Rising Sea Levels and the Right Wave: An Analysis of the Climate Change Communication that Enables “the Fascist Creep.”

Climate change communication can create space for a “fascist creep” by playing into fear and not communicating the di!erent responsibilities for, and impacts of, climate breakdown. This paper gives a brief overview of past and current of eco-fascists and points towards tropes and ways of communicating that might give space for a fascist creep. These include the Anthropocene concept, the Extinction symbol, and calls for purity.


Introduction
The sea levels are rising, and so is the far right. In 2019, two terrorists, worried that environmental and racial degradation would threaten their way of life, planned and executed terrorist attacks in El Paso and Christchurch. They claimed to be eco-fascists. Eco-fascism refers to the ideology and style of politics that advocates ethnic nationalism as a response to environmental breakdown. The terrorists' concern about climate breakdown is well-founded: for many years, people have known about the consequences of climate change (Wallace-Wells 2019, 2; Oreskes and Conway 2010, chap. 1). Scientists warn that global warming will not stay below two degrees Celsius (Gasser et al. 2015, 2), and there is broad agreement that humankind's collective actions do not re ect this understanding (United Nations Environment Programme 2019). Especially among people and within countries with the most historical responsibility for CO 2 emissions, responses fall short (Tokar 2014, 16;Parks and Timmons Roberts 2009, 387;Williams 2021, 4). Meanwhile, the climate crisis is represented as a burden to be borne by everyone equally, one with a unique ability to inspire cooperation (Zetkin 2021, xvii;Swyngedouw 2013, 13). In reality, however, climate change will exacerbate existing inequalities, as it is marginalised and poor people who su er rst and most. Fossil-fuelled modernity constitutes a racialised and unequal class system, and the history of climate change and capitalism are tightly connected in ways that bene t a select group of white men (Yuso 2018, 39;Szeman and Diamanti 2020, 138;Sealey-Huggins 2017, 101).
Mainstream Western climate change communication often leaves these topics -with their links to colonialism, imperialism, and privilege -out of the conversation. Moreover, insights from privilege theory are relatively rarely applied for analysing responses to climate change and environmental breakdown (Pellow and Park 2017, 143;Williams 2021, 98). According to privilege theories, people are privileged in so far as they measure up to the "mythical norm" that assumes that the standard person is a white, heterosexual, cis-gender, able-bodied, middle-class male (Lorde 2017, 96). In this paper, privilege refers to the idea that some aspects of one's identity make life easier, and that the experiences of others who lack these advantages are di cult for those with privilege to recognise. Although there have been discussions within the climate movement about how privilege in uences the choice of tactics for activism -most notably from the Wretched of the Earth Collective critiquing Extinction Rebellion (2019) -the role of privilege in shielding oneself from di erent perspectives remains under-researched in relation to climate breakdown.
This paper aims to redirect academic attention to the revival of eco-fascism by analysing how unacknowledged privilege and its e ect on climate change communication make it vulnerable to fascist co-optation. For the purposes of this paper, I describe instances of eco-fascism and point to some strains of thought or invocations of emotion that can facilitate the "fascist creep." This refers to the space the left creates for fascism to "creep" into both radical political groups and subcultures as well as into mainstream discourse. The right wave, the metaphor chosen for the special issue on the New Right, emphasizes "aspects of the new rights' e ective organizational and communicative practices" (2021,2). A fascist wave is an accumulation of many tiny droplets which together form a movement capable of travelling in an unintended direction. Some of these droplets consist of appeals to victimhood and innocence; some droplets are declarations of emergency and threat. I argue that ethnic nationalists pro t from appropriating fearful narratives about crisis and victimhood due to climate breakdown. This appropriation is likely to be expedited if climate communication obfuscates the unequal responsibilities for, and impact of, climate breakdown.

The Fascism in Eco-Fascism: the "Fascist Creep"
Eco-fascism is an understudied subject within both fascism studies and environmental studies. For example, in the global survey The Far Right Today, the only allusion to the in uence climate breakdown and ecology could have on fascism is the mention of "eco-terrorism" (Mudde 2019, 132). Nor is it mentioned in The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right (Rydgren 2018). Similarly, in The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society, mention of fascism is limited to three sentences on "enviro-fascism" as one of the possible political responses to climate change (Gilman et al. 2011, 9). The recently published book by Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective, White Skin, Black Fuel -on the danger of fossil Fascism, aimed to bridge this research gap (2021). This paper delves into the ways in which climate activists might strengthen an eco-fascist wave.
