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From conveniently hiding key climate science to flat out running misinformation campaigns, Climate Curious takes a look at the far right’s influence on climate. We’re joined by journalist and ‘Alt Reich’ author Dr. Nafeez Ahmed to connect the dots between techno-authoritarian power players, right wing politics, and attempts to stall climate action. Nafeez’s take? We shouldn’t give up on climate progress.
Created by TEDxLondon
Executive produced by Josie Colter
Produced by Ben Beheshty
Curated by Deesha Chandra
Hosted by Maryam Pasha and Ben Hurst
Communications by Tara Cooper and Issey Gladston
00:00 Introduction
00:15 Meet Dr. Nafeez Ahmed
00:44 Defining the far right
01:39 Far right and climate misinformation
03:12 The alliance with fossil fuel interests
04:39 Technological oligarchy and climate change
09:12 Hope for the future
12:29 Conclusion
Transcript
[00:00:00] Introduction
[00:00:00] Maryam Pasha: Welcome to Climate Quickies Bite-sized nuggets of Climate Goodness. From our TEDx London experts in under five minutes
[00:00:08] Ben Hurst: in this week’s climate, curious, we are asking how does the far right impact climate change?
[00:00:15] Meet Dr. Nafeez Ahmed
[00:00:15] Ben Hurst: Our guest today is Dr. Nefe Arnold, a journalist and author. With his work focusing on the converging powers in the far right of the political spectrum, nafe fills us in on the links between right wing politics and [00:00:30] climate misinformation, but fear not, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
[00:00:35] Ben Hurst: Let’s head over to Nafe now to see what there is. To be optimistic about, stay curious.
[00:00:44] Defining the far right
[00:00:44] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: Hi, I’m NFI Ahmed, and I am an investigative journalist and systems theorist looking at the intersection of some of the biggest crises facing humanity today. So I would define the far right as. Um, obviously an extreme version of [00:01:00] right wing politics, which is kind of politics, which sees kind of the social order as normal and natural and a function of everyday realities that need to be protected and conserved, whereas the far right takes that to another level and tends to justify extreme measures.
[00:01:19] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: To achieve some of those types of goals and also take those goals into an extreme kind of direction, which often involves excluding particular groups. [00:01:30] It can be associated with extreme forms of nationalism and nativism. Um, it’s often quite xenophobic and it’s usually associated with justifying violence.
[00:01:39] Far right and climate misinformation
[00:01:39] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: So increasingly in recent years, the far right has been linked to all sorts of disinformation around climate change, and it’s becoming a lot worse. I think as we look at the rise of the Trump administration, we look at far right groups in Europe and we look at even. Groups like Reform Party in the [00:02:00] uk, which, you know, the mainstream is reluctant to call them far, right?
[00:02:04] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: But many experts consider them to be outside of the mainstream of the center, right? And kind of moving more with kind of xenophobic politics and moving more into that kind of nativism and all that kind of stuff. The interesting thing with these guys is we find that there’s this consistent correlation where they see action on climate change as a danger.
[00:02:24] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: And that’s not that surprising when we consider that the far right is often about [00:02:30] using violence or extraordinary authoritarian power to maintain hierarchies in society. So they tend to naturalize these kind of dominant hierarchies where we would say that there are inequalities between white people and other minorities, not only within a certain country, but also between that country and other countries.
[00:02:49] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: And I think. Climate change is something which really challenges us to think about how the overall system isn’t working and that it’s unjust. It’s leading to [00:03:00] the destruction of our environment and that something fundamental needs to change. So the far right doesn’t like that. They’ve resist that, and increasingly what we’re seeing is that actually weaponizing all sorts of disinformation.
[00:03:12] The alliance with fossil fuel interests
[00:03:12] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: But there’s kind of this strange alliance between politicians who maybe don’t like migrants, don’t like Muslims, don’t like asylum seekers, even to the point of not, you know, don’t like black people and their kind of affinities. I. With lobbying for fossil [00:03:30] fuel industries, lobbying for all sorts of opposition to renewable energy and clean energy, and lobbying against kind of major structural changes.
