Settler ecofascism: Casey A. Williams, ‘Settler Ecofascism, Fossil Capitalism, and Democratic Crisis’, Environmental Communication, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler ecofascism: Casey A. Williams, ‘Settler Ecofascism, Fossil Capitalism, and Democratic Crisis’, Environmental Communication, 2025

19Dec25

Abstract: This chapter considers the racially motivated mass shooting in El Paso, Texas in 2019 as an expression of “settler ecofascism” – a distinct variant of ecofascism that yokes settler colonial justifications for racial violence to neo-Malthusian concerns about environmental degradation. Analyzing the rationale for murder laid out in the perpetrator’s manifesto, the chapter suggests that settler ecofascism is an antidemocratic environmental politics that is symptomatic of a deeper crisis of US democracy, in which the state’s perceived failure to manage core contradictions of a specifically fossil capitalism has further eroded the legitimacy of liberal democracy and created space for politics associated with the “ecofascist” right. Studying the episode in this context helps to explain both the mainstreaming of ecofascist ideas in recent years, as well as the limitations of “emergency” rhetoric in climate change communications. The episode suggests that persuading publics that climate change is an “emergency” does not guarantee that they will come to support effective, just, or humane responses. To the contrary: characterizing climate change as an “emergency,” without outlining a plausible strategy for resolving it, creates fertile ground for movements advocating a reactionary politics of personal or group preservation as necessary to manage the fallout from ecological catastrophe.

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