Most scholars agree that fascism is a form of ultranationalist ideology and practice (Passmore 2002, 25). Ultranationalism is the strain of nationalism that promotes the interests of one people or state above those of everyone else. There seems to be a consensus that fascism employs speci c techniques to inspire ultranationalism, namely the retreat to a past and appeals to threats of victimhood (Stanley 2019, chap. 6;Passmore 2002, 25). With fascism, I refer to both a political style and its aims: invoking fear, wishing for purity, harking back to a mythical past where all was good, a call for strong leadership to protect the innocent, and the promise of a better future. Eco-fascism, like fascism, is both contradictory and overdetermined. It would be beyond the scope of this article to give an exhaustive overview of its history and present state. However, ignoring eco-fascism in times of environmental collapse is a mistake. One way in which fascism can grow is by "seizing the popular narrative and public discourse" (Ross 2017, 259). Alexander Reid Ross argues that material conditions motivate both sides of the political spectrum; individuals who su er material disenfranchisement can turn either to the left or the right for answers (2017,258). Fascism can grow through absorbing and encouraging existing sentiments within society. However, just as material disenfranchisement can politicise someone, so can environmental degradation and extreme weather events.
Ross would argue that being alarmist about the climate, without analysing why and how it is breaking down, may result in some of those who became radicalised or politically active on the left of the political spectrum moving towards the extreme right (2017, 2). Following Ross, I call the little entry points that allow fascists to in ltrate or co-opt a discourse, the "fascist creep." The fascist creep encompasses both the porous borders between the radical right and fascism and the "crossover space between right and left" (2017, 3). Ross analyses how fascism has used the space created by the left to creep into both mainstream and radical subcultures (2). The connection between ecology, nature, climate, and right-wing politics is not inherent, nor is it inevitable (Staudenmaier 2011, 25). However, neither are ecological issues by de nition the terrain of social progressives. Contemplating fascism, Michael Zimmerman asks whether, "under mounting and political stress", ecology movements in advanced societies will be able to "avoid the risk of aligning themselves with these dark forces" (1995,211). "Enviro-fascism" is a possible response to climate change that hard-right environmentalist parties might engage in, with the aim of protecting one's own ethnic group by restricting immigration and hoarding resources (Gilmann et al. 2012, 9). Claudia Card argues that ecological holism and ideas that emphasise the interconnectedness between humans and nature can and often are combined with "blood and soil" fascism, as well as sentiments like racism, xenophobia, and hatred for refugees (1996,203).
With these de nitions of fascism in mind, a movement or an individual can be called eco-fascist if they consider environmental destruction, or climate change, as a threat to "the racial integrity of the people" and demand a reorganisation of society in "terms of [an] authoritarian, collectivist leadership principle based on masculinist-martial values" (Zimmerman 1995, 209). Eco-fascistic describes those ways of commu nicating and invoking tropes that many scholars call fascistic: invoking fear and the need for protection, appealing to a united innocent "us" that needs protection from "them". Ecofascism is the ideology that, instead of seeking a global approach to mitigate climate breakdown, aims to install a racially pure nation, protected from alien in uences.

I Did Nazi that Coming: Eco-Fascism Past and Present
Around the turn of the last century, the German Boy Scout group die Wandervögel organised hikes into the woods, retreating into the wild to defy German bourgeois norms and enjoy the unadulterated purity of nature. Whilst they considered themselves apolitical, they realigned their practices and ideas some decades later when members of the group joined the Nazis (Staudenmaier 1996, 10). If, like the Weimar youth, people "were to think of their commitments only as matters of personal improvement and ignore the political contexts," they could be more easily exploited and co-opted (Card 1996, 203). The German biologist Walther Schoenichen was one of those who exploited a love of nature for fascistic ends. After a successful career in nature conservation, and many publications on the necessity of protecting German forests, he revealed his conservationism to be rmly aligned with his Nazism. The protection of nature and National socialism were tightly connected for Schoenichen because the Volksgemeinschaft to which Hitler aspired had its foundation in "blood and soil" (Zimmerman 1995, 216). "Blood and soil" refer to two things that must be pure: the blood of the gemeinschaft, and the soil that sustains it. The slogan "Blut und Boden" means that those born on the land must preserve it -especially against those who do not belong there. Schoenichen saw a link between being in nature and feeling part of a community. His work teaches that nature provides a place to contemplate a volkisch essence and forms the grounds for a powerful connection with Heimat (Zimmerman,220). Within Germany, there has thus been a history of nature-lovers who, either by ignoring political context or by seeing their love for nature in part as a love of purity, became fascistic.
Around the same time, on another continent, American conservationist Madison Grant founded the Bronx Zoo and several national parks and was lauded for his dedication to endangered ora and fauna. He also wrote The Passing of the Great Race, a book that Adolf Hitler considered "his bible" (Spiro 2009, xi). Grant dedicated his life to saving nature, to preserving endangered ora and fauna. This dedication to endangered species also extended to his own white race (Spiro, xii). For him, eugenics and conservation were two sides of the same coin, both preserving as much of the old America as possible (Spiro 2009, xii). Skipping forward to the 1980s, Karlo Pentii Linkola expressed admiration for the Nazis while he spoke to the Green Party in Finland about the need to get organised. The Finnish Forest conservationists argued that the solution to environmental degradation lies in stopping overpopulation (Tammilehto 2004). He argued that a Green Party member -if concerned about the environment -should: learn to harden his own heart when necessary. He will have to learn to ignore minor interests for the sake of bigger interests. He will have to learn to be feared and hated. (Linkola quoted by Tammilehto 2004).
