Ecofascism in the shadow of ‘patriotic ecology’: nativism, economic greenwashing, and the evolution of far-right political ecology in France

Benoist, Lise, Turner, Joe ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2419-0414 and Bailey, Daniel (2024) Ecofascism in the shadow of ‘patriotic ecology’: nativism, economic greenwashing, and the evolution of far-right political ecology in France. Politics. ISSN 1467-9256

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Abstract

Far-right environmental politics has changed dramatically in Europe in the last decade. Through an investigation of (far-)right rhetoric in the 2022 French elections we document the development of far-right political ecology in France and the rise of so-called ‘patriotic ecology’. We identify an intensifying focus on rootedness, racialised Malthusianism, and localism which seeks to cast ‘nomadic’ or ‘uprooted’ Global South refugees and migrants, minoritised communities, and liberal globalist political elites as the primary culprits of France’s environmental issues. We show how this discourse extends and develops prior forms of ecofascism, promising forms of statecraft that will intensify authoritarian border violence while ‘liberating’ the native stewards of rural France from ‘punitive’ forms of industrial decarbonisation. This reflects an evolving form of climate change denialism by stealth within far-right politics because it obscures the unequal, extractive economic causes of ecological crises and the need for systemic economic transformations.