Piel blanca, combustible negro: Los peligros del fascismo fósil

by Andreas Malm, Victoria Prieto (translator)

En los últimos años la extrema derecha ha hecho todo lo posible por acelerar el calentamiento global, incluso un presidente estadounidense que lo considera un engaño ha eliminado los límites a la producción de combustibles fósiles. El presidente brasileño ha abierto el Amazonas y lo ha visto arder. En Europa, los partidos que niegan la crisis medioambiental e insisten en la máxima combustión han irrumpido en varios Gobiernos, de Suecia a España. Al borde del colapso, han surgido las fuerzas que más agresivamente promueven el business as usual, siempre en defensa del privilegio blanco, contra supuestas amenazas de otros no blancos. Pero ¿de dónde vienen estas fuerzas? El primer estudio sobre la extrema derecha ante la crisis climática, Piel blanca, combustible negro, presenta un elocuente rastreo de una nueva constelación política, y revela sus profundas raíces históricas. Las tecnologías que utilizan combustibles fósiles nacieron impregnadas de racismo. Nadie las amó con más pasión que los fascistas clásicos. Ahora han surgido fuerzas de derechas, algunas de las cuales afirman tener la solución: cerrar las fronteras para salvar a la nación mientras el clima se desmorona. Épico y fascinante, Piel blanca, combustible negro traza un futuro de frentes políticos que no podrá dejar de caldearse.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Climate Change, Environment, Ecology, History, Theory

656 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2021

About the author

Andreas Malm teaches Human Ecology at Lund University, Sweden. He is the author, with Shora Esmailian, of Iran on the Brink: Rising Workers and Threats of War and of Fossil Capital, which won the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

My mental health must be improving if I can get through a whole Andreas Malm book. (In late 2020 I gave up 52 pages into Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century as it made me feel ill. That still languishes unread on the bookshelf.) White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism is an investigation of the linkages between the far right and climate change, covering a great deal of contemporary and historical ground. Part 1 discusses a series of national case studies of 21st century far right politicians in Europe, North America, and South America and their policy positions/public statements on climate change. Part 2 seeks a theory to explain these positions by exploring the entwined histories of fascism, racism, and fossil fuel dependence. Anyone alarmed by resurgent fascism and the climate emergency will find the book both informative and deeply depressing. I got through it by reading about 80 pages at a time, stopping when it gave me an anxiety stomach ache and alternating with light(ish) fiction. It was worth the trouble, although I do sometimes think I'd be happier without a relentless desire to try and understand what's wrong with the world. I do not think that ignorance is bliss, but being deeply afraid of climate collapse certainly isn't much fun.

White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism demolishes hopeful illusions about climate change, for instance the argument (which I was taught as a undergraduate) that it can be solved by global treaty because that worked for the hole in the ozone layer:

Fossil fuels are the universal substratum for the production of surplus-value - not a material for this or that specific product, as bauxite for aluminium or oranges for juice, but a type of energy utilised across the spectrum of commodity production. It is this special status of fossil fuels in the total metabolism of capital that comes into view in the climate crisis. Conversely, we could say that the problem of ozone depletion was relatively easily managed because there did not exist any primitive accumulation of chlorofluorocarbon capital with which the rest of capital lived in symbiosis, and hence no capitalist class fraction with the capacity to sabotage the Montreal Protocol enacted in 1989.

As CFCs are also greenhouse gases, I've read somewhere (probably Kyoto2: How to Manage the Global Greenhouse) that the Montreal Protocol did more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than the Kyoto Protocol, which set voluntary targets for greenhouse emissions mitigation that were ignored. To set the scene, there is a brief and uncompromising synopsis of fossil fuel companies discrediting climate change (cf The Discovery of Global Warming and Losing Earth: A Recent History).

The layman's impression of a debate between researchers who believed in global warming and those who disputed it was completely manufactured by the class faction that knew, before almost anyone else, that there was no reason to have such a debate, any more than one over heliocentrism or the laws of thermodynamics. The debate was a vicious trick, the denial but a tactic. Some of the early reports might have been buried deep in desks and archives, but the knowledge was updated and the duplicity renewed on a regular basis. Exxon, for instance, spoke with a consistently forked tongue over the years, saying one thing in internal documents and something entirely different in advertorials and other PR material.

The substance of the book is then concerned with how the far right acts as a means by which fossil fuel companies continue to resist action to mitigate climate change. As the climate becomes increasingly unstable, with more and more occurrences of extreme weather, this denial and resistance has doubled down. While I'd already observed this somewhat with Trump, Bolsonaro, and useless Tory governments in the UK, seeing it laid out in great detail here hit hard. I hadn't realised what inroads the far right has made across much of mainland Europe, notably Finland and Denmark. The exhaustive descriptions of islamophobic, racist, and anti-environment policies and pronouncements are intensely depressing reading. The sheer fucking stupidity of these becomes overwhelming at times.