Linkola is a proponent of "life-boat ethics," an ethics that prefers to save a few lives rather than trying to get everyone on board because there are only limited resources. In the same decade as Linkola's speech, the wilderness movement Earth First! adopted deep ecology and was accused of propagating eco-fascism (Reid Ross 2017, 124). According to deep ecology, postponing di cult political decisions now means that more drastic interventions will be required later in order to save humankind and the biosphere (Zimmerman 1995, 209). This should not be controversial in itself: the more CO 2 is emitted, the more likely it becomes that we will pass a point of no return. However, deep ecologists' focus on population control makes them susceptible to fascist appropriation (Zimmerman 1995, 215;Schrader-Frechette 2002, 5). Although it is possible to interpret deep ecology progressively, many accuse the philosophy of "indulging in the same kind of anti-humanistic and anti-individualist nature mysticism that paved the way for Nazi victory in a period of social, political, and 'ecological emergency'" (Zimmerman 1995, 226). Deep ecologist and Earth First! founder David Foreman claimed to see famine as a welcome means of depopulation. Similarly, Christopher Manes, a deep ecologist under the pseudonym Miss Ann Trophy, lauded the AIDS crisis (Zakin 2002, 312). This view can be summarised as welcoming the AIDS crisis as an opportunity to let nature seek its balance, thereby preventing further ecological destruction (Bookchin 1991, 148-149). It is beyond the scope of this paper to argue whether Earth First! was fascistic or not, but deep ecologists used language that did little to prevent accusations of misanthropy and fascism.
Some eco-fascists actively claim the label. For example, on popular online discussion forum Reddit, a user wrote: What really pisses me o is how everyone associates deep ecology with Communism and far-left ideologies, which are deeply rooted in industrialisation. It was Nazi Germany that was environmentally aware not Soviet Russia, with the rabid industrialisation. (Reddit thread quoted by Manavis 2018).
Outside of Reddit, on other social media, eco-fascists often use tree, mountain, and earth emojis in their name and a symbol associated with neo-Nazism, the "life" rune, which Heinrich Himmler used to signal Lebensraum (Manavis 2018). A self-identi ed eco-fascist claimed in a recent interview that the use of the word Lebensraum did not mean conquest for him. Instead, it meant maintaining and caring for the land passed on by our forefathers (Manavis 2018). Caring and maintaining the land implies a defence against those elements and people that supposedly threaten to make it less pure or drain its limited resources. Similar sentiments about overpopulation and the faulty trope of "the tragedy of the commons" are still echoed in the current environmental movement.
Sentiments concerning racial purity and the destruction of nature continue to ourish today. They were used to justify two recent terrorist attacks. In El Paso, Texas, on August 3 2019, a shooter killed twenty people and injured even more. In New Zealand, on March 15 2019, a white supremacist terrorist shot 51 people at a mosque. He explained his terrorist attack as a wish for "ethnic autonomy for all peoples with a focus on the preservation of nature and the natural order" (Tarrant 2019). These white-nationalist terrorists self-identi ed as "eco-fascist" and used environmental arguments to bolster their white nationalism (Achenbach 2019). They expressed their worries about, amongst other things, the feminisation of society, illegal immigrants, and climate breakdown. The terrorist from the latter attack wrote: There is no Conservatism without nature, there is no nationalism without environmentalism, the natural environment of our lands shaped us just as we shaped it. (Tarrant 2019).
Nationalism and environmentalism are intrinsically linked for Tarrant, building on the environmental determinist idea that climate and environment are a determining factor for peoples' and nations' development. Protecting and preserving the land is therefore equal in importance to protecting and preserving his ideals and beliefs. His ideology and his adoption of the label "eco-fascist" are inspired by a growing community of self-proclaimed eco-fascists online who share memes with texts like "Save Trees, not Refugees" and discuss how to prevent further ecological collapse. According to this community, the rational response to climate breakdown is making sure the worthy can continue their way of living: the American lifestyle a ords our citizens an incredible quality of life. However, our lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country. So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. (Tarrant 2019).
This assumption, based on the idea that population growth is the true driver of climate change, and that resources will always be misused, leads him to commit mass murder in the name of preserving land. Rather than seeking ways to mitigate the e ects of climate breakdown, his ideas are xated on purity, committed to 'business as usual', and focused on himself.
One could object that some of these examples relate to the environment and nature rather than climate and that climate change poses di erent challenges to nature preservation. However, I believe there is a connection between the nature preservation movement and the mainstream climate movement. Those concerned with climate change are often also worried about nature, and vice versa (Lertzman 2015, 20). Furthermore, the naïveté that made the Wandervögel easier for the Nazi party to co-opt applies to both nature-and climate-minded groups. Lastly, when climate change causes more mass migration, concerns about a "right to the land" and racial purity are likely to grow (Shah 2020, chap. 1). From the examples above, ranging from concerns about purity to overpopulation, we can discern how a right wave might bene t from concerns about climate breakdown.

