The far-right and the corporate world to the prism of climate politics and ecology (14 February)

Friday 14 February 2025 14:00-17:00 GMT.
Zoom webinar: PLEASE REGISTER HERE
Over the past few years, an increasing stream of research has explored how the rise of far-right movements in many countries was supported by significant fractions of dominant classes. Such research plays a crucial role in moving the discussion on far-right movements away from the concept of ‘populism’, instead putting the emphasis on the economic, financial, and organisational conditions of the rise of the far-right.
In our first webinar (organised jointly with Critique at Edinburgh and with the Reactionary Politics Research Network of the University of Bath on 11 October 2024), our panel explained some of the key foundations for such research: first of all, as Alberto Toscano reminded us, that fascism is immanent to capitalism (as Horkheimer, Poulantzas, but also Karl Polanyi had argued). Capitalist accumulation is predicated on inequality, and inequality is what fascist ideologies enthrone. Nevertheless it is also not without interest to investigate the more specific fractions of capital which readily support far right parties and movements, as Vladimir Bortun argued, even as far right discourses become an idiom in which contradictory interests can be expressed and served. It is also important to examine specific political economic configurations in specific countries, as Dorit Geva did for Hungary.
In our second seminar, also in partnership with the Reactionary Politics Research Network at the University of Bath, we will take this discussion to the realm of climate change and (anti)ecological politics, and not only with a view to identifying those corporate sectors that are supporting the far right or anti-green right wing parties (big oil and big ag need no introduction here), but also to explore how a far right idiom can accommodate the most varied interests, from brown to green capitalism, both of which are of course actually entangled through corporate ‘diversification’, through financial schemes such as carbon credits and offsets as well as through Big Tech’s investment in both. Even the nationalist discourses on energy security and the fear of the powerful other, China, can be bent (as Musk’s dual partnership with Trump and Xi shows): what remains is the convergence in the war on anything approaching limitations on capitalist accumulation, private property and its attendant patriarchal, racialised, classed hierarchies. Unpacking these links and intertwined strategies can thus also hopefully be an important task to confront far-right cultural politics.
Moderators: Isabelle Darmon and Theo Bourgeron (University of Edinburgh)
Speakers:
• Cara Daggett, Virginia Tech University and Research Institute for Sustainability (Postdam): ‘Tech Bros and Trad Bros: On the convergence of technocapitalism, misogyny, and nationalism in the U.S’
• George Edwards, University of Warwick and Zetkin collective: ‘The Great Driving Right Show: corporate interests and the far right in recent UK traffic protests’
• FX Hutteau, University of Geneva and Strike (inquiry collective): ‘Eco-fascism or Fossil-fascism ? A case study of a far-right MP in France’s Green Capitalism Frontier’
• Joey Grostern, Desmog: ‘Farming outrage: how far-right groups co-opt agricultural concerns’.
Image: Black and White Carbon Pattern. Engin Akyurt. Pexels