The only interesting variety is provided by occasional elements of eco-fascism, which I did not realise France's Front Nationale had dabbled in. These usually combine harking back to a prelapsarian 'natural' past with blunt force racist 'concern' that non-white people are having too many children. The British example given is Paul Kingsnorth. While I found his essay collection Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays highly thought-provoking, many of the thoughts weren't positive. I noted in my review that the essay Rescuing the English made me very angry, as it's anti-immigrant green nationalism couched in pretty language. Every use of 'English people' actually means 'white English people'. White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism also makes this point and characterises Kingnorth and 'his ilk' as the 'highbrow (or perhaps we should say middlebrow)' face of far right green nationalism.

The second section begins with a few chapters on the historical context of fascism and fossil fuel dependence. These ask what conditions enabled fascism to rise in the 20th century and whether they are happening again:

For anyone concerned with the possible reappearance of fascism, it follows that 'the key question becomes: what kind of crisis calls this politics to the agenda?'

But no crisis has ever induced fascism through automatic causation, just as no ingredients bakes themselves into a bread. Someone is always running the bakery. Paxton highlights the fact that both Mussolini and Hitler came into office by order of traditional power-holders. Both men were invited to rule by the legitimate representatives of their respective states - King Victor Emmanuel III in October 1922, President Von Hindenburg in January 1933 - who acted out a shared resolve among their dominant classes to bank on fascist forces as the best way out of the impasse. Both Il Duce and the Fuhrer had taken a previous stab at seizing power on their own - the former in the election campaign of 1919, the latter in the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 - and failed abysmally. Their route to government passed through an alliance with the existing establishment. [...]

Such analysis should not be mistaken for a facile view of fascism as the string doll of big capital, designed by it and moving as it did. Keen observers from Zetkin onwards recognised fascism as a mass movement in its own right, with an authentic following - even among some proletarian strata - and a winning nationalist zeal irreducible to the needs of any dominant class fraction. It was never the first choice of a king or president. Rather it served as a last resort, to which official powerbrokers and bourgeois layers turned in an hour of desperate need. [...]

The second condition of the existence of fascism was the willingness of sections of the dominant class to call upon the fascists to relieve the crisis. Fascism, then, was not for ordinary times.

As a student and for many years after, I believed that incremental government policy could and would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and avoid runaway climate change. I lost this comforting belief between 2010 and 2016, which I talked about when reviewing This Is Not A Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook. The fact is that global carbon dioxide emissions keep rising rapidly and the longer this continues for the more severe any mitigation would need to be to avoid civilisation-ending rises in temperatures:

Anderson laid it down: every postponement of the 'day of reckoning' has intensified the contradiction between capital accumulation and the life-support systems of the earth. Every additional gigatonne of carbon sent into the atmosphere makes half measures less viable. Every moment of stalling mitigation has ensured that if it ever commences, it will have to exercise the highest degree of control over the material conditions of life - first of all, over the privileged minority wasting the resources on which all others depend, notably the carbon sink of the atmosphere. [...]

The development of climate politics seems to obey a law of polarisation: the higher the temperatures, the more acute the antagonism between a left that alone stands ready to pick up the instruments for alleviating the crisis and a right that, for that very reason, refuses to contemplate it. A recursive cycle has been rolling for some time. Every year of inaction necessitates more revolutionary action the next; every threat of such action - if only of a hypothetical, tautological character - strengthens the conviction that this is a plot by the left.

It seems extraordinary now to consider that the UK Climate Change Act 2008, which committed the country to cut emissions by 80% between 1990 level by 2050, was passed with support from all major parties including the Conservatives. Admittedly it's a toothless target with no real enforcement, but these days the Tories hate wind turbines, fuel tax, water quality standards, and any other environmental policies. Back then they were in opposition, led by David Cameron, and the years of austerity, brexit, and new depths of anti-immigrant racism were still to come. So I have definitely observed this intensified antagonism here in GB.

The only moment of anything like levity comes about in the section about right wing fear of 'cultural marxism', a conspiracy theory that sometimes includes the detail of Theodor Adorno writing all of The Beatles' lyrics. Impressive if true! On the other hand, there are many paragraphs in White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism that are so devastating that it's very difficult to get on with your day after reading them. For example, chapter 9 builds the argument that even when the far right doesn't deny climate change, it doesn't care about it because only non-white people in other countries will be affected by it. Thus the policy priority is to close borders to those suffering the ravages of climate change, while continuing with business as usual:

The logic appears robust. In a world where black and brown lives matter little, and where global warming first destroys such lives, then it will not be a matter of great concern. But if there is indeed a real effect of this kind - it's a problem for non-white trash, so let's keep burning - we would expect it to be most powerful in the early stages of warming, up to, say, 2°C, whereas at very late stages, at 6°C and 8°C and beyond, it would presumably wane with the differentials in vulnerability. At 10°C, the blondest Swedes will be reduced to cinders too. In other words, the effect would be most politically efficacious precisely in the window of time when mitigation could make the largest difference. Everyone will be in the same furnace and see their shared destiny only when it's far too late to do anything about it.

