Tomaž Mastnak
Nazism and
Climate Change
321.64:141.7”20”
327.8(477)”2013/2014”
551.583:316.75
Abstract: The author argues that the urgency of thought today is about
facing the twin threats of resurrected Nazism and climate change. While
climate change is spelling an un-apocalyptic end of the world, the resurrection of Nazism is feeding into climate change. A case in point is the
regime change in Ukraine, where Nazi violence is being used to ensure
the implementation of a radical neoliberal program. The Nazification of
neoliberalism aims at escalating carbon economy, which in the current
situation in Ukraine is represented by the transition form “Fuck the EU”
(Victoria Nuland) to “Frack Europe” (Hunter Biden).
Keywords: political philosophy, Nazism, climate change, neoliberalism.
T
he Urgency of Thought was the title of the conference for which this
paper was prepared. The organizers invited the participants to present
our current work and, in order to prepare for engaging each other in
conversation, to also send in one or two articles, published or not, recent or
not, which would provide some background for those present in the conference. I submitted an article on the reception of Thomas Hobbes’s political
philosophy in Nazi Germany, and an article I co-authored with Julia Elyachar
and Tom Boellstorff on the current debate on native plants.1 The two texts,
one on Nazism and the other on what we called “botanical decolonization”,
seem far apart. In what follows I will seek to point out what connects them,
which I hope will respond to the organizers’ invitation to explore “the different temporalities according to which we think, the imperatives to which we
1
See Tomaž Mastnak, “Hobbes in Kiel, 1938: From Ferdinand Tönnies
to Carl Schmitt, History of European Ideas (forthcoming), and
Tomaž Mastnak, Julia Elyachar, and Tom Boellstorff, “Botanical
decolonization: rethinking native plants”, Environment and Planning D:
Society and Space 32 (2014): 363-380.
Tomaž Mastnak
| 23
submit, the (academic) futures we imagine, and the emergencies to which we
respond”. What disciplines, topics and themes, commitments and priorities,
what imposing objects are condensed in what we were invited to think about
and discuss? What is “the urgency of thought”?
One would think that “thought” is urgent when no one really understands
what is going on. Such a view implies, first, that understanding matters and
that it is produced through thinking; and second, that what is going on is not
really good. The urgency we feel is about the need to confront “bad” developments. There is an old Enlightenment belief that, when reason sleeps,
monsters rise up. “El sueño de la razón produce monstruos”, as the inscription on a famous etching by Goya reads. Nowadays we would probably have
to admit that when reason is awake, even more horrible monsters proliferate.
Meanwhile, in the country where I live most of the time but cannot bring
myself to call my adopted country, I observe a tendency to suggest that if we
see problems, the problem is with our thoughts. In popular psychology, one
is accordingly advised to “think positively”. In intellectually more sophisticated versions, the problems that pile around us are called “the new normal”.
When it was introduced into public debate, this notion referred to extreme
events that fell outside of the previous models, or were seen, in previous statistical models in particular, as being statistically irrelevant, that is, the tail
end of a normal distribution curve.2 I believe the reasons it has been taken
up so widely have little to do with statistics but, rather, with the implicit
normativity of the “normal”. “Normal” is a normative term par excellence.
It implies the inevitability of the problems, which speaks to the Zeitgeist – a
strange blend of conformity, helplessness, submissiveness, and exaggerated
marks of individuality – and reinforces it. The problems, “the new normal”
formula suggests, are here to stay. We should change our attitude toward
them. While I do not believe in a world without problems, I am disturbed by
the shift from striving to solve problems to accepting a problematic reality.
The two most important areas captured by the “new normal” are the boundless power of big finance, and what we refer to as climate change.
It would seem, then, that in many quarters the “urgency of thought” is less
of a pressing problem than the change in the way we think. In addition to
accommodation to the “new normal”, there are other sources of pressure to
change our thinking. Change still figures as inherently good and desirable.
In our field of work, that whiggish or Hegelian view, according to which
2
I want to thank Julia Elyachar for clarifying that to me.
