The Old Green Fascism---Same as the New Green Fascism
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:9 NIV
"A strain of eco-fascism was also found in Nazi ideology. As one of the most explicit modern accounts of eco-fascism, Richard Walter Darre coined the Nazi slogan “blood and soil”, meaning to capture a
Nazi leadership ardently championed renewable energy, and institutionalized organic farming and land use planning on a level unmatched by any nation past or present. These environmental policies was actually grounded in the same racist worldview that shaped the Holocaust.
In the latter half of the nineteenth century in Germany, the volkisch movement emerged—a vision of social change that united profoundly racist and, specifically, antisemitic thinking with nature mysticism.
As historian Peter Staudenmaier writes in “Fascist Ecology: The ‘Green Wing’ of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents,” “in the face of the very real dislocations brought on by the triumph of industrial capitalism and national unification, volkisch thinkers preached a return to the land, to the simplicity and wholeness of a life attuned to nature’s purity.” He explains that this movement “refused to locate the sources of alienation, rootlessness, and environmental destruction in social structures, laying the blame instead to rationalism, cosmopolitanism, and urban civilization. The stand-in for all of these was the age-old object of peasant hatred and middle-class resentment: the Jews.”
In 1867, German zoologist Ernst Haeckel coined the term “ecology” and began to develop it as a scientific discipline—one “concerned
with the interrelationship of organisms and their environments.”
In 1867, German zoologist Ernst Haeckel coined the term “ecology” and began to develop it as a scientific discipline—one “concerned
He was also an avowed supporter of racial eugenics and was one of the primary proponents of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theories in the German-speaking world—theories used to legitimize the notion of nordic racial superiority as scientific fact rather than mere opinion. These ideals would have a significant impact on the thought and political aspirations of the leaders of the National Socialist German Workers Party, known in the English-speaking world as the Nazi Party. And, as Staudenmaier argues, the emergence of modern ecology was a key ingredient that helped to give the volkisch movement’s racism scientific credibility and, thus, scalability at the level of government.
Lebensraum—the plan for securing “living space” for the German people through conquest—became a primary justification for invading Poland and orchestrating mass violence against Jews and other groups of people. This horrifying program was bolstered by the Darwinian notion that species must compete for dominance in a world of finite natural resources such as food. In keeping with this emphasis on maximizing space and optimizing Germans’ access to nourishment, the Nazis would also establish the first nature preserves in Europe and an unprecedented level of government support for ecologically sound farming methods.
One of the most striking aspects of this history is the role that young, ecologically minded Germans played in the success of the Nazi
Party. As Staudenmaier writes, the German youth movement in this period was the key cultural force that popularized volkisch ideas amongst the general public. The youth culture rejected civic engagement outright and embraced a communal, back-to-the-land lifestyle instead. They perceived the social and ecological challenges of the day as too great to be resolved through the political process.
Two nineteenth century figures exemplify this ominous conjunction: Ernst Moritz Arndt and Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl.
Arndt was also dedicated to the cause of the peasantry, which lead
him to a concern for the welfare of the land itself. Historians of German environmentalism mention him as the earliest example of ‘ecological’ thinking in the modern sense. His remarkable 1815 article On the Care and Conservation of Forests, written at the dawn of industrialization in Central Europe, rails against shortsighted exploitation of woodlands and soil, condemning deforestation and its economic causes.
Arndt’s environmentalism, however, was inextricably bound up with virulently xenophobic nationalism. His eloquent and prescient appeals for ecological sensitivity were couched always in terms of the well-being of the German soil and the German people, and his repeated lunatic polemics against miscegenation, demands for teutonic racial purity, and epithets against the French, Slavs, and Jews marked every aspect of his thought.
Riehl, a student of Arndt, further developed this sinister tradition. In some respects his ‘green’ streak went significantly deeper than Arndt’s; presaging certain tendencies in recent environmental activism, his 1853 essay Field and Forest ended with a call to fight for “the rights of wilderness.” But even here nationalist pathos set the tone: “We must save the forest, not only so that our ovens do not become cold in winter, but also so that the pulse of life of the people continues to beat warm and joyfully, so that Germany remains German.”
