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anger can be misdirected toward a specific enemy who its proponents see as ruining their society, taking their resources, rob- bing them of their comforts and advantages. Eco-fascism can look like militarized border walls, isolationism, resource hoarding, and enforcing racist policies — such as those rejecting climate migrants or opposing multiculturalism in the name of conser- vation. It can even subtly manifest in the kind of quips that caught on earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic about humans being “the real virus,” which insinuate that at least some of us ought to be cleared away to “disinfect” the planet.
“I fear that in the future there’s going to be more strategic use of [eco-fascistic argu- ments against immigration] by the far right, but also that there will be people who believe them who aren’t really into it for perfidious reasons, but perhaps because they are too easy to accept,” says Betsy Hartmann, author of The America Syndrome, a 2017 book about how end-times thinking influences politics. “Unless you’re demographically literate.”
The point is, people who are not de- liberately malicious actors or consciously xenophobic can still be seduced by apparent “solutions” to climate change that are inher- ently fascistic. What kinds of people might find the protectionist arguments of eco-fascism compelling? Well, for example, people who feel threatened and who want and have the option to be protected. People like, potentially, some of Ray’s climate-anxious students.
For her part, Ray believes unanalyzed climate anxiety can manifest among the privileged as a desire to retain their favour- able status quo. “The dog whistle potential of climate anxiety is that it can [sometimes] be the experience of people who have been insu- lated from existential threats in the past and are all of a sudden experiencing the prospect of an unlivable future for the first time,” says Ray. She believes in the importance of considering climate anxiety in the context of race and power: “Who gets the space to talk about this stuff and whose vulnerability is more important in these conversations?” Focusing on the climate anxiety of those in positions of privilege can overshadow the experiences of people on the front lines of climate change — like Indigenous nations within Canada who have been ringing alarm bells on ecological degradation for years to little effect — and distract even more from their urgent needs.
Of course, not everyone who experienc- es climate anxiety will be drawn to eco-fascist logic. Yet for us to ensure we avoid it at a cultural level, we must be able to not only spot its rhetorics and proposals but also un-
derstand the ways our emotions can distort our perception of reality and make us sus- ceptible to those with a stake in our politics.
“We can have all the science in the world. We can have all the research, all the programs out there, new technology that the- oretically could address this [climate] crisis. And what it’s really going to come down to is human emotions, thoughts, and behaviour,” says Andrew Bryant, a Seattle-based psycho- therapist specializing in how climate change affects mental health. Some emotionally intelligent people are consciously thinking about how climate anxiety may be affecting them, and thus are better equipped to handle it in productive, healthy ways, says Bryant. Others are not so self-aware. “They’re reading the news and responding to disasters and experiencing anxiety without even naming it,” he says. “And that’s going to be unques- tioned: ‘I need to take care of myself and my people.’ And historically, in those types of situations, a percentage of the population turns toward xenophobia, racism, protection- ism.” Unchecked emotions could play into a contemporary rise in eco-fascism, “and if we don’t talk about it, we won’t have much say in what happens,” he says.
We must talk about our fear — how it feels to think, as 56 per cent of respon- dents to the Bath study do, that “humanity is doomed.” It behooves us to be aware that
“...Someone once even admitted to liking the idea of a green
dictatorship.”
blind panic can be exploited by those who wed socially regressive, unjust politics with concern for the environment. And it can re- assure us to understand that our fears are not irrational, but that they also don’t need to dominate us; we can be distressed by what threatens our future without abandoning our hope for it. We must also talk about our hope.
“People have long been afraid that if you talk about solutions that are actually happening, that somehow you’ll create complacency,” says Elin Kelsey, a scholar and educator at the University of Victoria, and the author of 2020’s Hope Matters. Yet focusing exclusively on problems can lead to apathy. “It’s really paramount that we focus on the kinds of solutions that are emerging and look at ways of amplifying them in real time,” she says — and not wishful-think- ing, naively optimistic solutions but facts. For instance, in 2009, Kelsey was part of a team that pushed the U.S. government to create what was then the world’s largest protected marine area. Today, it’s not even in the top 10. “Now [in Canada] there’s this big movement to protect 25 per cent per cent of land and water by 2025, 30 per cent by 2030. Those are numbers we were not talking about [back then].” Additionally, Kelsey points to the recovery of humpback whales (which contribute to carbon capture), a huge increase in plant-based diets in the West, the climate– and social justice–cen- tric priorities of the young, and investors successfully pushing corporations to adopt climate-friendly policies as some examples of positive shifts.
Looking at optimistic trends helps us “get away from the starting-line fallacy, which is that all the hard work lies ahead, and that we haven’t done anything,” says Kelsey. There is certainly more to do, but acknowledging the progress that is being made empowers us to continue working toward the tenable goal of a future that’s better than our past.
“We were able to get rid of slavery, we were able to get rid of manifest destiny, we were able to get rid of the divine right of kings — all of these things which were thought of as not even human constructs but given by God. Something like the fossil fuel industry is very much a human creation. It certainly can be changed,” notes Ray. “Every time I talk about climate anxiety, I want to scream from the rooftops, ‘This is not the only inevitable reality!’”
Ray’s words echo with those I turn over in my own mind whenever I feel the creep of climate anxiety these days, penned by the activist and author Arundhati Roy: “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
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