Nature and Nationalism: Right Wing Ecology and the Politics of Identity in Contemporary Germany

Across Europe, parties of the radical Right are moving environmental themes to the centre of their political programmes. Perhaps nowhere is this phenomenon more visible than among Germany's numerous far Right parties and groups. Jonathan Olsen explores the right-wing ecology in Germany, its ideological underpinnings, historical evolution and relationship to more mainstream political-environmental discourse. Arguing that radical environmentalism is not exclusively a domain of the left, Olsen shows how many of Germany's radical Right parties ground their environmental ideology in an anti-universalist anthropology which sees human beings as naturally "rooted" on specific nations and cultural traditions. "Pollution" in this discourse signifies not only the disruption of the natural world, but the social as well, thus providing an "environmental" justification for an anti-immigrant politics which finds resonance outside the specific milieu of the far Right. This text challenges understanding of the ambiguous ways in which "nature" functions to legitimate a wide variety of political ideas.