The Aesthetic Politics of Far-Right Environmentalism

This book offers a groundbreaking exploration of the complex relationships between aesthetics, politics, and environmental concerns within far-right movements. Drawing on critical theory and insights from Walter Benjamin, Jacques Rancière, and others, it examines how both institutional far-right political parties and extra-institutional extremist actors manipulate environmental narratives to advance their distinct political agendas.

Its unique approach features a comparative analysis of far-right individuals and organisations, investigating how they use imagetic media to promote ethnonationalist and authoritarian responses to environmental degradation, including the adverse effects of climate change. Spanning recent historical and contemporary contexts, the book provides a nuanced account of how eco-fascist and other far-right political ecologies are embedded within broader far-right ideologies.

It critically analyses various dimensions of this alignment, including the romanticisation of nature as national identity, the instrumentalisation of ecological crises to justify authoritarian, anti-immigration, and other forms of social control, and the use of conservation rhetoric as a façade for nativist policies. It offers a broad overview of how images and other visual media are used for propaganda. This book will be of interest to policymakers, scholar-activists, and practitioners.

Imogen Richards is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Deakin University, Australia.