There isn't much to say about that, other than it makes me glad I don't have children and want to weep for the children of others.

Andreas Malm's excellent earlier book Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming recounts how steam power became dominant in Britain during the industrial revolution. In that Malm mentions a sequel tentatively titled 'Fossil Empire' that would extend his analysis beyond Britain, to the forcible export of industrial capitalism and steam power across the world. That book hasn't materialised, as the current state of climate change politics understandably proved more urgent, but elements of it are clearly present in White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism:

But it could also be hypothesised that the articulation of energy and race that developed over the nineteenth century, in the most primary levels of modern capitalism, sedimented an association between whiteness and fossil fuels that wells up like magma in a time of climate breakdown. Certain defenders of such fuels might feel, on some level, questioned not only as burners but more specifically as white people, who for so long have had their tap-root of riches in the bowels of the planet. One can hear some of this association echoing in one of the boilerplates of white supremacy, in the US in particular: whites should be proud for having invented the modern world.

I also appreciated an analysis of how car dependence links into fossil fuel dependence and the far right, which took me right back to my PhD thesis. In that, I argued that reducing car ownership is key to reducing carbon emissions from transport, due to pernicious impact both at an individual and social level. Consequently this made me feel a certain amount of vindication:

The motorist wants to be left alone, preferably have the road to himself as he speeds forth. 'We are now, truly,' Mitchell writes, continuing the SUV-owners anthem, 'the liberal, autonomous subject. We own ourselves and no one can intrude upon us without our permission.' The car, in other words, exudes the ideology most detrimental to any efforts to cut emissions - an ideology of form as much as content, abiding no rationing or accommodation of foreign others.

Of course car dependence requires a vast network of public infrastructure that is built and maintained at huge public expense, but this is simply taken for granted as the motorist's entitlement!

Any involvement with The Beatles notwithstanding, Adorno is treated as a particularly useful philosopher for our current times, because his observations of encroaching fascism have unsettling relevance today:

Among the messages in a bottle that Adorno sent out like an armada, this one is not the least disconcerting: the break with reality is caused by reality itself and then reacts back upon it. Under the conditions of a fossil economy, the rational thing to do is to turn on the coal stove, take the car to work, fly to Thailand for a holiday, buy some shares in an oil company. The totality is irrational. It cannot adjust to the reality it produces and so breaks off from it, one way or another, in a flight that inevitably sweeps up individuals too. 'People are inevitably as irrational as the world in which they live.' [...] We can particularise this diagnosis and say that after the onset of the climate crisis, the reproduction of fossil capital as such secretes ideologies of denial and other irrational pathologies.

White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism was published in 2021 and includes a postscript reflecting on 2020, which begins, 'One of the first political casualties of the Covid-19 pandemic was the climate movement.' This is not a book to read if you want to feel comfortable about current politics and daily life. It relentlessly strips away any illusion that the rise of the far right and the climate crisis are unrelated phenomena that won't worsen together. While this is not an invitation to despair rather than resistance, it is a lot to process. If necessary, I suggest reading or watching something that takes you away from the horrors of reality both during and after. Nonetheless, I do not regret reading it as a means of making some sense of what's preventing action on climate change. Certainly not a lack of scientific evidence or technological solutions; in essence it's a political choice to prioritise current shareholder returns over the survival of the human race. As that choice looks more and more insane, it is defended with greater and greater virulence. Generative AI is bound to worsen the reliability of information online, so it seems the political divide increasingly boils down to whether you are more afraid of reality (e.g. environmental breakdown) or of lies (e.g. Europe being taken over by Muslims). Positive visions of the future are sparse on both sides, but I'd still prefer to face reality in all its grimness than be manipulated by self-serving untrue garbage. Building a positive future requires acknowledgement of the world as it actually is.

[lindsi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half of the book contains too many chapters devoted to the minutiae of contemporary European politics without tying them to larger geopolitical trends or meaning, but the theory and history portions of this work are fantastic. I learned a lot of new vocabulary with which to discuss capital accumulation and I found the chapter explaining fascism as a historical force particularly insightful. Overall, very worth the read.

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

We really shouldn’t have to look too hard to find the hard right, neo- and not-so-neo-fascists in the coal shed or gas tank. Much of the fossil fuel industry – coal and oil – have been very open about their funding of and other support to politicians such as Trump, Bolsanaro and the like who channel and provide voice to those reactionary tendencies. Elsewhere (think Poland and Germany) these extreme right forces, including those in government, latch on to coal and along with the oil industry types push the agenda and rhetoric of energy sovereignty. Yet many of us don’t necessarily link that language of energy sovereignty in any clear way to the other rhetorics of nationalism – the ‘race purity’, white supremacy and anti-immigrant claims of the radical right. These links are exactly those that are made in this richly crafted and powerful piece of work that surveys much of the right in Europe and the Americas.

