The Radical Right During Crisis

And yet, GLF has not only proclaimed the need to restore such an imagined equilibrium but has also frequently report relevant activism, what Zbyněk Tarant refers to as far-right “eco-activism” or “eco-actions”. 17For example, GLF’s chapters have repeatedly reported on clean-ups 18as well as suggested to build a bird feeder 19and to raise oak trees, 20thus putting an emphasis on direct action and hands-on experience well-established in radical right activism. These illustrative examples are taken from the German variant which also illustrates shifting levels of (public) activism: for instance, its vk.com channel, opened in 2016 but left untouched since 2017. 21The variant has recently returned to Twitter and made available a webpage, although both are seemingly deserted again. 22Indeed, GLF’s eco-fascist “unique selling point” and raison d’être might not be enough to stabilize such groupuscules 23in the medium—and long-run—as is also visible in one of their Polish interviewee’s words: ‘Greenline Front died of “natural causes”, people didn’t do anything’.

The short-lived case of GLF may be emblematic of eco-fascist and radical right cells, sentenced to atomized and disjointed activism and operating remotely from most radical right organizations. However, the case of GLF raises at least two issues worth considering about the relationship between the radical right and ecologism. First, although many radical right actors have taken a contrarian position when it comes to anthropogenic climate change, 24the current relevance of environmental issues has let some of these actors to show increasing interest in the environment. While this is not necessarily congruent with eco-fascism, elements such as purity of the national land and rootedness of an essentialised collective may also be found in more subtle forms of radical right ideology. Thus, studying “proper” eco-fascism might sharpen our awareness of related, though different, articulations of nature protection across the radical right spectrum.

Second, even though GLF did not permeate into mainstream environmental networks and might not even attract significant support within the radical right, its grassroots activism keeps alive a fascist tradition of ecological thought and practice. Moreover, this ecological moment points to the importance of critically examining environmentalist framing. That is, GLF and eco-fascism at large question our understanding of environmentalism and ecologism as framing done by mainstream and left-wing environmentalists too might unconsciously reproduce potentially troubling notions of eco-organicism and an imagined equilibrium in and with nature, resulting in exclusionary politics.

Dr Bernhard Forchtneris a Senior Fellow at CARR and associate professor of media and communication at the University of Leicester.

Balša Lubardais a Doctoral Fellow at CARR and doctoral candidate in environmental sciences and policy at the Central European University.

1Peter Staudenmaier, “Fascist Ecology: The ‘Green Wing’ of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents,” in Ecofascism Revisited: Lessons from the German Experience, eds. J. Biehl and P. Staudenmaier (Porsgrunn: New Compass Press, 2011), 13-42.

2Bernhard Forchtner, “Eco-fascism: Justifications of Terrorist Violence in the Christchurch Mosque Shooting and the El Paso Shooting,” openDemocracy, August 13, 2019, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/countering-radical-right/eco-fascism-justifications-terrorist-violence-christchurch-mosque-shooting-and-el-paso-shooting/.

3Balša Lubarda, “Beyond Ecofascism? Far Right Ecologism (FRE) as a Framework for Future Inquiries,” Environmental Values 29, no. 6 (2020): 713-32.

4Bernhard Forchtner, ed., The Far Right and the Environment. Politics, Discourse and Communication (Oxon: Routledge, 2019).

5Greenline Front Ukraine, vk, January 11, 2021, 9:10 a.m., https://vk.com/greenline_kyiv?z=photo-74403565_341755028%2Falbum-74403565_0%2Frev. On the life rune as a symbol, see “Life Rune,” Anti-Defamation League, https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/life-rune.

6“Home,” Greenline Front International Blog, https://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/.

7“Für Blut Und Boden,” Greenline Front International Blog, http://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/2016/08/fur-blut-und-boden.html.

8“Manifesto: 10 points,” Greenline Front International Blog, https://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/2016/07/glf-manifesto-10-points_4.html.

9“Leonardo da Vinci’s Ethical Vegetarianism,” Greenline Front International Blog, http://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/2016/09/leonardo-da-vinci-ethical-vegetarianism.html

10“Democracy: The Religion of Death—Pentti Linkola,” Greenline Front International Blog, http://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/2016/08/democracy-religion-of-death.html.

11“William Pierce—‘Who are we?’,” Greenline Front International Blog, https://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/2016/07/william-pierce-who-are-we_44.html.

12Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Hitler's Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism (New York: New York University Press, 1998).

13“The Religion of the Strong by Savitri Devi,” Greenline Front International Blog , https://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-religion-of-strong-by-savitri-devi.html.

14“Walter Darré and the ‘Lebensgesetzliche Anbauweise’,” Greenline Front International Blog , https://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/2016/07/walter-darre-and-ebensgesetzliche.html.

15“Alwin Seifert: First German Environmentalist,” Greenline Front International Blog, http://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/2016/08/alwin-seifert.html

16“The Law of Blood,” Greenline Front International Blog, http://greenlinefront.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-law-of-blood.html

17Zbyněk Tarant, “Is Brown the New Green? The Environmental Discourse of the Czech Far Right,” in The Far Right and the Environment. Politics, Discourse and Communication, ed. B. Forchtner (Oxon: Routledge, 2019), 201-15.

18Greenlinefrontde (Greenline Front Germany), “Erste Müllsammlungsaktion,” June 18, 2019, https://greenlinefrontde.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/erste-mullsammlungsaktionen/.

19Greenlinefront Deutschland, “Vogelfutterhäuser selber bauen,” vk, October 6, 2016, 1:00 p.m., https://m.vk.com/wall-123638406_49.

20Greenlinefront Deutschland, “Operation Eichenwald,” vk, January 6, 2017, 11:33 a.m., https://m.vk.com/wall-123638406_65.

21Greenlinefront Deutschland, https://vk.com/public123638406.

22Greenlinefront Deutschland (@greenlinefront), https://twitter.com/greenlinefront?s=20; Greenline Front Deutschland, https://greenlinefrontde.wordpress.com/.

23Roger Griffin, “From Slime Mould to Rhizome: An Introduction to the Groupuscular right,” Patterns of Prejudice 37, no. 1 (2003): 27-50.

24Bernhard Forchtner, “Climate Change and the Far Right,” WIREs Climate Change, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.604.

Terrorism and Political Violence

Reem Ahmed and Maik Fielitz

In June 2020, two right-wing extremists faced trial in Frankfurt, Germany, suspected of assassinating the CDU politician Walter Lübcke at his home in June 2019. Lübcke, who openly supported Chancellor Angela Merkel’s liberal border policy at the height of the “refugee crisis” in 2015, has been a symbol of hate within far-right circles and was vilified as a ‘traitor against the people’ ( Volksverräter ). As the first assassination of a politician at the hands of right-wing extremists in post-war Germany, this case brings together two key elements of transnational far-right narratives; namely, that 1) the state has fallen into the hands of the “enemies” who are facilitating 2) apocalyptic scenarios of the ‘death of the people’ ( Volkstod ) by welcoming migrants into the country.