In his February 2012 Adbusters article titled Post-Crash Fascism, Christian Parenti discussed the catastrophic convergence of crises that military planners at the Pentagon and national security analysts at the NSA and CIA predict will require ever greater responses from their agencies. One of the key crises they are preparing for is the social disruption caused by climate change, which is already unfolding faster and more dramatically than expected.
For the institutional bureaucracies these planners represent, a New Dark Age, culminating with state collapse worldwide, is viewed as an inevitability that will overwhelm the traditional instruments of national security, power and authority. Coming together in one conflagration, public rage, religious fervor, hostility and violence, they predict, pose serious threats to altruism and generosity. With increased refugee flows and social breakdown, says Parenti, “they envision a project of open-ended counterinsurgency on a global scale.”
As Parenti notes, the colossal changes we will need to make will also require changes in economics and diplomacy. The response of militarized societies, he says, is likely to be increased authoritarianism–a climate fascism based on exclusion, segregation and repression. As Parenti asserts, there must be another path. As Indigenous Nations and Modern States contend with the crises of climate change adaptation, the political emergence of these nations challenging state power offers an alternative view.