Structured in two parts the case is clear: first, there is a survey of the emergence of this hard right alliance between nationalism, processes of fascisation, what the authors call fossil capitalism – that is both the extractive industries and those whose very existence depends on fossil fuels (recognising the difference between those fractions also), and the growing power of electoral and non-electoral political formations –although most of the focus is on electoral groups (in Hungary, for instance, Fidesz, not Jobbik, in Germany AfD not PEGIDA). The second section then explores these alliances through a reading of 20th century fascism (principally the ideologies and practices of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy) and other hard right nationalisms, of the kind seen in Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg.

The first section is more expansive with considerable discussion of not just of fascistic parties such as The Finns, Rassemblement National (the Le Pen platform after the FN), UKIP, Sweden Democrats, AfD and the like, as well as other forces that seem to adopt their language, such as the anti-immigrant practices of Denmark’s Social Democrats. This is alongside the focus on those hard right forces in government (Lega Nord in Italy, Poland’s PiD, Vox in Spain, the Tories in the UK, and of course Trump and Bolsanaro – the exploration extends beyond Europe to the USA and Brazil). The second section narrows the geographic sweep but broadens the conceptual and analytical frame making good use of a diverse set of theorists and analysts.

There are several very real strengths in the book. First, it is collectively written – listing 21 authors, plus Malm as having ‘coordinated the writing’. This approach means that there is an extensive reach and deep engagement with multi-lingual sources and local conditions, while Malm seems to have been able to develop a relatively coherent voice across the collective. Second, it treats its readers as smart – the authors assume that we can ‘get’ the big and complex ideas, but also recognise that these things take time – so the conceptual stuff is developed in stages. A common approach is the outline a conceptual or theoretical point, and then further explore and test that point to refine and develop – it’s a kind of theorisation by stealth and it works well (many of the rest of us in academia could learn a lot from this approach!) and develops rather than ‘tests’ theory and concepts.

Third, and related to #2, it is willing to be conditional, of the ‘this is what we know now’ kind while noting that circumstances might change and not imposing a single model. This allows them to be quite open about contradictory and countervailing tendencies such that while they reject the legitimacy of nationalist responses (the evisceration of Green Nationalism is a delight) they also recognise widely divergent nation and nationalist approaches and practices. Four, this means that they recognise the distinctions between climate change denial and capitalist climate governance while still being able to criticise both. Finally, there is a careful retheorisation of recent notions of fascism not as an overthrow of the state but of the seizure of the state from within.

But it’s this final point that I am left pondering as it relates to capitalist climate governance and the place of increasingly ineffectual attempts at management of this existential crisis, and how that affects and effects class fractions as the crisis of legitimacy that lies at the heart of this fascisation plays out.

In these I have barely scratched the surface of this rich, nuanced, sharp and compelling analysis, especially the careful crafting of the notion of an Ideological State Apparatus the lies across all manner of institutions and practices, made more complex by the development of privatised spaces for state-supporting ideological work to a much greater extent than when Althusser popularised the notion of the ISA 50 years ago. Even more, I like the notion the develop (drawing on Cas Mudde) that the reach of this ISA is leading to a pathological normalisation of these fascistic tendencies, rather than seeing those tendencies as a normal pathology.

This, then, is a big sprawling book – not because it is loose but because it is doing vital work linking tendencies often seen as discrete and building a transnational analysis drawing out commonalities and distinctiveness while also highlighting a class fraction whose interests are served and challenging us rethink conceptions of historic and contemporary fascism. I am also looking forward to what analysts of tendencies to fascisation in states such as India and Turkey do with these ideas. There is much to quibble with here, as we’d expect such a case, but the overall model and approach is compelling.

[Kai · Rating 4 out of 5]

comprehensive and at many points compelling analysis of the numerous historical, practical, and potential intersections between the far right, fossil fuels, and (anti-)ecological politics. this extensive analysis is written by Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective, a group of scholars, students, and activists who are researching these relationships. I have met a few members of the Zetkin Collective, and participated in one of the conferences that resulted in this book, so I was waiting for it for some time. (as an authorial note, it feels sort of like the group might have wanted the book to be solely collectively authored, but the former's name recognition required the awkward co-authorship for marketing purposes. nonetheless, if you've read any of Malm's other books, the writing style and tone is essentially the same).

