"White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism" is a recent book by Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective, the latter being Malm´s co-writers. The bulk of the book was written shortly before the COVID pandemic, but has a postscript dealing with certain aspects of it. The title of the work is a rather obvious reference to Frantz Fanon´s "Black Skins, White Masks". Let me first say that if you are an early 21st century leftist of a somewhat more intellectual bent (but not *too* intellectual), this might be just what you have been looking for. Malm, a Swedish climate activist, weaves together the climate crisis with racism, fascism and capitalism in this near-encyclopedic survey of the White and Western far right and its hot takes (pun intended) on climate change. The authorial collective is named after the German Communist leader Clara Zetkin, who wrote one of the first Marxist analyses of fascism in 1923.
My own take on the book is that although Malm does say interesting things, I nevertheless felt strongly frustrated when reading it, perhaps because I´m a "recovering leftist". The left I used to sympathize with was very different from the early 21st century SJW-ish/identity politics/postmodern kind of left to which Malm (at least broadly) belongs. Ironically, I might have been closer to the real life KPD than the Zetkin Collective! Today, my mental universe is so different from the main author´s that I initially found a meaningful polemic difficult to even concieve, but it seems I just may have found the right wave length, after all!
Malm´s analysis of fascism differs in some ways from the "classical" Marxist one. He believes that the standard analyses de facto treats fascism as an alien force within capitalism. Fascism is either seen as a bourgeois response to the organized attempts by the working class to abolish capitalism, or as an atavistic pre-capitalist reaction. That is: if capitalism is left undisturbed, threatened neither by a militant workers´ movement nor by a feudal throwback, it will *not* turn fascist, but presumably develop "normally" in a "liberal" way. However, Malm argues, the present situation disproves this, since fascism is on the rise *in the absence of* a radicalized working class or pre-modern Vendées. Capitalism, it seems, breeds fascism by its normal dynamic. (I think Slavoj Zizek might have a similar take.)
Malm, of course, connects this to the unfolding climate crisis. In short, capitalism and modern imperialism are dependent on fossil fuel, making fossil capital the most important faction within the bourgeoisie. This dependency inevitably drives climate change, leading to social conflicts, wars, refugee crises, chaos and potential collapse. *This* is what makes fascism an inevitable product of the system´s own internal laws of motion, not just a momentary political tactic the powers-that-be occasionally resort to. Fascism is the last line of defense of fossil capital when the latter becomes a threat to human survival, yet refuses to yield. This explain why most fascists are climate change denialists, indeed denialism has become a central part of their message (topped only by opposition to immigration and Islam), and the more the crisis unfolds, the more pushed to the fore it is. The same is true of proto-fascism and indeed of the capitalist class itself. True, some fascists claim to be "Green", but Malm believes that this is just a kind of "green-washing". The voting record of the "True Finns" in Finland (who claim to be ecologically woke) shows that they really suppport fossil fuels when push comes to shove, in their case peat (of which Finland has an abundance). Likewise, the National Alliance in France consistently vote against all climate regulations, despite also claiming to be green (I note that France gets most of its electricity from nuclear power). Malm doesn´t rule out a truly green fascism at some point in the future, but current trends rather point towards a "fossil fascism". The program of such a regime would be to protect capitalism by defending the White nations against "the Other", meaning mostly poor non-White peoples, both those in the Third World and those already living in the West. To accomplish this, fascists will try to unite all Whites regardless of class. He believes that a substantial portion of the White working class has or will be won to the fossil fascist perspective. So will various "declassed petty bourgeois layers".
Of course, this makes no sense if you believe in a strictly materialist interpretation of history, and I think Malm realizes this. Please note that Malm *denies* that the colored peoples are responsible for the climate crisis, but if so, it makes no sense for the bourgeoisie to exclude them, if the point of fossil fascism is to somehow save capitalism. Then it´s better to promote mass immigration to the West, drive down wages, and use the cheap labor to make fossil fuels great again! Malm is brave enough to grab the bull by the horns, stating that perhaps fascism is at bottom an irrational phenomenon. It´s connected to White status issues and ditto anxiety. As somebody once said: "If a White man can´t be higher up than a nigger, what can he be?" Indeed, the Whites who vote fascist and deny the climate crisis might be psychologically damaged by strong narcissism and a Freudian death-wish.
Since the White working class is essentially written off in this scenario, Malm must call for new alliances, principally with non-Whites (including non-White workers) both in the metropols and the global south. His analysis is strongly "racialized" on this point. To Malm, fossil capitalism is an inherently White project to dominate non-Whites. It´s almost as if he believes in a kind of "bribe theory" from the outset, in which the working class struggles of the early 20th century was just a paranthesis. However, the wretched of the earth aren´t the only possible allies in the Malmian scenario.
Another is the imperialist state itself...