Riding the Wave: Movement Communication
Extinction Rebellion is one of the fastest-growing climate movements of today. Since their launch in 2018 they have become active in 81 countries, with more than a thousand local chapters (Extinction Rebellion 2021). It seems fair to conclude that they appeal to a broad audience and are skilled in bringing new people onboard. Part of their communication strategy is precisely this: appealing to as many people as possible (Glynn and Farrell 2019, 124). Below, I will analyse their adopted logo, the Extinction Symbol as a " oating signi er." Finding a slogan or theme everybody can rally behind is the holy grail of social movement communication, according to activist and writer Jonathan Schmucker (2017,41). He uses the oating signi er concept to explain the success of the term "we are the 99%." The Occupy Wallstreet movement used a slogan that refers to no actual object and has no agreed-upon meaning; as a result, almost everybody can align themselves with it. Schmucker states that the perfect oating signi er can make or break a social movement or campaign (2017,52). What makes a signi er attractive is that it has no single accepted meaning, so people can project onto it whatever meaning they wish. This was also partly the goal of Extinction Rebellion when they chose the extinction logo to represent their movement.
Climate justice activists make an analysis that stresses the need to take di erent impacts and contributions to climate breakdown into account when discussing global warming (Tokar 2014, 19). However, the broader climate movement does not necessarily do so (Taylor 2016;Heglar 2019) and has been criticised for lacking BAME representation (Climate Reframe 2021), even being described as a "white middle-class ghetto" (Bawden 2015). A painful example of whitewashing the climate movement was the cropping of Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate from a picture with Greta Thunberg and other white climate activists (Woodyatt 2020). After a press conference of ve climate activists at the World Economic Conference in Davos in 2020, Associated Press sent out a picture from which Nakate, founder of the Rise Up Movement, had been cropped. They later apologised and stated there was "no bad intention." Nakate did not consider the erasure as incidental and proclaimed that the people losing their homes need to be able to bring their message across. (Nakate as quoted in Tinsley 2021, 2). In removing a young black woman from a picture of white female climate activists and citing the other activists, but not the woman from Africa, the existence of black voices within the climate youth movement was negated. This makes climate change more of a "white" issue and does not remind an assumed white audience of the victims of climate change with other skin colours. When campaigning to stop climate change, the movement does not necessarily recognise the role of imperialism and colonialism in creating climate change (Tinsley 2021, 11). The neglect of di erent forms of privilege, and the overlooking of race, are common in the broader climate movement (Taylor 2014). There are however many exceptions to this. For example, climate activist groups such as Shell Must Fall, Reclaim the Power, and Code Rood have made explicit connections between colonialism, migration policies, and climate breakdown (Code Rood 2020, Reclaim the Power 2018). NGOs like Friends of the Earth, and organisers such as Suzanne Dhaliwal from the No Tar Sands Campaign, have spoken out about the lack of diversity and have criticized campaigns mainly targeting white people (Gayle 2019). Extinction Rebellion has so far mobilised thousands of new people for the climate cause. People from all ages and walks of life demonstrate, petition, lobby, blockade, block, and glue themselves onto buildings under the banner of XR. Many within these movements are committed to climate justice, which some recognise is required to make the Paris Agreement work (Thunberg 2019, 9). Within the Extinction Rebellion handbook many contributors also express this commitment (2019). Furthermore, the group is learning and evolving, and many local groups have di erent opinions to those expressed by the people I will refer to. However, since the reasoning behind Extinction Rebellion's communication is also used by other elements of the climate movement, it is apt to take the XR logo as an object of analysis.
Extinction Rebellion's analysis of "time running out" is similar to that of the school strikers. Fridays4Future, the movement of high school students on strike to protest politicians' apathy concerning climate change, are clear in their analysis: their future is being robbed from them. However, some people are not only robbed of their future but also of their present (Thunberg 2019, 39). The need for intervention and the profound loss people in the West will likely experience is clearly communicated. The stories of climate change already happening, and analyses of the vastly di ering power structures that have enabled climate breakdown and ecological destruction both in the past and present, could counter the possibility of fascistic co-optation of climate breakdown. However, movements do not always portray these di erent causes and impacts, and sometimes even deliberately choose to stay away from politics. Below I will argue that communicating about climate change in a neutral way both results from and results in an unawareness of privilege.
