Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders released an immigration plan for his presidential platform, which included a significant climate component in that it would welcome some 50,000 people displaced by climate change.
In response, on Monday Tucker Carlson questioned the proposal in a way that fits comfortably with his decade-long embrace of white nationalism, asking “Why would a climate migrant have a right to come to my country?”
Now, to state the obvious, this is not Carlson’s country. But the question does reveal something about Carlson, which is that he considers the United States a place for white people like him, as opposed to being a nation of immigrants seeking a better life. (The indigenous people who lived here for millennia before European colonization do not appear to exist in Carlson’s conception.)
As folks were quick to point out on Twitter, what followed was a clear display of eco-fascism, with Carlson invoking a sort of “blood and soil climate nationalism” by complaining that welcoming immigrants (who were displaced by climate change, a problem for which the US is by far the greatest historic contributor) would be “crowding the country.”
And isn’t that, Carlson asks rhetorically, “the fastest way to despoil [the country], to pollute it, to make it a place you wouldn’t want to live?” (Because apparently the 50,000 people that Sanders’ plan would welcome to the US would be so much worse than the million-plus people that already immigrate here annually, or the more than 10,000 babies born every day in this country.)
But to answer the question: No, Tucker, it’s not. The fastest way to pollute the country is to allow the billionaire fossil fuel magnates that fund your website to continue treating the atmosphere like a garbage dump for CO2.
For Carlson, though, who says he “personally [does] emphatically care” about the environment because he does “actually go outside once in a while, unlike most people on the left,” the problem isn’t pollution, but (brown) people polluting what he considers to be his country.
Unfortunately, he’s hardly alone. Carlson’s rhetoric has been embraced by several eco-fascist white nationalists, including recent mass shooters, who have been so radicalized that they chose to murder Hispanics and Muslims.
Unsurprisingly, his Daily Caller, itself home to more white nationalism than it cares to admit, wrote the segment up uncritically as though it’s something to glorify.
And then there’s the Trump administration. Stephen Miller, who’s been steering the administration’s immigration policy, was exposed just yesterday for sharing a white nationalism website with a Breitbart reporter prior to the 2016 election, helping forment that website’s white nationalism laundering into the mainstream.
With the GOP generally and Trump’s campaign in particular recognizing that the public no longer accepts climate denial, we can unfortunately expect to see more of this strain of eco-facism, which is also emerging in Europe’s far-right parties.
But the fact remains that the bulk of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from fossil fuels burned by the US and Europe, during times when white supremacy meant it was predominantly, if not solely, white people who benefited from that economic activity. Yet it’s those in the global south, in developing nations, and from marginalized communities who are bearing the brunt of that carbon pollution.
So why do they have a right to come here? Because when you make money off of burning down someone’s house, the least you can do is let them stay in yours.
