To: badsubjects@uclink.berkeley.edu
From: noon0004@gold.tc.umn.edu (david hoogland noon)
Subject: environmentalism, racism, etc.
Date: Thu, 22 Sep 94 21:28:50 -0500


Thus requested Sanjay Kharod:

>I have a request -- I am researching the curious and frightening 
>linkages between "progressive" environmentalism and racism.  This 
>includes the hijacking of the eco-message by groups like LePen's 
>National Front, the Lombardy League, WAR, and environmental 
>groups like -- shockingly enough -- factions of the Sierra Club that have
>joined rhetorical forces with groups like Federation for American
>Immigration Reform in arguing that illegal aliens and new 
>immigrants are threatening the precious environment.   The point of 
>all this, I hope, is to try to show that race issues run to the core of a
>'progressive' movements like Environmentalism and in the end 
>create truly progressive political work -- So the request --  I'd like any
>thoughts, discussions, etc. that could come from all on the list on these
>disparate thoughts.

This a damn good topic, and one that I've been concerned with and written
about as well.  A lot of environmentalists have rightly expressed outrage
over racially-coincidental dumpings of radioactive waste, chemical refuse,
and regular old consumer garbage.  The problem is global as well as local
to the U.S. (e.g., with the exception of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, every
nuclear explosion has taken place on indigenous -- or, rather, *formerly*
indigenous -- land.)  In spite of all this energy, however, not a lot of
discussion has gone into racism and classism within the environmental
community itself.  This seems bizarre at first -- after all, this is a
progressive issue, right? -- but when you think about the history of
environmentalism, this inconsistency starts to make more sense.  (Note: 
this is *not* intended to be a clean, linear narrative -- just some
puzzling and unpleasant strands within a number of different histories,
some of them cooperating, some of them competing....)

First of all, if you go back to the old notion of America as a "virgin
land," it's pretty evident that the celebration of nature on this continent
was coincident with the erasure of indigenous cultures from the
*imagination* of that natural landscape.  If it's "virgin land" (apologies
for the gendered metaphor, but it ain't my term), then it's all just there
for the taking -- regardless of who already lives there.  Even the
celebrated icons of radical ecology -- John Muir is archetypal for this --
reproduced this colonial blindness in their own works.  Whether he liked it
or not, Muir's studies of the Alaskan wilderness did a wonderful job of
showing the U.S. government and their industry thugs where to drill for oil
and mine for gold (as well as a number of other very profitable resources).
 Nor was Muir simply guilty of a literary man's naivete -- he, too,
"disappeared" indigenous people from the landscape he constructed for his
readers.  Not only that, but he "renamed" a number of glaciers that
*already* had names -- names given by the folks who used them for hunting
and fishing.

Also, think about who the first environmentalists were back in the late
19th century -- they were largely the frightened bourgeoisie who couldn't
bear to witness the arrival of urban immigration from Eastern and Southern
Europe.  They saw the cities as sites of national (and, by definition,
racial and ethnic) capitulation and "nature" as the place where "real
Americans" could be reborn and renewed.  Since nature was -- paradoxically
-- the technology that had "produced" The American, it became important to
preserve a little nature here, recreate a little nature there, and make
sure that those who were *not* part of the dominant narrative could be
(hopefully) remade in the image of those who *were*.  So they packed
orphans into boxcars and shipped them off to work farms in Ohio to get them
out of the "stifling" atmosphere of the cities and into the "real" American
terrain.  They allied themselves with eugenicists.  And they continued to
rip off as many native tribes as possible -- after all, the land and all
its bounty needed to be saved for those Real Americans and Soon-to-be Real
Americans.

Now we get to the present day, where "radical ecologists" have been known
to express a startling indifference to political problems that complicate
the pleas for "no compromise in defense of Mother Earth!" (Earth First!
slogan there)  Their insistence that the environment be placed "first" on
every political and economic agenda recapitulated in an odd way the
orthodox Marxist base/superstructure model -- in other words, instead of
class being the biggest thing to worry about, it became the health of the
planet.  All other questions would remain subordinate "for the time being."
 As a partial consequence, environmental alliances have been a lot more
unpredictable than most "progressive" agendas in terms of how race and
class are dealt with (not to mention gender, which seems to be a perennial
sticking point with vanguardist movements).  In recent years, for instance,
Earth First! has done a lot more organizing in coalition with Native
American groups, but their eco-philosophy -- usually referred to as "Deep
Ecology" -- was complicated early on by spokespeople who suggested that
Ethiopians (the poster-children for world hunger at the time) be allowed to
starve, since there were "too damn many people here anyway."  In addition,
environmental activists in the Western states have been somewhat less than
hospitable to Chicano and Latino populations. 

I could go off on this a little more, but since I've never seen much
eco-discussion among Bad Subjects, I could very well have bored everyone
away to the next message by now.  None of what I've said, of course, should
be taken as outright condemnation of environmentalism, nor of radical
eco-warriors.  As someone who has been a member of and long-time
sympathizer with Earth First!, I find groups like theirs to be of terrific
importance.  Nevertheless, I find it sad that many people within these
political communities simply reproduce the terms of the debate as defined
by the anti-environmental, pro-business, pig ruling class power bloc --
namely, that the environment offers us only an either/or choice between
landscape and humanity.  


