Against the promethean: Energy throughput and the far-right politics of degrowth

Abstract

While criticism of growth by a diverse but overall left-leaning degrowth spectrum has become increasingly prominent, less is known about degrowth stances by far-right actors. While the far right is regularly viewed as ‘productivist’ and tied to fossil fuels, we point to a more complex relationship, taking the German New Right eco-magazine Die Kehre as a case study. Drawing on Bakhtin's concept of chronotope (time–space configuration), we identify two chronotopes, the promethean and the idyllic, with their interaction giving rise to a far-right degrowth stance. The promethean (rejected) signifies environmental destruction and consumerist ways of living. The idyllic (affirmed) posits a reduction in energy throughput, small-scale production/exchange, limits and the building of ‘rooted’ communities. Our analysis provides original conceptualization and one of the first comprehensive accounts of the far-right politics of degrowth. Thus, we raise awareness of how particularistic and non-universal criticisms of growth and capitalism can partly overlap with better known degrowth positions.

Introduction

Especially in the Global North (though not limited to it), today's ideas of a ‘good life’ commonly depend on and emerge from the reliance of societies on unsustainable economic growth, with higher energy throughput enabling more growth. More recently, (largely) left-leaning activists and scholars have denounced this reliance, calling for de/post-growth (e.g. Hickel, 2022; Kallis, 2019; Saito, 2022; Schmelzer et al., 2022). ¹ In contrast, scholars who have considered the far right through the lens of energy have underscored how these actors have long been intricately tied to fossil fuels and the growth economy. For example, Malm and The Zetkin Collective (2021) stress that both Italian and German fascism were fossil fuel/combustion-bound (on the overall devastating environmental record of, e.g. German National Socialism; see Blackbourn, 2006: 266–280; Uekötter, 2006: 30–43; Brüggemeier et al., 2005; Dominick, 1992: 81–118; Geden, 1996: 26–27). Moreover, they add with regards to the contemporary party-political far right – for example, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the French National Rally and the Italian Lega – that ‘[s]ome of the very same values the far right found in the nation it appears to have located also in the fossil economy, so that defence of the former and of the latter become one and the same thing’ (Malm and The Zetkin Collective, 2021: 54). Indeed, reviews of research on the contemporary far right and climate change confirm the largely obstructionist agenda of these actors (Ekberg et al., 2022: 69–94; Schwörer and Fernández-Garcia, 2023), though more research is needed to neither overlook the diversity of far-right positions on the environment nor their overlaps with other, non-far-right ones.

This article contributes to such efforts at analysing the complexity of far-right positions. Taking an energy-focused perspective on the far right's understanding of environmental issues, we dissect the far-right politics of degrowth rooted in an opposition to ‘the promethean’. After all, Greek mythology speaks of Prometheus the Titan who stole the fire and gave it to humanity before being punished by the God Zeus (while humanity ultimately suffered from the opening of Pandora's box). One reading of the myth is that ambition carries with it the danger of transgression of limits and its catastrophic consequences. Accordingly, the editor of the far-right eco-magazine we will consider below, Die Kehre (The Turning; a name inspired by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger's concept of the same name), describes the utilization of fire as the initial ignition of the civilizational development of mankind, while industrialization and consumer societies, on the back of fossil fuels, ultimately ‘unleashed Prometheus’ (Schick, 3/2020: 11). Considering catastrophic ecological consequences, Schick (3/2020: 14) urges a ‘reduction of the energy level [“Energieniveaus”]’. ²

Thus, the questions guiding our analysis are: if and how do energy and (de)growth play a role in articulating both far-right politics towards the natural environment in particular and its political agenda in general? To be sure, the politics of most parts of the degrowth spectrum are thoroughly on the left, with Eversberg (2018: 59) connecting degrowth to a ‘global-solidary universalism’ and Hickel (2022: 29, italics added) defining degrowth as ‘a planned reduction of excess energy and resource use to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a safe, just and equitable way’. A crucial step towards this is reduction in energy use in the Global North, with continued growth in some areas (e.g. renewables, health care) being more than offset in others (e.g. fossil fuels, private jets). Indeed, both degrowth scholarship and dominant parts of the degrowth movement view degrowth as more than ‘profane’ economic redistribution. Rather, it is an aspirational programme to rekindle global and domestic relationships around the question of what a good life requires (see Hickel, 2022: 169–290; Kallis, 2019). By analysing the far right's degrowth stance, its takes on a good life, we thus contribute not only to the study of the far right and the environment, but to degrowth studies more broadly. More specifically, the significance of our case study lies in (a) highlighting the exclusionary nature of degrowth politics of the far right through a conceptualization of how such actors imagine the material/energetic exchange between nature and society and in (b) pointing out the wider societal relevance of this case as we discuss overlaps with the ‘progressive’ degrowth movement.

Existing research in this area includes the longitudinal case study of the political party Swiss Democrats (Forchtner and Gruber, forthcoming), pointing to the interplay of opposition to economic and population growth, and Benoist's (2020: 40–41) discussion of the French situation which highlights degrowth ideas which can attract both left and right, such as self-sufficient localism, spirituality and naturalism in the face of a commodified, productivist world. With regards to Germany, the magazine Ökologisches Wirtschaften (1/2023) includes commentaries on far-right post-growth, for example, by Astrid Gläsel and Aron Buzogány who warn against the potential danger of overlaps and Yannick Passeick's observation that far-right post-growth rejects modern consumer lifestyle while calling for a drastic reduction in mobility and an emphasis on regional economic models. Similarly, Langer (2021: 21–22) describes post-growth as one theme in her analysis of early issues of Die Kehre, and Geffken (2020: 52–70; see also FARN, 2019: 17–18) discusses far-right criticism of growth as an expression of anti-modernism and cultural pessimism. Overall, these studies identify antimodern opposition to fluidity (versus the alleged stability of the region/local); ‘overpopulation’; and regressive anticapitalism as key elements of such a position. ³ In addition, Schmelzer et al. (2022: 171–175) offers concise notes on regressive degrowth politics more broadly while Eversberg (2018: 53) stresses the ‘political polyvalence of the notion of post-growth’ in his general reflection, problematizing degrowth-related arguments concerning, again, regressive anticapitalism focusing on rent-seeking and ‘overpopulation’. Schmelzer (2014) illustrates this polyvalence in his discussion of a conservative degrowth position, while, for example, contributions in Die Kehre point approvingly to the (‘mainstream’) German post-growth theorist Niko Paech, including his critique of the ‘mobile subject’ (Stein, 7/2021: 13) and his ‘concise introduction into post-growth thinking’ (Dittus, 7/2021: 64).