The book consists of a survey of major statements and potential policy goals of far-right parties in several European countries, as well as Brazil and the United States. This includes somewhat exhaustive analyses of denialism, border violence and scapegoating of refugees, updated malthusian theories of 'great replacement', the possibility of green nationalism, and historic analyses of Naziism. Analytically, the book takes a somewhat marxist perspective, influenced primarily by the Frankfurt school and Adorno in particular, with an Althusserian ISA sort of analysis as well. the sharpness of this conceptual toolkit comes out the clearest when discussing the far right in psychoanalytic terms, while its bluntness appears in the sparseness of class analysis.

as mentioned above, large chunks of the book are deeply compelling. but this is not a quick read, and its style is somewhat odd. presented as an inductive analysis, one is not given an introduction or allowed to stray from the book's 508 page arc (plus Coda plus pandemic afterword). preliminary conclusions are made in early chapters which are substantially modified later. and the chapters are not broken up into readable chunks; each tends to be around 70 pages. summary and roadmapping could have done a lot to cut down the book to a more manageable load--a move that IMO would seem pretty important for garnering the wider readership on the Verso adjacent left that this topic deserves.

i have just two major disagreements. first and more briefly, the limited geographical focus leads to a somewhat blinkered treatment of both imperialism (GN/GS inequality) and their implication in the existence of the far right in the GS beyond Brazil (Modi and Duterte come to mind, but also a few forms of reactionary fundamentalism). ((major aside: sort of astonishing given the title's crib from Fanon!! who is briefly mentioned a few times)) and second, a more immanent critique: because the book is focused on understanding "the far right" and "fossil fuel driven combustion leading to climate change," the historical parts of the text feel like the authors are finding the argument they have already assumed. in particular, chapters 9 and 10 felt very unconvincing to me, respectively analyzing the relationship between fascism and fuel, and technological modernity. each chapter sets out to describe Italian and German rhetoric and actions which sought to accelerate destruction and domination of nature with promotion of the race and industry. and though it is briefly acknowledged that other forms of social organization are capable of performing similar tricks (442-443), the argument is made that fascism in fact had some particularly brutal *material* relation to combustive fuel and modern technology. this, to me, seems to make a few mistakes: 1) it lets the overwhelmingly *liberal* politics of modernity and progress off the hook, 2) it fall into the trap of isolating aspects of incoherent fascist ideology and making them seem coherent (through interpreting, ironing out the contradictions between say German romanticism and Italian futurism, or, less geographically, Nazi modernism and anti-modernism). and 3) in desiring to 'prove' that some aspects of fascism were at its core (technological modernity) and others incidental or inessential (anti-modernism or romanticism), it seems to let go of the main theoretical tools of the Frankfurt/ISA combo: that these are more interesting and ought to be understood as psychoses, not disproven by their "really" ecological or anti-ecological character. that's sort of a complicated argument to make on my part, and i'm doing it short shrift (and likely to be unconvincing) but this is a hastily written goodreads review after all.

still, it is a helpful contribution from which I learned quite a bit, especially being somewhat removed from understanding far right European politics (aside from the neverending barrage of Brexit analyses).

[Martin Empson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't 100 percent agree or more accurately wasn't convinced by everything in White Skin, Black Fuel, but the book gets 4 stars from me for being a stimulating read that explores many neglected aspects to the climate crisis - particularly racism and fascism.

[Feral Academic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good stuff but would be improved by slashing like 50% of it. The arguments get meandering and repetitive and the analysis would be sharpened if the trends discussed didn't have so many hundreds of pages separating them.

[Javier Valdés · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dí con este libro por pura casualidad, y sin duda se ha convertido en un indispensable. A través de las posiciones de las externas derechas sobre el cambio climático (básicamente posiciones negacionista) el autor nos ofrece una ventana en la que se atisban algunos posibles escenarios políticos en el contexto de emergencia climática.

[Fethi Boulaloua · Rating 5 out of 5]

Long read, but very in-depth and informative. Basically explains all there is to know about the special relationship between far-right politics and fossil fuels, both historically and in the present.
One of those books that genuinely give you new tools to understand the world around you.
Warmly recommend, pun intended.

[Eric Bottorff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit longer than it needed to be, this is nonetheless a must-read on the connection between fossil fuels, climate change, and fascism.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliantly argued and wide-ranging historical analysis of the relationship between fossil fuel, ecological awareness, and the far right in its various permutations. Tremendously insightful and compulsively readable – my highest recommendation!

[Darran Mclaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another brilliant, thought provoking book from Andreas Malm (and a collective of collaborators). A trenchant analysis of the relationship between the Far Right and fossil fuels. I hadn't taken a step back and really let it sink in that the Right had shifted from being climate change prevaricators back to being outright denialists, but that is in fact what has happened over the past few years. As the book explains, the fact of the matter is that the kind of corporate obfuscation we have been dealing with in the 21st century, with Shell and BP making big marketing campaigns about how green they are, actually couldn't go on forever. The fact is that carbon emissions continue to rise in absolute terms, and as a percentage of their outputs, and there is only so long that you can get away with trying to greenwash this before it won't stand any more, and at that point it is either switch back to outright denial or end Capitalism as we know it.

I thought the sections that draw on psychoanalysis were particularly interesting and revealing, and it makes me think I need to dig into psychology more than I have to try to understand the total irrationality of so much that is going on at the moment in the world.

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

A timely and important discussion on the shift towards authoritarianism as it relates to accelerants like climate change.

"Indeed, one way of understanding the rise of the far right in the early twenty-first century is to see it as a reaction – first pre-emptive, later direct – to the quickly approaching crunch time of the climate crisis. Some of the deep structural forces in society that resist any transition appear to have gravitated towards this political pole. The worse the crisis, on this logic, the stronger the attraction, and these tendencies pertain not only to mitigation" (p.251).