The Extinction logo consists of an hourglass in a circle, representing time running out for the earth. London artist ESP created this logo in 2011 as "an ecological symbol of peaceful resistance" (Extinctionsymbol, 2020). Since the non-violent civil disobedience platform for climate activism adopted this catalysing symbol in 2018, many local XR chapters have used the logo. In a newspaper article, the observation was made that "it is not often that a single symbol emerges to represent a global, decentralised activist movement, but the ER symbol is now ubiquitous" (Brown 2019). Another popular news article compares the Extinction symbol to the peace sign (Rose 2019). The Extinction Rebellion logo communicates a message that is relatively open to interpretation. It conveys that time is running out but does not suggest how to act on that fact. In a talk about the XR logo, one of the founders of the art and design section of the activist group stated that the design of the logo is undogmatic, not prescriptive, but uid and open to interpretation (Farrell 2020). This echoes the sentiment portrayed in the Extinction Rebellion handbook, that because "we are rebelling for a cause that a ects us all," aggressive colours and connotations to any speci c political agenda should be prevented (Glynn and Farrell 2019, 125). Instead, the style of XR must be dynamic rather than alienating or dividing (Glynn and Farrell, 126).
The idea that climate change a ects us all is widespread. It is a trope of climate breakdown communication: that we are all in this together and that, therefore, climate breakdown has the unique ability to bring everyone together. The wish to be actively inclusive is also widely shared. However, as in this case, it is often presented in a manner that aims to be non-aggressive and politically neutral. By not recognising the di erences between people, the idea of "colour-blindness" can actively exclude people who experience that neutral often means "white" (Mills 1997, 19;Delmas 2019, 204). Extinction Rebellion has had many conversations about inclusivity, and many local branches are actively committed to be welcoming to people from all walks of life and backgrounds. However, their communication about their logo does not re ect this. The inclusivity that is actively discussed and re ected in the logo is that the hourglass does its best not to scare away di erent political opinions.

Whose Sea-Levels? Neutrality Is a Privilege
Reaching as many people as possible through the active inclusion of di erent political backgrounds stems not only from the wish to reach a wider audience, but also from being in a position that enables one to conceptualise inclusivity as "including di erent political opinions." It is a form of privilege to be able to frame inclusivity as concerned with political opinions. The question to be asked is: Who is actively welcomed by this inclusivity? Are these the people Extinction Rebellion, or any climate movement, should prioritise to build alliances with? What is the e ect of this active inclusivity? Active inclusivity is framed here as not discriminating between di erent political ideologies, whereas it could also be the commitment to explicitly welcoming di erent genders, skin colours, economic and educational backgrounds, and abilities. Whether building a broad political alliance is a successful movement strategy is beyond the scope of this paper. However, the e ect of not explicitly putting race and other axes of privilege on the agenda is that people can consider it irrelevant.
Privilege prevents people from recognising the unfair starting point from which conversations begin (Delmas 2019, 204). Only when acceptance on the grounds of gender, race, class, and able-bodiedness is guaranteed, can those who do not t the white middle-class mould worry about the lack of inclusion of political conservatives. Only when there are no more direct and apparent barriers to participation -like having a meeting space accessible for those in wheelchairs, or being sure you will not face harsh police brutality when you join a protest -can inclusivity based on political opinion be prioritised. Privilege prevents people from seeing their privilege (Sullivan 2019, chap 1.; Delmas 2019, 204).
Acknowledging one's privilege is a rst step towards understanding that your speci c position in society or on the planet might shield you from harsher experiences (Sullivan 2019, chap 2.; MacMullan 2015 650). I consider privilege to be a morally neutral term to describe the other side of oppression: when there is injustice, there is also privilege. This is in line with the observation that any system of di erentiation shapes not only those who bene t from it, but also those who are oppressed by it (Frankenberg 1994, 1). Your position within a system of di erentiation thus in uences your viewpoint, and thus your point of view. Points of view, then, in uence what you recognise as just and unjust -for you need to view something before you recognise it. White privilege can be conceptualised as the advantages of being white, the easier access to upward mobility and the easier movement throughout a white world (Sullivan 2019 chap 1.), but also as the thing that prevents you from recognising these and other injustices or inequalities (Mills 1997, 18). Privilege in this paper is thus understood as having real, material impacts on the world, as well as resulting from structural racism and personal prejudices (Zack 2015, chap. 1). Ignorance about one's privilege -be it male, white, able-bodied, straight, or thin privilege -makes one less likely to understand those who deviate from the "mythical norm" (Lorde 2017, 96).
Not coming across as too aggressive and promoting active inclusivity might be part of a strategy to reach as many people as possible. "Not aggressive" turns into "not starting uncomfortable discussions", making it possible to conceptualise inclusivity as reaching people from di erent political backgrounds. Many climate movements are in an ongoing discussion about representation to the outside world, and what their key messages should be. One could imagine calling the people partaking in actions "concerned citizens," "earth defenders," or "grannies for climate" in order to circumvent calling them "activists", and therefore not to come across as too aggressive. However, when one is not actively aware of the implications of one's pursuit of inclusivity, the result may be a sacri cing of part of the content so as to reach more people.
