The Political Ecology of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD): Defending Capitalism as an Economic and Social System in Times of the Climate Crisis

As global average temperatures are rising, the populist radical right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has ramped up its focus on topics of ecological concern. Whilst this increased focus can neither be tied to party competence, issue salience, nor policy innovation, the question of reasons for and strategic functions of the incorporation of these topics into the AfD’s political agenda arises. This paper seeks to bring clarity into the AfD’s political ecology by analysing it from three angles: policy propositions, ideological underpinnings, and frames. In a first step, this paper introduces the AfD’s position on central ecological concerns (climate change, environmental protection, energy- and mobility transitions). In a second step, based on work by De Cleen (2019) and Heiskanen (2021), Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) discourse theoretical considerations are employed to unravel the ideological underpinnings of the political ecology of the AfD and present them in their spatial orientation: populism, nationalism, and ordoliberalism. The resulting ideological matrix is put in conversation with the analysis of seven semi-structured interviews with party members active in the coal-mining area of Lusatia (fall 2021), by which three frames are identified as most constitutive to the interviewees' understanding of the ecological crises, namely labour, morality, and progress. Together, all three angles of analysis lead to the primary conclusion of this paper: that the political ecology of the AfD is an articulation of a defence of capitalism as both an economic and a social system. I identify subject positions interpellated by this political defence, thereby building a common explanatory ground for theories of populism as a reaction to economic grievances, modernisation or cultural backlash. Lastly, I outline possible strategies for the broader climate justice movement to counteract and mitigate a further radicalisation of the populist radical right in times of ecological crises.