Responding to the above literature, this article offers a thorough understanding of degrowth within the far right through novel conceptual work and one of the very first finely detailed, systematic analysis in this thematic area, pointing out the partial compatibility between the far right's approach to degrowth and those of the wider (diverse) movement. We view far-right degrowth politics in terms of a specific current within what Olsen (1999) calls ‘right-wing ecology’ and Lubarda (2023) calls ‘far-right ecologism’ (for collections of contemporary cases discussing the far right and the environment in general, see Forchtner, 2023a, 2019a). That is, and as we will see in great detail below, far-right degrowth ideas emerge against the wider background of perceptions of an organic embeddedness of ‘man in nature’ and couples this with a belief in the supremacy of nature's laws which should also guide society, all utilized, moreover, in the Othering of political opponents and ideals. In its arguably most ‘extreme’ form, ecofascism, such ecology/ism might incorporate degrowth ideas, though definitions of ecofascist politics by activist/academic and self-described ecofascists vary too widely for definitive claims (for a review of debates and definitions concerning ecofascism, see Lubarda and Forchtner, 2022; see also Bryant and Farrell, 2024: 18.4). Whatever the link between far-right conceptions of degrowth and the relationship between the far right and the natural environment, these narratives point to a separation between ‘radical’ ecologism and ‘reformist’ environmentalism noted in the literature on green political thought (e.g. Dobson, 1990). Although neither public use nor the empirical material considered below employs this separation consistently, the actor analysed below would certainly consider itself to be ‘radical’, objecting to a managerial approach towards environmental crises.

Our empirical focus here concerns the above-mentioned German far-right eco-magazine Die Kehre. While we introduce the latter in more detail below, the magazine is part of the German New Right (see Göpffarth, 2020; for accounts of the German New Right during the second half of the 20th century and their ecological politics, see Biehl and Staudenmaier, 2011[1995]; Geden, 1996; Jahn and Wehling, 1991; Olsen, 1999). The New Right is ideologically committed to ethno-cultural purity along with anti-pluralism and elitism, rejecting basic norms of modern (liberal) democracy. Moreover, it is not primarily electorally oriented but consists of loosely connected networks of actors interested in metapolitical influence and cultural change. It first emerged during the late 1960s in France around the ‘master thinker’ Alain de Benoist (the Nouvelle Droite, separating itself from the Old Right, i.e. historical National Socialism and contemporary neo-Nazism). The New Right has as its point of reference intellectuals of the so-called Conservative Revolution who opposed the Weimar Republic, and in Germany broke with the Old Right politics represented by the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD, now renamed Die Heimat/The Homeland), founding new organizations in the 1970s, such as the Solidaristic People's Movement and The People's Interests/National Revolutionary Reconstruction Organisation, both playing small but notable roles in the early green movement.

In the next section, we further discuss the choice of Die Kehre as our empirical case, that is, as data which enables us to understand the complexities of present-day far-right politics of degrowth and derive insight relevant beyond the particularities of this case. Following this, we introduce the analytical device at the heart of this article, Bakhtin's chronotope, as a means to conceptualize far-right degrowth and make sense of how interaction across time–space configurations produces affect, identity and knowledge before explaining the qualitative, analytical procedure through which we analyse Die Kehre. In the empirical sections of our article, we reconstruct both dystopian and utopian far-right time–space configurations, the promethean and the idyllic respectively. We conclude our article by considering the wider relevance of our case study for the contemporary degrowth movement.

New Right data: introducing Die Kehre

Die Kehre offers a window to understand contemporary far-right visions of degrowth and related ‘ideal’ ways of living which aim to repair what is seen as modernity's radical break with nature – a perception that is hardly limited to the far right but speaks to wider parts of society and the green movement. Indeed, the magazine represents a far right which, even though not necessarily in complete accordance with mainstream scientific and political positions, is concerned about the natural environment and its protection. Its stance revolves around a particularistic, exclusionary understanding of an (usually) ethnonationalist ‘eco communion’ (Forchtner, 2023b: 4–8) between humans and non-human actors in a bounded territory. Consequently, the magazine's very first editorial asserts that ‘Humans [“Der Mensch”] do not live outside of creation but rather are a part of their natural environment’ (Schick, 1/2020: 1). Consistent with our focus here, the attention paid to energy use and degrowth in Die Kehre makes this publication rather unique within the (New) Right spectrum. Ideologically, organizationally and/or personally, the magazine has links to, for example, the AfD and the New Right ‘Schnellroda circle’ (e.g. the publishing house Antaios and the magazine Sezession). In fact, Die Kehre (and its publisher Oikos, which has also published, e.g. a collection of eco-relevant pieces by de Benoist in 2022) was acquired by Jungeuropa, a key publisher in Germany's New Right.

Die Kehre emerged in early 2020 as something of a successor to Umwelt & Aktiv (Environment & Active, see Forchtner, 2019b), a now-defunct eco-magazine with links to the NPD which was published between 2007 and 2019. Subscriptions of Umwelt & Aktiv were automatically transformed into subscriptions for Die Kehre with both editors signing a letter to Umwelt & Aktiv subscribers explaining the change. Today, and although not the majority position within the far right, Die Kehre acts as a central venue – having interviewed, for example, key figures in the AfD (Alexander Gauland and Björn Höcke), far-right intellectuals (Götz Kubitschek and Alain de Benoist), and activists and scholars not emerging from the far right (Derrick Jensen and Dave Goulson), as well as providing extensive portraits of, amongst others, the Finnish deep ecologist Pentti Linkola. Thus, it offers ecology as a meta-framework for the far right, stating in something of an illustration of the magazine's guiding thesis concerning energy and (de)growth:

All in all, ecology embodies more than just the search for a stable exchange between man and nature in order to prevent environmental crises, but it touches all levels of society (…) It is therefore essential for the political right to turn to the ecological and energetic questions of our time. In view of the situation in which we find ourselves at the end of modernity, a serious conservatism must be interested in conceptualizing the very system (…) which counters the liberal chaos of liquefaction and decadence with a state of stability – ecologically, economically and social. From the perspective of energy use, the necessary step is obvious: slowing down our consumption of raw materials [Stoffumsätze]. (Schick, 3/2020: 14)

While Schick's call for ‘slowing down our consumption of raw materials’ (resembling the wider degrowth spectrum) is controversial within the right – for example, the then leader of the AfD in the German Bundestag, Alexander Gauland (2/2020: 37), asserted that ‘the way to a pre-industrial world remains blocked’ and opposed ‘backward-looking utopia’ as ‘not practicable in reality’ during an interview with the magazine – such sentiment builds on a long history. After all, the far right consistently stresses its leading role in the early days of the green movement as ‘ideas of respect, protection and conservation of nature were always situated on the political right, up to the failure of conservatism after 1945 (…) after all, ecology means the primacy of nature and culture over machinations and commerce’ (Falter, 9/2022: 75). And one of the leading voices of today's New Right in Germany, Benedikt Kaiser (11/2022: 15), claims that the New Right of the 1960s, 70s and 80s understood ecology as at the very core of its theoretical and practical work: ‘The New Right of the present thus also has a forgotten “ecological” heritage - time to get to know it (again)’. Yet although it is true that the (New) Right has a long history of thematizing ecological problems, degrowth was not as central a concern in its publications of the 20th century, which instead focused on ‘overpopulation’ and the purported link between immigration and environmental destruction (Geden, 1996; Jahn and Wehling, 1991; Olsen, 1999).

