due to an explicitly ecologically driven dogma. the eco part would not matter in the least, to me.

"to me, anyone trying to control me could be seen as acting fascisticly;"

...but fatalistically, i think to a DEGREE people will always be trying to control each other, so in my real life i have to be able to look past my notion that all humans are fascists, which i think is where eco-extremism comes from, i feel like EE's are really just crypto-anarchists who grew an intense hatred for the scenesters. They take out their rage on sensitive humanists who read anything anarch-related, hoping their fascistic ideology may lead to the death of all humans, starting with some snowflake suicide somewheres.

Why would they hate scenesters, they are just peasants with alot of style, and fròm history one knows that loathing peasants is a dangerous business, they can rise up into revolutionary hordes and form a police State, or they can become boring consumerists addicted to status and philistine aesthetics.
The scenesters must read some Stirner and reconnect with their unique individuality.

Has this discussion already been snarked to death? Whatever.

Maybe the problem is the basic definition? Mine leans towards fascism being the reactionary pseudo-populism used to crush grassroots liberation and anti capitalist movements and tendencies. It makes up lots of stupid gibberish reasons for why it wants to do this but who cares? The enemy pours poison in the ears of fools.

A lot of the confusion comes from taking fascism's dishonest rhetoric at face value. ie. watch what it does, don't waste too much effort trying to make sense of a pack of murderous lies on its own terms.

So if that's the case, then "eco fascism" is probably just one more ruse thrown on the pile in an attempt to inspire stochastic terrorism amongst the gun polishing hysterical audience of needle dicks its always been trying to appeal to.

You're not an "eco fascist" just because you hate most people or think civilization is going to destroy itself (it is) but if you shoot up a mosque and claim it had something to do with climate change, it doesn't really matter what word I use to describe your bullshit. You just need an extra hole in your head.

Anyway, there's another take to do with the tech bros like Peter Thiel but they're most likely smart enough to understand exactly what they're doing: weaponizing the stupid half of the poor to kill the smarter half for them when things start to really get out of hand. As for how "ecology" factors in, Pete likely wants to keep the last of the drinkable water and edible food for himself, simple as that lol

Overall words mean different things to different people. To me fascism has a lot of different definitions, theres the Mussolini and Hitler crew, theres racist statist repression (like trumps dangerous clowning and Obama's deportations), theres the broad reference to anything you find to be authoritarian and repressive, any association with right wing ideology...

And they're all correct

Sure, thats fair but if you're interested in a sporting debate about it, I'd say those definitions are specific to their periods of history and only contribute to a sum total contemporary definition: cuz like, "fascism" appears to shapeshift over time to suit whatever socio-economic conditions it's counter-insurging on.

to me fascism is when you troll a website by posting thousands of repeated words in the comments section because you're a butthurt manbaby whose comments got moderated for being a butthurt manbaby and spewing hateful drivel and then forcing everyone to have to put up with reading your flood of butthurt manbaby outbursts and then pretend that everything is fine and expect to not be moderated into nonexistence because the world revolves around your fragile ego.

maybe time to turn off the computer for awhile then?


on behalf of the anarchistnews anonymous daoist community, i want to be very clear that this gweilo troll calling themself "The Tao" (and all the many other troll nicknames they use to spam this place) is no daoist nor anarchist. this is plainly clear by their embarrassing failure at wu wei and their massive overabundance of butthurt.

These eco-fascists should direct their attention to the species of carnivores and their jackboot treatment of other animals they bully, torture, imprison and devour. I'm talking about tigers, lions, sharks, piranha, bears, eagles, etc.
Wake up ecofascists to nature's criminal territorial politics and exploitation.

...or if commenter actually thinks piranhas are fascists...

"controlled fire" is the real fascism. see my upcoming blog entry on elemental domination

This is what I've been saying from the beginning-- unlearn FIRE, roll back the "wheel" (GoT), and presto-mundo, fascism is ashes, plz.

how can we unlearn the authoritarian marriage and property structures without roving around as a band of poly-primi humans? we can collect berries and chill. Netflix allowed because cyberpunk. Hmu in the dm for new commune

Ooooh those venus flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) are an evil fascist plant species!! Imprisoning and drowning flies in an acid bath. Damn sick nazi plant!

It's more like the fascists (and the fascist trolls, like u know...) are the annoying flies, and some plants like to trap and eradicate them. Those just like shit flies they come back every summer... too bad there's liberal democracy to allow the to exist. And shall I say... liberal freezepeaches!

