White Nationalist Parks, Eco-Fascism, and Conserving Global Capitalism

Abstract

This article contextualizes fortress conservation as a violent system of green-colonialism that is rooted in eco-fascist ideology. Drawing upon the work of Aimé Césaire, I highlight how colonial capitalism is inherently fascistic, although prevailing historical narratives of the 20th and 21st century tend to obscure the fascist realities of settler colonial states such as the United States. With contradictions in capitalism rupturing through the crisis of climate/ecological disaster, our attention must also turn to the violence of eco-fascism as it has formed the environmental and conservationist policies of Western colonial powers, particularly in the creation of National Parks as intertwined with the concurring histories of removal, warfare and genocide. From tracing the early history of fortress conservation in the national building projects of settler colonial states, the article then turns to the militarized violence of imperialism and colonialism throughout the Global South in the contemporary management of fortress conservation projects, financed by Western aid development agencies and co-managed by ‘corporatised’ environmental NGOs. I argue that underpinning the Global North’s persistent interest in conservation parks is the ‘offshoring’ of global capitalism’s climate/biodiversity crisis into continued systems of colonialism, built upon the self-preservation of ecocidal capitalism and voyeuristic colonial desires for ‘untouched wilderness’ to whatever means necessary, normalizing the rise of eco-fascism in the West’s response to climate change. Campaigns against fortress conservation must work with strategic urgency to place pressure on Global South governments to halt evictions against Indigenous peoples, while also recognising the wider solidarity struggles to decarbonize, demilitarize, and ultimately to decolonize against the global extractivist economy of colonial capitalism - eager to outlive its day.