https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6022-8021
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ABSTRACT
Environmental issues have inspired violent action on both extremes of the political spectrum. Yet, there is a dearth of research on social psychology of environmental extremism. We provide the first empirical exploration of socio-demographic and psychological correlates of support for pro-climate and ecofascist extremism, drawing on two online surveys conducted in the UK in 2020/2021. We focus on the differences and commonalities in the profile of supporters of the two types of extremism. We find that pro-climate extremist action is associated with both left- and right-wing political ideology and we highlight the importance of social norms, political efficacy, and neuroticism, for future studies.
Acknowledgments
This project has been supported by seed funding from the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Jamie Barlett, “The Next Wave of Extremists Will Be Green,” Foreign Policy, September 01, 2017.
2. Matthew Phelan, “The Menace of Eco-Fascism,” The New York Review of Books, October 22, 2018.
3. See also: Joel Achenbach, “Two mass killings a world apart share a common theme: ‘ecofascism,’” The Washington Post, August 18, 2019; Philip Oltermann, “German far right infiltrates green groups with call to protect the land,” The Observer, June 28, 2020; John H. Richardson, “The Unlikely New Generation of Unabomber Acolytes,” New York Magazine, December 11, 2018; The Economist, “What if climate activists turn to terrorism?,” The Economist, July 04, 2020.
4. See, for example: Bernhard Forchtner, The far right and the environment: politics, discourse and communication (2020); Don Liddick, Eco-terrorism: radical environmental and animal liberation movements (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 2006); Leslie James Pickering, The Earth Liberation Front, 1997-2002 (Portland, OR: Arissa Media Group, 2007); Bron Taylor, “Religion, violence and radical environmentalism: From earth first! to the Unabomber to the earth liberation front,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 10, No. 4 (1998): 1-42.
5. See, for example: Betsy Hartmann, “The Greening of Hate: An Environmental Essay,” in M. Potok, ed., Greenwash: Nativists, Environmentalism and the Hypocracy of Hate (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010); Balša Lubarda, “Beyond Ecofascism? Far-Right Ecologism (FRE) as a Framework for Future Inquiries,” Environmental Values, Vol. 29, No. 6 (2020): 713-32; Rueda, “Neoecofascism: The Example of the United States,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism, Vol. 14, No. 2 (2020), p. 95; Michael E. Zimmerman, “Ecofascism: An enduring temptation,” in Michael E. Zimmerman, ed., Environmental philosophy: From animal rights to radical ecology (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2004).
6. See, for example: Jennifer Varriale Carson, Gary LaFree, and Laura Dugan, “Terrorist and Non-Terrorist Criminal Attacks by Radical Environmental and Animal Rights Groups in the United States, 1970-2007,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 24, No. 2 (2012): 295-319; Paola Andrea Spadaro, “Climate Change, Environmental Terrorism, Eco-Terrorism and Emerging Threats,” Journal of Strategic Security, Vol. 13, No. 4 (2020): 58-80.
7. Andrew Silke and John Morrison, “Gathering Storm: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Climate Change and Terrorism,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 34, No. 5 (2022): 888.
8. Rueda, Neoecofascism, p. 95.
9. Damian Carrington, “Climate crisis affects how majority will vote in UK election – poll,” Guardian, (2019); Martin Kuebler, “German election: Is this the climate election, or isn’t it?,” DW, (2021); Rune Stubager and Kasper Moller Hansen, Klimavalget: folketingsvalget 2019 (Kbh.: Djof, 2021).
10. Rueda, Neoecofascism, p. 116.
11. Elżbieta Posłuszna, Environmental and animal rights extremism, terrorism, and national security (Amsterdam: Elsevier/Butterworth-Heinemann, 2015); Bron Taylor, “The Tributaries of Radical Environmentalism,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2008): 27-61.
12. Taylor, The Tributaries of Radical Environmentalism.
13. Ibid.
14. Posłuszna, Environmental and animal rights extremism, terrorism, and national security.
15. Ibid.
16. Posłuszna, Environmental and animal rights extremism, terrorism, and national security; Taylor, The Tributaries of Radical Environmentalism.
17. Posłuszna, Environmental and animal rights extremism, terrorism, and national security, p. 108.
18. Ibid.
19. Spadaro, Climate Change, Environmental Terrorism, Eco-Terrorism and Emerging Threats, p. 63.
20. Carson et al., Terrorist and Non-Terrorist Criminal Attacks by Radical Environmental and Animal Rights Groups in the United States, 1970-2007.
