Governing “decadent cities”: The far-right as agents of climate counterinsurgency

Abstract

Ecological crisis has given rise to a range of discussions over “climate fascism,” “green nationalism,” “fossil fascism,” and “eco-fascism.” Several authors have advanced the thesis that climate adaptation will be shaped by an increase in authoritarian politics or an uptick in organized violence (e.g. at the borders of nation-states) as states deploy counterinsurgency tactics against climate refugees and environmental activists. My article inverts this proposition by arguing that far right politics emerges as a contingent possibility in the mode of counterinsurgency governance. I propose the framework of “relations of counterinsurgency” as a means of understanding how counterinsurgency manages crises of urban governability by remaking the spaces of uneven urbanization. I then argue that to theorize contemporary far right climate politics, we should ask what the term eco-fascism does rather than what it is. My argument is that, as climate change makes increasing claims upon political institutions, relations of counterinsurgency allow far right actors to constitute their agency and subjectivity.