We chose this journal alone (rather than including, e.g. Umwelt & Aktiv) for several reasons. First, Die Kehre is a ‘living’ journal (i.e. still publishing unlike, e.g. Umwelt & Aktiv), thus giving us up-to-date data in a single source. Second, it represents a coherent and rich case, with one issue specifically devoted to post-growth, and articles written at a fairly high intellectual level, offering ample justification of positions taken. Finally, and as indicated above, Die Kehre is associated with the contemporary New Right in Germany (unlike Umwelt & Aktiv) and well connected within the wider national (and even beyond) far right, something which adds to its relevance in today's debates on the environment.

Methodology: ‘[T]hrough the gates of the chronotope’

We reconstruct Die Kehre's far-right ecological visions by drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of chronotope (time–space configuration). Chronotopes shape our experience and offer a subjective feel for time and space as ‘every entry into the sphere of meanings is accomplished only through the gates of the chronotope’ (Bakhtin, 1982: 258). Drawing on the concept of chronotope as an interpretive tool to conceptualize the thickening of time and the responsiveness of space (Bakhtin, 1982: 84), and to structure our empirical reconstruction of the far right's politics of degrowth, we identify two time–space configurations. On the one hand, we reconstruct what we call the promethean chronotope. Here, there is no standing still as time moves fast, space is abstract and interchangeable, and subjects lacking a sense of limits. These are restless individuals who have lost their roots in the (global) circulation of energy and never-satisfied consumption and live in a dystopian world. On the other hand, we reconstruct an idyllic chronotope which revolves around the slow movement of time and the significance of place due to low-and-slow energy flows. Hence, localized and descaled existence moves to the fore as abundance and ‘the machine’ are not fetishized. Rather, this time–space configuration gives rise to a communitarian subject which inhabits a world of self-limitation, renunciation, traditional principles, particularity and rootedness in ‘natural’ national and regional communities. To a large degree this idyllic chronotope reflects an idealized past; however, it is not simply backward-looking, serving instead to envision an alternative future.

Developed in the context of Bakhtin's analysis of novels, the concept of chronotope serves as the ‘primary means to materialize space in time (…) All the novel's abstract elements – philosophical and abstract generalizations, ideas, analyses of cause and effect – gravitate towards the chronotope and through it take on flesh and blood’ (Bakhtin, 1982: 250). And while Bakhtin devised a system of novelistic chronotopes, the latter are not simply artistic contrivances, but a way to read history (see Bakhtin, 1982: 206). For example, Ancient Greek ‘adventure time’ features heroes who remain unchanged over time and experience their adventures in ‘alien’ space (Bakhtin, 1982: 100) while Bakhtin's ‘idyllic chronotope’ is characterized by a ‘folkloric time’, and a ‘little spatial world’ (Bakhtin, 1982: 225).

Being time–space configurations, chronotopes are, ultimately, subjectivity-creating device. As Blommaert and de Fina (2016) stress, identity is chronotopic as time–space configurations enable and sanction ways of being. That is, chronotopes are semiotic devices which facilitate the experience of and feel for time and space, and are thus ‘productive of subjectivity’, including the latter's affective dimension (Wirtz, 2016: 344). The understandings individuals and collectives develop are, in other words, always chronotopically organized, as being is imagined via and demands specific time–space configurations. Hence, chronotopes ‘orient users in space and time, offering them a sense of how to interpret their material and rhetorical surroundings and simultaneously enabling and constraining a range of possible performances within those surroundings’ (Milbourne and Hallenbeck, 2013: 403). However, while one chronotope might be hegemonic, this does not imply that a multiplicity of chronotopes could not exist. Nicotra and Parrish (2010: 230) stress the conflictual existence of various chronotopes and Wirtz (2016: 344) notes that meaning emerges through interaction between chronotopes. More precisely, her chronotopic analysis of interviews illustrates how different understandings of time, space and subjectivity are mobilized in often rapid succession, and how shifting between these ontologies produces affect, identity and knowledge.

Indeed, as we started to engage with the data, we were often struck by how semiotically ‘thick’ the connection between time and space were here, by how clearly a political programme emerged from a felt understanding of and interaction between two time–space configurations. Our decision to draw on the concept of and to identify chronotopes is thus due to both theoretical and empirical considerations as alternative concepts, such as ‘narrative’ or ‘discourse’ (the former having temporality at its core, the latter capturing a wider range of elements), provide a less explicit focus on the time–space nexus.

To address energy, growth and the natural environment in the imagination of the far right, we reconstruct the two chronotopes underlying the communication of the first 15 issues of Die Kehre (1/2020–15/2023), a quarterly up to 90 pages long which largely features substantive articles on a broad range of environment-related topics, from architecture to viticulture. In terms of analytical procedure, we, first, read all 15 issues to identify all passages which addressed energy (throughput) and degrowth/post-growth. We focused on articles which had one or both of these two, broadly speaking, as their main topics, that is, articles in which these two featured as ‘macro structures’ (van Dijk, 1991: 131) via which language users understand and summarize texts, for example, through a headline and/or lead paragraph. While we considered editorials and general articles, we did not include short posts (present at the beginning of each issue) and book reviews to focus on genres in which chronotopes are presumably most fully articulated. This resulted in a corpus of 70 texts (out of a possible maximum of 153 texts), with editorials being one page long and articles having about six to eight pages. Second, we familiarized ourselves with the data (reading relevant articles multiple times) before, third, coding the material. Here, we did not simply identify explicit occurrences of, for example, the terms ‘energy’ and ‘post-growth’ or quantify these two vis-à-vis other thematic areas present in the magazine. Rather, we reconstructed different time–space ontologies from which far-right degrowth politics emerge by departing from a process reminiscent of thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006). That is, our ‘themes’, such as ‘green growth’ or ‘overpopulation’, emerged from our focus on reconstructing the two chronotopes (inductive) by looking for instances in which the key elements of a chronotope – time, space and subjectivity – were presented (deductive).

