An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Fraser McQueen (Postdoctoral Fellow 2022-23; University of Stirling)
The Threat of Ecofascism in French Literary Great Replacements
Since the 1960s, environmentalism has primarily been associated with the political left. Mainstream right-wing and far-right political actors typically minimise or outright deny the reality of the unfolding climate catastrophe. While they may be marginal, however, there is a long history of far-right movements outlining racist visions of environmentalism: visions that are abhorrent, but not always insincere. The danger such ideologies pose even from the political fringes is underlined by the growing list of white supremacist terrorists who have identified as ecofascists, including the Christchurch, El Paso, and Buffalo murderers.
This paper will explore how ecofascist worldviews are refracted through two recent French novels: Franck Poupart’s Demain les barbares (2015) and Chris Antone's Vicilisation. La Chute (2011). Both depict fictionalised versions of the racist ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory, which holds that non-white immigrants and their descendants seek to ‘replace’ France’s ‘native’ whites, coming to pass. In doing so, they adopt the tropes of dystopian satire: an inherently engaged genre, which depicts horrific consequences unfolding when a trend its author believes is at work in their real-world society is left unchecked. ‘Political’ readings of such novels are therefore not purely instrumentalist, instead making it possible to detect hints of what remains unexpressed within an author’s political imaginary. These two authors depict very different problems causing France’s downfall: Poupart unambiguously reproduces a far-right discourse holding that race war is inevitable, while Antone’s worldview is ostensibly more benign, problematising capitalist extractivism. On closer inspection, however, the ingredients of ecofascism can be detected in both narratives. That two so ostensibly different worldviews both contain ecofascist elements speaks to the danger of its emergence as a mainstream ideology. In this context, it is vital that the environmentalist movement be actively anti-fascist, refusing to complacently assume that environmentalism will always belong to the political left.
Click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/86535202023
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