Eco-fascism

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Eco-fascism is a political battle term , to which individual authors also attribute the potential of an analytical term. André Gorz spoke of eco-fascism as early as 1977 in order to characterize (feared) forms of totalitarianism based on an exclusively ecological orientation of politics. The term is also used to denote radical ecological ideologies that either want to enforce environmental policy ideas with authoritarian means or have a conceptual proximity to manifestations of fascism or National Socialism .

Scientific use

The term eco-fascism is used in particular in the environmental philosophy of the United States . With its help, attempts are made to classify ecocentric positions in terms of the history of ideas. The ecocentrism based on Aldo Leopold , among others , takes the view that, for example, “ ecosystems ” or “ biocenoses ” have a moral intrinsic value. In this way, this ethical concept, as represented by Baird Callicott , for example, breaks with the view common in current ethics that primarily individual individuals and not collective wholes as such are to be considered morally. Michael E. Zimmerman in particular studied this topic.

In 2002, Bernd Hamm and Barbara Rasche differentiated according to the discussion within bioregionalism, different currents, all of which rejected globalization , state power and consumerism . According to the analyzes carried out, the “eco-fascists” still “tend to pay homage to a vulgar evolutionism and regard their own group as genetically better than others. They unite inwardly in their region and exclude others. Above all, they want to survive in the bioregions themselves while the earth is perishing. “Eco-fascism” is at its core group-selfish. An essential cornerstone is biologism , which, as a component of reactionary concepts of society, also makes social differences explainable and defines the prevailing power relations as 'conditioned by nature (laws)' ”. Followers of this view often take the position that belonging to a region, a nation or a race leads to the right to a certain (higher) consumption of resources than for the rest of the world's population.

The term eco-fascism is also occasionally used when the power dimension of environmental policy is questioned: Then it points to “the fear of a power-political dimension in the current environmental and nature conservation debate”.

Political use

In the political debate, the term is also used, especially by the left, as a political catchphrase and as a polemical battle term . The catchphrase was used, for example, as a reproach against the ÖDP in the 1980s, against its then chairman Herbert Gruhl and also in relation to the German section of the World Federation for the Protection of Life .

Various sources call the Finnish deep ecologist Pentti Linkola an eco-fascist. The term is also used to a lesser extent within the New Right .

In Switzerland, the initiators of the Ecopop initiative found themselves exposed to the charge of eco-fascism in the voting discussion . The corresponding allegation was made by FDFA State Secretary Yves Rossier at a CVP event on January 11, 2013. After a threat of legal action, Rossier apologized for this allegation.

See also

literature

  • Wolf Dombrowsky : “Eco-Fascism” - New Specter or Real Danger? A contribution to a critique of party-political ecology. In: Jan Peters (ed.): Alternatives to the atomic state. The colorful picture of the greens. Verlag Rotation, 1979, ISBN 3883840017 , pp. 101-112.
  • Janet Biehl , Peter Staudenmaier: Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience. AK Press, 1995, ISBN 1873176732 .
  • Marie-Luise Heuser : What began in green ended in blood red. From the romanticism of nature to the plans for reagrarization and depopulation of the SA and SS. In: Dieter Hassenpflug (Ed.): Industrialism and Ecoromantics. German University Press , 1991, ISBN 9783824440771 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ André Gorz Ecology and Politics Rowohlt, Reinbek 1977, page 75 ff.
  2. ↑ Thomas Jahn / Peter Wehling: Ecology from the right. Nationalism and environmental protection among the New Right and the Republicans , Campus, Frankfurt / Main, New York 1991
  3. ↑ If "ecosystems had a moral self-worth, then they would have to be taken into account prima facie before all living beings." Konrad Ott / Tanja Egan-Krieger in the ethical report, Waldzukunft project, p. 19 (PDF file; 709 kB)
  4. ↑ See Zimerman: Possible Political Problems of Earth-Based Religions , as well as Zimmerman: Ecofacism (Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature) ( Memento from June 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF file; 112 kB) and Zimmerman Ecofascism: An Enduring Temptation ( Memento from June 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF file; 130 kB). Zimmerman was director of the Center for Humanities and the Arts at Tulane University and currently works with Ken Wilber at the Integral Institute . In his contribution to the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature in particular , he points out that “eco-fascism” would be suitable as an analytical term.
  5. ↑ “Right” are the “eco-fascists”, “left” the “ecoanarchists”, and the “eco-esotericists” are apolitical, although the authors call these terms “polemical fighting terms”, but because of their frequent use in literature of bioregionalism.
  6. ↑ Bernd Hamm , Barbara Rasche: Bioregionalism: An Overview ( Memento from June 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF file; 897 kB) . Series of publications by the Center for European Studies at the University of Trier, 2002, p. 24f., Accessed on December 21, 2009. Hamm and Rasche only use the term in quotation marks, as they distance themselves from the term's political connotation .
  7. ↑ cf. Eric Neumayer: The environment: One more reason to keep immigrants out? Ecological Economics 59 (2006): 204-107
  8. ↑ Manuela Casselmann: Models of ecological knowledge in environmental policy . Polis 22; P. 9 (PDF file; 361 kB)
  9. ↑ Frank Decker , Viola Neu (ed.): Handbook of German political parties , Wiesbaden, VS-Verlag, 2007, p. 351.
  10. ↑ Der Tagesspiegel : It doesn't help to shoot comrades , November 13, 2007.
  11. ↑ Martin Benninger: Eco-Fascism: Threat or Chimera? About a new catchphrase , in: Criticon 26 (1996), pages 191-195.
  12. ↑ Chief diplomat calls Ecopop initiators eco-fascists. In: Tages-Anzeiger from January 19, 2013.
  13. ↑ NZZ of January 22, 2013: State Secretary apologizes for comparing fascism.