Hyper-Nationalism, Neo-Fascism and the Destruction of Nature: Part-2
(Translated into English from Orginal Bengali Text)
Neo-Fascism, Nationalism and Resource Extraction
The relationship between fascism and nature is historically contradictory. Agrarian romanticism, organicism and elements of environmental thought entered German nationalist politics and Nazi ideology. The language of "blood and soil" associated national identity with land, agriculture and rural life. Yet Nazi Germany simultaneously pursued massive industrialisation, road-building, automobile and aircraft production, chemical industries, weapons manufacturing, and military expansion. A regime can thus celebrate nature symbolically while destroying ecological systems materially. Nature can forming the basis of ecological politics. The historical lesson is important: political celebrations of nature do not necessarily entail its defence.
The same contradiction appears in contemporary nationalism. Extreme nationalist politics often portrays nature as part of national heritage and pride while pursuing policies that intensify extraction from forests, rivers, and land, especially through mining. In contemporary India, political rhetoric frequently invokes civilisational pride, traditional agriculture, rivers, forests and cultural-religious relations with nature. At the same time, regulatory frameworks governing forests, minerals, wildlife and energy have undergone far-reaching changes. The political significance lies not in any one amendment, but in the broader direction of policy.
On 8 September 2025, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change issued an Office Memorandum exempting mining projects involving specified atomic, critical and strategic minerals from public consultation on the grounds of national defence, security and strategic considerations. However, the projects remain subject to central-level appraisal. This matters because the government is increasingly incorporating minerals required for military technologies, renewable energy systems, electric vehicles, and digital infrastructure into national security frameworks. The ecological transition is thereby opening a new strategic frontier. The same territories become sites of conservation, mineral extraction, infrastructure development and geopolitical strategy, while the language of national necessity turns ecological conflict into a security issue.
The Contradiction of the Green Transition
Renewable energy is indispensable to any serious attempt to reduce fossil-fuel dependence. Yet replacing fossil fuels with renewable technologies does not automatically transform the social relations governing energy. The installation of solar photovoltaic panels and wind turbines, and the manufacturing of batteries and electric vehicles, require land, minerals and other raw materials, infrastructure, energy and labour. If organised of ever-expanding industrial demand, the transition can reproduce extractive relations in a different technological form.
The International Energy Agency has said that global electricity demand grew by about 3 per cent in 2025, more than twice as fast as total energy demand, while data centre electricity consumption increased by about 17 per cent. The question therefore is not simply fossil energy versus renewable energy, but what kind of society the energy system serves. Land Conflict Watch has documented numerous conflicts associated with renewable energy projects in India, including disputes over common land, livelihoods, and community consultation. The problem is not renewable energy itself, but a capitalist energy transition without social transformation. If renewable energy remains under corporate control and organised around ever-expanding production, it can reproduce the underlying relationship between capital and nature in a new form.
Artificial Intelligence and the Materiality of Digital Capitalism
The idea that digital technology represents a departure from material production is equally misleading. Digital capitalism depends on immense physical infrastructure. Electronic devices require minerals such as lithium and cobalt. Data centres consume humungous amounts of electricity; servers generate heat and require cooling systems and water; fibre-optic cables cross oceans and territories; and data centres occupy land, buildings and power grids. Artificial intelligence intensifies this material dependence.
A data centre is a new kind of capitalist factory. Its product may be information rather than textiles or steel, but it still concentrates capital, energy, technology, infrastructure and labour. The proposed Google-Adani AI hub in and around Visakhapatnam offers a concrete example. The project is planned as a one-gigawatt cluster across three sites. An initial allotment of 480 acres was expanded in February 2026 to 601.4 acres in Visakhapatnam and Anakapalli districts of Andhra Pradesh. This has prompted the Human Rights Forum to warn of water stress, heavy electricity demand, diversion of public resources and inadequate environmental transparency.
The Visakhapatnam project illustrates the ecological and political costs that, more often than not, remain hidden behind the language of digital growth. The Human Rights Forum has also warned that the proposed cluster could intensify pressure on the already stressed water and electricity systemshas raised concerns about the absence of a publicly available cumulative environmental impact assessment and the diversion of substantial public resources through fiscal and non-fiscal incentives.
