German National Identity and the Mainstreaming of Right-Wing Ecology

Right-wing ecological ideas began to seep into more mainstream conservatism during the 1980s and 1990s. Reaching a peak during the debate on political asylum and immigration in German in the late 1980s and early 1990s, migration was sometimes conceptualized as an environmental problem. Immigrants and asylum seekers were identified with conditions destructive to the local environment (e.g., immigration as threatening to Germany’s environmental carrying capacity), while simultaneously described in terms that resembled the most fearful, harsh parts of the natural world (“floods of refugees,” “swarms,” “locusts”). Moreover, within this discourse, immigrants and asylum seekers were said to overburden or put stress on Germany’s environment, not merely because immigrants supposedly tax scarce national resources, but rather because it was claimed that environmental solutions depend on a heightened environmental consciousness only found in those who are “native” and organically connected to a particular homeland. This chapter shows that right-wing ecological ideas have been embedded in a larger debate on German identity, with one understanding of identity forcefully reflecting an ethno-cultural understanding of Germanness. Consequently, although right-wing ecological themes have been most consistently expressed by parties and groups of the far right, right-wing ecological discourse has not been limited to these groups.