Authoritarianism and Fossil Capitalism: the Liberal-Right Alliance
A talk with Genevieve Guenther
The West is in danger. Authoritarian and fascist forces have emerged across Europe and the US, infiltrating previously democratic governments, capturing social and traditional media outlets, and shaping the digital platforms of contemporary life, including those for elections and warfare. At the same time, fossil-fuel use has heated our planet to 1.5°C - the temperature above which we confront rising risks of tipping points that will make regions like Europe uninhabitable.
As Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor write in End Times Fascism, these two historical events are connected. Insofar as fascism arises in response to crisis, end-times fascists, Klein and Taylor posit, are responding to climate change by accelerating it, under the false belief that they will just disappear into bunkers or rocket up to Mars while the sweaty masses below roast in whatever wasteland remains.
Building on Klein and Taylor’s analysis, in Genevieve Guenther’s talk she will argue that rising authoritarianism is not just a response of a particular faction to a global emergency, but should be viewed as the inevitable next phase of fossil capitalism under climate change, upheld not just by extremist end-times-fascists on the right but also by "normie" liberals on the center left. Although the center-left also promotes the development of clean energy, both the authoritarian-right and the center-left support the expansion of fossil fuels. Both support the development and forced adoption of AI, an unnecessary technology ravenous for super-polluting methane gas. Both equally refuse to do what the moment requires: respond to the existential threat of climate change by phasing out coal, oil, and methane gas.
In order to keep using coal, oil, and methane gas despite the accelerating harms of climate change - and despite the so-called “free market” information that clean energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels, and the costs of climate change are already making life unaffordable - capital must ensure that authoritarianism supersedes democracy. Thus we see the rise of strongman leaders who rewrite, ignore, or break international norms and laws to benefit fossil fuels. We see the suppression of science, which has ironically become a counterforce to fossil-capital accumulation. We see the dehumanization and culling of people displaced by extreme weather and other consequences of global heating. Insofar as liberal and even left governments support the expansion of the fossil-fuel economy, they are allies of the authoritarians in this conjuncture - perhaps unwittingly or unknowingly so, but allies nevertheless. And why? Because their first commitment is to protecting capital above all other considerations.
Genevieve Guenther’s talk will expand on and substantiate these claims with examples from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, South America, and Denmark.
Bio
Genevieve Guenther is the founding director of End Climate Silence and the author of The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It, which was short-listed for the Penn Libraries Book Prize in Sustainability. Genevieve advises U.S. NGOs, corporations, and policymakers on climate communication; she lectures on the language of climate politics in settings such as Google, Harvard, and the United Nations; and she is a frequent commentator on climate politics in media outlets such as WIRED, The Guardian, and The New York Times. Earlier this year, The Independent named her to their global Climate 100 List.