The promethean chronotope

In the promethean chronotope, the idea of limits is present as something to be overcome. It implies a permanent rush towards transcendence and the prospect of an abstract, universal notion of time and space in which particularity has vanished and everything becomes exchangeable. In the promethean chronotope, the eschewing of limits points to perpetual growth, a growth which ‘can only be realized by transgressing every boundary’ (Schick, 2/2020: 9).

First, concerning the temporal in this chronotope, time is signified by ‘dynamism’ and ‘movement’, the hectic and erratic. Time is fast-moving and does not stand still, bringing with it the threat of ‘human burn out in the machinery created by him’ (Schick, 9/2022: 14) and ‘the total mobilization of all material and cultural assets (…) with significant ecological consequences’ (3/2020: 12). Thus, frenetic movement escalates, and readers learn that ‘the last 200 years have been an expression of a total raw material mobilization that is beyond any stability.’ (Schick, 2/2020: 10). Initially, this mobilization relied on

countless hours of ‘work’ lying dormant underground, waiting to generate dizzying amounts of added value. The transition from agricultural societies to industrial and consumer societies was correspondingly disruptive and revolutionary. Man had broken his chains, at least seemingly. Everything seemed possible, technically and socially. Consequently, this meant an exorbitant increase in energy and raw material consumption. (Schick, 3/2020: 11)

Such ideas in Die Kehre regularly draw on the thinking of the relatively well-known German historian Rolf Peter Sieferle whose 1982 Der Unterirdische Wald (The Underground Forest) identified a shortage of previously abundant wood in Germany around 1800 which led to a British-style tapping into its ‘underground forest’ (coal). Given the late Sieferle's move to the right (welcomed by the New Right, see Turnbull, 2021: 270f), this influence may be unsurprising. However, this influence is not due chiefly to political congruence but Sieferle's problematization of energy sources and his related energy determinism. That is, based on fossil input, everything becomes possible, or at least is believed to be possible. Indeed, in an interview with Die Kehre, Alain de Benoist, the leading intellectual of the French New Right, spells this out: ‘the basic logic of liberal capitalism, which is a logic of unlimitedness, i.e., gluttony (hybris), is incompatible with the requirement of ecosystem conservation’ (de Benoist, 3/2020: 34). Importantly, hybris is linked to the notion of progress, more specifically, a modern time regime (forward-looking instead of cyclical). As Koselleck (2004) noted, modernity fundamentally affected our perception of time as the future was no longer expected to be determined by past experience. This feeds into the rejection of ‘limits’ and resonates well with an ecologically minded New Right. Historically, this connects to ideas of the Heimatschutz movement (at the turn of the 19th/20th century) and one of its intellectual inspirations Ernst Rudorff for whom the world was becoming ‘uglier, more artificial, more Americanized’, as well as the cultural critic Ludwig Klages (2013[1913]: 14) for whom ‘[a]n unprecedented orgy of devastation has gripped mankind (…), the fullness of the earth withers from its [“civilization”] poisonous breath. So this is what the fruits of “progress” look like!’. In fact, it is worth noting that significant parts of the critique put forward in Die Kehre, and the far right's stance vis-à-vis the natural environment more general, echoes points familiar from Romantic critics of early industrialization, namely that the modern industrial system has reduced nature into pure ‘raw material, turning nature thereby into something exchangeable and fungible’ (Olsen, 1999: 58; see also Bryant and Farrell, 2024; Ditt, 1996; Forchtner and Olsen, 2023: 240–241) illustrating again the embeddedness of such a degrowth stance in wider far-right politics.

Second, progress is not simply a category of time, but also intimately linked to space. Indeed, before ‘progress’, there were agrarian societies which were rooted, lived within their means and abided by natural limits. All of this was transformed by fossil fuels, which enabled a ‘boundless fluidity’ (Schick, 3/2020: 12). For example, dependence on the soil for food needs was reduced, with technology and fossil energy injected to accelerate agricultural production. However, relying on such energy input, on ‘artificial’ acceleration of food production, might soon collapse if cheap energy is no longer available. Here, the neo-Malthusian worry over so-called overpopulation, about a limit which cannot be overstepped, resurfaces; that is, (too little) space for masses. Space is imagined as a container in constant danger of ‘bursting’ in light of capitalism's drive towards ‘unlimitedness’ and ‘overflowing’ due to ‘breeding and overpopulation in the third and fourth world [which] would not only mean hunger and death, but also unleash massive migration flows’ (Eichberger, 4/2021: 19). Indeed, not only have we already highlighted that such degrowthers stress ‘overpopulation’, but this theme has a much broader history within the far right's engagement with the natural environment (already Geden, 1996; Jahn and Wehling, 1991; Olsen, 1999 highlight the presence of this topic in their studies of the German scene in the second half of the 20th century; for a recent collection, see Leitschuh et al., 2020; see also Bierl, 2014; Röpke and Speit, 2019) while, amongst many, Macklin (2022), Dyett and Thomas (2019) and Turner and Bailey (2022) highlight ‘overpopulation’ with regards to far-right terrorism and ‘ecofascism’, as well as mainstream far-right parties respectively.

While this chronotope is hellish as it lacks concrete and rich particularities, might green technologies, a green economy, ameliorate this malaise? Although green technology is partially welcomed (ranging from the use of alternative energy sources to building ‘smart’ homes and with less concrete) and the machoism of ‘rollin’ coal’ (Daggett, 2018) is not endorsed, green growth is dismissed. Partly, this is due to its supposed effect on meaningful place. That is, the profaning construction of renewable infrastructure, including solar farms and, especially, wind turbines is ‘spatialized’, with horizons populated by wind turbines often visualizing it. Although the sanctity of the cultural landscape (aesthetics) is frequently mentioned, the negative consequences for biodiversity (the killing of birds) and wider issues concerning resources are also raised, even including concerns over neo-colonial green extractivism. Schick (1/2020: 1) summarizes this:

Wind turbines shred birds, bats and insects, biomass cultivation furthers land degradation via over-fertilized monocultures, and cobalt extraction for the production of »green« technology in the Congo leaves behind smoldering wounds, both ecological and social.