[Dayton Martindale · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can tell it is written by a collective because the organizational structure can feel a bit haphazard. But wow, this was a fascinating and horrifying tour through the far right past and present and its relation to ecological destruction. Definitely recommend. We will be discussing in Storytelling Animals book club – more info here! https://daytonmartindale.com/book-club/

[Charles Heath · Rating 5 out of 5]

MALM HAS THE STRONGEST REALEST MARXIST GAME IN HISTORY TOWN.
Fucking dude is incredible, and has written not one, but two, maybe of the best histories of the past ten years: Fossil Capital and this one.

[Bryan Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

White Skin, Black Fuel explores the roles carbon fuels play in European and American right wing politics. It's an ambitious, extensively researched work of interdisciplinary analysis, combining ecology, history, religion, economics, and political science.

A galaxy of topics appear in the course of this work. Climate denial, Islamophobia, immigration politics, fascism's love of fast cars, nationalism, lignite mining... let me pull out a few ideas and arguments which struck me.

The book offers an interesting model of fascism and a mass movement which a nation's elite makes use of as an ally in exceptionally chaotic times (230ff). This then leads to the possibility of fascism's return in areas where the climate crisis causes extraordinary problems. The natural impacts of the crisis can cause political and social dislocation, which we can think of as "adaptation crises," and so can political responses. Malm et al speak of the latter as a "mitigation crisis." (240) This might be likeliest to hit "countr[ies] with extensive fossil fuel extraction and some tradition of ethonationalism. The US comes to mind, as does Germany, Poland and Norway, to which we might add Australia, Canada, Russia..." (241)

White Skin, Black Fuel adds the idea of "palingenesis" to these right wing political currents. Palingenetic politics seek to rebirth an older, favored political order, a la MAGA. If I channel the late Bruno Latour, I'd say palingenesis is a reaction to the world slipping into strangeness, an attempt to reclaim an Earth when it still made sense (to the speaker).

I like the book's contrast of fossil fuel stocks with the flows of solar and wind power. Nations (and companies) can own a supply of coal, oil, gas, but not the sun (nor winds). In this context, "[s]olar and wind are the Jew and the Muslim of energy." (274-5)

One of my criticism's of today's progressive proclamation that the political right is now fascist is that fascism appeared in bitter, close struggle with communism in the 1920s and 30s. Which makes little sense in the 21st century, with world communism largely a spend force outside of North Korea, or in the weird mutation of Xi's China (see below). White Skin, Black Fuel offers an interesting riposte, arguing that communism has become unmoored from actual social movements and political structures, instead becoming a free-floating signifier.

As the radioactive decay from the Russian Revolution proceeds, perhaps already past half-time, the fantasy of Marxist deviltry rather appears to radiate brighter again. That paradox can be explained by the depth of revolutionary problems, for which the status quo cannot take responsibility and which do not yet have a matching subject: Marxism must be recruited as a revenant to fill the gap. (311)

Indeed, the authors think that class has fallen away from the right's imagination, being replaced by race. (458). Race can at least play the role of scapegoat. (498)

To return to race: the book's collective authors describe racism as a way of ordering the world with white people on top and others - including nature - at the bottom. "[T]his link between the subsumption of nature and the oppression of non-whites was forged in the earliest days of the European colonial enterprise and might well persist into this day." (337) ...which reminds me of Amitav Ghosh's recent books.

More on race and carbon: cars give racists the ability to withdraw from mixed social environments, which one author referred to as "secessionist automobility." This contrasts with public transit, where marginalized people predominate. (371-374) In WWII-era fascism this connection of machines and racism was even deeper.

There were two issues which I wanted to raise because they are largely missing from the book, and might complicate its arguments. First, China is barely mentioned in the book, which is a glaring hole for the reality of the 21st century. There's a quick attempt at evoking anti-Asian racism (202-3) but the text prefers to focus on other forms of white racism instead. How does the history of fascism play out in the Chinese setting, from the war with fascist Japan (another missing nation) to the emergence of today's hybrid nation?

Second, while the authors focus on Islam, they do so almost completely in terms of race, rather than religious content. Religious bigotry is in play when, for example, European Christians dread or attack Muslims (as they've done for a millennium and a half). Taking religious issues more seriously should deepen the overall analysis.

That's it for now. I have to run. Strongly recommend this important book.

[Daisy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the last book I’ve read in 2022. White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism by Andreas Malm discusses the Far Right’s stance on the Climate Crisis after analyzing over 40 European Countries’ Far Right parties in recent history. It’s that intersection between race, politics and environmentalism that I love to learn more about. I could not recommend this book this 500 page book enough. This book introduces some critical concepts like green nationalism, capitalist climate governance, fossil fascism, and climate skepticism.