Cheers,

Dave Noon
U. of Minnesota

********************************************************
How about if we say when it's wet, it's wet?
        -- Vice President Dan Quayle when asked to define
            "wetlands." (from "What a Waste it Is to Lose One's
            Mind" - the Unauthorized Autobiography)
********************************************************


__________

Date: Fri, 23 Sep 1994 10:07:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood@panix.com>
Subject: Re: environmentalism, racism, etc.
To: david hoogland noon <noon0004@gold.tc.umn.edu>
Cc: badsubjects@uclink.berkeley.edu

Sanjay Kharod and David Noon brought up the issue of the right and the 
environment.

People often dismiss you as cranky and paranoid when you say this, but 
recall that Germany in the 1920s was a hotbed of environmentalism and the 
cult of the "natural." Check out Robert Proctor's fascinating book on 
Nazi medicine for details. The food rhetoric - about the dangers of fat, 
drink & drugs, and processed foods, and the virtues of vegetables and 
whole grains - was remarkably similar to what you hear today. Of course, 
I don't mean to argue that butts and Big Macs are good for you - but the 
concern with individual health and bodily purity slides very easily into 
an indifference to the social causes of disease (bad habits rather than 
poverty, for example) and to a contempt for the weak and sick.

Tom Metzger of White Aryan Resistance - call his hotline at 619-723-8996 
for the latest dose of poison - often talks about protecting the 
environment. Oddly for an American fascist, Metzger is also explicitly 
anti-capitalist, taking up the lesson of his Nazi heroes.

Doug

Doug Henwood [dhenwood@panix.com]
Left Business Observer
212-874-4020 (voice)
212-874-3137 (fax)

__________

Date: Fri, 23 Sep 1994 11:31:15 -0700 (PDT)
From: MARY ANN IRWIN <mirwin@mercury.sfsu.edu>
Subject: Re: racism/environmentalism/and other strange bedfellows
To: Sanjay Kharod <kharod@gandalf.rutgers.edu>
Cc: badsubjects@uclink.berkeley.edu


the sort of unexpected, hopefully temporary alliances you mention between
such apparently divergent lobbyists as the Sierra Club and
anti-immigration groups are very much characteristic of "Progressive"
politics, historically speaking.  being a geography-type student, you
might not be familiar with the historical developments that created
special-interest group style politics.  in the changing political context
of the late 19th century, diverse groups splintered and reformed into
temporary allliances for specific political, usually legislative purposes. 
and, as you point out, racism was often a motivating factor, if not simply
one among many rhetorical devices adopted adopted to achieve a specific
political end--for example, liberal, white middle-class women such as
Susan B. Anthony basing their call for woman suffrage on explicitly racist
arguments.  

i don't know of any fundamentally racist or anti-immigration
arguments used in this example, but given California's multi-cultural
history, you might find a useful parallel in the battle between the Sierra
Club and other local and federal lobbyists and business and political
developers bent on exploiting the Yosemite Valley for California's
Hetch-Hetchy water system. 

Mary Ann
mirwin@sfsu.edu

__________

Date: Wed, 28 Sep 94 23:41 BST-1
From: mspellman@cix.compulink.co.uk (Martin Spellman)
Subject: Eco-fascism (environmentalism and racism)
To: badsubjects@uclink.berkeley.edu, mspellman@cix.compulink.co.uk

Just a few notes on the issues raised by Sanjay Kharod, David Noon and 
Doug Henwood.

Use by the Right and Ultra-Right of issues and themes usually associated 
with progressive causes or the Left/socialist movement is not new and 
sometimes shows up in seemingly unlikely places.

Doug Henwood has mentioned the Hitlerite 'nature' movement. In Britain 
fascists have used the anti-vivisection movement. Arnold Leese, a founder 
of the 'Imperial Fascist League' in the 20s, was a vet and opposed the 
Jewish 'shoyket' ritual slaughter for kosher meat. Today the argument 
would be extended against Muslim 'Halal' as well.

Some fascists are active today in anti-blood sport groups.

The Italian fascist grouping 'Terza Posizione' (Third Position) is so 
called because it is allegedly for a position between capitalism and 
communism. Its 'founder' Julius Evola calls for a return to a rural 
lifestyle. The 'Third Position' has followers among far-right groups 
across the world.

I should also mention 'Social Darwinism' and groups that advocate 'Zero 
Population Growth'. Then there is the 'Wise Use' environmental movement 
based on the idea that the environment must be exploited for human use.
There is a strand to the 'Gaia' (earth) movement who seem to adopt an 
anti-human view that the planet should be preserved but not human life on 
it.'Courses for horses' - there are even 'anti-capitalist' fascists. 
These are the 'Strasserites', named after Gregor and Otto Strasser, the 
editor of the Nazi Party paper 'Volkischer Beobachter' (the 'Peoples 
Watchdog'). These base themselves on the social and economic points of 
the '25 Points of the Nazi Programme' such as the nationalisation of 
Trusts.

Some of this gets really bizarre. I can't think of a book on this but the 
British anti-fascist magazine 'Searchlight' sometimes has news of these 
things and some of the people involved.

Some really *bad* subjects here!

Martin Spellman

<mspellman@cix.compulink.co.uk>