In the postscript, Malm argues that the capitalist state´s anti-pandemic measures during the COVID outbreak (including lockdowns and mask mandates) are a "post-political moment" and the first example of how the states somehow respond to the needs of the people. This positively bizarre analysis of the COVID crisis is expanded in another recent book by Malm (without the Collective this time), "Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency", in which the author calls on the climate change movement to capture the existing states (rather than overthrowing them in an outright revolution) and use their power to smash fossil capital. Is it really possible that Malm could have missed the enormous transfer of wealth to the super-rich that has taken place during the pandemic *with the help of precisely this state*, rather starkly revealing that nothing "post-political" is going on, after all? In "White Skin, Black Fuel", when Malm discusses the lock downs, he writes off those "declassed" by them as "petty bourgeois layers" ready for fascism - does this refer to, say, Somali shop-owners in Minneapolis bankrupted by the lock downs and then attacked by Malm´s Antifa buddies? Or is the chronic emergency so woke that it only hits Trump-voting evangelicals in the Idaho panhandle who own anti-gay pastry shops?
There is another potential ally to the climate change movement: Green capital. Malm doesn´t discuss this at length, but he does believe that some sections of the capitalist class might survive the destruction of fossil capital by simply capturing the alternatives, such as wind or solar. Might not *they* become part of a popular front with the Greta Thunbergs of the world? If not, why not? Perhaps its safer to simply take over the bridge...
As already mentioned, "White Skin, Black Fuel" frequently operates in a mental space somewhere to the left of La-La Land. For starters, there is nothing about China, the second biggest emitter of CO2 in the world. China is, of course, "colored". If the color is red or jade is perhaps another matter, but it´s certainly a highly centralized economy. India isn´t mentioned either, something actually admitted in one sentence by the author-collective. But India is *governed by a party Malm and the Collective should consider fascistic*. Unfortunately for their racialized analysis, the Indian Aryans are also non-White, but perhaps the strongly pro-Muslim Malm will one day write about the BJP due to its anti-Muslim policies? One also wonders whether narcissim and death-wishes are really purely White character traits, or whether they might also exist among more colored kins, among jihadist warriors, perhaps, the Chinese neo-rich or Hindu communalists...
As for overpopulation, Malm is right that the poor in Mozambique (his favorite example, since that nation was hit by a devastating cyclone on the same day as the first international climate strike in 2019) don´t contribute much to global warming, while being disproportionately hit by it, but China *does* contribute, and India will in the future, if the BJP somehow catches up with the CCP, meaning that an additional two billion "colored" people will enter the orbit of fossil capital. If Malm´s analysis of fossil fascism is correct, then the PRC and India will be just as big purveyors of it´s proto-version as Donald Trump or Hans Rosling, indeed, they might even become the first actual fossil fuel fascists (or at least the first really dangerous ones) since they are already in power in large nations (the CCP even being the sole legal party in China)! And what would stop runner-ups from becoming fossil fascists, too? Malm does discuss Brazil, but obviously only because Bolsonaro is a White right-winger. Why no discussion about neighboring Venezuela, the entire economy of which is based on oil? Indeed, why can´t there also be a "fossil Communism" (pun unintended) or "fossil left-nationalism" in the Third World *or even a fossil democracy in the Western nations*?
At bottom, the problem is that modern civilization simply can´t do without fossil fuel. White people want to keep it, colored people want to claim it, nobody (except maybe some seriously declassed petit bourgeois) want to abolish it, indeed, nobody but such people has any *objective material self-interest* in doing so. The idea that wind, solar and other exotic energy sources will make everyone in the world (all the projected 11 billion) just as prosperous as (locked down) middle class Europeans (OK, they have to take the train to Grönköping instead of flying to Phuket) is just another Green-leftist conceit. The future probably does belong to fossil fascism, and in a distant future even eco-fascism, but we might also see people vote in fossil fuel governments in democratic nations, ironically enough precisely because they are democratic and hence must respond to the felt needs of the electorate, rather than post-politically sheltering them in place. But yes, the democratic polity might decide on reforms Malm would find horrendous, perhaps even proto-fascist, such as less immigration, pipelines to Russia (or why not *Byelo*russia) and so on.
In contrast to the Zetkin Collective, I don´t claim to have any solutions to our present predicament. I do have a prediction, however. Barring a sensational technological breakthrough, or a massive and coordinated international mobilization in favor of a de-carbonized economy with thorium reactors (which would be extremely expensive and detrimental to the environment in other ways than climate change, but of course still worth trying if at all possible), what the world will see is a "bellum omnium contra omnes", or less eruditely put "use up the last fossil fuels and then duck", perhaps dominated by the Russian Federation and China, and then a general collapse of modern civilization, followed by centuries of tribal warfare and dragon-ships...
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