Weaponizing Nature, Naturalizing Violence: Anthropologies of Ecofascism

ABSTRACT After decades of denial and obstruction, the global Right is increasingly willing to acknowledge that climate change is a threat to lives and lifeways everywhere. Moreover, some seize on the specter of ecological collapse to advance fascistic politics. Mass shootings by White men who propose that eliminating racialized people will ease environmental pressures—including in Christchurch and El Paso—have been the most spectacular manifestations of this shift. But close observers note kindred shifts at borders and in boardrooms all across this planet, as far‐right groups work not merely to “save the earth” but to save it for specific people, and from the allegedly “polluting” force of racialized others. This commentary brings together scholars who share the sense that anthropology is uniquely suited to grappling with this complex political terrain, as a science of emergent and quotidian formations. Together, they map the weaponization of the environment in explicitly extremist spaces across Zimbabwe, Germany, Romania, Turkey, the Philippines, the United States, India, and the UAE—and also in more mundane sites where ecofascist ideologies pulse beneath the surface of the everyday. This conversation represents a work of theory‐in‐the‐making and conveys the value of collaborative, comparative thought at a moment of resurgent fascism and intensifying ecological apocalypse.