Vol. 17 No. 33 (2026): Precarious dwelling. Everyday practices, caring relations, and meaning-making processes
Special Issue: Climate Change and Far-right Politics: Between Adoption and Adaptation

«I Don’t Need Climate Change to Be an Ecologist»: Far-right Ecological Activism, or When Climate (Almost) Doesn’t Matter

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  • Lise Benoist
Lise Benoist
Department of Human Geography, Uppsala University, Sweden
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/smp-17060

Published 2026-08-04

Keywords

  • Far-right environmentalism,
  • Far-right activism,
  • Climate Denialism,
  • France

How to Cite

Benoist, L. (2026). «I Don’t Need Climate Change to Be an Ecologist»: Far-right Ecological Activism, or When Climate (Almost) Doesn’t Matter. SocietàMutamentoPolitica, 17(33), 145–156. https://doi.org/10.36253/smp-17060

Copyright (c) 2026 Lise Benoist

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This article examines how far-right activists from groups within the French extra-parliamentary far right that have incorporated ecological issues into their agenda relate specifically to climate change. In doing so, it aims to further tackle the why and how of climate acceptance/denialism within far-right ecologism. The analysis of in-depth interviews reveals that, while climate change is widely acknowledged, the denial of its anthropogenic causes persists. However, the interviewed activists’ disengagement from climate issues also stems from their perception of such issues as further entrenching a political and economic status quo they claim to oppose, as well as overshadowing other ecological issues fundamental to their ecologism. This results in an ecological activism where climate issues, when not entirely absent, are deemed redundant, and are therefore relativised rather than simply opposed. The findings reinforce the importance of the environment/climate division and the obsolescence of the denier/non-denier dichotomy, while providing additional perspectives on the articulations of these dimensions. The article concludes on the implications of these findings, as well as on how far-right ecologists see ecological issues as embedded in a broader «anthropological crisis» that they aim to mitigate, and which should be further investigated.

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