The supposedly non-material digital economy is therefore profoundly material. Artificial intelligence is not free of the ecological contradictions of capitalism; instead, it could become a new frontier of energy-intensive accumulation. The question is: whose energy is used, whose water is consumed, whose land is occupied, whose labour sustains the system, and who receives the economic benefits?
Climate Policy and the Commodification of Crisis
The capitalist response to climate change increasingly relies on carbon markets, carbon credits, private plantations and technological fixes. Under particular conditions, these instruments may reduce emissions; they do not necessarily challenge the social relations that underlie this perpetual ecological destruction. When forests are commodified as carbon stocks, trees as sinks, and biodiversity as a market-mediated mitigation service, the climate crisis itself becomes another field facilitating accumulation. Politically, what is important is not only how much carbon markets or renewable technologies can reduce emissions, but whether climate policy is capable of helping transform the relations among ownership, production and consumption that continually lead to ecological destruction.
If the economic system that generates emissions is also allowed to organise the markets through which those emissions are ostensibly offset, the climate crisis risks being absorbed into capitalist accumulation rather than being politically transformed.
Climate Crisis, Political Openings for Neo-Fascism and Environmental Resistance
The ecological crisis is increasingly a crisis of human survival.
Atmospheric carbon concentrations have risen dramatically since the beginning of industrialisation, while extreme weather increasingly contributes to the displacement of people and the disruption of livelihoods. Climate insecurity will not only automatically lead to a progressive ecological politics; it can also create openings for authoritarian nationalism.
As people suffer the rigours of displacement, unemployment, food insecurity, water scarcity and loss of livelihoods, political narratives can be used to influence their reaction and redirect their anger towards migrants, minority communities and opposition forces. The more unstable everyday life becomes, the easier it will become for authoritarian regimes to present themselves as guarantors of order and development. Climate politics therefore cannot be separated from the politics of democracy.
Environmental movements are often represented as campaigns for conservation. Many contemporary ecological struggles, however, are fundamentally struggles over land, labour, democracy, sovereignty and social reproduction.
In Ladakh, Sonam Wangchuk's mobilisation connected ecological concerns with demands for greater political autonomy and protection of the region's fragile environment and ecology. He was detained under the National Security Act in September 2025 and held for nearly six months before the Union government revoked the detention in March 2026. The episode illustrates how the government can reframe ecological and political demands as a potent threat to national security.
Adivasi rights activist Father Stan Swamy's case reveals another dimension. His work among Adivasi communities on land and forest rights brought him into conflict with state power, and he remained imprisoned under anti-terror legislation until his death. The arrest of climate activist Disha Ravi during the farmers' movement in Delhi similarly demonstrated the criminalisation of climate activism when it intersected with wider political dissent.
Environmental journalism has also become increasingly dangerous for practitioners. UNESCO documented at least 44 killings of journalists investigating environmental issues during the 15 years from 2009 to 2023, alongside hundreds of physical attacks and other forms of intimidation.
In Hasdeo, Adivasi communities have resisted coal-mining projects that threaten forests, wildlife and livelihoods. Police action against the protesters shows how resistance to extraction of natural resources can be criminalised when it questions powerful economic interests. The struggle against Vedanta's bauxite-mining projects in Sijimali and Kutrumali in Odisha likewise involves communities defending forests and mountains that form the material basis of everyday life, food systems and cultural relationships.
The case of Pranab Doley in Assam is another recent example. Doley, an Indigenous land-rights activist opposing a proposed luxury hotel project near Kaziranga National Park, was arrested in July 2026 and charged under multiple provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita for protesting against the project. After a local court granted him bail, the Assam government detained him under the National Security Act on 2 August 2026.
These cases exhibit a broader political pattern. States increasingly respond to ecological conflict using the language of national security. States claim an obstruction to national progress. A state need not declare war on environmentalism to nullify resistance to resource extraction; it just needs to redefine resistance as a threat to development, national security, and sovereignty to achieve that goal, and transform ecological conflict into security conflict.
These, along with many other struggles, show that ecological politics is inseparable from democratic politics and the politics of dissent.