As such, and this is more fundamental than concerns over landscapes, green growth is dangerously oxymoronic. For example, a prominent member of the German New Right, Philip Stein (5/2021: 9) writes of ‘“eternal” economic growth’ as the base of ‘industrial and technical modernity’, with green growth acting as ‘a Trojan horse of capitalism’. Similarly, de Benoist (3/2020: 35), in an act of trolling the left by paraphrasing Horkheimer's dictum on capitalism and fascism, states that ‘[a]nyone who talks about ecology without questioning capitalism should be silent’. Thus, ‘a farewell to > progress < and growth [is needed] instead of its > green < repainting’ (Schick, 2/2020: 10). Although this situates the problem at the core of capitalism (which relies on constant growth), this New-Right critique avoids connecting capitalism to our societies’ class structure. ⁴ Nevertheless, it does position alternative energy sources as serving a productivist agenda. Citing the work of the 19th century economist William Stanley Jevons who argued in The Coal Question that increases in energy production efficiency would, paradoxically, lead to increases and not decreases in consumption, Schick (like many degrowth scholars, see Hickel, 2022: 152; Schmelzer et al., 2022: 87) states that ‘every new [energy] source that is tapped, every new resource made available for production, serves not to improve energy usage (…) but rather to increase a total energy reserve, whose exploitation doesn’t slow or stop but instead accelerates’ (Schick, 9/2022: 11). In short, renewables do not break with modernity's energy hunger and an energy transformation based on an expansion of, for example, solar panels and wind turbines to keep up or even to further increase the pace of our world, is painted in ‘dark’ colours. Indeed, from the viewpoint of Die Kehre, it is an illusion to think that technology can save the world from ecological catastrophe (Kubitschek, 4/2022).

It is against this background, that the opposition to climate change (policy) in Die Kehre has to be understood. That is, while outright climate change denial does not dominate, questions concerning the validity of the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change (which are viewed as justifying the profanation of place via green growth/the energy transformation) are still raised, and combined with secondary climate obstruction (Ekberg et al., 2022). The presence of both types of climate obstruction guarantees that the magazine remains accessible to the wider far-right in Germany and Europe (Ekberg et al., 2022: 69–94), though it is important to note that Die Kehre is seldom concerned with climate change as such. What we mean by this is that even though anthropogenic climate change might be accepted, the phenomenon becomes a mere symptom of a wider malaise, a problem which can only be overcome through fundamental cultural change.

Third then, the subject we see emerging from the promethean chronotope is one without limits and unanchored in any particularity, a subject which derives meaning instead from the pleasures of perpetual consumption (Schmidt, 9/2021: 23, 25). Consumption – and the German New Right once again plays with a trope also known from the left, in a kind of right-wing Marcusian ‘One-Dimensional Man’ critique – offers meaning to these hollow beings who lack Heideggerian Dasein. Indeed, the promethean chronotope illustrates the resonance of Heidegger's philosophy in Die Kehre (as noted earlier) and in particular his notion of ‘enframing’ (Gestell). The latter perceives the world through the lens of instrumental rationality, of technology (instead of authentic Dasein of a concrete Volk). However, this neither concerns mainly environmental issues nor the material limits of growth; ‘[I]nstead, he [Heidegger] was primarily concerned about the reductionist relationship between humans and their world’ (Rohkrämer, 2005 189; for more on Heidegger and the German New Right, see Göpffarth, 2020). In addition, these beings are hollow because they do not recognize that their ideological cornerstones – freedom, individualism and humanity – are all ‘children of modernity condemned to growth’ (Stein, 5/2021: 13). Similarly, Schick (3/2020: 1, see also Schick, 2023: 8) not only relates welfare and holidays to our increased use of energy, but also the end of child labour and the emancipation of women. Of course, although such questioning of achievements combines well with the far right's ideological agenda, it is not without empirical support. For example, Mitchell (2013) has argued that it was also because of coal – enabling the concentration of people and the effective making of democratic claims due to the power workers held – that modern democracy rose, while the subsequent rise of oil ushered in a high-energy, consumerist way of life. This, again, calls for nuanced critique of the status quo and the (unintended) implications of such critique.

Such implications are strikingly visible in the following quote by Kaiser (7/2021: 15; see also Fröhlich, 10/2022: 48; Redaktion, 9/2022: 58), who speaks of ‘the individualistic to Volk-denying premises of the Greens. They not only adhere to the foundations of the prevailing economic and social order, but also want to explicitly cement its existence (only in a more climate-friendly, “ecological”) way’. This Othering of Greens (here present as inhabitants of the promethean chronotope) has long been identified as a persuasive feature of far-right communication, such as with regards to representations of Greta Thunberg (e.g. Vowles and Hultman, 2021), though Lubarda (2023: 58–63) in particular has mentioned the crucial role played by both abstract (modernity, consumerism and liberalism) and concrete Others (such as international organizations and greens) in far-right communication about the environment. Here too, ‘talking degrowth’ remains thoroughly tied into wider far-right logics – after all, economic growth damages the environment, with capitalism being, of course, premised on growth. Thus, even green capitalism is problematic. In other words, what is required is opposition to contemporary eco-modernizers, including Green parties and their allies. As, for example, Wiessner (7/2021: 28) claims, the entire left ‘remains tied to the memory of growth, which today continues to exist in the illusion of “green capitalism”, and the taboo of addressing population development, the preservation not only of nature, but also of peoples and cultures’. Leaving aside a closer consideration of the second point (but see Forchtner and Gruber, forthcoming on this double character of far-right ‘ethno-ecological degrowth’ as well as Schick, 7/2021: 44–53 for another substantive illustration of this), the green and the left-wing subject is thus truly incapable of responding to environmental crises. At times, this is explicitly linked to Marx and productivism (e.g. Wolters, 11/2022). Although parts of Marx’ work can be described as such, this changes as Marx recognizes the price paid – something which Saito (2022) has argued results in ‘degrowth communism’. Irrespective of the latter, ecological elements are present in Marx’ work (e.g. see discussions around the notion of ‘metabolic rift’ in particular by Foster and Clark, 2020; more generally, see Löwy, 2015). Yet the promethean chronotope is populated with productivist subjects without roots, interwoven in and emerging from a spiralling growth. Such a high-energy-consuming subject is leaving the nation state behind while becoming, a citizen ‘no longer descending from place of residence or descent’ (Raskolnikow, 3/2020: 19). Relatedly, as roots are replaced by consumption and the individualization inherent in modernity, everything appears possible, leading to nothing less than ‘the self-decomposition of humanity’ already lamented by Klages (2013[1913]: 19).