Once of the things I love about this book is that this book does a good job of fighting against overpopulation myths. Overpopulation myth the idea that there are too many people, specifically non-white people, and it’s unsustainable. This overpopulation is exacerbating the climate crisis.

Adding to this, the book discuses the extremally flawed belief of Green nationalism because if all they can think of is violence towards migrants (specifically Muslims), it would leave fossil capital unchallenged. And so far, all green nationalism has to show for it is a body count and a rap sheet of hate crimes against anyone not white. The book is able to objectively denounce anyone who spews green nationalist ideologies.

I enjoyed the section on Capitalist climate governance. One of my favorite quotes from this was this; ‘What is fascism?’ asked Antonio Gramsci in 1921: ‘It is the attempt to resolve the problems of production and exchange with machine-guns and pistol-shots’ & "If future generations will have to sift through the reasons for why so little was done to prevent a climate catastrophe foretold, this will be one of them: the fictional problem of an immigrant invasion and a Muslim takeover supplanted the real thing."

At the core of it, the book argues the intentionality of white supremacy and fossil fascism; why we don’t have a more aggressive renewable energy plan is because If resources were distributed fairly, the harm done to disadvantaged groups would be stopped and the general drivers of degradation shut down. This is why Justice then, is not the negation but the ESSENCE of sustainability. The path forward for environmentalists is to incorporate environmental justice as a core part of their activism.

It’s crucial to understand the far right’s climate change stance and challenge them at every turn because Any rise of fascism is resistible at every stage. ON top of that, we must bring forth policies that radically challenge capitalism with an emphasis on addressing the needs and concerns of BIPOC folks, for that’s who green nationalist will attack first. I couldn’t recommend this book enough if you are interested in this topic. Please go read White Skin, Black Fuel by Andreas Malm.

[Lethe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is unnecessarily long - almost the whole first half could be cut, the same goes for parts of the second half.
Nevertheless, the worthwhile parts are extremely insightful.

These worthwhile parts are especially:

The first half of chapter 1's subchapter "The Origins of Denial"
->[illuminates the capitalist factions wrt fossil fuel and the crises they face]

Chapter 8's subchapter "The Mythical Body of the Stock"
->[explains nomadic vs territorial energy]

Chapter 9 (minus the first subchapter)
->[explains interpellation and how fossil fuels are related to white supremacy]

Chapter 7, stopping at the subchapter "Imagining the Change"
->[explains what fascism is as both idea and force, and what fossil fascism is]

Chaper 11
-> [explains psychological mechanisms driving denial and right-wing support] (some subchapters are subpar, but they are all very short)


honorable mentions, but not as good as the above:
Chapter 3's subchapters "Of Minarets and Mills"
Chapter 5's subchapter "Green Nationalism in Theory"
Chapter 8's first paragraph on palindefence


P.S.: It's a bit odd that they pretend to "expand" on Althusser's concept of the ISA twice to then end up with a point Althusser himself makes in "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", leaving me to think the author responsible for this didnt actually read it, which seems supported by them quoting a bunch of other Althusser books in its stead. One of these occurences is them using Poulantzas to establish that Ideological State Apparatuses don't have to be "official" state institutions (explicitly discussed by Althusser) aswell as using Kukla to establish that not all interpellations are in the form of shouts (never claimed by Althusser and in my view in no way implied).

But again, the good parts of this book are excellent enough to warrant a 5 star rating, even if the book couldve been 150 instead of 554 pages long.

[joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

essential reading on the articulations of fossil capital to racial capitalism over the longue duree and in the present conjuncture, a broad - albeit avowedly eurocentric - and detailed mix of history, theory and reportage. it's a clarion call to leftists in the coming climate struggles and a useful resource for climate and anti-racist activists to understand their enemy. for now it looks as if a far-right resolution to the environmental crisis would be fossil fascist - arrantly denialist, sadistically extractive, and viciously xeno-racist - rather than eco-fascist in any meaningful sense of the term. but the collective doesn't rule out the latter, which is in any case tantamount to a form of denialism in all but the nominal sense, given that eco-fascists deny the really existing social drivers of climate change in favour of spurious racist explanations. the authors - all twenty of them - are adept at showing the structures and interests that uphold fossil capitalism - primitive fossil capital, fossil capital in general, and the political and media isas - and how they do and might in future interact with the far right. the book - whose richness is impossible to precis in a dashed-off capsule review- is written in a recognisably malmian style - and he did coordinate the writing of it. it's malm at his best - historically engaged rather than gallingly polemical as he has been in his other two, much shorter post-covid books.

[ElFalleret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un llibre llarguíssim. Exhaustiu. No dóna cap fil d'esperança ni cap instrucció de què hem de fer. Tanmateix, fa una anàlisi per entendre la realitat de la crisi climàtica i les seues conseqüències en el racisme i sobretot en el feixisme.