Capitalism and Fascism: Alliance and Contradiction
Capitalism and fascism are not identical systems, and their relationship is neither automatic nor seamless. Capital depends on the state to protect property, infrastructure, markets and accumulation; authoritarian politics depends on economic resources, technological capacity and corporate cooperation. Yet corporations and authoritarian governments can also struggle over regulation, information, sovereignty and political influence, particularly when powerful technology companies control platforms and infrastructure with quasi-public power. The result is not a single, unified capitalist-fascist entity, but a shifting field of alliances, dependencies and conflicts. These contradictions matter politically because crises often emerge where different forms of power collide. It is thus important that ecological movements must learn to identify and exploit such fractures.
Conclusion: Towards a Political-Ecological Struggle
The ecological crisis, instead of simply being a crisis of nature, is a crisis of the social relations through which nature, labour and life are organised. On the other hand, capitalist accumulation, corporate control over resources, militarisation, imperialism, patriarchy and authoritarian nationalism are deeply interconnected systems of domination. Therefore, technological change, including a shift from fossil fuels to renewables and the use of AI, cannot resolve the crisis as long as these underlying relations remain intact. The task is not merely to mitigate ecological destruction, but to transform the political and economic structures that produce it. This means challenging who owns land, controls energy, governs forests and minerals, determines development and bears its costs. This also means placing social reproduction, labour, ecological knowledge and collective survival at the centre of environmental politics. Such a transformation cannot be achieved through institutional reform alone; it requires informed political struggle, too.
The central challenge is to connect dispersed struggles: to link resistance to extraction with struggles against capitalism, patriarchy, militarisation and fascism. Ecological insecurity will either be absorbed by authoritarian nationalism, militarisation, and intensified accumulation, or become the basis for new forms of solidarity and democratic transformation. An anti-capitalist, anti-fascist and anti-patriarchal ecological politics seeks the latter.
References
BBC News. (2021, February 15). Indian activist Disha Ravi arrested over farmers' protest 'toolkit'. BBC News.
Business Standard. (2026a, February 18). Andhra government boosts land allotment for Google AI data centres to 600 acres. Business Standard.
Business Standard. (2026b, March 14). Centre revokes Sonam Wangchuk's detention after almost six months. Business Standard.
Caffentzis, G., & Federici, S. (2014). Commons against and beyond capitalism. Community Development Journal, 49(Suppl. 1), i92-i105.
Carbon Brief. (n.d.). Which countries are historically responsible for climate change?
Crosby, A. W. (2004). Ecological imperialism: The biological expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Crouch, C. (2004). Post-democracy. Polity.
Down to Earth. (2025, September 11). Critical, strategic and atomic mineral mining projects in India can now be approved without public hearing. Down to Earth.
Dutta, S., Ghosh, S., Gopalakrishnan, S., Bijoy, C. R., & Yasmin, H. (2013). Climate change and India: Analysis of political economy and impact. Daanish Books and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung-South Asia.
Eatwell, R., & Goodwin, M. (2018). National populism: The revolt against liberal democracy. Penguin.
Economic Times. (2026, August 2). A day after bail, Assam government invokes NSA against Indigenous rights activist Pranab Doley. The Economic Times.
Foa, R. S., Klassen, A., Slade, M., Rand, A., & Williams, M. (2020). The global satisfaction with democracy report 2020. Centre for the Future of Democracy, University of Cambridge.
Foster, J. B. (2002). Ecology against capitalism. Monthly Review Press.
Fraser, N. (2017). The end of progressive neoliberalism. Dissent, Winter 2017.
Fraser, N. (2019). The old is dying and the new cannot be born: From progressive neoliberalism to Trump and beyond. Verso.
Gadgil, M., & Guha, R. (2004). The use and abuse of nature: Incorporating This Fissured Land and Ecology and Equity. Oxford University Press.
Ghosh, S. (2016). Selling nature: Narratives of coercion, resistance, and ecology. In K. Kohli & M. Menon (Eds.), Business interests and the environmental crisis (pp. 170-206). SAGE.
GroundXero. (2024a, October 17). Adivasi villagers resist cutting of trees in Hasdeo forest; one youth injured in police lathicharge. GroundXero.
GroundXero. (2024b, February 16). Update on the struggle against Vedanta's bauxite mining at Sijimali. GroundXero.
GroundXero. (2025, October 18). Google-Adani data centre in Vizag a looming environmental and economic disaster, warns HRF. GroundXero.