There is liberal carrion, that's the smell Dionaea muscipula exudes at the bottom of its prison cell to lure the flies in with. Brush up on your biopolitics.

this is a mis-spelling which leads to a misunderstanding

it's e co-fascism

the decentralized, distributed, horizontal and cooperative fascism that takes place on the world wide web. everyone participates in the fascist order, and the more times the words fascism is said, the more fascist it is.

WHOA! Can everyone just round this whole thread off and just agree that its CIVILIZATION which is a fascist construct, if we want to split hairs it comes down to organization and hierarchies as the culprit, and the only real non-fascists are the real individualists, the Stirnerians.

NooOoo, you may be the spooky fascist psyche co-ordinator for all I know!

is "eco-fascist" to ecologist, what "feminazi" is to feminist?
in other words, completely bullshit internet terms that don't matter

Yes to the first question, and, they are not bullshit internet terms, or "woke" terms.

sadly for your hypothesis, both terms predate the internet. however, your point that they have become vacuous slurs is mostly correct.

Rioters display fascistic methodologies, falls into the binary us/them narrative tit-for-tat circular reactionary.

see, this is a comment in bad faith, i've seen you try to put variations of this type of comment in various articles across weeks. it's just a baseless assertion, plus who says tit-for-tat has anything to do with fascism?
joining up "binary" "circular" and "reactionary" and piling it up onto "fascism" to make the insult to rioters extra spicy, is just a transparent flame bait

I didn't comment in bad faith, this is just my opinion, as an observer and an individualist, that the collective mob actions of rioters are fascistic actions. Amongst the targets of the rioters are the innocent people who are forced to protect themselves and their possessions against groups who refuse to respect them though they have done nothing against them. That's fascist behavior, simply.

some people get fucked with by the riots, so to them it will always be fascist behavior.

ON THE OTHER HAND, i think it's fair that rioters are often revolting against "normal" conditions that are far more fascistic than the riots, so it's kinda a double standard to say they are fascistic when cities always seem to impose draconian restrictions on movement and activity. There's also the red argument about "the oppresiveness of capitalism" which sounds wonky and aggrandized but is partially true.

These kinds of emotionally charged discussions -- bringing in words like "riots" and "fascism" -- are interesting when you look at them as spectrums for chaos/order, rather than absolutes such as "that's fascist" or "you are a fascist!"

The emotional context is what breaks the anger/ chaos spectrum open and out and away from the quiet order of dull control. In good faith yes, the absolùte use of terminology like fascist must be avoided for generalities and only used in my opinion on politicians like Trump.

… why the hell wouldn't you just use words based on their actual definitions? are you finger painting and words are the colours?

I'm simply illustrating the fact that words will continue to be used the way people want to use them. Saying trump is a fascist is playing a slippery slope with its definition, but to split hairs and say "no,no,no,no...only Mussolini and his cohorts were fascists" is plain silly, I personally prefer the more tolerant and sensitive version of devils advocate, it has more nuances and crevices I can dive into and play with.

So yes you are painting with your fingers too despite that you try to be objective and sane

yeah yeah, words are signposts, language is subjective, blah blah. true enough.

but i thought @news had a rough consensus where we all fling poop at people who lazily drop the f bomb when what they mean is THAT THING I DONT LIKE OR WHATEVER!!! YA KNOW, fascismahnism!

We are still posting here, if these conversations were rational and un-provokative...lord only knows where else we'd be. Not here.

Ooooh boy, you've just opened the thesaurus at page Blahblahblah fucking blahblahismistic shitwords!
Emperor Claudius was the only true bonafide fascist that ever walked this Earth and he lived in Rome.

Anarchist discussion on a term (fascism) they cannot coherently explain what it means. sighlol

Is Donald Trump a fascist? I would say close enough. Yet it doesn't really matter what i think, except to me.

or could it be that anyone who isn't explicitly an anarchist a fascist?

Think about it: So, archists are people who believe that human beings need authority and without that, society plunges into horrendous violent crime and chaos. Think Sam Harris as a model for an archist.

and as far as people who agree with anarchists on some things, well, they might rat you out to the archists, so they are also archists who can't be trusted either.

This is fun thanks for thinking of me at this time a year my peeps!

nope. there's already perfectly good words for that.

They say that they are not,
yet they are the real fascists.

Trying to cancel my honest and
sensible material for years....

but i readily cling to the white
serpents of order.

And, they are
the worst, trying to destroy men's
rights. We must take back our
natural dominance.

They plot to harm us!

We must focus our minds on
pantheon, that great symbol
of western love. We are the true
stuarts of the earth.

Not a single cultural marxist, snowflake, or feminist can take this away from us.

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