Publicat en desembre del 2020, hi ha una primera part on fa una anàlisi del discurs climàtic i racista de diversos països europeus i dels EEUU i Brazil fins aleshores. En la part racista fa especial èmfasi en la islamofòbia. Acostumat a un mercat editorial que traduix massa assajos anglosaxons (a causa de l'imperialisme cultural i la facilitat de traduir de l'anglés) és d'agrair poder llegir una anàlisi en clau europea i conéixer la realitat dels països del nostre entorn.

Després hi ha una segona part que trobe que és la més interessant on fa una anàlisi sobre què és el feixisme i quina relació ha tingut i té amb la industria dels combustibles fòssils. Quina és la base de les seues estratègies, quines són les trampes que fan servir, com fa per calar el missatge entre els ciutadans (com de fàcil penetra en aquells que es consideren blancs i no volen perdre el seu privilegi)...

La redacció és senzilla de llegir, pero el contigut no és gens fàcil de pair. Tot i això, dóna una vista aèria i una bastida que ajuda a entendre el món que vivim, i el que ens tocarà viure.

[Kathleen O'Neal · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was assigned by Dr. Denise Albanese for her Cultural Study of Science and Technology course which I took in the fall of 2024. "White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism" is ultimately an in depth look at the intersection of climate change, the fossil fuel industry, and the ideologies and practices of the global far right. While it took a while for me to get into this book, once I got through the first few chapters, I was increasingly fascinated by the history and politics of the global far right as explored in this volume. Particularly interesting to me was the exploration of Italian fascism during the World War II era and the aesthetic and ideological trends which undergirded this phenomenon . An exploration of the work and thought of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was particularly striking to me and he is a figure I definitely want to learn more about. The authors' exploration of the destruction of the Amazon rain forest in Brazil, their look at the importance of automobile culture in American history, and the notion of "ecological sadism" (396) were some of the highlights of this book for me.

[Dee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thorough and eye-opening analysis of Europe’s, the U.S.’s, and Brazil’s twenty-first-century rightward political turn and simultaneous sharpening of climate-change-denialist or greenwashing discourse. While the authors succeed in showing that, historically, racism and fossil capitalism are deeply causally interconnected, some of their conclusions about contemporary right-wing programs seem to indicate simultaneity rather than causality. But it’s all part of the same “narcissistic” structure. I found the book’s historical chapters, on Italian and German fascism’s relationship to technology, extraction, and ecological devastation, especially enlightening. Will definitely read up on Victorian extraction of palm oil and coal as suggested by the authors.

The book ends in December 2020—things have only gotten worse since then. The Amazon is still burning.

[Vladimir · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that I wish everyone would read.

Appeasement won't work, because it never does. With regard to the climate crisis in particular, the crisis will keep getting worse, therefore the appropriate mitigation strategies will involve larger and more rapid shifts from the status quo, therefore everyone who wants to resist policy change will support ever more undemocratic and violent means of holding onto power.

[Hannah Ekin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviews far right parties views on climate, nature and fossil fuels, and projects forward how a Mitigation crisis (where we do all that is needed to avoid runaway climate chaos and in doing so cause economic instability and transformation) or an adaptation crisis (where we don't address runaway climate change and have to adapt to the impacts) is likely to land politically, arguing that the far right are well placed to capitalise on an adaptation crisis which plays to their strengths.

[Sjoerd Mense · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eén van de meest uitgebreide en diepgaande onderzoeken over de extreemrechtse politiek van dit moment. Met name het laatste jaar heb ik met veel onbegrip gekeken naar hoe het debat in de wereld vorm leek te krijgen. Dit boek geeft een uitleg. Een duidelijke zeer aannemelijke uitleg, die bepaalt niet geruststelt. Maar je moet ook niet in slaap gesust willen worden wanneer je huis in brand staat. Ik zou het iedereen aanraden.

[Daire Dempsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was about half mind-blowingly insightful (exploring the conceptual and philosophical far right links to fossil fuels and resistance to renewable energy, their focus on anti-immigration, the tendency of liberal capitalism to fall back on fascism in times of crisis, extrapolating into the future) but the other half was a bit of a slog (personally I could have done without the lengthy dig into Nazism and Futurism). I extremely recommend it, especially if (like me) you need to learn more about what exactly drives the right/far right, just a heads up that it’s p long and dry.

[Ned Netherwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, it's a chunky beast. I initially wondered if I'd even be able to finish it but it was such an eye-opener, it's central premise of the links between climate change denial and racism hits you right between the eyes.

[Alexas V · Rating 5 out of 5]

Landmark work on fascism.

An overview and comparison of contemporary movements, historical connections, deep-digging analysis, and jaw-dropping connections. A grand effort in sense-making, exposing the modern embodiment of evil. I swear.

[Robin Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

More like 4.5 stars

[Brian Doering · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprised to see that the intersection of racism and fossil fuels is capitalism*

*no. I’m not.

[Finlay · Rating 5 out of 5]

So thoroughly evidenced that you can't possibly substantially disagree.

Not happy to find out that a leading fascist, 'Puricelli', sounds like stereotyped Italian version of myself.