National Anarchism

The rise of the so-called 'alt-right', or alternative right, has transformed the political landscape in the United States and challenged established political categories. For at least a generation, the political right has been understood primarily as a defence of the status quo: pro-capitalist, pro-state, pro-science and technology, and anti-environmental. By contrast, the alt-right draws its energy from a critique of the established order, liberal and conservative alike, not from its defence. Thus, it has resurrected older right-wing traditions of the antimodernist, revolutionary, and fascist right which have remained marginal in the North American conservative movement, often articulated in a white nationalist framework. While this milieu is highly diverse and internally divided, much of it is animated by strains of reactionary thought which attack liberal democracy, the state, and the 'mongrelizing', amoral forces of global capitalism. It has adopted positions associated with the political left, for example against war and free trade and for (exclusionary) social protection-ism. Many contemporary researchers of the far right have begun to examine these new political alignments and how they disrupt past understandings (Reid Ross 2017; Lyons 2018). However, these accounts often overlook the extent to which alt-right discourse draws from ecological discourse. Ecology is an increasingly important political vector for the rejection of traditional pro-business conservative positions by the constellation of esoteric, revolutionary, and traditionalist currents that comprise the alt-right. This chapter thus analyses how the alt-right deploys ecological discourse, rediscovering older Nazi themes like organic agriculture and animal rights while articulating novel right-wing interpretations of concepts like biodiversity, decentralism, deep ecology, bioregionalism, anti-capitalism, Indigenism, and anarchism. It will explore the core themes and political actors within the milieu, as well as how ideological cross-pollination has resulted in left-right resonance and, at times, political collaboration. The chapter concludes by discussing the potential political role of alt-right ecology in the present historical conjuncture, drawing on theoretical frameworks developed by Fraser (2017) and Brown (2006).