One might question how "we are all in this together" could be divisive and enabling of fascist creep, rather than inspiring cooperation and empathy. An analogy can be made with the slogan #blacklivesmatter. The Black Lives Matter movement introduced this hashtag to call attention to the fact that black people were much more likely to face police violence than white people. The claim that their lives mattered was a radical one in a society that did not always treat them that way. A response to this call was to claim that "all lives matter": police violence is wrong regardless of the victim's race. This take on the issue diminishes the su ering of black people, for "the slogan 'black lives matter' is meant to underscore the qualitatively distinct experiences of African-Americans with racist police violence in the US" (Pellow 2018, 44). While "All lives matter" sounds more pluralistic, it erases the experiences and realities of people of colour (Pellow 2018, 44.). The same goes for climate breakdown. The threat or event of ecosystem collapse does not discriminate; neither does a police bullet. Whether it will hit you, and to what e ect, and whether there will be outrage about that fact, sadly, does seem to be in uenced by skin colour, socio-economic background, and where on the earth you were born.
The neutral standpoint is that of the dominant group -and a typical response to being confronted with the subjectivity of that standpoint is anger (Stanley 2018, chap. 6). It is privilege that makes it possible to ignore the unequal e ect of climate breakdown on di erent groups of people, and it is privilege that ignores the unequal contribution those people make to climate breakdown. Not acknowledging that privilege makes it easier for people to rally behind the logo. However, just like the oating signi er of Occupy or the non-political stance of the Wandervögel, if potentially 99% of the world can rally behind a slogan, it might also attract or emancipate people who have very di erent ideas about social change than its initiators had. Sara Ahmed's work on diversity and complaint re ects that sentiment. She argues that it is the uncomfortable, too-aggressive, words that might not reach as many people but do more work. Diversity is one of the terms she recognises as less threatening than other terms (2017,101). Broad support can be gained by using words that do less, analyse less, threaten less: "the words that travel more are the words that do less (diversity), while the words that travel less do more (racism)" (Ahmed 2017, 101).
There are many concepts within climate change communication that travel far but do less work. The Occupy movement shows this can be dangerous: the movement's broad support not only consisted of anti-capitalists, hippies, and communists, but also of people who believed the banking system to be run by lizard people or Jewish people. Some of these people later turned to the far-right for answers (Lagalisse 2019, 76). "We are the 99%" leaves it open to the imagination what the 1% might look like. Therefore, it attracted more people -but at the same time also exposed those newly politicised people open to messages that the original Occupiers did not intend. This is where the "fascist creep" might happen (Reid Ross 2017, 5). A watered-down message might keep people comfortable and attract more people to the movement but might not do enough to push them forward. The climate movement thus should be careful with oating signi ers or unspeci ed slogans that attract and gather more people -especially when their inviting message could be susceptible to co-option by eco-fascists.

Anthropo-Who: the "Equally Innocent" Trope
It is not only the wish to be neutral and nd the perfect oating signi er that leaves the climate movement vulnerable to fascist creep. Both the "equally innocent" and the "fear of crisis" trope create space in climate discourse that, rstly, obscures the responsibility for causing climate change, and secondly, hints towards fascistic solutions of decisionism and circumventing democratic deliberation. Below, I will analyse the concept of the Anthropocene and show how critiques of the di ering responsibilities for our "new geological epoch" also hold for other obfuscating narratives about climate breakdown. The "equally innocent" trope is likely best exempli ed by the term "Anthropocene." This is the proposed name for a new geological epoch -one that is "de ned by overwhelming human in uence upon the earth" (Grusin 2017, vii). The term was coined in the 1980s by Eugene Stoermer and popularised around 2000 by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen. Both recognised signs that the planet was entering a new geological period: humankind's impact on the earth was visible and pointed to the end of the Holocene. Anthropocene emphasised the magnitude of the problems that fossil fuel combustion has created. Anthropos means "human" in ancient Greek: humanity was now so powerful that it could change the course of planetary history. Although the Anthropocene working group of the International Commission on Stratigraphy is still working to identify precisely when the period began, the term is already widely used both within and outside of academia to discuss the seriousness of climate change.
However, the term Anthropocene is not uncontroversial for people who accept climate science. Amongst other criticisms, it argued that the term obfuscates the responsibility for, and thus possible solutions to, the crisis in which we nd ourselves (Haraway 2016, 37;Bonneuil and Fressoz 2017;84), that it gives humankind a "compensatory charge" of at least having made an impact (Dean 2016, 2), and that it is too deterministic to motivate a struggle for change (Malm 2014, 17).
Kathryn Yuso argued that the formulation of the Anthropocene entails a turning away from race in A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None, a history of the relation between geology and subjectivity (2018, 3). If "Anthropos" means human it is essential to consider what "human" means, and where the borders around who counts as a person, and who does not, have been drawn, both in the past and in the present. Clear in her analysis is that for a long time the term did not refer to black people. Geology lets whiteness o the hook by failing to acknowledge the dispossessing practices of subject-making (Yuso , xiii). What geologists nd to be traces of the Anthropocene are also traces of the "slave mode of production": "to address this silence would be to understand geology as a regime for producing both subject and material worlds, where race is established as an e ect of power within the language of geology's objects" (Yuso 2018, 4). The Anthropocene is understood as a future, rather than the past extinctions of black and indigenous peoples. Geographical place, and the place of the human, are important aspects of the story of environmental breakdown, and both are overlooked in Anthropocene discourse. Thus Anthropocene is an inadequate name for what has taken place and is now going on.