24 | Belgrade Journal for Media and Communications #6
changes are considered moments of historical progress, and where progress
is equated with the forward march of freedom, is still alive and well. I think,
however, there is little reason to cling to it.
The world is in such a precarious shape today that the least destructive way
to relate to it is a conservationist one. This applies to the intellectual world as
well. So much of our intellectual life is fireworks: a lot of noise and glaring
light, and pollution. We are left waiting in smoke and darkness for the next
firework. I do not see the urgency of thought in running after the new and
fashionable. Whatever is good in the newest production is likely to stay, to be
picked up when needed. If such a conservationist (or conservative) position
trumps change and newness, what do we do then? My answer is not simply
to ground reflection in what came before, in the history of thought. Rather,
I see the urgency of thought in preserving historically formed traditions of
thought: preserving, not embracing. The role of a thinker is to be a guardian
of language. As someone who considers himself a political thinker, I consider the best I could do to be a guardian of political languages.
Guardians of Language is the title of a fine book about the grammarians
of late antiquity.3 Our world resembles in many evocative ways that of late
antiquity. Now, like then, the decline and fall of an empire spreads chaos. Today, the declining empire is an empire of chaos. The chaos caused by its decline is thus vastly compounded. The role of intellectuals appears to be once
more to preserve, conserve, save the intellectual common good from the destruction of Christian emperors and barbarians. (“Barbarians” of course is
a value-laden term, a subject of discussion on its own, which I only use so
lightly here with a reference to the Italian classicist Luciano Canfora, who
in a recent book has argued that we are being led toward barbarism by the
EUSA “exporting of freedom”.)4
My late friend István Hont often argued that when it comes to thinking about
politics, when it comes to political thought, there have been no advances
over the achievements of the eighteenth century.5 I agree with him, but am
3
4
5
Robert A. Kaster, Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and
Society in Late Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1997).
Luciano Canfora, Esportare la libertà: Il mito che a falito (Milano:
Oscar Mondadori, 2007).
Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the
Tomaž Mastnak
| 25
equally fascinated by the great variety of decline and the ingenuities of regression. Hegel seems to be a liminal figure here, obscure in many ways but
with a firm foothold in the Scottish Enlightenment. After Hegel or, rather,
after Eduard Gans, it all went, so to speak, downhill. One can learn a lot,
though, by studying the figures and forms of regression. (That is why I am
lately drawn to re-reading Marx, for example.) But in order to be able to
learn this way, one needs to know the historical, discursive, linguistic (also
the visual) material with which the thinkers of progressive regression had
worked, or failed to work.
Having made this aside about ways of thinking, let me return to the subject of
the urgency of thought. Speaking about the urgency of thought means taking
a position. If one is serious about the urgency of thought, one needs to take
a position against making thought a function of the “new normal”, against
taming thought with the “new normal”.
The “new normal” is hardly ever challenged. Accepting this formula is chic.
It is like a badge worn by those who flatter themselves and think that they are
not starry-eyed, that they are realistic, down-to-earth, future-oriented doers
and leaders. In their view, the “new normal” is the starting point for critical
thinking. As such, the “new normal” has obliterated the normal – the dignity
or indignity of different ways of being, and the notion itself. The “new normal” formula is taking away the standpoint from which one could see and
say that what is going on is “not normal”. Neither can we say any more that
this is “abnormal”. And it is not the word that is lost – worlds are lost, different pasts, presents, and futures. With such a loss, how can one be “critical”?
The “new normal” as the presumed starting point of critical thinking brings
thinking to an end before it has even started. Temporality is extinguished.
What then takes place in lieu of thinking is an activity the function of which
is precisely this: to occupy the place of thinking.
The writer Zadie Smith is one of those rare voices that have questioned the
“new normal”. “We can’t even say the word ‘abnormal’ to each other out
loud”, she wrote in a piece on climate change, “it reminds us of what came
before. Better to forget what once was normal, the way season followed season, with a temperate charm only the poets appreciated”.6 When we wash
6
Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 2005).
