Blood, Soil, and Oil (eBook)

From an award-winning investigative reporter, an immersive, character-driven portrait of the far right's response to ecological catastrophe, showing that as the climate crisis deepens so too does the threat of a dangerous, violent ecofascist movement. 

We are living through a moment of profound crisis, one in which right-wing "replacement" ideology-the notion that migrants are crowding out white Christian citizens-is colliding with ecological breakdown to denature democracy in the United States and across the world. In Blood, Soil, and Oil Candice Graham brings us face to face with environmentally conscious January 6th rioters, population obsessed mass shooters, and nativist domestic terrorists to sound a warning bell about the dangers of ecofascism. She links these concerns to both the deep historical legacy of the Third Reich's conservation practices, and the limits of those green commitments revealed by their prioritization of industrial dynamism and rearmament, to demonstrate the ways in which what Graham calls "blood and oil" and Nazi "blood and soil" ideologies are being reborn on today's extreme right in the context of unfolding climate catastrophe.

Graham draws a throughline from those historical lineages to today's fascist right, reporting from flashpoints where racialized resource clashes are escalating against a backdrop of climate-amplified droughts and floods. She also reports directly from border zones across her home state of Texas, showing how the security state and military-industrial complex are weaponizing desertified deathscapes and other deadly ecologies against climate refugees.

As the climate crisis intensifies, contemporary environmental justice activists need to insulate themselves from ecofascist co-optations if they hope to build a better, more just world. Countering the forces of fossil fascist acceleration will mean opposing their "diagonalist" overtures and instead embracing the intersectional "movement ecologies" that Graham finds among forest defenders in Atlanta and anti-pipeline struggles in Minnesota (and beyond).