[00:03:38] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: So a lot of the entities that we are seeing mobilized with that type of fund funding are actually far out groups. And one of the most bizarre things that I uncovered recently is that ExxonMobil. You know, the major biggest, one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers based in, in Texas, the United States, uh, historically [00:04:00] responsible for funding massive climate science denial, despite in the 1970s, their own scientists having actually confirmed the existence of climate change, and they then suppressed those findings.
[00:04:10] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: ExxonMobil has been seen in, in various other. Fossil fuel companies have been seen working with climate science denial groups like the Heartland Institute, which in turn have been working with far right racist politicians in Europe, such as the Austrian FPO, which is a historically neo-Nazi party, which actually had, um, [00:04:30] and still has today connections with active neo-Nazi groups.
[00:04:39] Technological oligarchy and climate change
[00:04:39] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: So there’s a rising phenomenon that we’re seeing, especially coalescing around the Trump Musk administration of what some people are calling a technological oligarchy. Others have used the term techno feudalism. I like to call it techno utopian fascism. I. I think what’s happening here is we can see that there is [00:05:00] increasingly a convergence of interests among this kind of new class of power where, you know, it used to just be traditional fossil fuel companies, but it’s not just them anymore.
[00:05:11] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: There’s also, there’s new kids on the block who own the big data. They own the big platforms. They’re making huge amounts of money, but they’re working in alliance with the fossil fuel interest too, and. A lot of the incumbent industries. So these guys increasingly are looking at this looming global [00:05:30] crisis that we’re seeing, whether it’s climate change, other types of risks, and I think they’re really worried about the danger of losing control and the risks of what does I.
[00:05:39] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: A really radical transformation of society adapting to climate change look like, and it obviously looks very different to the kind of societies we operate Today. We’re talking about extensive, cheap, abundant clean electricity for everyone we’re talking about regenerative. Agriculture we’re talking about even technology [00:06:00] used in terms of information and AI and precision fermentation, which produces lab grown meat without killing animals.
[00:06:07] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: Even these types of innovative technologies being much more decentralized and distributed and used not only to limit the ability of major companies to pollute the environment, but also to to kind of improve lives of ordinary people. And I think they find that a major threat to. Continued business as usual.
[00:06:27] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: So I think what’s happening here [00:06:30] is this technology oligarchy is seeing democracy, which has been the place where climate action has been able to thrive. You know, through protests, through engagement, through consistent, you know, decades of pushing and lobbying and convincing and persuading climate.
[00:06:48] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: Activists all over society have successfully actually pushed the needle and we’ve managed to get things through. And I think what these guys are really worried about is that [00:07:00] if all of these climate initiatives go through, it’s gonna endanger that oligarchy’s ability to control. It’s gonna endanger the hierarchical centralized structure of an industrial order that is premised on control of fossil fuel resources.
[00:07:14] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: So. The solution for these guys is smash democracy. So a lot of the ideologies that these guys are looking at, very strange ideologies that hark back to a combination of things from 1930s [00:07:30] Technocracy, which was a old ideology that kind of faded out, but it’s kind of making a comeback today to this kind of new, it’s called Neoreactionary.
[00:07:38] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: Ideas or what some people might call the dark enlightenment. Um, and, and this mix of ideas is essentially saying that democracy has failed. Democracy doesn’t work, really trying to essentially dismantle government itself. It’s a massive laboratory. It’s a huge experiment that’s taking place and is very likely to accelerate [00:08:00] destruction.
[00:08:00] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: As we can see, it dovetails. With Trump’s fanatical obsession, we drill, baby drill, and that’s what it’s about. Total deregulation for these huge, powerful entities, whether it’s technology, Silicon Valley or fossil fuels, to do whatever they want.