Others had already proposed the terms Anthroposphere, Homogenocene, and Noocene before Crutzen's popularisation of the term Anthropocene to denote the e ect of humankind's interference with the climate (Schneiderman 2017, 169). Among the more than 80 proposed names for this epoch (Chwalczyk 2020, 1), Donna Haraway has proposed the name Chtulucene (2016, 35) and James Moore "the ugly word" Capitalocene (2016,5). Di erent names for this moment locate both speaker and crisis in "di erent temporal and spatial locations," writes Tinsley (2021, 2). When we talk about the Anthropocene, we do not adequately address the di erent locations from which one can speak. Many scholars thus doubt whether calling "the Anthropos" responsible for this new geological epoch accurately describes a crisis caused by the fossil combustion of a select group of people (Bonneuil and Fressoz 2017, 68;Tinsley 2021, 5). Words have real material impacts, discourse has extra-discursive e ects, even if it is not always -or ever -possible to determine how an event was created. Anthropocene is a word that overlooks di ering responsibilities for the rising CO 2 concentration in our atmosphere, and therefore also occludes some of the possibilities to ameliorate and mitigate climate breakdown. It is thus not a politically neutral word, but a word that protects those who made the most impact from realising their heightened responsibility in causing, and thus also potentially ameliorating, climate breakdown.
"The Anthropocene" is a potent mobiliser for the climate movement because it clearly indicates the immensity of the crisis -a whole new time-scale -caused by humans. However, the term is contested. "What do we obscure, and what do we privilege with such a choice?" (Schneiderman 2017, 176). She does not deny the necessity of naming this new geological era but recognises that our words are not without e ect. A term like Anthropocene can pose as being politically neutral, whereas Capitalocene cannot (Moore 2016, 5). The assumption that "future generations" need protection ignores and discards black and brown lives already lost or being lost (Bonneil and Fressoz 2017, 71). Whereas the Anthropocene discussion is an academic one, similar terms and slogans do the same work outside the ivory tower. For example, on Amazon, a notebook with "The dinosaurs thought they had time too" is on sale, conveying the message that, indeed, time is running out, but also obscuring the fact that the dinosaurs went out with a bang, whereas humanity loses people every year. By taking a shortcut, these words imply that human existence, rather than a way of existing, is the problem. Also, actions, like solemn funeral processions where people carry a casket with the words "our future," convey that something is taken from innocent people. The "equally innocent" trope frames climate breakdown as being caused by humans rather than a speci c set of pro t-seeking fossil-fuel-combusting people.
This has two detrimental e ects. Firstly, the trope makes it possible for white climate activists in the global North to portray themselves as victims, obscuring how they bene t from the current geopolitical structure in which they nd themselves. It makes climate change communication vulnerable to the fascistic rhetoric of victimhood. "Equally innocent" blames all people equally -not just in terms of historical contribution, but also in terms of who is currently responsible. Ignoring these di erences in (historical) fossil-fuel emission portrays the people who currently enjoy the many privileges that this has brought them as purely victims, rather than as the complex subject position of both having bene tted and prospectively su ering from the same thing (Dean 2016, 2). Furthermore, those who will su er in the future are portrayed as the victims, rather than those su ering already. Extinction Rebellion writes that they "refuse to bequeath a dying planet to future generations by failing to act now" (2019, 2), with this sentence claiming a ght for future generations, rather than the ones currently dying. By combining victimhood with political neutrality, the climate movement might nd itself in a similar position to that of the Wandervögel. Secondly, by obscuring blame, it makes population control, rather than, for example, the supervision of transnational companies, a spearhead for climate change prevention (Bonneuil and Fressez 2017, 72). Depicting the climate crisis as caused by humans results in the notion that getting rid of some of them -it does not matter who -might bene t the climate. If people are contributing to climate breakdown, fewer people mean less climate breakdown. When Paul Ehrlich starts his book Population Bomb with an image of people, he describes poverty (1988, 1). On the other side of his taxi window, the people he sees eating, washing, sleeping, arguing, defecating, and begging are not middle-class white men, but poor people with skin a di erent colour to his. Lots of research points to the profound discomfort privileged people experience when reminded of their unfair starting points (Stanley 2018, chap. 6). Not mentioning the e ects of colonialism, imperialism, and extractivism on the climate, and how these impact on global warming, keeps the conversation going smoothly. Not making the privileged white audience in the global North uncomfortable might mean communicating that it is human existence rather than a way of existing that is the problem. Whether academics, social movements, individuals, or mainstream media do this, the e ect is that the message is made more palpable by painting the assumed audience as less complicit. This is an Emergency: the "Fear of Crisis" Trope By obscuring the di erent contributions to and causes of climate change, one also obscures the various possible solutions. This is doubly dangerous if it obfuscates the di erence between victims of climate breakdown and stresses the importance of purity and preservation of what is. The "fear of crisis" trope is hazardous because of the work of the "equally innocent" trope. Invoking "fear of crisis" is an appealing strategy for movements. After all, there is a real threat that will cost many lives. Appealing to fear, stressing the immensity of the e ects of the combustion of fossil fuels, might motivate people to act (Reser and Bradley 2017, 2). Furthermore, acting sooner rather than later might still mitigate some e ects of climate breakdown (Wallace-Wells 2019, 34).