Overall, this time–space configuration is driven by ‘too much energy’, resulting in fast-moving time oriented solely towards the future, a neglect of meaningful place in favour of interchangeable space and unanchored subjects unaware even of their hollowness. This imagination of time and space thus constitutes a dystopian ontology of limitedness and hybris, demanding ever more growth through the capitalist machinery. It is in contrast to such a promethean hunger that an idyllic chronotope expressing alternative visions of time, space and subjectivity is imagined, one to which we turn now.

The idyllic chronotope

In contrast to the promethean chronotope, the idyllic chronotope rests on a counter-Enlightenment rejection of the universal and its narrative of progress, instead reaffirming the idea of a particularistic re-enchantment of the world. Thus, the idyllic chronotope attempts to recapture what Falter (9/2022: 76) affirmingly notes in relation to the protection of nature in antiquity: ‘the setting of taboos: the grove or the mountain as untouchable’. Or to cite Bakhtin (1982: 225) once again, the idyllic chronotope signifies ‘an organic fastening-down, a grafting of life and its events to a place, to familiar territory with all its nooks and crannies, its familiar mountains, valleys, fields, rivers and forests, and one's own home’.

The temporal dimension of the idyllic chronotope is one of constancy, regularity, and a slowing-down of movement. Here an abstract, universal notion of time (and space) is rejected in favour of one which is concrete, specific and enduring. Accordingly, there is a yearning within this chronotope for an ‘organic’ and ‘rooted’ way of life, one which possesses a constancy and regular rhythm. In opposition to the metaphor of the running machinery, here, the ‘overheating’ of modern life ceases and human life ‘come[s] to rest’ (Beleites, 1/2020: 13). An understanding of ‘slow time’ – in contrast to the frenzy of the promethean chronotope – is made explicit by Götz Kubitschek (4/2020: 32), one of the leading intellectuals of the New Right, who has laconically claimed that ‘it is best if there is just little going on’. Yet despite its seemingly rustic and pre-modern inclinations, this vision is not purely, or even primarily, a rural one. Nor is it – temporally speaking – a turning back of time per se. Rather, and raised in the context of a discussion of arcology and bioregionalism, a ‘synthesis of the ancient with the ever-evolving new’ is envisioned (Dittus, 3/2020: 31), one the author connects to Guillaume Faye's ‘archeo-futurism’. ⁵ In short, and whether taking the shape imagined by Faye or not, this is not a romantic escape to a pre-modern past but rather a route to an alternative future.

Second, space in this chronotope finds its most concrete expression in a specific interpretation of bioregionalism, a ‘small is beautiful’ social and ecological theory where socio-political boundaries are purportedly harmonized with specific ecosystems (for a critical discussion of bioregionalism, see Olsen, 2000). Here, supply chains would be short/local, production would be small scale and energy use radically curtained. As Die Kehre understands it, bioregionalism reorganizes the land organically and, in the words of de Benoist (3/2020: 38), ‘privileges cooperatives, regional economies, short exchanges, local currencies, the protection of earth and landscapes – all the while facilitating the creation of local democracy’. Indeed, for its far-right proponents, bioregionalism connects a traditional, pre-modern, agrarian sensibility to a modern understanding of eco-systems and environmental management – all filtered through a conservative ethos of limitedness. Moreover, bioregionalism à la Die Kehre is one where urbanization has its proper place – sprawl and unlimitedness are the enemy (as is the case in contemporary cities), not density per se. This has the positive effect of reducing both humans’ footprint and energy consumption through shorter transportation networks (Dittus, 3/2020: 29). Thus, while the idyllic chronotope resonates with pastoral visions of the moral division between countryside and city so prevalent in nationalist and far-right thought (e.g. Bryant and Farrell, 2024: 18.5), one not limited to Germany as the well-known British case illustrates (see Turner-Graham, 2019; Williams, 1973), this division does not concern urban spaces as such but those aesthetically insufficient, ecologically harmful and symbolically impure.

Moreover, bioregionalism is said to be ‘ethnopluralism in its purest form’ (Eichberger, 2/2020: 17), a way in which a people and its culture grow naturally out of the land. Indeed, a people, culture, urban environment and landscape within a bioregional conceptualization are said to be naturally and organically integrated. The preservation of this particularity, opposed by universalism, is essential: ‘Man, community, culture, and landscape – in a word: Heimat – belong together and cannot be arbitrarily replaced or substituted’ (Nagel, 10/2022: 72). Modernity has allegedly torn this relationship asunder with disastrous consequences as visible in the promethean chronotope. Rather than ‘thinking locally, but acting globally’, in this idyllic what is envisioned is localism pure and simple, (bio-)regionalism in place of globalism. ⁶

This consideration of far-right, ethnopluralist (bio-)regionalism and localism points to notions of ‘particularity’ and ‘rootedness’ in relation to Indigenous peoples/a decolonial critique of settler colonialism. Here, resistance to ongoing disposition is connected to ontological difference, as in the cases of water as a living entity for Yukon First Nations in the Canadian North (Wilson and Inkster, 2018). Indeed, Nirmal and Rocheleau (2019), in their call to decolonize degrowth, repeatedly stress the importance of (re-)rooting in such place. We mention this here to raise a point about the extent to which particularity and rootedness in the context of indigenous resurrection might overlap with far-right themes discussed above. While we cannot answer this in any detailed manner here, we would, first and foremost, point out that indigenous peoples’ relationship to ‘the land’ is not necessarily based on exclusionary ethno-nationalism as well as noting that references to the particular/roots, even if unfolding in the context of fundamentally different ontologies, shall remain reflective about one's claim-making and committed to equality within and between groups. In other words, power dynamics remain fundamental when considering such similarities.

The idyllic chronotope is at bottom deeply sceptical (if not hostile) of anything but limited and localized trade. One of Die Kehre's authors writes that global trade itself is problematic, for it ‘expands not only technology (and therefore means of oppression) but also replaces local economic circulation with a global-capitalistic market logic. (…) As a side effect it furthers the mixing – and therefore destruction – of cultures’ (Raskolnikow 5/2021: 22). Besides the predictable opposition to the global, space in the idyllic chronotope is one in which matter is not out of place, where there is no crossing of boundaries, no pollution through ‘mixing’ (Douglas, 2002).

All this feeds into the idea of post-growth, with issue 7 explicitly dedicated to it. Die Kehre understands a post-growth world as one marking a ‘clear break with the liberal concept of progress’ and a severing of market relations from (liberal) capitalism. For Schick, bioregionalism ‘presents but one sub-category within a larger body of thought called “post-growth”’ (Schick, 7/2021: 1). What would such a world look like? Schick (7/2021: 53) suggests the following:

Instead of continuing to grow beyond natural limits, processes of contraction should be initiated, what is commonly referred to as ‘post-growth.’ This ‘postgrowth’ would then not only be integrated into the economy, but would also inform population policy, a policy that has as its goal the reduction of the human population worldwide.

