Presenting a view of fascism as a complex power network that plays out on scales both large and small, Alexander Menrisky, author of Everyday Ecofascism, shows how extremist sentiments have crept into everyday language, stories, and ideas. He illuminates ecofascism’s narrative patterns and their easy permeation of environmentalist discourses, from back-to-the-land movements to the resurgence of psychedelic drugs, food localism, and pandemic politics. Here, Menrisky is joined in conversation with April Anson and Kyle Boggs. 

Alexander Menrisky is assistant professor of English at the University of Connecticut. He is author of Everyday Ecofascism: Crisis and Consumption in American Literature and Wild Abandon: American Literature and the Identity Politics of Ecology.

April Anson is assistant professor of English at the University of Connecticut. Anson writes and teaches at the intersection of the environmental humanities, Indigenous and American studies, and political theory. Anson is cofounder of the Anti-Creep Climate Initiative and coauthor of Against the Ecofascist Creep.

Kyle Boggs is associate professor of rhetoric and community engagement in the Department of Humanities and Cultural Studies at Boise State University and author of Recreational Colonialism and the Rhetorical Landscapes of the Outdoors.

REFERENCES:
Anti-Creep Climate Initiative

Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy

Tommy Pico

Jeff Mann

Gloria Anzaldua

Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God

Louise Erdrich’s The Sentence

Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog

Theodore Roszak’s From Satori to Silicon Valley

Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia

Ketan Joshi on lazy ecofascism

Mark Rifkin’s Settler Common Sense

Emily Martin’s Flexible Bodies

Everyday Ecofascism: Crisis and Consumption in American Literature by Alexander Menrisky is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.