What is it about?
It is not difficult to notice that most of the nationalist political forces in the Western world are hostile to environmental policies. This convergence of hostilities - anti-immigrant and anti-environmentalist - is not obvious to explain. After all, why would nationalists not want to protect the lands they live on and the air their children are going to breathe? The explanation for the phenomenon may come from a different vantage point - one that reveals the connection between the interests of capital and nationalism as an instrument of protecting those interests.
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Why is it important?
A lot of scholarly attention has been given to the relationship between nationalism and anti-environmentalism, as well as the relationship between capitalism and nationalism. Rarely, however, was the triad theorized together. We need such theoretical propositions in order to test them empirically and possibly be able to prove what many "red-green" thinkers and activists suggest outside of academia.
Perspectives
The economic elites of states have readily used nationalist sentiments throughout history on every continent in order to focus the working and peasant classes on an external threat instead of their exploitation. Why wouldn't they use them again, this time against environmental regulations which would hurt the profits of those elites?
Piotr Walewicz
Uniwersytet Kazimierza Wielkiego
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Nationalism, Capitalism and Hostility Towards Environmental Policies: A Theoretical Study, Polish Political Science Yearbook, January 2024, Wydawnictwo Adam Marszalek,
DOI: 10.15804/ppsy202425.
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