Zadie Smith, “Elegy for a Country’s Seasons”, The New York Review of
26 | Belgrade Journal for Media and Communications #6
away the memory of what “once was normal”, and relinquish our ability to
talk about what Smith calls “minor losses”, we are reduced to speechlessness
when facing the major, immeasurable loss that lurks in the “new normal”. As
a writer, Smith has recourse to licentia poetica. She invents a grand-daughter
who will be seven in 2050, and in answer to her question explains why in
2014 we were unable to notice, understand, talk about, and act in response to
climate change: “So I might say to her, look: the thing you have to appreciate
is that we’d just been through a century of relativism and deconstruction, in
which we were informed that most of our fondest-held principles were either
uncertain or simple wishful thinking, and in many areas of our lives we had
already been asked to accept that nothing is essential and everything changes
– and this had taken the fight out of us somewhat”.7 Is that “relativism and
deconstruction” indeed the background against which the absoluteness of the
“new normal” is being constructed? I do not know.
Zadie Smith’s take on climate change allows me to shift from thought to urgency in the urgency of thought. What I said about the urgency of thought led
me to the assertion that one needs to take a position against allowing thought
to be tamed by the “new normal”, which is a political decision. (Such a decision may be read as a call for a more thoughtful politics.) But what about the
urgency of thought?
Thought is urgent because we are quite literally running out of time, because
the ascendancy of the “new normal” spells the end of what we call the world.
Not “the end of the world as we knew it” – that is omnipresent, it has been
happening and it continues to happen all the time – but quite literally the end
of the world. We are living in the end times. But these end times are a disappointment. Not noticing – or noticing but acquiescing to – minor losses, we
are fixated on a major, on the ultimate event: on the apocalypse.
The apocalypse is, first of all, consoling. The apocalypse is an instrument
of denial and a polemical device at the same time. It is used time and again
against those who are warning us against the unsustainable and irreversible
damage we are inflicting on the climate and eco-systems. We denounce them
for being apocalyptic, while at the same time we take the measure of their
research and conclusions by means of the standard we imagine as the real
apocalypse. Thus we can feel safe, for neither is there nor can there ever be
7
Books, April 3, 2014.
Smith, “Elegy for a Country’s Seasons”.
Tomaž Mastnak
| 27
scientific evidence or – which to this frame of mind is even more important –
journalistic reports on the apocalypse. The warnings are dismissed.
But there is a more profound sense in which we – at least “we” in the “Western world” – are holding tight onto the apocalypse. The apocalypse is comforting, reassuring, not only in the sense I have just mentioned – that there is
actually no proof of an apocalyptic disaster happening – but also, and more
importantly, in the sense that, should such a disaster happen, we are reducing
it to the images of the horror we know. The apocalypse is our familiar world.
Even if the world ends, the familiarity does not, and in this sense our world
continues to live beyond its own end. If we are believers in the narrower sense
of the word, we may even rejoice: the righteous will feast at the Lord’s table
and enjoy eternal bliss.
This sense of invulnerability is callous, of course. And surely enough, while
we are facing the end of the world, no apocalypse is awaiting us. There are
those, some of my friends included, who – seeing how bad things are and
despairing of the majority that does not seem to notice, understand, or care
– pin their hopes on a catastrophic event that would be the wake up call, eyeopener, forcing us, humanity, to change our course. These are vain hopes. Or,
take another example: the great Leviathan, symbolizing the state, is being
slaughtered, but there will be no millenarian banquet. This slaughter is not for
the blessed to feast upon. At best it is for the ultra-rich and mighty to profit
from. There may have been a big bang in the beginning, but there will not be
one at the end. The world, indeed, is ending “not with a bang but a whimper”.
A much more apt image or, rather, a precedent (even though on a limited
scale) is the end of the Pueblo Indians civilization. The archeological evidence indicates that a prolonged drought ended in horrible violence, to all
appearance involving ritual cleansing and murder, whereby we can only
speculate about where the survivors had gone. The people disappeared. I
had a chance to talk this over with James Brooks and William deBuys, who
both wrote about it,8 and a short summary runs as follows: Big disasters like
8
Cf. James F. Brooks, “Women, Men, and Cycles of Evangelism in
the Southwest Borderlands, A.D. 750 to 1750”, American Historical
Review 118. 3 (2013); William deBuys, A Great Aridness: Climate
Change and the Future of the American Southwest (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011), chap. 3.