These latter two fixations matured in the second half of the nineteenth century in the context of the völkisch movement, a powerful cultural disposition and social tendency which united ethnocentric populism with nature mysticism.
Haeckel was also the chief popularizer of Darwin and evolutionary theory for the German-speaking world, and developed a peculiar sort of social darwinist philosophy he called ‘monism.’ The German Monist League he founded combined scientifically based ecological holism with völkisch social views. Haeckel believed in nordic racial superiority, strenuously opposed race mixing and enthusiastically supported racial eugenics. His fervent nationalism became fanatical with the onset of World War I, and he fulminated in antisemitic tones against the post-war Council Republic in Bavaria.
Near the end of his life he joined the Thule Society, a secret, radical organization which played a key role in the establishment of the Nazi movement.
Raoul Francé, founding member of the Monist League, elaborated so-called Lebensgesetze, ‘laws of life’ through which the natural order determines the social order. He opposed racial mixing, for example, as “unnatural.” Francé is acclaimed by contemporary ecofascists as a pioneer of the ecology movement..webp)
Francé’s colleague Ludwig Woltmann, another student of Haeckel, insisted on a biological interpretation for all societal phenomena, from cultural attitudes to economic arrangements. He stressed the supposed connection between environmental purity and ‘racial’ purity:
The National Socialist “religion of nature,” as one historian has described it, was a volatile admixture of primeval teutonic nature mysticism, pseudo-scientific ecology, irrationalist anti-humanism, and a mythology of racial salvation through a return to the land. Its predominant themes were ‘natural order,’ organicist holism and denigration of humanity: “Throughout the writings, not only of Hitler, but of most Nazi ideologues, one can discern a fundamental deprecation of humans vis-à-vis nature, and, as a logical corollary to this, an attack upon human efforts to master nature.”
Echoing Haeckel and the Monists, Mein Kampf announces: “When people attempt to rebel against the iron logic of nature, they come into conflict with the very same principles to which they owe their existence as human beings. Their actions against nature must lead to their own downfall.”
Even in the midst of war, Nazi leaders maintained their commitment to ecological ideals which were, for them, an essential element of racial rejuvenation. In December 1942, Himmler released a decree “On the Treatment of the Land in the Eastern Territories,” referring to the newly annexed portions of Poland. It read in part:
This passage recapitulates almost all of the tropes comprised by classical ecofascist ideology:
“The unity of blood and soil must be restored,” proclaimed Richard Walther Darré in 1930. This infamous phrase denoted a quasi-mystical connection between ‘blood’ (the race or Volk) and ‘soil’ (the.webp)
land and the natural environment) specific to Germanic peoples and absent, for example, among Celts and Slavs. For the enthusiasts of Blut und Boden, the Jews especially were a rootless, wandering people, incapable of any true relationship with the land. German blood, in other words, engendered an exclusive claim to the sacred German soil. While the term “blood and soil” had been circulating in völkisch circles since at least the Wilhelmine era, it was Darré who first popularized it as a slogan and then enshrined it as a guiding principle of Nazi thought.
Darré worked to install environmentally sensitive principles as the very basis of the Third Reich’s agricultural policy. Darré’s most important innovation was the introduction on a large scale of organic farming methods, significantly labeled “lebensgesetzliche Landbauweise,” or farming according to the laws of life. The term points up yet again the natural order ideology which underlies so much ecological thought.
The campaign to institutionalize organic farming encompassed tens of thousands of smallholdings and estates across Germany. It met with considerable resistance from other members of the Nazi hierarchy, above all Backe and Göring. But Darré, with the help of Hess and others, was able to sustain the policy until his forced resignation in 1942 (an event which had little to do with his environmentalist leanings). And these efforts in no sense represented merely Darré’s personal predilections; as the standard history of German agricultural policy points out, Hitler and Himmler “were in complete sympathy with these ideas.”