Focussing on the limited time left might convince people that it is now or never and spur them into action. However, two e ects of the "fear of crisis" trope make it attractive to eco-fascists. These rely on rhetorical tricks that have been labelled as fascistic in the past (Manavis 2018). First, the urgency to act now downplays the fact that many people have already su ered from climate breakdown. It is only from a privileged position that one can frame the destruction of fossil fuel use as a problem concerning the future (Williams 2021, 98). A call for panic because the house is on re is disrespectful: it has been burning for quite some time now, and the servants living in the attic have already lost their lives. Ignoring that truth about climate breakdown allows for the claim "there are no grey areas when it comes to survival" (Thunberg 2019, 8). There is no grey area between living or dying on an individual level, but for humankind there is. Horrible consequences will follow for both non-white and white people if no action is taken; however, horrible things are already happening and have already cost millions of lives. The apocalypse is not in the future; the apocalypse is now (Swyngedouw 2013, 10).
Second, the call to act now and the fear that motivates it encourages decisionism, whereby the crisis narrative might circumvent democratic decision-making, preserving what is, rather than creating what could be by rethinking the system that resulted in climate breakdown in the rst place. One could think either of techno-xes or border control here to keep a speci c place liveable. Fascism, writes Jason Stanley, thrives on anxiety (2018, chap. 10). In times of anxiety, there is little motivation to think about justice, fairness, and systemic causes. Fear can keep existing power structures in place (Ahmed 2004, 64). When fear designates something as under threat in the present, "that very thing becomes installed as that which we must ght for in the future" (Ahmed 2004, 77). Claire Colebrook warns that crisis narratives create a space where it is acceptable to act without taking everyone into account (2017, 10). The climate crisis is considered to be such an emergency that there is no time to wait for deliberation. She writes that "just as the 2008 global nancial crisis allowed the immediate bailout of banks without questions of justice or blame being allowed to delay what was declared to be a necessary response, so the severity of the Anthropocene presents itself as a justi cation in advance for executive actions" (Colebrook 2017, 11). Conveying that something is a crisis is not in and of itself a wrong approach or fascistic. However, if it conveys the idea that a strong leader should intervene or that there is not time to hear everyone, it starts to resemble decisionism. Decisionism, the state of emergency that Carl Schmitt describes, is that state in which there is so much trouble that it must be up to one strong leader to make bold interventions to save the nation (Hirst 1999, 5). A constant state of emergency in which there is no space for communication is not only fascistic in and of itself but also provides dangerous grounds for decision-making if there is no clear consensus on a just and fair way to tackle the problem.
The climate movement should be careful to use language that acknowledges the di erent impacts of and contributors to climate breakdown. This way, the fear and feelings of loss that climate change inherently brings about will not be as easily co-opted for ethnic nationalist purposes.

Conclusion
The sea levels will rise, and preventing the worst and mitigating the inevitable is crucial. However, at the same time as the sea levels are rising, there is a fascist wave emerging. It might be a good idea, as Zimmerman suggests, to actively minimise the risk of aligning oneself with this wave (1995,211). This paper aimed to add to the understanding of eco-fascism by analysing one of the ways in which ethnic nationalists potentially pro t from the growing concern about climate breakdown. Such an understanding can guard against the alignment or "fascist creep". Within this paper, I argued against a tactic of appeasement and undi erentiated inclusivity in climate breakdown communication. I have not argued for a speci c course of action. Nor did I see the onus as being on me to put forward an account of how narratives and emotional appeals in uence people's behaviour. Letting ethnic nationalists pro t from one's communication is both morally and strategically wrong, whether it is intentional or unintentional, for reasons beyond the scope of this paper. Instead, I argued that an (unconscious) wish to assuage privileged people, or a lack of knowl edge of one's privileged position, might explain the use of language that ts within a white nationalist discourse. I explored why it might be that little is done to actively ward o fascists and the themes that might be inviting them in. I claimed that some of the messages of the climate movement do not do enough to prevent a rise of right-wing shock doctrine policies or to curb anti-immigrant sentiments. Material disenfranchisement can be politicised in di erent ways, so it is possible that rising sea levels will give rise to a fascist wave. An awareness of how privilege in uences the climate movement's communication strategy could stop it from contributing to this wave.