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The Political Ecology of the Alternative für Deutschland: Defending Fossil Capitalism in the Era of Climate Crisis

Söding, Tatjana LU (2022) HEKM51 20221
Department of Human Geography
Human Ecology
Abstract
As global average temperatures are rising, the populist radical right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has ramped up its anti-climate but pro environmental protection politics. As this focus is nascent, the question of how and for whom does the political ecology of the AfD articulates meaning has yet received little attention. My analysis of seven semi-structured interviews with party members active in the coal-mining area of Lusatia (fall 2021), identified four core categories constitutive for the interviewees' understanding of the ecological crises, namely labor, progress, morality, and capitalist denialism. Based on work by De Cleen and Stavrakakis (2017) I operationalize Laclau and Mouffe’s theorization on discourse to unravel... (More)
As global average temperatures are rising, the populist radical right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has ramped up its anti-climate but pro environmental protection politics. As this focus is nascent, the question of how and for whom does the political ecology of the AfD articulates meaning has yet received little attention. My analysis of seven semi-structured interviews with party members active in the coal-mining area of Lusatia (fall 2021), identified four core categories constitutive for the interviewees' understanding of the ecological crises, namely labor, progress, morality, and capitalist denialism. Based on work by De Cleen and Stavrakakis (2017) I operationalize Laclau and Mouffe’s theorization on discourse to unravel the ideological underpinnings of the political ecology of the AfD and present them in their spatial orientation: authoritarian populism, ethnic nationalism, ordoliberalism and fossil capitalist realism. Together, the findings from the interviews and the ideological reconstruction led to the primary conclusion of this paper: that the political ecology of the AfD is an articulation of a defense of fossil capitalism as both an economic and a social system. Based on an Althusserian notion of interpellation, I postulate that the ideological laborer of fossil capitalism – a term I coin within this thesis – is the primary supporter of the AfD’s political ecology, thereby building a common explanatory ground for theories of the AfD’s populism as a reaction to economic grievances, political modernization, or cultural cleavages. (Less)
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author
Söding, Tatjana LU
supervisor
organization
course
HEKM51 20221
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
keywords
the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), climate denial, energy transition, authoritarian populism, ethnic nationalism, ordoliberalism, capitalist realism
language
English
id
9079782
date added to LUP
2022-10-14 12:50:30
date last changed
2022-10-14 12:50:30
@misc{9079782,
  abstract     = {{As global average temperatures are rising, the populist radical right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has ramped up its anti-climate but pro environmental protection politics. As this focus is nascent, the question of how and for whom does the political ecology of the AfD articulates meaning has yet received little attention. My analysis of seven semi-structured interviews with party members active in the coal-mining area of Lusatia (fall 2021), identified four core categories constitutive for the interviewees' understanding of the ecological crises, namely labor, progress, morality, and capitalist denialism. Based on work by De Cleen and Stavrakakis (2017) I operationalize Laclau and Mouffe’s theorization on discourse to unravel the ideological underpinnings of the political ecology of the AfD and present them in their spatial orientation: authoritarian populism, ethnic nationalism, ordoliberalism and fossil capitalist realism. Together, the findings from the interviews and the ideological reconstruction led to the primary conclusion of this paper: that the political ecology of the AfD is an articulation of a defense of fossil capitalism as both an economic and a social system. Based on an Althusserian notion of interpellation, I postulate that the ideological laborer of fossil capitalism – a term I coin within this thesis – is the primary supporter of the AfD’s political ecology, thereby building a common explanatory ground for theories of the AfD’s populism as a reaction to economic grievances, political modernization, or cultural cleavages.}},
  author       = {{Söding, Tatjana}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{The Political Ecology of the Alternative für Deutschland: Defending Fossil Capitalism in the Era of Climate Crisis}},
  year         = {{2022}},
}