Again, the idyllic chronotope would be one that ‘shrinks space and rolls back growth’; it affirms limits, both economic and population ones, which once again are perceived in terms of naturally given and container like as ‘too many’ threaten to overwhelm ‘containers’.

Finally, the subject which populates the idyllic chronotope is masculine in its ability to limit and restrain itself, to exercise ‘eco-asceticism’ (Forchtner and Olsen, 2023: 240). Accordingly, Wolters (13/2023: 25) asserts that ‘Since man cannot become his own God and Prometheus, he must limit himself’. Only via a subject able to curtail its use of energy radically will an ecologically sustainable world come into existence. Indeed, energy flows serve a decontextualization of subjectivity, while the idyllic chronotope limits, slows and recontextualizes. As Schick argues:

In order to avoid plunging into chaos, there must be a step-by-step lowering of energy usage. Only those technologies which use small amounts of material and energy can be used. Without a doubt such development would be tantamount to a revolution, because it would signify a fundamental transformation of the entire social system and necessitate an orientation towards traditional principles. It would be, in effect, the necessary [ecological] turn [‘Kehre’, italic in the original]. (Schick, 3/2020: 14)

While ‘self-abnegation and the recognition of limits are the ideological foundations of conservative thought’ (Schick, 9/2022: 14), principles such as self-limitation and restrain as well as asceticism are also present in the left as well as mainstream green political theory (e.g. Dobson, 1990: 73–93). This includes, for example, the degrowth scholar Giorgos Kallis (2019) who has argued for a ‘culture of limits’. However, Kallis is at pains to stress that such limits are not naturally given. For example, although the release of CO₂ into the atmosphere results in increased global temperatures (and suffering), humanity would survive this – with Kallis, however, calling for a collective, conscious (i.e. truly democratic) project of ‘self-limitation’ so to enable good living in a just world. Indeed, degrowth approaches outside the far right regularly warn against regressive potentials which can accompany them, in particular when related vis-à-vis the Global South. That is, de-growth must be oriented towards global justice and, indeed, recent scholarship (Millward-Hopkins et al., 2020) has illustrated that global energy consumption at the level of the 1960s could provide a decent living for a global population of about 10 billion in 2050.

In the case of the subject aligned with the idyllic chronotope, however, particularity in ‘natural’ national, ethno-cultural and regional communities, from which the non-rooted, non-national or ethno-culturally alien is excluded, is key. As such, it is a subject which recognizes that supposedly hollow materialism/consumerism has to be rejected. Here, the magazine celebrates one of the key conservative environmentalists of the second half of the 20th century, the German Herbert Gruhl, as the type of subject in tune with this chronotope. Gruhl, initially a high-profile member of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union of Germany left the party over its lack of ‘green ambition’, became a bestselling book author (warning against) and was involved in the founding of the German Green party before leaving the latter too because of his perception that it was increasingly pursuing a left-leaning course (for more on the role of Gruhl in the contemporary far right in Germany, see Olsen and Forchtner, forthcoming). For example, Die Kehre praises him for his

rejection of the illusion of limitless growth and the focus on the annual increases in economic growth (…) [as] a consistent ecological idea must necessarily be anti-capitalist or generally critical of growth. It was precisely this persistence in materialistic thinking that was one of the points of contention between Gruhl and the left wing of the Greens. (Wiessner, 7/2021: 25)

Importantly, however, to highlight self-limitation is not to suggest that the subject populating this chronotope is somehow ‘negative’ or ‘miserable’. Rather, and in line with Leser and Spissinger's (2020) call to look beyond so-called negative emotions such as anger, fear and hate in the study of the far right, there is love, warmth and hope for and appreciation of a (from these actors’ perspective) better world. The emotions which circulate in and through texts (Ahmed, 2014) by Die Kehre (and, we argue, related actors) thus establish complex relationships between various elements in the world and the far-right subject. Concerning the latter, this is a subject that derives its pleasure and meaning from ‘letting things be’ and rootedness rather than indulging in, and contributing to, a continuous alteration of what is the ultimate backstop: nature.

In sum, the idyllic chronotope is one of constant and rhythmic temporal dynamics, a slowing down of speed sharply contrasting with the frenetically paced promethean one. It is also one in which space is present as a meaningful, concrete and enduring place, with a bioregionalist vision as one potential realization. It is within such a time–space configuration that degrowth becomes a necessity, calling for a subjectivity strong enough to limit oneself instead of, supposedly, hollowing out via materialist excess.

Conclusion: far-right degrowth politics à la Die Kehre and beyond

This article's main purpose has been to dissect degrowth politics in a segment of far-right thought, a politics radically different from what is commonly associated with both the wider far right and the degrowth movement at large. In doing so, we hope to initiate a wider discussion on a more differentiated understanding of the relationship between the contemporary far right and the fields of energy, environment and degrowth than has hitherto been assumed. Our particular empirical subject, the far-right eco-magazine Die Kehre, provides a glimpse into such far-right visions. To grasp the complexity of Die Kehre's aims, we drew on Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of chronotope to reconstruct two space–time configurations. That is, Bakhtin enabled us to observe degrowth politics as it emerges from the interaction between two chronotopes, its spaces (interchangeable/profane – particular/sacred), times (forward moving/frantic – cyclical/slowed down) and subjectivities (hollow/unrooted – self-limiting/rooted), chronotopes which enable us to capture the ontologies underlying such politics, rather than perceiving degrowth as solely an economic issue. The first one we call promethean. Reflecting our current age, this chronotope embodies a dystopian vision of growth, environmental destruction, ‘greenwashing’, an insatiable thirst for energy, and consumerist, soulless and indeed, rootless, ways of living. The other chronotope reflects an idealized/selective-past-in-the-service-of-an-alternative future, and posits a reduction in energy throughput, small-scale production and exchange, limits, a slowing-down of time and compression of space, and the building of bioregional communities. Although this idyllic chronotope suggests a vision of a post-growth society which attempts to re-enchant the natural world, to repair the break between nature and humans occasioned by our modern age, neither its embrace nor the rejection of the promethean result necessarily in a sophisticated degrowth position by the far right. Rather, together, each chronotope summons a vision of what, respectively, a dystopian and a utopian future oriented around the question of growth entail. Based on the conceptualization of these two chronotopes and following our introduction of chronotopes as being also regimes of affect which shape the feel of time–space, the affective landscape of far-right (degrowth) politics too is more complex, though no less exclusionary, than traditional foci on, for example, anger, fear and hate suggest. For example, time in the promethean chronotope awakens feelings of stress, anxiety and alienation; space gives rise to displacement, atomized loneliness and uncertainty; subjectivity is unanchored, giving rise to irrationality and madness. In contrast, time in the idyllic chronotope gives rise to security, stability and contentment; space feels filled, joyful, peaceful and centred; subjectivity is well-adjusted and confident in an ability for self-discipline and restraint (for a related case of combinations of emotions, see Illouz, 2023).