Guha, R. (2016). Environmentalism. Penguin Books.
Hartung, W. D., & Freeman, B. (2025). The trillion-dollar war machine: How runaway military spending drives America into foreign wars and bankrupts us at home. Bold Type Books.
Inamdar, N. (2025, November 10). India's data centre boom confronts a looming water challenge. BBC News.
Institute for Economics & Peace. (2020). Ecological threat register 2020. Institute for Economics & Peace.
International Energy Agency. (2025). Electricity 2025. IEA.
International Energy Agency. (2026). Global Energy Review 2026. IEA.
International IDEA. (2024). The global state of democracy 2024. International IDEA.
Land Conflict Watch. (2024). The hidden cost of green growth: Land conflicts driven by renewable energy projects. Land Conflict Watch.
Liang, X., Tian, N., Lopes da Silva, D., Scarazzato, L., Karim, Z. A., & Guiberteau Ricard, J. (2026). Trends in world military expenditure, 2025. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. https://doi.org/10.55163/ZLHQ1057
Lohmann, L. (2022). Labour, energy and the colonial geography of artificial intelligence. The Corner House.
Lohmann, L., & Hildyard, N. (2014). Energy, work and finance. The Corner House.
Malm, A. (2013). The origins of fossil capital: From water to steam in the British cotton industry. Historical Materialism, 21(1), 15-68. https://doi.org/10.1163/1569206X-12341279
Marx, K. (1973). Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy (M. Nicolaus, Trans.). Penguin.
Mudde, C. (2019). The far right today. Polity.
NDTV. (2025, December 4). Andhra allots 480 acres for Adani-Google AI data centre in Visakhapatnam. NDTV.
Research Unit for Political Economy. (2003). Behind the war on Iraq. Monthly Review Press.
Roy, T. (2020, June 17). Digital currency: Survival strategy of late-capitalism? GroundXero.
Roy, T. (2023, September 5). New forest law: Licence to corporates for destruction. GroundXero.
Saito, K. (2017). Karl Marx's ecosocialism: Capital, nature, and the unfinished critique of political economy. Monthly Review Press.
Scarazzato, L., Tian, N., Lopes da Silva, D., Liang, X., Karim, Z. A., & Guiberteau Ricard, J. (2025). The SIPRI top 100 arms-producing and military services companies, 2024. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Seymour, R. (2025). Disaster nationalism: The downfall of liberal civilisation. Verso.
Streeck, W. (2014). The crises of democratic capitalism. New Left Review, 71, 5-29.
Streeck, W. (2016). How will capitalism end? Essays on a failing system. Verso.
The Hindu. (2022). Remembering Father Stan Swamy on his 85th birthday. The Hindu.
The Hindu. (2025). Sonam Wangchuk detained under NSA for his 'provocative' speeches: Ladakh administration. The Hindu.
Tian, H., Banger, K., Bo, T., & Dadhwal, V. K. (2014). History of land use in India during 1880-2010: Large-scale land transformations reconstructed from satellite data and historical archives. Global and Planetary Change, 121, 78-88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2014.07.005
United Nations Environment Programme. (2022). The environmental impact of the conflict in Ukraine: A preliminary review. UNEP.
United Nations Environment Programme. (2024). Environmental impact of the conflict in the Gaza Strip: Preliminary assessment of environmental impacts. UNEP.
United Nations Environment Programme. (2025). Environmental impact of the escalation of conflict in the Gaza Strip. UNEP.
UNHCR. (n.d.). Extreme weather driving repeated displacement: UNHCR report. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
UNESCO. (2024). Press and planet in danger: Safety of environmental journalists. UNESCO.
Van der Walt, J. (2024). The fragility of liberal democracy faced with fascism and climate politics. Athena - Critical Inquiries in Law, Philosophy and Globalization, 4(1), 23-67. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2724-6299/19162
World Resources Institute. (n.d.). The history of carbon dioxide emissions. World Resources Institute.
World Rainforest Movement. (2019). A mineral-intensive 'green' energy transition: Deforestation and injustice in the Global South. WRM Bulletin, 246.
Wrigley, E. A. (2010). Energy and the Industrial Revolution. Cambridge University Press.