The Zetkin Collective is an ecosocialist group of scholars and activists working primarily on the political ecologies of the far right. Originally formed around the Human Ecology division at Lund University in the summer of 2018, the Zetkin Collective is now internationally based. Our first book, with Andreas Malm, was White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism (Verso, 2021).
Thinking, discussing and writing together, we analyse the ascendence of the far right in times of climate collapse. You can find our latest collective work here.
We're happy to announce that our new book, The Great Driving Right Show: Cars, Crisis, and the Rise of Fossil Fascism, has been published by Verso!
Three years ago, it started as an essay on the growing wave of far-right protest and conspiracism which, having incubated during the pandemic, increasingly centred on automobility: from low-emission zones and 15-minute cities to supposed globalist plots to take away our cars and trap us in our neighbourhoods. As we followed these developments, we came to see that they were connected to much broader transformations in contemporary politics, including mutations of climate denial and intensifying fascisation.
Our study of the far right, political ecology and political economy centers on the Euro-Atlantic world, with a particular focus on the UK, Germany, Canada, and the United States. The book shows how, as the climate crisis worsens, the political right constructs an 'inverted crisis' in which climate action – not climate change – represents the gravest existential threat. The inverted crisis, we argue, is the far right’s conjunctural response to an accelerating organic crisis of capitalism and ecology. We show how its anti-ecological and pro-car politics unites diverse actors, mainstreams once fringe positions and drives the entire political spectrum to the right.
In sum, The Great Driving Right Show examines the spectacular success of the far right in constructing conspiratorial crises and combating the progressive push towards a green transition in the post-pandemic conjuncture. Tracing the place of the car in the evolution of capitalism, China's electrification, Trump's reelection and Elon Musk's role in it, farmers' protests and freedom convoys, and an increasingly militarized border regime premised on ‘remigration’, it reveals how our politics and climate are being taken to new extremes.
We are happy to be in touch! Reach out to us via email at thezetkincollective@gmail.com.