In reconstructing these two chronotopes, we have furthermore indicated that the far right's positions on energy and degrowth have potential points of crossover to more mainstream (or even left-wing) ideas of the degrowth movement, crossover which has some precedent in the beginning of the environmental and peace movements in Germany in the late 1970s (e.g. eco-naturalism but also anti-colonialism, anti-Americanism and national self-assertion; see Olsen 1999: 97–108). It is thus in relation to this point of crossover that the question ‘why bother’ (with a minor German far-right magazine) re-emerges forcefully. As we have mentioned throughout, the politics of the left and the right concerning the natural environment certainly differ, including their concepts of degrowth. The former is committed to global justice and opposes the far right's concern over (usually the racialized Other's) ‘overpopulation’. Moreover, while left greens (at least theoretically) correctly identify basic capitalist logics as a driver of environmentally destructive growth, the far right's vision is at times ambiguous, at least in its opposition to capitalism when it does not clearly put the basic dynamic of the capitalist system (profit and expansion) itself closely under the microscope – rather than capitalism's ‘liberal’ or ‘global’ form.

However, even though this difference seems to be straightforward, we want to close this article by expanding on the potential crossover of degrowth narratives we have alluded to, pointing out where we see the threat of such degrowth communication and thus the wider, international significance of our case study. True, it is unlikely that Die Kehre will be able to implement its vision via a political party, such as the AfD. Indeed, research on European far-right parties (e.g. De Vries and Hobolt, 2020; Hansen and Olsen, 2024) has demonstrated how these parties’ vote-seeking strategy is often centred on articulating issue positions at odds with those of establishment parties but which enjoy significant support among a distinct voting clientele, such as climate change obstruction and a hostility to extensive environmental regulation (which is visible too in Gauland's rejection of Schick's position mentioned earlier), even admitting that Die Kehre's influence may be more profound within a broader swath of far-right subcultures (with its intellectual labour affecting, for example, far-right settlers, see Dannemann, 2023; Varco, 2023). It is similarly unlikely that progressive degrowthers will consciously draw on Die Kehre. Nevertheless, studying Die Kehre brings most clearly to light modes of thinking ‘the natural’ or ‘the local’ which are ultimately regressive. That is, by showing the function of degrowth (since the latter is widely perceived as ‘left-wing’) within a clearly far-right symbolic system, it becomes easier for ‘progressives’ to understand the exclusionary implications of what might intuitively appeal even to them.

We end here then with an illustration of the need for such awareness, connecting our analysis to survey data from an International Degrowth Conference (for the latter, see Eversberg and Schmelzer, 2018). The authors identify five ideological currents within the degrowth movement, from eco-radical sufficiency-oriented critics of civilization to moderate immanent reformers, voluntarist–pacifist idealists, modern rationalist leftists and the alternative practical left. Within their first cluster – eco-radical sufficiency-oriented critics – almost two-thirds advocate a return to the ‘lifestyles of previous generation’ with around half agreeing with the statement that ‘Man should return to his (and her) natural place in the world’ (Eversberg and Schmelzer, 2018: 256). This group is comprised of ‘radical ecology “movement veterans”’, and is an ‘extraordinarily homogeneous group’ whose views ‘converge more and more towards the pattern of radical ecological critique and scepticism towards civilisation’ (Eversberg and Schmelzer, 2018: 256). This current is also radically anti-consumerist, works towards alternative, small-scale local community-building, and identifies with the environmental, anti-nuclear and global justice movements.

Concerning this eco-radical cluster, there is nothing to indicate that this group of some 20% of respondents shares views normally associated with the far right, save that a majority within this cluster does not outright reject conservatives participating in the degrowth movement. What is striking then is how the elements of what we have identified here as the idyllic chronotope overlap with such eco-radical sufficiency-oriented critics. Both traffick in ideas idealizing the past; are civilizational-sceptical and critical of the basic thrust of modernity; are militantly anti-consumerist; advocate a return to localism and small-scale production and exchange; and articulate a position of ‘eco-naturalism’ (Olsen, 1999), that is, they look to the laws of nature as a model for the social order. The emphasis on small-scale production and exchange should be particularly noted, for it celebrates a local/regional and organic lifestyle which both left and (now increasingly) far-right critics of global capitalism have posited as a counter-model to the current world (see Lubarda, 2020). More fundamentally, both articulate, first, a radical environmental (indeed: ecological) critique of modernity as severing the ties between humans and their natural environment and, second, a vision which aims to ‘fix’ this break. In other words, members of this group might well agree with Die Kehre author Fröhlich (11/2022: 22) who identifies ‘the materialist worldview’ as being responsible for the destruction of natural and build environments as well as the ‘devastation of the soul landscape’, speaking of the ‘spiritual plague of materialism’ (Fröhlich, 11/2022: 23). As such, they might even nod in agreement with the previously quoted Klages who interpreted progress, civilization and capitalism as merely different sides of one direction of will – one which calls for ‘a radical change in mentality, an inner change in life [“Lebenswende”]’ (2013[1913]: 31). Such implicit agreement, however, carries the manifest potential for unintended, but nevertheless exclusionary, politics.

In sum, we suggest that the overlaps between this far-right vision and the mainstream degrowth movement needs to be analysed in greater (empirical) detail and more systematically compared. Only when accounting for the actual (and potential) complexity of far-right degrowth positions can regressive – particularistic, non-solidaric and non-universal – criticisms of liberal modernity and a self-destructive growth regime be overcome.

Highlights

• While the contemporary far right is commonly viewed as ‘productivist’, we offer a comprehensive and systematic analysis of far-right degrowth.

• We conceptualise two chronotopes (promethean and idyllic) – time–space configurations – through which far-right politics of degrowth become meaningful.

• While the contemporary degrowth movement is associated with global justice, we highlight the possibility of exclusionary and particularistic degrowth politics.

• We point to overlaps between some ‘progressive’ degrowth positions and far-right degrowth, and call for vigilance amongst the former.