21. Steve Vanderheiden, “Radical environmentalism in an age of antiterrorism,” Environmental Politics, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2008): 299-318.
22. Spadaro, Climate Change, Environmental Terrorism, Eco-Terrorism and Emerging Threats. The Police later apologized and withdrew the two organizations from the material.
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24. Lubarda, Beyond Ecofascism?
25. Rueda, Neoecofascism.
26. Ibid.
27. Ecofascism: lessons from the German experience (Edinburgh ; San Francisco: AK Press, 1995).
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29. Rueda, Neoecofascism, p. 99.
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31. Rueda, Neoecofascism.
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34. Macklin, The Extreme Right, Climate Change and Terrorism.
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37. Jake Hanrahan, “Inside the Unabomber’s odd and furious online revival,” Wired, (2018).
38. Zimmerman, Ecofascism: An enduring temptation.
39. Hartmann, The Greening of Hate: An Environmental Essay.
40. Ibid.
41. Sam Knights, “The Climate Movement Must Be Ready To Challenge Rising Right-Wing Environmentalism,” Jacobin, (2020).
42. Rueda, Neoecofascism.
43. Lubarda, Beyond Ecofascism?
44. Spadaro, Climate Change, Environmental Terrorism, Eco-Terrorism and Emerging Threats.
45. Daniel Trilling, “Flag, faith and fear for the planet – how the far right is exploiting climate change for its own ends,” Prospect, (2020).
46. Hornsey et al., Meta-analyses of the determinants and outcomes of belief in climate change; Jylhä et al., Climate Change Denial among Radical Right-Wing Supporters.
47. Sadi Shanaah, Immo Fritsche, and Mathias Osmundsen, “The Effect of Climate Change Threat on Public Attitudes toward Ethnic and Religious Minorities and Climate Refugees,” Unpublished manuscript.
48. The reason for this restriction is that the theory that underpinned the original study posits an unconscious negative effect of climate change threat on attitudes toward out-groups and so the experimental manipulation (a list of information about future negative climate change impacts on Britain) was followed by a delay task, after which the dependent variables’ scores consisting of the evaluation of various social groups were collected. Only after these sections we asked about the support for various extremist environmental actions relevant to this paper. The possible effect of the manipulation on these latter variables was thus likely affected by the delay as well as the items following the delay. Although our check revealed no systematic statistically significant direct or indirect effect of the manipulation on the dependent variables that are the focus of this present study, we cannot rule out every possible effect of the manipulation.
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51. Daniel Koehler, “‘The Fighting Made Me Feel Alive:’ Women’s Motivations for Engaging in Left-wing Terrorism: A Thematic Analysis,” Terrorism and Political Violence, (2021): 1-16.
52. Jürgen W. Falter and Siegfried Schumann, “Affinity toward right‐wing extremism in Western Europe,” West European Politics, Vol. 11, No. 2 (1988): 96-110; Raul Gomez, Laura Morales, and Luis Ramiro, “Varieties of Radicalism: Examining the Diversity of Radical Left Parties and Voters in Western Europe,” West European Politics, Vol. 39, No. 2 (2016): 351-79.
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54. Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer, Extreme right activists in Europe through the magnifying glass (London: Routledge, 2006).
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60. Tarrant used “we Europeans” in the original, which we replaced by “we native British” to fit the context of the participants. Also, he used the term “invaders” instead of “immigrants,” which we contextualized as well.
61. Spadaro, Climate Change, Environmental Terrorism, Eco-Terrorism and Emerging Threats.
62. N. Pontus Leander et al., “Frustration-affirmation? Thwarted goals motivate compliance with social norms for violence and nonviolence.,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 119, No. 2 (2020): 249-71; Fergus G. Neville, “Preventing violence through changing social norms,” in Peter D. Donnelly and Catherine L. Ward, eds., Oxford Textbook of Violence Prevention (Oxford University Press, 2014): 239-44.
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66. Ozer and Bertelsen, Capturing violent radicalization.
67. Piotr Cap, “Immigration and Anti-migration Discourses: The Early Rhetoric of Brexit,” The Language of Fear (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2017), pp. 67-79.