Nation,nature, purity: extreme-right biodiversity in Germany

ABSTRACT

In this article, Forchtner investigates the construction of an ‘ideal’, extreme-right, ecologically sensitive subject. A concern for the natural environment is in no way new to the extreme right, and has long been part of its ideological make-up. In particular, claims that the laws of nature are applicable to the social world and that a community is embedded in an ecosystem have long been features of a right-wing ecological imaginary. Through an analysis of all the articles on a paradigmatic ecological issue, biodiversity, published in Germany’s exemplary extreme-right magazine preoccupied with ecology, Umwelt & Aktiv (Environment & Active), this cultural imaginary is reconstructed. Included in it as key themes are human responsibility for environmental degradation, the ecological value of flora and fauna, and criticism of modernity’s levelling tendencies (both biologically and culturally). Taking responsibility for the community’s Heimat (homeland) is, consequently, a crucial element for this subject: a subject who aims for purity, order and the stability of ecosystems.