Darré has sometimes been regarded as a forerunner of the contemporary Green movement. His biographer, in fact, once referred to him as the “father of the Greens.” Her book Blood and Soil, undoubtedly the best single source on Darré in either German or English, consistently downplays the virulently fascist elements in his thinking, portraying him instead as a misguided agrarian radical.
Lebensraum—the plan for securing “living space” for the German people through conquest—became a primary justification for invading Poland and orchestrating mass violence against Jews and other groups of people. This horrifying program was bolstered by the Darwinian notion that species must compete for dominance in a world of finite natural resources such as food. In keeping with this emphasis on maximizing space and optimizing Germans’ access to nourishment, the Nazis would also establish the first nature preserves in Europe and an unprecedented level of government support for ecologically sound farming methods.
One of the most striking aspects of this history is the role that young, ecologically minded Germans played in the success of the Nazi
 |
| Blood & Soil |
Party. As Staudenmaier writes, the German youth movement in this period was the key cultural force that popularized volkisch ideas amongst the general public. The youth culture rejected civic engagement outright and embraced a communal, back-to-the-land lifestyle instead. They perceived the social and ecological challenges of the day as too great to be resolved through the political process.
Two nineteenth century figures exemplify this ominous conjunction: Ernst Moritz Arndt and Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl.
Arndt was also dedicated to the cause of the peasantry, which lead
Arndt’s environmentalism, however, was inextricably bound up with virulently xenophobic nationalism. His eloquent and prescient appeals for ecological sensitivity were couched always in terms of the well-being of the German soil and the German people, and his repeated lunatic polemics against miscegenation, demands for teutonic racial purity, and epithets against the French, Slavs, and Jews marked every aspect of his thought.
Riehl, a student of Arndt, further developed this sinister tradition. In some respects his ‘green’ streak went significantly deeper than Arndt’s; presaging certain tendencies in recent environmental activism, his 1853 essay Field and Forest ended with a call to fight for “the rights of wilderness.” But even here nationalist pathos set the tone: “We must save the forest, not only so that our ovens do not become cold in winter, but also so that the pulse of life of the people continues to beat warm and joyfully, so that Germany remains German.”
These latter two fixations matured in the second half of the nineteenth century in the context of the völkisch movement, a powerful cultural disposition and social tendency which united ethnocentric populism with nature mysticism.
Haeckel was also the chief popularizer of Darwin and evolutionary theory for the German-speaking world, and developed a peculiar sort of social darwinist philosophy he called ‘monism.’ The German Monist League he founded combined scientifically based ecological holism with völkisch social views. Haeckel believed in nordic racial superiority, strenuously opposed race mixing and enthusiastically supported racial eugenics. His fervent nationalism became fanatical with the onset of World War I, and he fulminated in antisemitic tones against the post-war Council Republic in Bavaria.
Near the end of his life he joined the Thule Society, a secret, radical organization which played a key role in the establishment of the Nazi movement.
Raoul Francé, founding member of the Monist League, elaborated so-called Lebensgesetze, ‘laws of life’ through which the natural order determines the social order. He opposed racial mixing, for example, as “unnatural.” Francé is acclaimed by contemporary ecofascists as a pioneer of the ecology movement.
.webp)
Francé’s colleague Ludwig Woltmann, another student of Haeckel, insisted on a biological interpretation for all societal phenomena, from cultural attitudes to economic arrangements. He stressed the supposed connection between environmental purity and ‘racial’ purity:
The National Socialist “religion of nature,” as one historian has described it, was a volatile admixture of primeval teutonic nature mysticism, pseudo-scientific ecology, irrationalist anti-humanism, and a mythology of racial salvation through a return to the land. Its predominant themes were ‘natural order,’ organicist holism and denigration of humanity: “Throughout the writings, not only of Hitler, but of most Nazi ideologues, one can discern a fundamental deprecation of humans vis-à-vis nature, and, as a logical corollary to this, an attack upon human efforts to master nature.”
Echoing Haeckel and the Monists, Mein Kampf announces: “When people attempt to rebel against the iron logic of nature, they come into conflict with the very same principles to which they owe their existence as human beings. Their actions against nature must lead to their own downfall.”