28 | Belgrade Journal for Media and Communications #6
floods,9 fires, or earthquakes – the events we used to, but cannot any longer,
call “natural disasters”10 – bring up the best in people, solidarity, at least in
the immediate aftermath. A prolonged drought has the opposite effect. What
it brings about is a slow chipping away of whatever social cohesion and
solidarity there was, the worst in people comes to the fore, and while time is
running out one has all the time to observe in minor detail the irritating traits
and hateful behavior of the neighbor; one is growing to hate one’s neighbor: hate builds up and leads to destruction. We have here the real “state of
exception”.11
This is one side of my understanding of the urgency of thought. The other
side is more directly political, but it feeds into the destruction of climate and
eco systems. This other side is the spread of chaos and lawlessness, disorder and anarchy. These are the words Franz Neumann used in his Behemoth
9
10
11
The conference took place at the time of catastrophic floods in Serbia
and Bosnia. In fact, a few days prior to the beginning of the conference
it was not certain whether the conference would take place at all. As it
turned out, Belgrade was spared, and from Kalemegdan, the fortress
above the confluence of the rivers Sava and Danube, we were able
to watch the brownish-yellow Sava joining the blue Danube, and the
Danube flowing further east toward the Black Sea (to which the US
navy was ordered in support of the Kiev junta) in two colors.
The Anthropocene has obliterated all talk about natural disasters. One
should now rather talk about disasters visiting “nature” as a result of the
all-pervasive and out-of-control human agency. During the conference,
some of us learned that, especially in Bosnia, the people afflicted by
the floods had blamed the floods on the American manipulation of the
weather. Such a view of the US should give pause to those Washington
apologists who have become accustomed to citing Bosnia as a success
story of American humanitarian interventionism. The point here,
however, is that such a view of the cause of the floods should not be
routinely dismissed as yet another “conspiracy theory” because it
realistically identifies human agency at work in bringing that disaster
about. The specific identification of the agency as American is not so
off the mark as it might seem if we consider that the US has been the
biggest polluter and remains the most determined opponent of any
serious international action to deal with climate change.
Walter Benjamin, Thesen über den Begriff der Geschichte, thesis VIII
(“Der Ausnahmezustand als Normalfall”). The thesis was discussed in
the conference by Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin and Marc Nichanian (see in
this volume).
Tomaž Mastnak
| 29
to describe the Nazi non-state.12 For the system of coercion, which Nazism
undoubtedly was, was not a state. In our world today, the state is being progressively deconstructed or destroyed, while the most worrisome feature of
political developments is indeed the resurrection of Nazism. What is most
worrying is the emerging articulation of the “empire of chaos”13 with neoliberalism, and Nazism. This articulation is transpiring in the current situation
in Ukraine.
A very rough outline of developments that brought about the war along the
Russian border is as follows: As part of its Drang nach Osten after the end of
the Cold War, the US had invested USD 5 billion into the “promotion of democracy” in, i.e., into the destabilization of, Ukraine. In preparation for the
regime change, Nazi militias were organized, trained, and equipped. They
were the shock troops in the violent overthrow of the elected government,
and their representatives were incorporated in to the post-coup unelected
government, holding especially strong positions in its repressive sector. The
US-picked usurper of the post of Prime Minister hastened to sign a loan
treaty with the IMF, letting it be known in advance that he was going to accept all the harsh conditions.
The south-eastern part of Ukraine, for reasons I cannot discuss here, refused
to recognize what they saw, and continue to see, as a Nazi junta. The IMF
announced it would not release the loan unless the Kiev regime controlled
the whole territory. Toward that goal, the coup government, unable to rely on
the army – which after all is a state apparatus and as such also in principle
an obstacle to neo-liberal expansion – set up a para-state repressive force.
This force consists of reorganized Nazi militias, rebranded as the National
Guard, to which are added private armed forces and death squads organized
by oligarchs14 and right wing politicians, as well as foreign mercenaries. In
12
13
14
Franz Neumann, Behemoth: the structure and practice of national
socialism (Toronto, New York: Oxford University Press, 1942).
