The storm before the storm

Abstract

This essay follows the incursion of far-right groups into post-disaster zones in the United States, including communities struck in fall 2024 by Hurricane Helene, where they work to undermine state agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency and recruit white folks to their cause through mutual aid campaigns. Even when the groups in question are not “ecofascist” in the classic sense, our work suggests that they do pledge to protect white folks from an environment that has allegedly been weaponized by enemies. They do portray the sky as a terrain of political struggle. They do seize on increasingly strange weather to advance Manichean narratives and foment a sense of racial threat. And in this sense, they are seeding an emergent ecofascism that can and will be taken up by others.