Even in the midst of war, Nazi leaders maintained their commitment to ecological ideals which were, for them, an essential element of racial rejuvenation. In December 1942, Himmler released a decree “On the Treatment of the Land in the Eastern Territories,” referring to the newly annexed portions of Poland. It read in part:
"The peasant of our racial stock has always carefully endeavored to increase the natural powers of the soil, plants, and animals, and to preserve the balance of the whole of nature. For him, respect for divine creation is the measure of all culture. If, therefore, the new Lebensräume (living spaces) are to become a homeland for our settlers, the planned arrangement of the landscape to keep it close to nature is a decisive prerequisite. It is one of the bases for fortifying the German Volk."
This passage recapitulates almost all of the tropes comprised by classical ecofascist ideology:
“The unity of blood and soil must be restored,” proclaimed Richard Walther Darré in 1930. This infamous phrase denoted a quasi-mystical connection between ‘blood’ (the race or Volk) and ‘soil’ (the
.webp)
Darré worked to install environmentally sensitive principles as the very basis of the Third Reich’s agricultural policy. Darré’s most important innovation was the introduction on a large scale of organic farming methods, significantly labeled “lebensgesetzliche Landbauweise,” or farming according to the laws of life. The term points up yet again the natural order ideology which underlies so much ecological thought.
The campaign to institutionalize organic farming encompassed tens of thousands of smallholdings and estates across Germany. It met with considerable resistance from other members of the Nazi hierarchy, above all Backe and Göring. But Darré, with the help of Hess and others, was able to sustain the policy until his forced resignation in 1942 (an event which had little to do with his environmentalist leanings). And these efforts in no sense represented merely Darré’s personal predilections; as the standard history of German agricultural policy points out, Hitler and Himmler “were in complete sympathy with these ideas.”
Darré has sometimes been regarded as a forerunner of the contemporary Green movement. His biographer, in fact, once referred to him as the “father of the Greens.” Her book Blood and Soil, undoubtedly the best single source on Darré in either German or English, consistently downplays the virulently fascist elements in his thinking, portraying him instead as a misguided agrarian radical.
This grave error in judgment indicates the powerfully disorienting pull of an ‘ecological’ aura.
Darré’s published writings alone, dating back to the early twenties, are enough to indict him as a rabidly racist and jingoist ideologue particularly prone to a vulgar and hateful antisemitism (he spoke of Jews, revealingly, as “weeds”).
The “green wing” of the NSDAP was not a group of innocents, confused and manipulated idealists, or reformers from within; they were conscious promoters and executors of a vile program explicitly dedicated to inhuman racist violence, massive political repression and worldwide military domination. Their ‘ecological’ involvements, far from offsetting these fundamental commitments, deepened and radicalized them. In the end, their configuration of environmental politics was directly and substantially responsible for organized mass murder.
No aspect of the Nazi project can be properly understood without examining its implication in the holocaust. Here, too, ecological.webp)
arguments played a crucially malevolent role. Not only did the “green wing” refurbish the sanguine antisemitism of traditional reactionary ecology; it catalyzed a whole new outburst of lurid racist fantasies of organic inviolability and political revenge. The confluence of anti-humanist dogma with a fetishization of natural ‘purity’ provided not merely a rationale but an incentive for the Third Reich’s most heinous crimes. Its insidious appeal unleashed murderous energies previously untapped. Finally, the displacement of any social analysis of environmental destruction in favor of mystical ecology served as an integral component in the preparation of the final solution.
The “green wing” of the NSDAP was not a group of innocents, confused and manipulated idealists, or reformers from within; they were conscious promoters and executors of a vile program explicitly dedicated to inhuman racist violence, massive political repression and worldwide military domination. Their ‘ecological’ involvements, far from offsetting these fundamental commitments, deepened and radicalized them. In the end, their configuration of environmental politics was directly and substantially responsible for organized mass murder.
No aspect of the Nazi project can be properly understood without examining its implication in the holocaust. Here, too, ecological
.webp)
The record of fascist ecology shows that under the right conditions such an orientation can quickly lead to barbarism."
FacingHistoryAndOurselves/TAL