Referring to the US, this phrase is often used by Pepe Escobar in his
analyses in the Asia Times. See also Sergio Cararo, “Iraq e Ucraina:
I ‘destibilizattori creativi’”, Contropiano, 17 June 2014, accessed
at <http://contropiano.org/editioriali/item/24686-iraq-e-ucraina-idestabilizzatori-creativi> on June 22, 2014.
Prominent among these oligarchs is Igor Kolomoisky. His right hand,
Boris Filatov, is on record as saying: “In Ukraine, there is no state. It is
only the patriots fighting against shitheads”. Cited in Franco Fracassi,
“Kolomoisky, l’oligarcha a cui è affidata la repressione”, Globalist,
30 | Belgrade Journal for Media and Communications #6
tune with Obama’s new ways of waging foreign wars (a true revolution, for
which he has not been given due credit), the efforts of this medley of organized violence in Eastern Ukraine are supported, advised, and coordinated
by the FBI and the CIA – whose offices were established in Kiev, where the
US Deputy Secretary of Defense was also dispatched – as well as by personnel from some allied nations.15
Just as the protestors in the demonstrations that led to the violent overthrow
of the elected government were not all Nazis, the agglomeration of armed
forces fighting the self-declared People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk
are not composed exclusively of Nazis. But even if a minority in numerical
terms, the Nazis were the decisive force in the coup and are strategically
placed shock troops in paramilitary and military actions in Odessa and in
Donbas, in the front line of the crimes against the civilian population.16
The chain of events, the logic of developments in Ukraine is clearly visible: the creation of chaos – the adoption of a militant neoliberal program –
(para)military action spearheaded by Nazis. Whatever might be the personal
motives and agendas of the Nazi fighters, their action, openly encouraged by
the IMF, is supposed to create the conditions for the implementation of the
IMF-dictated neoliberal program. The question we need to ask ourselves,
facing these developments, is whether what we see is a prefiguration of the
future. Can the neoliberal model survive without Nazi violence, without
nazification?17
15
16
17
9 June 2014, accessed at < http://popoff.globalist.it/Detail_News_
Display?ID=104955>, on July 5, 2014.
Cf. Andrew Korybko, “Sikorski and Dziewilski: The Strategy and
Tactics of the Neo-Commonwealth”, Voltaire Network, 14 June 2014,
accessed at < http://www.voltairenet.org/article184283.html> on June
22, 2014.
In an unprecedented complete Gleichschaltung, western mainstream
media and politicians have summarily dismissed any talk about the
resurrection of Nazism in Ukraine as Russian propaganda and imposed
a near total blackout on any information that might cast doubt on the
western propaganda about Ukraine. I cannot enter here the discussion
about the nature of power in Russia.
I speak of nazification, not fascization, because of the difference
between Italian fascism and German Nazism. Ideological and
iconographic elements that build up the identity of today’s
Ukrainian Nazis are those which Italian fascists had criticized in
Tomaž Mastnak
| 31
How does the neoliberal nazification of Ukraine relate to the destruction of
ecological and climate systems? One simple detail may show the link: the
appointment of Hunter Biden, the US Vice President’s son, as one of the directors of the Burisma Holdings, the largest Ukrainian private gas producer.
The appointment followed Biden the father’s visit to Kiev (the escalation of
what was initially a crisis into a war was marked by visits of US high officials
to Kiev). As such, the appointment could be seen as funny, given the outcry
about corruption during the campaign to remove President Janukovič from
power: has the US adopted a homeopathic approach to fighting corruption
with corruption? I am afraid this matter is more serious. PR talk about “transparency, corporate governance and responsibility” aside, Biden the son, a
lawyer, was tasked with “international expansion and other priorities”.18
When it comes to the “production of gas” in Ukraine, any “expansion” can
only point toward the exploitation of shale gas. Since there is a strong opposition to hydraulic fracturing in Europe both on the political level and among
the public, this opposition has to be broken before the gas could be accessed.
