August 07, 2019

How eco-fascism inspired the El Paso shooter

topic:	Humans
located:	USA, New Zealand
editor:	Yair Oded

Last weekend, yet another deadly wave of gun-violence swept across the United States. In El Paso, Texas, a white nationalist terrorist carrying an assault rifle murdered 22 people at a Walmart frequented predominantly by Hispanic Americans and Mexicans from across the border. In Dayton, Ohio, a gunman killed 9 people and injured dozens more.

Unlike the Dayton shooter (whose motives for the attack are still being investigated), the El Paso murderer left behind a four-page-long manifesto in which he claims his massacre was committed as a response to the “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” Many have rightly argued that it is the bluntly racist rhetoric and fear-mongering of the president and conservative media pundits that embolden white supremacists like the El Paso shooter and goad them into committing horrifying acts of terror. Yet a closer look at the shooter’s text reveals that his inspiration stems from conspiracy theories and ideologies that date back to the previous century.

“Some people will blame the president or certain presidential candidates for the attack. This is not the case,” stated the El Paso killer in his manifesto, claiming that his ideas predate Trump and revolve around the issue of “race-mixing”. 

The El Paso shooter echoed, and in some cases quoted, the claims made by the Christchurch, New Zealand gunman in his manifesto “The Great Replacement” that recent migration trends cause a demographic threat to white populations and that eliminating ‘intruders’ is the only way to defend the ‘white race’. 

The Great Replacement theory as we know it was forged by French white nationalist conspiracy theorist and writer Renaud Camus, who claimed that the indigenous white civilization of Europe was being gradually replaced by ‘Third World’ immigrants who will inevitably destroy its culture and future. In an interview for The New York Times, Thomas Chatterton Williams – a journalist who profiled Camus back in 2017 – stated that, “One very clever move these identitarians make — and, it has to be said, this is an exploitable opening provided to them in part by the progressive left — is to cynically proclaim their ‘whiteness’ as just another form of diversity that is in danger of erasure. This is why you see in the El Paso manifesto a disdain for ‘shameless race-mixers’ who ‘destroy genetic diversity’.” Williams added that “This allows the writer to avoid saying that whites are superior, but rather that they must be preserved just like everyone else.”

Camus’ theory, however, has roots that go even deeper, and point out to a movement that came to be known as ‘eco-fascism’ – traces of which are laced throughout the El Paso shooter’s text. According to journalist Natasha Lennard, this theory, which was formulated by the Progressive Era lawyer, eugenicist, and conservationist Madison Grant, was arguably the first to conflate ideas of environmental protection and nativist claims of people to their indigenous land. Once a source of inspiration to German Nazis, Grant’s ideas now feed the nationalistic mania of white supremacists, who draw on environmental degradation as a way to bolster their racist agendas.

The Christchurch shooter identified in his manifesto as an ‘eco-fascist’, stating that, “there is no nationalism without environmentalism.” The El Paso gunman, too, made clear references to the convictions of eco-fascism, writing that, “The American lifestyle affords our citizens an incredible quality of life. However, our lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country… everything I have seen and heard in my short life has led me to believe that the average American isn’t willing to change their lifestyle, even if the changes only cause a slight inconvenience. … So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources.”

In her piece for The Intercept, Lennard points out that despite the fact that conservatives constitute the greatest force behind climate change denial today, they nonetheless make an increasing number of references to ideas of eco-fascism. As one example, Lennard cites Marine Le Pen’s presidential campaign promise “to make the ‘first ecological civilization’ of a ‘Europe of nations,’ claiming that ‘nomadic’ people with ‘no homeland’ do not care about the environment.”

Eco-fascism is on the rise. In an era when climate-caused disasters and migration waves are only expected to increase, it is crucial not to fall prey to such panic-inducing racist conspiracy theories, which do not only inspire horrendous violence by individual terrorists but also serve as lethal ammunition at the hands of populist governments.  

Image: A shooting at a shopping complex in El Paso, Texas, on August 3, 2019, left at least 20 people dead. The city, shown here at sunset, borders Juárez, Mexico, seen in the distance. Second-Half Travels/CC via Flickr