The flooding in Valencia is the worst in Spain in over 100 years. Several hundred people have died, vital infrastructure has been damaged and years of agricultural crops destroyed. Everyone knows that the wildness is due to man-made climate change. It is less well known that the political uproar in the wake of the flood is also fueled by human minds.
It did not take many hours before brown forces on the right flank attacked the government. The reactionary party Vox, for example, thought it was “incompetent” and “evil”. One of the angry young men filmed lashing out at King Felipe VI when the royal palace was attacked during the Valencia visit is wearing a Blue Division hoodie. The Blue Division was a unit that fought voluntarily for the Nazis, usually wearing the fascist party’s blue shirts – hence the name.
Revuelta, a far-reaching youth organization with ties to Vox, has claimed to have sent thousands of orthodox youth to the flooded areas to help the “Spaniards”, with added emphasis on the nationality of the victims. Both Revuelta and Núcleo Nacional, an even more racist group in Spain, have distributed food and offered words of comfort to victims in the flood-stricken region.
“The Valencia tragedy has triggered a regular far-right race in which many organizations are trying to attract new supporters after a natural disaster that has created anger among a population that feels left behind by the authorities”, we could read in the Spanish newspaper El Pais.
Making political use of climate disasters has become part of the right-wing’s modus operandi. By assisting on the ground and being instigators in legitimate demonstrations, they create the impression that they are in solidarity with the majority of people, in contrast to the clumsy, deceitful state. Felipe González Santos, who has researched how far-right movements claim progressive politics to undermine the left, believes their behavior during the Valencia flood foreshadows how they will behave in the years to come with more frequent and powerful natural disasters.
Making political use of climate disasters has become part of the right-wing’s modus operandi.
The left has historically had high credibility on everything that has been about climate, nature, forest protection, ecology, animal welfare, vegetarianism, recycling, pollution and more, but in recent times both moderate and extreme groups on the right have tried to undermine credibility and usurp ownership .
That is why we can find right-wing extremists today who can be mistaken for eco-hipsters from Grünerløkka SV. The Nordic resistance movement, which are neo-Nazis, claim on their website that they want a “more nature-friendly way of thinking to replace the ‘use-and-throw’ mentality”, and they want to “ensure that children at an early age gain respect and understanding for nature and that they take a holistic approach to it’. Like many on the left, these green fascists are keen to shop local, healthy and organic – in contrast to the global capitalist brands. “Without the National Socialist view of man as part of nature, with a unique responsibility to take care of it, humanity will eventually perish.”
That is why we can find right-wing extremists today who can be mistaken for eco-hipsters from Grünerløkka SV.
In their own podcasts, leading figures in the movement have spoken about the importance of “taking back” environmental policy from the left, which according to them consists only of people who run away with empty talk and lack the will to act.
“The commandments of an overheated and fully exploited globe warn of man’s downfall. The bigger the crisis, the easier it is to argue for extreme solutions,” according to Maria Darwish, who has researched ecofascism movements in Europe. Her message is that democratic parties must urgently come up with constructive solutions to the climate crisis, otherwise people may seek out authoritarian groups because “the eco-fascists have the answer where the democrats remain silent”.
according to Felipe Gonzalez Santos is the strategy of far-right and right-wing populist parties to re-calf the public debate on vital social issues. “This approach aims not only to change the existing progressive narrative, but also to garner support among traditional voters on the left.”
The left should stop thinking that it gets more voters by adopting the right’s negative characterizations of it.
This does not only apply to climate policy. They also seek defining power on everything from workers’ rights and the fight against crime via equality and minority issues to refugee and asylum policy. It has become easier now when the competitor is on the defensive, without either self-confidence or voters, and some on the left have come to the (wrong) realization that the battle can only be won by outdoing the right in rhetorical (self-)flagellation.
When parts of the left themselves begin to call themselves detached from reality, superior, naive, elitist, moralizing, man-hating and “woke”, it’s game over. When even leftists portray the right as more popular and concerned with the little man on the farm, conservatives, populists and extremists can smile all the way to the polling station.
The left can fold their hands and silently watch it happen, or they can take up the competition. But the left should stop thinking that it will gain more voters by adopting the right’s negative characterizations of it.
When parts of the left themselves begin to call themselves detached from reality, superior, naive, elitist, moralizing, man-hating and “woke”, it’s game over.
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