This is precisely what is happening in Ukraine, and it is one of the central
issues in the current war. In the US policy toward Europe in general and
Ukraine in particular, we are witnessing the transition from “Fuck the EU”
to “Frack Europe”, the progress in action personified by Victoria Nuland and
Hunter Biden. The main deposits of shale gas are in eastern Ukraine.19
18
19
the contemporary German Nazi movement. Cf. Delio Cantimori,
“Note sul nazionalsozialismo”, in Carl Schmitt, Principii politici del
nazionalsocialismo, ed. Delio Cantimori (Firenze: G.C. Sansoni, 1935).
Accessed at <http://burisma.com/hunter-biden-joins-the-teamof-burisma-holdings/> on May 13, 2014. In Dispatch News Desk
translation, “Hunter Biden will head legal unit and will provide support
for the Company among international organizations”. Accessed at
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38486.htm on May 13,
2014.
Ironically, opening Ukraine to the “exploration” of shale gas deposits
goes back to ousted President Janukovič. The piece that was missing,
and which fell in place with the coup, was the IMF loan. See Nat Parry,
“Beneath Ukraine Crisis: Shale Gas”, Consortiumnews.com, April 24,
2014, accessed at < http://www.globalresearch.ca/beneath-the-ukrainecrisis-shale-gas/5379228> on June 10, 2014. See also Franco Fracassi,
“Gas, nazi e media: la verità sula guerra”, Sinistrainrete, 19 June 2014,
accessed at < http://www.sinistrainrete.info/estero/3831-franco-fracassigas-nazi-e-media-la-verita-sulla-guerra.html> on July 6, 2014; Olga
Chetverikova, “Donbass: Russians Subject to Unparalleled Ethnic
32 | Belgrade Journal for Media and Communications #6
If this transition to fracking Europe is accomplished, Europe will undergo a
geomorphic change. In this regard – more than with reconfigurations of geopolitical alliances alone – the shape of the world’s future indeed depends on
the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine.20 On the surface, we will witness an
escalation of carbon economy,21 as well as of “carbon democracy”.22 And
since this escalation of carbon economy/democracy is tied to neoliberalism,
and neoliberalism is enforced, maintained, and spread through a revitalization of Nazism, we will end up with a direct link between the resurrection of
Nazism and global warming. The urgency of thought today is about facing
this twin threat.
Tomaž Mastnak is a Director of Research at the Institute of Philosophy of
the Center for Scientific Research at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and
Arts in Ljubljana. A political scientist, sociologist, writer, and civil society
activist, he was also an editor of major journals, a major force in the Slovene
political scene, and later worked as director of the Office of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in New York. Among his many books are Crusading Peace: Christendom, the Muslim World, and Western Political Order
(Berkeley in Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002); Evropa:
med evolucijo in evtanazijo (Ljubljana: Studia Humanitatis, 1998); Orobba
Wa Tadmeer Al Akhar: Al Honood Al Homr Wal Atrak Wal Bosnawyoun [Europe and the Other: The Indians, the Turks, and the Bosnians] (Kairo: Misr
Al Arabiyya, 1995).
20
21
22
Cleansing”, Strategic Culture Foundation, 6 July 2014, accessed at <
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/07/06/donbass-russianssubject-unparalleled-ethnic-cleansing.html> on July 6, 2014.
Cf. Sergej Glaz’ev, “Začem Amerike Majdan?” Argumenty Nedeli,
No. 21, 10 June 2014, accessed at < http://argumenti.ru/toptheme/
n441/344574> on June 10, 2014.
The same result will follow the Russian strategic shift to reorient oil
and gas exports to China, which envisages a joint Chinese-Russian
development of eastern Siberia. Such a development may well
accelerate the massive release of methane from the East Siberian Arctic
Shelf. Cf. Dahr Jamail, “Are We Falling of the Climate Precipice:
Scientists Consider Extinction”, Tomgram, 17 December 2013,
accessed at < http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175785/tomgram%3A_
dahr_jamail%2C_the_climate_change_scorecard/> on May 10, 2014.
Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of
Oil (London: Verso, 2011).
Tomaž Mastnak
| 33