[00:08:21] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: So I wrote the book, alt Rike, the Network War to Destroy the West from Within as a kind of an antidote [00:08:30] to this really dangerous nexus between the far right anti-climate groups and you know, kind of supporters of eugenics and you know, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, anti-migrant, this kind of dastardly coalition that.
[00:08:44] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: Appears to be growing in force all over the world. My book really helps, I think, to understand who these groups are, how they’re working as a global network, what they really believe, what they’re trying to achieve. But most importantly is how [00:09:00] we can actually defend ourselves against these movements and create viable alternatives that have a real chance of actually taking off.
[00:09:08] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: In place of what we’re seeing taking over, you know, countries like the United States.
[00:09:12] Hope for the future
[00:09:12] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: I’m actually really hopeful about the future, and the reason that is, is because looking into these groups and how they think, one thing became really clear to me is that they have no idea how the world actually works.
[00:09:24] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: They don’t really understand the economy. They don’t understand politics, they don’t understand [00:09:30] society. In fact, they hate science, which is one of the reasons why we see Trump literally dismantling every single major scientific institution in the United States right now, which is insane because science was literally the bedrock of all progress that we’ve had.
[00:09:45] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: Uh, uh. Over the last century or so, if not longer, I think it’s gonna become clearer and clearer that this agenda of the far right cannot work. And the more that these guys get to power, the more that [00:10:00] it’s gonna become clear. I. That all they can do is tear things down and create crisis and chaos. I think there’s a real scope for viable alternatives.
[00:10:09] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: People are gonna be really, really desperate for answers for an inspiring vision of hope for the future. And I do think that the climate movements all over the world. Have the resources and the ideas to do this. There are experts and activists and practitioners who have been creating and seeding [00:10:30] expiring visions grounded in really cutting edge science, whether it’s economics, and you’re looking at heterodox types of economics from post growth economics to degrowth, even to kind of green capitalist e economics.
[00:10:43] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: There’s all sorts of. Brilliant new ideas out there and and exciting debates going on, which are giving people real tools to pick these up. We’ve already seen that people are experimenting with citizens assemblies at all sorts of scales. It’s even been done at the kind of international [00:11:00] global scale at the United Nations with the COP processes, and we’ve seen there that there is a real power.
[00:11:06] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: In bringing citizens together to deliberate on the key challenges that we are facing. And you can see that it creates amazing solutions that has actually impacted political processes in the world. Like we’ve seen that actually happen at different parts of the UK and in other parts of the world as well, where they’ve tried this process.
[00:11:24] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: So there are real actual, real things out there which are working. And at the same time, we’re [00:11:30] also seeing that there are these ex exponential clean technologies. And despite all of the barriers, despite all of the politicking, despite all of the obstacles, solar, wind, and batteries are scaling exponentially, and the International En Energy Agency has said that we have passed an inflection point.
[00:11:46] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: Trillions of dollars are now pouring into clean energy, and it’s like over weighing what’s going into the fossil fuel industry. We’ve passed that inflection point. It’s like two thirds. Is going into clean energy. So, you know, the change is happening, the change [00:12:00] is coming and it’s now unstoppable. But we have to make it work.
[00:12:03] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: You know, we have to make sure that we scale that change in the right direction, make the right decisions, and move as fast as we can. ’cause if we don’t, we’re not gonna move fast enough to escape climate danger, and we are not gonna move fast enough to leverage the, the power of these changes for prosperity for our societies today and for our our future generations.
[00:12:23] Dr Nafeez Ahmed: So we really need to get our act together, but I think the reality is, is that there is so much hope for the future.
[00:12:29] Conclusion
[00:12:29] Ben Hurst: Thanks [00:12:30] for listening to this quickie.
[00:12:31] Maryam Pasha: This episode was created by our superstar podcast team at TEDx London. Until next time,
[00:12:37] Ben Hurst: stay curious.
